Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 241

Happy Father’s Day! Now Get Back To Work.

James Poniewozik stresses the need for paid paternity leave:

A new study from the Boston College Center for Work and Family has found that new dads take paternity leave only to the extent that they’re paid to – i.e., not a lot. As the Washington Post reports, the majority of men who get two weeks’ paid leave take two weeks, those with three weeks take three, and so on. And per the Families and Work Institute, those lucky guys are few; only 14 percent of employers offer any pay for “spouse or partner” leave, compared with 58 percent for maternity leave (mostly through temporary disability insurance and very rarely at full salary).

Bryce Covert digs into the new research:

The report notes that in a study of 34 developed countries, the United States is one of just two that doesn’t ensure all fathers can access paid family leave. Here, both parents are only guaranteed 12 weeks of unpaid leave for the arrival of a new child, but even that only covers about half of all workers thanks to restrictions. Only 12 percent of workers get paid leave through their employers, although three states — California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island –  have instituted paid family leave programs for everyone. This past December, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced a bill that would give all workers access to paid family leave.

A past study from the Center for Work & Family found that 85 percent of fathers still take time off when their child arrives, but three-quarters take a week or less. California’s experience, meanwhile, backs up the most recent survey’s finding that paid leave increases leave taking. Just 35 percent of fathers took leave before the program began, but now three-quarters do, taking an average of three weeks.

Jena McGregor adds:

The vast majority of respondents – 86 percent – said they wouldn’t use paternity leave or parental leave unless they were paid at least 70 percent of their normal salaries. Roughly 45 percent said they wouldn’t use it unless they received all of their regular pay. Much of the explanation for those numbers is likely an economic one, as many of these fathers may be the primary breadwinner in their families.

Meanwhile, Aaron Gouveia praises his employers for letting him take paid leave as a new father:

By the time my second child was born last year, I had switched companies and had access to two weeks of fully paid paternity leave in addition to vacation time — all of which I was encouraged to take if I needed it. That extra time (and positive company attitude) was invaluable to me; it gave me peace of mind.

I was able to take care of my wife. I was able to supervise my oldest’s transition from only child to big brother. But most importantly, I was free to bond with my baby. I held him, changed him, got up at night to support my wife during feedings, learned his sounds, and developed a routine. Whether it’s moms striving for perfection or dads being hesitant (or already back at work) during those first few weeks, uninvolved dads lose out on so much of that initial experience that serves as a foundation for fatherhood. But paternity leave allowed me to be an active participant in parenting, as opposed to a bystander.

A Ledger For The Soul

Jacob Soll explores the penchant 16th and 17th century Dutch artists had for portraying accounting in their paintings, claiming that “the tradition of accounting in art shows just how much is at stake in ‘good accounting,’ and how much society can gain from seeing it, like the Dutch, not just as a tool but as a cultural principle and a moral position”:

Double-entry accounting made it possible to calculate profit and capital and for managers, investors, and authorities to verify books. But at the time, it also had a moral implication. Keeping one’s books balanced wasn’t simply a matter of law, but an imitation of God, who kept moral accounts of humanity and tallied them in the Books of Life and Death. It was a financial technique whose power lay beyond the accountants, and beyond even the wealthy people who employed them.

Accounting was closely tied to the notion of human audits and spiritual reckonings. Dutch artists began to paint what could be called a warning genre of accounting paintings. In Jan Provost’s “Death and Merchant,” a businessman sits behind his sacks of gold doing his books, but he cannot balance them, for there is a missing entry. He reaches out for payment, not from the man who owes him the money, but from the grim reaper, death himself, the only one who can pay the final debts and balance the books. The message is clear: Humans cannot truly balance their books in the end, for they are accountable to the final auditor.

(Image: Death and Merchant by Jan Provost, via WikiArt)

The Sons And Daughters Of Abraham

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, whose The Who And The What recently opened in New York, considers the similarities between Jewish and Muslim identity, particularly in America:

My relationship to Jewish artists and writers began when I was very young. It started with Chaim Potok, and in college I discovered Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Woody Allen, Seinfeld. All of that stuff was hugely influential in helping me think about my experience. There seemed to be so many commonalities; I found myself and my community in those works, oddly.

I think there is a lot of continuity between the Jewish and the Islamic traditions. We know this historically, though people don’t want to talk about that – especially Muslims. There is a common source for both Judaism and Islam, or let’s say that Islam finds its source in Judaism. The commonalities of practice and sensibility, ethos and mythos, create a lot of overlap.

Post-9/11, the notion of “Muslims” taking on a potential truculence [corresponds to] – although it’s different – ways in which Jews were seen pejoratively within dominant Western cultures. Something about the orientation of faith being your identity marker as opposed to nationality or ethnicity. Post-9/11, that is an issue: folks get labeled “Muslim” no matter where they’re from. If you are Muslim, then that is part of it, but here’s the complicating factor for me: growing up, the only part of my identity that mattered was being Muslim, and I knew that. Being Pakistani was not as important as being Muslim. So the black guy whom I met who’s a Muslim, I’m much closer to him than the Christian Pakistani guy who is my dad’s friend. We have a closer bond. This was innate to me as a kid.

I don’t know what it’s like to be Jewish, but I suspect there is some aspect of that: being Jewish is the thing that bonds you as opposed to being Jewish from Poland, or Jewish from Hungary.

Pop Rocks

Jillian Mapes reflects on the musical taste she inherited from her father:

These days, there’s a phrase for the classic rock my Baby Boomer father raised me on: Dad Rock. Some say Dad Rockers are forever stuck in 1976 or 1985 or even 1994, when the music was real, man. Prominent in Urban Dictionary’s most up-voted definition of Dad Rock is this phrase: “Dad Rockers have no desire to listen to recent music and are stuck in the past.” But I can assure you it is possible to teach an old dad new tricks when it comes to matters of rock ‘n’ roll.

I prefer this definition from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, the leader of a band often dubbed New Dad Rock: “When people say Dad Rock, they actually just mean rock. There are a lot of things today that don’t have anything to do with rock music, so when people hear something that makes them think, ‘This is derived from some sort of continuation of the rock ethos,’ it gets labeled Dad Rock. And, to me, those people are misguided. I don’t find anything undignified about being a dad or being rocking, you know?”

Mapes’ advice for teaching an old dad new tunes:

The key is to mix familiar sounds and structures (perhaps a current band who makes room for guitar solos) with something new or slightly experimental (could be as simple as electro-pop synths). Still, if your Dad Rock dad was as obsessive over music as my pops was in his day, trust that his tastes are not as narrow as they may seem now that he’s past his prime music discovery years. (My dad said that for the typical music fan, keeping up with new music slides off the priority list when you have kids and you settle in hard with your all-time favorites.) Present a wide array of new music and see what sticks. It may be a chart-topping rap song about money-grubbing groupies, or it may be the new War on Drugs album (which I will be sending dad).

More suggestions here.

(Video: Bruce Springsteen, Dad Rocker extraordinaire, performs “The River” in 1980)

Fairy Tales Can’t Come True

So Richard Dawkins would rather do without them:

Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Dawkins, a prominent atheist, said that it was ‘pernicious’ to teach children about facts that were ‘statistically improbable’ such as a frog turning into a prince. … Speaking about his early childhood he said: “Is it a good thing to go along with the fantasies of childhood, magical as they are? Or should we be fostering a spirit of skepticism?” “I think it’s rather pernicious to inculcate into a child a view of the world which includes supernaturalism – we get enough of that anyway,” the 73-year-old said. “Even fairy tales, the ones we all love, with wizards or princesses turning into frogs or whatever it was. There’s a very interesting reason why a prince could not turn into a frog – it’s statistically too improbable.”

Nothing but Zola for the kiddies, then? Gracy Olmstead ripostes:

[T]his is the argument for fairy tales that I don’t think you’ll like – because the more you appreciate the pattern and beauty, the magic and charm of the empirical world, the less likely you are to chalk such things up to statistical probabilities. When you see the wonder of nature and people, the potency of words, the luminosity of our world, it’s very hard to return to a merely statistical, empirical vision. Things do become enchanted and mysterious. We begin to consider visions and miracles. These things are very dangerous, so I can understand why you’re alarmed by them.

Perhaps you’re right – perhaps it’s better for us to just abandon the tales and fantasies. After all, the more we dabble in “creating worlds,” the more likely we are to consider whether our own world had a Creator. The more we construct and tell stories, the more likely we are to ponder the possibility of our own Storyteller.

Update from a reader:

On one hand, I’m amenable to what Dawkins is saying. But the death of the fairy tale is the death of science. The actual practice of being a scientist who advances knowledge demands a kind of imagination, creativity, and questing that can’t be contained in a regression equation. The tools we use to prove hypotheses are profound in their own right, but inculcating a sense of magical possibility and hidden reality in children is the first necessary condition in preparing them to make the next generation of rigorously tested leaps forward.

Mental Health Break

Traffic and smog never looked so good:

The Good Book, Without God

Valerie Tarico asked a number of prominent atheists and secularists what their favorite verses in the Bible were, reasoning that “if clear-eyed Christians can take the risk of exposing the Bible’s nasty bits, the converse should also be true—atheists should be able to acknowledge the parts that are timeless and wise.” Greta Christina, author of Coming Out Atheist, was one of a number of respondents who pointed to Ecclesiastes:

I actually have an entire favorite book: Ecclesiastes. There’s lots of beautiful stuff in it about nature, human nature, and good ways to live life. It has plenty of stuff I have serious problems with, too — the God stuff, obviously, and some other stuff as well — but much of the philosophy and poetry is quite lovely and moving. And much of it is oddly humanist, with an awareness of how small humans really are in the scheme of things, and how fragile our lives are, and the absurdity of how important we think we are (“all is vanity”), and how much our lives are shaped by chance, and the repeated reminders of our mortality.

I deeply love 4:9-12: “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

Passages about social justice also appeared with some frequency. Here’s Kim Veal’s selection:

I sometimes read Gospel passages in the tradition of Zen koans. I like John 14:2, where Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” Holding the paradox of many mansions inside a house gives me a sense of spaciousness, of welcome, of saying, “Everyone can find a home in my heart.” I have no idea if that’s what Jesus meant—it doesn’t seem to be what Christians mean sometimes—but it reminds me that we’re all one grand, human family and that we need to care for each other.

The Betamale Gaze

Jon Rafman‘s creepy short film “Still Life (Betamale)” is NSFW:

Ben Valentine details how Rafman’s film captures the dark art of the Internet:

“Still Life (Betamale)” confronts some of humanity’s newer and more obsessive activities, all things that may be unique to the web (though we’re never sure). The video sets the stage with shots of disgustingly lived-at computer desks covered in bits of food and cigarette ashes, surrounded by energy drinks and dirty dishes. The main character, the fat man with panties covering his face, pointing two guns at his own head, is leading us on a nearly psychosis-inducing stream of various types of fetish and subculture porn — some of the web’s darkest and strangest corners. This is not the safe and corporate internet of Facebook or Google; “Still Life (Betamale)” is drawn from the visually overloaded world of 4chan, as obsessively browsed by a man who lives in his mother’s basement.

The video paints a clear picture of the stereotype we associate with 4chan users:

smelly men who obsessively consume, produce, and share socially unaccepted media, never AFK. By splicing together footage and images from these online communities, Rafman places the viewer at the center of a mind-numbing search for meaning in some of the most socially questionable places. … Rafman shows how these creations were made in a sincere search for pleasure, meaning, community, and self-expression, as grotesque as they may look to some of us.

Brandon Soderberg reviewed the film back in October:

The 8-bit imagery (recalling the digital pixel art of Uno Moralez) brings with it an ambiguous menace. Moments of joy and humor creep in as well: Can you deny that a guy in a bunny suit bouncing up and down in his ground floor apartment isn’t having the time of his life?

The more you sit with this collection of clips and images, the harder it is to LULZ away. You gain empathy even as you grow more creeped out. The combined pile-up of seeing suicidal panties dude a few times, and the long-as-hell clip of someone in a fox costume, stuck in a mudpit in the middle of the woods, is mind-cracking. A sense of overabundance sits in your gut long after “Still Life (Betamale)” (which climaxes by finding infinity in piss-soaked panties) ends. You’re overwhelmed and engulfed by the unlimited. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a furry flailing about in quicksand—forever.

The Dish has featured Rafman’s work here and here.

Sexbots And Sexism

Leah Reich considers how sex robots could alter human relationships – or keep them trapped in the strictures of the past:

Perhaps the best-known work on intimate relationships with robots is by the British author, chessmaster, and CEO of Intelligent Toys Ltd, David Levy. Most of the discussion regarding the ethics of robot sex centers on his article ‘The Ethics of Robot Prostitutes’ from Robot Ethics (2011), wherein he separates types of sexbots according to their sophistication. Levy argues that as long as sexbots are artifacts, without ‘artificial consciousness,’ there are no ethical implications in having sex with them or using them for prostitution. …

But even if sexbots are not currently conscious, they do have the external markings of personhood, and we are programming them to be person-like. Indeed, we are programming them to be like a specific type of person: the type of woman who can be owned by a heterosexual man. If women are the model on which most sexbots are based, we run the risk of recreating essentialized gender roles, especially around sex. And that would be too bad, because sex technology has the potential to alleviate longstanding human problems, for both men and women. Sex tech can help us take on sexual dysfunction and profound loneliness, but if we simply create a new variety of second-class citizen, a sexual creature to be owned, we risk alienating ourselves from each other all over again.

In other high-tech sex news, Victoria Turk investigates “the DIY side of the 3D-printed sex toy revolution”:

The descriptively named ‘Dildo Generator’ lets you tweak a phallic model until it fits your preferences just so, ready to be saved and exported so the 3D file of your fantasy can be forever solidified in silicone. I reached out to Ikaros Kappler, the Berlin-based programmer behind the project, to ask why. Fittingly, the idea came to him while he was hanging out with friends, drinking beer, and listening to techno at a maker space. “It was the aim to print something more useful instead of printing small figurines to put on your windowsill,” he told me over email. He also wanted to explore the new features of HTML5. “Oh, and I love Bézier curves!” he added. Those are the curves you can make by adjusting points at either end on a computer model, always resulting in a nice smooth finish. Pretty important to dildo design, I guess.

Previous Dish on futuristic fornication here.

Chart Of The Day

A new YouGov poll shows that Americans consider themselves fun drunks. But what about the next morning?

On the whole, most Americans have avoided double hangovers where you feel bad both due to excessive drinking and because of something stupid or mean you did the night before. 26% of Americans say that they have never been drunk, while out of the 71% who say that they have been drunk before most (42% of the entire country) haven’t had to apologize for something they’ve done the night before. Only 31% have had to apologize for the night before. 23% of Americans say that they’ve had to apologize for doing something that they were too drunk to even remember doing.