Peg Tittle's Blog, page 48

Testicular Battery and Tranquilizer Guns (what the world needs now is)

Given the relative vulnerability of men to sexual assault (all it takes to disable them is a swift forceful kick, or, at closer quarters, a good grab, pull, twist – almost anything, really) (whereas women have to be partially undressed and then immobilized), it’s surprising that we hear far more often about rape than – well, we don’t even have a special name for it.  Testicular battery?

Since most women are physically capable of such an assault, the reason must be some psychological social inhibition.  And, of course, this is so.  Girls are not permitted, encouraged, or taught to fight; boys are.  All three.  Women are socialized to see men as their protectors, not their enemies.  Men are – well, this is the interesting bit: men used to be socialized to see women as in need of protection, and so would never dream of raping them (well, okay, they’d dream of it – perhaps often and in technicolor – but there was a strong social stigma against assaulting the fair sex: boys were shamed if they ever hit a girl, and if you ever hit your wife, let alone another woman, well what kind of man are you?), but feminism got rid of such patronizing chivalry.

And rightly so.  Unfortunately, it has yet to make its replacement, self-defence, as commonplace.

There’s another problem.  We’re afraid that if we hurt them, they’ll come back (when they can walk again) and kill us.  Which is why women’s self-defence should include a small tranquilizer gun.

(‘Course they might still come back and kill us.  After all, to be decommissioned by a woman!  It would be a new kind of honor killing…)

Which means the best solution may be to just kill him first.

(And given the very real possibility that your rapist is HIV+, since he’s apparently not monogamous and/or in the habit of using a condom, it may not just be rape, but murder—in which case you’re justified in doing just that.)

Dolly (what’s in a name – for cloning)

Wilmut’s team named the sheep cloned from a single adult cell “Dolly” because that cell had come from a mammary gland.  I’m tempted, on that basis alone, to cast my vote against human cloning.  I mean, if that kind of short-sightedness or immaturity is going to be running things, they’re bound to go horribly wrong.

Did they really not foresee that “Dolly” would become headline news?  Or did they not even recognize how juvenile they were being?  Mammaries = women = mammaries.  We are not seen as people, or perhaps colleagues, certainly never as bosses.  Really, need I go on?  This is all so old.  And yet, grown men, brilliant men, on the cutting edge of science, who become headline news, are apparently still forcing farts at the dinner table and snickering about it.

So, cloning?  I don’t think so.  Not until the other half of the species grows up.

(Then again, since cloning means we finally don’t need them at all, not even to maintain the species, let’s go for it.)  (Could it be they never thought of that either – that cloning makes males totally redundant?)

Have you noticed the way the weather is being reported lately?

Have you noticed the way the weather is being reported lately?  Climate change, specifically global warming, as evidenced by the dramatic increase in severe storms and the decrease in polar ice…they’re making it entertaining.  Entertaining, for gawdsake.

Commentators refer to “extreme storms” — making them sound all exciting and daring, like “extreme sports”.

Another opens with “this week’s wildest weather” as if we’re on a fun safari.

And there’s a video called “Force of Nature – Uncut”.  Again, exciting entertainment.

“Will any records be broken?” the commentator asks, the phrasing suggesting that, like athletic competitions, breaking a record will be a good thing.

And on the weather network website, the “photo of the day” shows a huge iceberg afloat, testament to the alarming melt of the polar ice, and the caption reads, unbelievably, “Anyone else see a face in the iceberg?”

They’ve turned the death of our planet into entertainment.

(Oh, and they’re referring to “acts of weather”.  Not, like, acts of humanity.  Oh no, we had nothing to do with it.  And of course we don’t want to blame someone’s god.)

 ***

 Even if greenhouse emissions stopped overnight the concentrations already in the atmosphere would still mean a global rise of between 0.5 and 1C. A shift of a single degree is barely perceptible to human skin, but it’s not human skin we’re talking about. It’s the planet; and an average increase of one degree across its entire surface means huge changes in climatic extremes.

…Six thousand years ago, when the world was one degree warmer than it is now, the American agricultural heartland around Nebraska was desert. … The effect of one-degree warming, therefore, requires no great feat of imagination. … Whilst snow-covered ice reflects more than 80% of the sun’s heat, the darker ocean absorbs up to 95% of solar radiation. Once sea ice begins to melt, in other words, the process becomes self-reinforcing. More ocean surface is revealed, absorbing solar heat, raising temperatures and making it unlikelier that ice will re-form next winter. The disappearance of 720,000 square kilometres of supposedly permanent ice in a single year testifies to the rapidity of planetary change. …Chance of avoiding one degree of global warming: zero. …When temperatures were last between 1 and 2C higher than they are now, 125,000 years ago, sea levels were five or six metres higher too. All this “lost” water is in the polar ice that is now melting. …

http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm

 

In the last century, the average global temperature has risen approximately 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit; disconcertingly, most scientists agree that the point of no return is a rise 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Beyond these levels (approximated to be 450 ppm carbon dioxide), the planet will experience unprecedented changes in the global climate and a significant increase in the severity of natural disasters (Dresner, 2008). Currently, the average atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is approximately 392.2 ppm (NOAA, 2011) and it is increasing at a rate of 1.92 ppm per year. At this rate, the global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide will reach 450 ppm by 2042, disregarding the contribution of growing industrialized nations such as China and India [italics mine]. … [S]ome estimate that the loss of species is currently happening at 1000 times the natural rate of extinction (Esterman, 2010). Species simply do not have enough time to adapt to altered habitats or migrate to better suited ecosystems. This leaves them stranded, and many of them soon become endangered. … [And in case you miss the relevance of that] As a population, humans depend on a great deal of species for survival.

http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2015/2015/climatechange.html

 

…[A]s the IEA found, we’re about five years away from building enough carbon-spewing infrastructure to lock us in and make it extremely difficult — maybe impossible — to avoid 450 ppm. The point of no return comes around 2017.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/when-do-we-hit-the-point-of-no-return-for-climate-change/2011/11/10/gIQA4rri8M_blog.html

 

Surrogacy – Why Not?

Sure, women should be allowed to be surrogates.  We all do work with our bodies, some of us also include our minds in the deal (some of us are allowed to include our minds in the deal), so why not?  As long as they get paid for service rendered.

Being a surrogate is sort of like being an athlete.  You have to be and stay physically healthy, for the duration: you have to eat and drink the right stuff, and not eat or drink the wrong stuff; you have to get the right amount of physical activity.  And so on.  It’s important.  Use during pregnancy of illegal drugs (such as crack cocaine and heroin) as well as legal drugs (such as alcohol and nicotine) can cause, in the newborn, excruciating pain, vomiting, inability to sleep, reluctance to feed, diarrhoea leading to shock and death, severe anaemia, growth retardation, mental retardation, central nervous system abnormalities, and malformations of the kidneys, intestines, head and spinal cord (Madam Justice Proudfoot, “Judgement Respecting Female Infant ‘D.J.”; Michelle Oberman, “Sex, Drugs, Pregnancy, and the Law: Rethinking the Problems of Pregnant Women who use Drugs”).  Refusal of fetal therapy techniques (such as surgery, blood infusions, and vitamin regimens) can result in respiratory distress, and various genetic disorders and defects such as spina bifida and hydrocephalus (Deborah Mathieu, Preventing Prenatal Harm: Should the State Intervene?)

To be an elite surrogate, you have to have a good genotype—no genetic diseases, etc.  And elite athletes—professional football, hockey, basketball, and baseball players— are paid around $3 million dollars per season http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ycn-10423863).

Now, I think many people justify that level of income because of the risk of physical injury that such athletes incur.  Okay, fair enough (let’s say) (because coal-miners don’t get paid $3 million).  Being pregnant incurs the risk of nausea, heartburn and indigestion, constipation, incontinence, backaches, headaches, skin rashes, changes in sense of smell and taste, chemical imbalances, weight gain, dizziness and light-headedness, diabetes, anemia, embolism, stroke, circulatory collapse, and cardiopulmonary arrest (sorry, can’t find my reference for this list).

They are, further, paid what they’re paid because their career is over by, say, thirty or thirty-five.  (I don’t agree with that reasoning, but it’s the same reasoning construction workers and other seasonal workers use to charge higher-than-average hourly rates.  I used to teach piano, a September to June thing; in the summer, I just had to find other work.)  Similarly, women are pretty much toast as surrogates by thirty-five, forty tops.

In addition, unlike being a professional athlete, being a surrogate involves, typically, some sort of emotional expense.  The hormones, the attachment…

And, then there’s the labour.  Perhaps if professional athletes had to under knee surgery without anaesthesia at the end of the season…

Lastly, there’s the value of the service provided.  Football, hockey, basketball, and baseball players play a game whose outcome is of no consequence whatsoever.  Surrgoates create a human being.  I’m going to make a modest proposal here and suggest that, given that, surrogates should be paid ten times what professional athletes are paid.   $30 million.

And that’s  the problem with women being surrogates: we wouldn’t be paid what our work is worth.

The Right to Life – a given?

What if the right to life was a natural, inalienable human right to age 18, but after that it was an acquired, alienable right?  So you had to deserve it somehow, you had to deserve to be alive.  And you could lose it, by doing any of a number of things…

Needs and Wants

I don’t like living in a global community.  When everything is so interconnected, everything I do (or don’t do) is bound to be at someone else’s expense.  Mere self-interest seems impossible; selfishness is inevitable.

For example, if it pleases me to live in a cabin on a lake in a forest quite a distance away from the nearest town or highway, and I buy such a place, that no one else even wanted, let alone needed, I’m acting out of self-interest.  No one has been disadvantaged by what I’ve chosen to do.  However, if I prefer to keep warm with easy electric baseboard heaters or an oil furnace rather than with the hassle of splitting and carrying firewood and building fires, that’s another story.  With the former, I’m supporting a heavily-subsidized industry: the subsidies that support it could have gone instead into education, but didn’t – to the detriment of how many kids?  I’m also supporting the nuclear industry; I’m thus responsible perhaps for one of those microscopic flakes of plutonium that will give somebody cancer.  As for the oil furnace, well, the acid rain that’s killing our lakes?  Some of it was formed by the SO2 and NO from my burning of fossil fuels.  But even if I heat with wood, well I’m depleting our already endangered forests, the lungs of the planet.  Okay, what if I heat with the sun?  That wouldn’t be at anyone’s expense – taking heat form the sun for myself doesn’t reduce the amount available for someone else.  But I’d have to cut down a lot of trees to go solar, and well, the trees are the lungs of the planet.

But let’s back up a bit.  If I’d chosen instead to live in a rented apartment, that down payment of several thousand dollars could’ve provided housing for some ‘Third World’ family.  So actually, that initial self-interested action was at the expense of another – it was also selfish.  Okay, but maybe if that Third World family didn’t have so many kids, they could provide their own house.  Maybe if their country didn’t spend half of its money on weapons, they would have a home.  But, and, maybe if they didn’t spend the other half paying off their debt to us ‘First World’ countries who, let’s admit it, are as well off as we are because we’ve exploited them…  Okay, but why should we suffer for the past and/or present corrupt trade policies of our government?  Well, why should they?  I don’t know the solution to this problem: I know we’re connected but the connections are neither clear nor simple; how much self-interest should I sacrifice for the very low probability that my deficit will be their asset?

Let’s go on.  What about intangibles?  What about things like peace and quiet?  I happen to be very happy when it’s quiet.  My neighbour, however, seems to be happy when he’s making noise (he sings when he’s outside, loudly enough for me to hear him; he cuts his grass with a power lawnmower; he trims the weeds with one of those obnoxiously noisy weed trimmers; etc.).  I’m sure that if I told him he was being selfish whenever he cut his grass, because it was at my expense (it destroys the quiet upon which my happiness depends), he would disagree.  (He’d probably do a few other things as well.)  I’m sure he thinks he’s being a morally responsible person by cutting the grass.  He’d also claim, I’m sure, that he doesn’t want to cut it – it has to be cut.  And I, of course, would deny that – he doesn’t need to cut his grass!

And here we get to the infamous ‘needs/wants’ distinction.  Many people call a ‘need’ what is really a ‘want’.  For example, contrary to popular opinion, one doesn’t need sex.  Of course, the crucial question is ‘need for what?’  My answer is pretty basic – ‘for survival‘: if you can live without it, you really don’t need it, you just want it.

This definition allows us to make the persuasive proposal that all things being equal, one shouldn’t satisfy one’s wants until everyone has had their needs satisfied; one shouldn’t take dessert until everyone’s had some bread and water.  But what if someone didn’t help with the harvest?  Well, that’s why I said ‘all things being equal’ – we’re really back to the Third World family home problem.

Eventually we get to the equally infamous difficulty of ranking wants (or needs, if you like).  Whose want is more important, more to be respected?  I would argue that since my desire for quiet is truly autonomous and hence genuine, and my neighbour’s desire to cut the grass is just socialized habit and hence artificial (we live in a fucking forest for god’s sake, it’s stupid even to have a lawn), mine is better and therefore more to be respected.  Or I could argue that my desire does no harm, whereas his does (having a lawn that one maintains with fossil-fuelled machines adds to ecological degradation); but he’d probably say that his desire keeps people employed, it creates jobs (all those lawnmowers to manufacture and repair).  How do we judge?

Well, we could rank wants according to their proximity to needs, according to their relation to survival, both individual and collective.  And so, since quiet is totally unrelated to food, water, and shelter, whereas cutting the grass is negatively related (environmental degradation), my want should have priority.  (So yes this puts environmental health before economic health.)  In the case of two equally unrelated-to-survival wants (do we hear Bach or Bon Jovi), I think equal time to each would be fairest (unless some creative solution can be found – like headphones).

So what’s my guide here to living unselfishly in the global community?  Well, using truly unlimited resources is okay: it would be impossible to even have the stuff at another’s expense.  Use of limited resources should be directed by the distinction between needs and wants, with needs taking precedence; that is to say, one should not have what one wants if that causes another not to get what is needed.  (Wait a minute – who is this ‘another’?  Someone you made?  Why should I do with less because you replicated yourself?  Shouldn’t the people you make come out of your allotment?)  However, if the stuff is so limited that it would not even meet everyone’s needs, surely it’s insane for everyone to not get enough – that would be species suicide.  Someone should get enough.  In that case, then, it seems permissible to take what one needs.  But no more.  Those who die from lack of it don’t die because you took more than you needed, they die because there wasn’t enough.  And as for the non-stuff things, the more related something is to a need for survival, the greater priority it gets.  Failing that distinction, the more genuine the want, the more respect it should get.  And failing that, equal time or a creative solution should do the trick.

Not gonna happen though.  All those connections were made in the first place by people hoping to satisfy their wants, not their needs.  We don’t live in a global community: we live in a global marketplace.

Our Christian Language

I hadn’t really thought about it until I saw ‘his word’ corrected to ‘His Word’ on a Writing Competency Test at a publicly-funded university.

I can accept a capital on ‘God’ because the word is being used as a name, and names are generally capitalized.  (Though I do find it rather presumptuous to so appropriate a common noun.  It’s also a bit coercive: to use a common noun without an article is to imply there’s only one – the claim ‘Cat is happy’ demands the question ‘Which cat?’ unless you think there’s only one; so when the rest of us want to refer to the Christian god, since we must say ‘God’ instead of using a real name like ‘Zeus’ or ‘Hela’, we are unwillingly implying the same belief.)

And I can accept capitals on ‘The Bible‘, as well as italics, because the words refer to the title of a book, and such words are generally capitalized, as well as italicized.

But what’s the rationale for capitalizing ‘His Word’?  It was suggested to me, when I questioned the marking committee, that ‘his word’ was being used to refer to The Bible and so, as a title, should be capitalized.  Well, one, then it should also be italicized, and, oddly, this wasn’t mentioned.  Two, we generally don’t accept substitute titles for other books; for example, we would not accept The Dictionary for The Concise Oxford Dictionary – not at the university level.

I suspect the student meant ‘his word’ not as an equivalent to The Bible, but as an equivalent to ‘his teaching’.  So again, what’s the rationale for capitals?  With two exceptions, no other pronoun is ever capitalized.

The first exception is that pronouns are capitalized when they refer to royalty – ‘His Majesty’.  I suspect it’s meant to show respect.  Well I, for one, don’t respect someone who’s in a position of power and wealth merely by accident of birth.  And for our language rules to impose such a display of respect is completely unjustified.

The second exception is ‘I’.  This one’s unjustified on the grounds of inconsistency alone: no other subject pronoun is capitalized in the normal course of things.  To make ‘I’ an exception is to be egocentric as well as inconsistent.

Since both exceptions are then, to my mind, unjustified, neither, to my mind, supports capitalizing in the instance under consideration.  So much for ‘his’ in ‘his word’.

As for ‘word’ (or ‘teaching’ or ‘messages’ or whatever), it doesn’t belong to any class of nouns usually capitalized (names of people, countries, cities, months, etc.).  Case closed.

So capitalizing ‘His Word’ seems to be an exception to the rules.  And on what basis is this exception made?  Well, it seems to me that capitalizing ‘His Word’ is meant to designate some special status, some special respect.  It’s a sign of worship, pure and simple.  And, as I suggested when I considered ‘His Majesty’, language has no business legislating opinions of value.

More specifically, worship has no place in our grammatical rules.  It especially has no place in the grammatical rules taught in public schools.  Jewish schools can teach their kids to write ‘G-d’ and Christian schools can teach their kids to write ‘His Word’ – but neither should be stipulated as a common rule of grammar, and students in public schools should not be ‘corrected’ if they don’t express these religious opinions through their spelling.

Nor should such rules be in any grammar book not identified as a Christian grammar book.  Lamentably, five out of five grammar texts that I checked listed as a rule that names of deities and other religious names and terms be capitalized.  However, in three at least, capitalizing the pronoun was presented as optional.

It’s one thing to impose religious belief in public education, which is not only contrary to the view that a just society is one which separates Church and State, but also contrary to the view that public education is committed to the pursuit of knowledge, not superstition.

It’s another, and far more insidious, thing to entrench religious belief in our common language.  We’ve exposed the sexism rooted in our language, and we have managed to begin to make changes.  It’s past time to do the same for the religionism rooted in our language.  Just as B.C. (Before Christ) has given way to B.C.E. (Before the Common Era), let’s make ‘His Word’ and the like equally anachronistic.

 

(A slightly different version of this was originally published in Free Inquiry, the journal of the Council for Secular Humanism.)

“Oh Canada” Revision

I’m all for sex-neutral language.

In fact, I think we should completely revamp English to eliminate all sex-specific terms (except ‘male’ and ‘female’, to be used only in relevant contexts, most likely only in medical contexts).  As is, the language encourages, obsessively, sex-differentiation when sex is, or should be, irrelevant.  As is, it supports the patriarchy, a blatantly ridiculous and unfair system.

That said, I’m quite happy to be excluded from a group supposed to be ‘commanded’ (a few steps beyond ‘inspired’, yeah?) by Canada to patriot love (true patriot love, no less).

Because, to be honest, Canada does not inspire me to patriot love.  Why not?  See “Canada Day – Are you sure you want to celebrate?”

 

 

Population Growth (i.e., rape)

I am amazed at the number of population growth analyses that don’t mention rape.  So far I’ve read, let me see…none.  And if they don’t even mention rape, they sure as hell can’t consider it a major causal factor.  I mean, think about it:  Do you really believe that millions of women want to be pregnant for five to ten years?  Do you really believe that most women would actually consent to child number four when the other three are still under six?

And look!  The lower the status of women, the higher the birth rate.  Compare Bangladesh’s birth rate of 3.7 with Sweden’s 1.9.  Gee.  What a coincidence!  “Women of low status have less control over their lives, including decisions involving their fertility” (Diana M. Brown, “Population Growth and Human Rights” in Humanist in Canada 30.1:29).  Go ahead!  Say it!  They’re more likely to be raped!  That’s what they were bought for!

“Son preference is strong when females are undervalued, so parents go on increasing their family until they have the desired number of sons” (Brown, as above).  Parents?  Don’t go all gender-inclusive on me now!  Men are the ones with the obsession for progeny, their progeny, male progeny.

And also look!  Iraq and Gaza top the chart with birth rates of 6.7 and 8.0 respectively.  I wonder what the figures were for Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia – I mean really, do you think that after a hard day of castrating the enemy and raping its women, the Man of the House is going to come home to bed and ask first?  I don’t think so.  And don’t forget, this is war!  We have to outnumber them!  (Why does the Pope come to mind just now?)

“We know from research in many countries that if women were allowed to choose for themselves and had unfettered access to suitable family planning methods, fertility would be falling much faster than it is” (Brown, as above).  Go ahead, say it!  The population growth problem is due to men – who rape.

So the solution is not female literacy or the availability of contraceptives.  Government intervention?  Yes.  But not for a one-child policy.  Rather, for an anti-rape policy, husbands included.

School Crossing Signs

You’ve seen the signs I mean – silhouette figures of two children about to cross the road: one boy, one girl.  (How do we tell?  One’s wearing a skirt.)  (That’d be the girl.)  (Really, do most girls still wear skirts to school?)

So, yes, let’s emphasize sex.  Boy and Girl.  Ms. and Mr.  Nothing else matters.

And nothing else is possible.

Note that the boy is taller. ‘Oh, but they are.’  Not at that age! Taller suggests older which suggests more mature, wiser.  And just in case you miss this not-so-subtle suggestion of male authority, look, he has his hand on the little girl’s shoulder – guiding, protecting, patronizing.  It will be there for the rest of her life.

Just to make sure of that, we have this social understanding that in a couple, the man should be two or three years older than the woman.  Such an arrangement gives the illusion, and the excuse, of the man being in a position of authority over the woman – after all, he’s older.  (But since, as they say, women mature two years ahead of men, such an arrangement merely ensures the two are ‘equal’.  If they were the same age, they’d see in a minute that the woman should take the lead, being more mature intellectually, emotionally, and socially.)

And to really really make sure the message of male authority gets through, mothers encourage their boys to be the man of the house.  So a fourteen year old boy comes to consider himself more knowing, more capable, than a woman twice his age (his mother).  Is it any wonder that at eighteen, he assumes he’s more knowing, more capable, than all women?

Now I confess that if the crossing sign had things the other way around, a taller, older girl guiding a younger boy, I’d protest the nurturant mommy-in-training role model.  Which just goes to show we can’t win.  As long as we insist on pointing at everything and saying ‘male!’ or ‘female!’  As long as we live in an apartheid of sex.

The ironic thing is that the signs point the way to (or from) school, the institution at which we supposedly become educated, enlightened.  Looks like we just learn how to colour – in pink and blue.       (In black and white.)