This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
portcullised
How dare you say that!
Aaargh. Good thing I copied…
Chas:
Yeah, I know Chas. There have been plenty of times I’ve been an ass to you. We clash in a lot of ways, but I don’t see that as reason for ongoing hostility, and I have learned a lot from you, and I enjoy your sense of humour. I try to take each post as it stands, without dragging in a fucktonne of history. Not that I’m always successful.
I’m not so good at this. I am making a concerted effort to be better.
***
Speaking of asshole moves, and I bring this up in a response to you, because it concerns you, I seriously dislike people thinking they are free to address Chas as Sven. That nym is no longer used, and by using it, you are declaring your intent to hang onto every perceived bad thing, rather than move forward.
But Chas, the problem is that there is nobody you like and respect around here!
I am pretty sensitive to this sort of thing, and I think it is really quite rude, similar to using a diminutive instead of the name a person gives you. As someone who wasn’t around during Sven days, I really don’t feel the need to go snooping around old threads for him so I can go “aha! Chas said something a long time ago with a different nym!” but some others might.
Unrelated…it’s MoPho for lunch today (*squee*). Spicy chicken ramen noodles over leftover veggies (I got cabbage, bean sprouts, green onion, red pepper, and like some TVP with taco seasoning). The bomb, in other words.
Not true.
On most days.
I have perfectly sound, logical reasons for occasionally referring to Chas as Sven Dimilo but I shall not explain them.
—
I did an image search for sven dimilo
very odd
Chigau:
It still shouldn’t be done. It’s fuckin’ disrespectful.
Chas:
Uh…. That? Yeah.
I meant “implied,” which itself doesn’t imply it’s a person’s deliberate intention to mean exactly that, no more or less, since I’m not a mind-reader and that makes no difference anyway. The effect I’m talking about is (or would be, if you made a real counterargument) in a society, not necessarily in a single person’s head in the form of their intention that it have a particular meaning.
I’ll acknowledge it isn’t universal. In fact, I already did so in my previous comment. I don’t see any reason why universality would matter.
Jackie
As an adult with a speech impediment, I found stuff like that quite embarrassing. The only thing worse was people interrupting me to ask why I couldn’t talk right. Don’t get me wrong, it’s adorable as hell. It’s just also embarrassing to realize that people around you are “gawking” (so to speak) at your inability to speak the way everyone else does.
I don’t have much of a point beyond that. I’m not even really telling you to stop.
There is a battle going on between First Nation activists and the RCMP over fracking on First Nation lands.
Janine:
I’m not surprised. I wish we could fight it on those grounds here.
Jacob @11:
As a stutterer, I don’t mind this so much, because it gives me the opportunity to ask whether they’ve been living in a cave since birth*. What really bugged me was people trying to complete my sentences, especially, but not only, if they got it wrong. Real fist-clencher, that one.
*Unless they’re kids being honestly curious, then I explain.
lol.
And not a single one is actually me.
(although–wow–this guy is eerily close.)
Rob:
That’s highly irritating, no matter the circumstance. Some people seem to think they are mind readers.
Chas:
Nice lookin’ man. Are those earthworms?
Chas
Not even the boots?
’cause those are fabulous
Rob
It wasn’t so much that they asked at all; I’m fine with answering. It’s not like I could really hide it anyways.
What bugged me was that it stopped all my efforts. I’m struggling to make a point (and it really is a struggle, sometimes) and the other person speaks over me to address the way I speak instead. All my effort *Floosh* wasted. Honestly, when someone is struggling, you don’t erase their efforts to satisfy your own curiosity.
If they can get it right, then fine by me. Makes my life a tad bit easier. I don’t get annoyed unless they keep guessing after getting it wrong the first time (that’s just me). The worst of that, I think, is when they guess and (when I stutter in trying to correct them) they assume that they’re right and walk off.
pHred:
Maybe something in a pair of soft (or silky-feeling), loose, harem pants?
–
–
yes, lots!
Coyne.
My footwear, when present, is never fabulous.
Jacob:
I’m usually very patient, but this sort of thing brings out the ornery cuss, and they’d be walking away briskly with an earful of fluent Middle English.
Jacob,
My three youngest kids have severe speech problems. I know how hard it is on them. I’ve seen the tears. I was the one to “translate” to others when they could not make themselves understood. Saying “flashlight” was damn near torture at one point. I’m the one who does the speech exercises with them. I’m the one who had to help them learn to read and spell when they could not speak understandably or even begin to understand language in the way that comes naturally to most kids. You can’t “sound out” a word if you cannot physically make the sounds. You can’t sing along with the other kids at school. Yeah, it sucks and it makes me angry at the situation that led to this disability. I’m not sure if you just wanted to share something about yourself with me or if you think you are telling me something about my kids that I don’t know. If it is the second; trust me, I know. My eldest son’s shyness requires group and therapy to deal with. Still, I said that it is adorable when my littlest boy tries to pronounce “testicles” because it is. It’s cute. So is his snaggle toothed grin, even though that is caused by bad teeth that chip off in pieces, giving him a jagged under-bite. I hope you understand that I am not mocking them, I am saying that I find them endearing and lovely. Some days I want to flush them down the toilet, because they’re kids, but I love and cherish them. I have a serious issue with the way certain people take a tone of irritability with them, as if they make the mistakes on purpose. That’s an ongoing issue that I’m not sure exactly how to handle just now. But when in doubt, I opt for telling that person frankly that I don’t appreciate their tone. Other than that, most people are patient and understanding. We have great teachers and specialists and we’re doing all that we can to help the kids out. I know my kids will face bullies and kids just being insensitive kids. I will do my best to face that future with them as I am able. I’m sorry that you had a hard time too. I wish the world was a kinder place.
There is something I told my oldest son that seemed to make him feel better and I’ll tell you too, because it is about speech impediments and cuteness.
In grade school, I had my first crush on a boy with a speech impediment. He had green eyes and wore an earcuff. (80’s!) I liked him so much that I tape recorded (80’s!) his voice and would play it over and over again. Alas, my affections were not returned. I had forgotten all about that boy and the tape until my son started to worry that girls might never like him. I told him about the boy and listening to his voice. That cheered him right up. Then, this summer he had a little girlfriend at camp. He’s not worried about that anymore. :)
…now I’m worried. They’re just babies! No dating! Aaaaahhhhh! *strokes out*
Rob,
Thanks for being so understanding about little kids and their wee little ways.
When my eldest daughter was very small she went through the phase kids sometimes do of announcing their observations about people in public. “That man doesn’t have any hair, Mommy!” and crap like that.
We’d have talks in the car about the fact that there was nothing wrong with not having hair, but it isn’t nice to talk about people, especially loudly, in earshot of several strangers. It took her a while to curb this habit. So, one day we’re leaving a gas station when she spots a man with long, dark, wavy hair, a full beard and a patch over his eye. She points and says loudly, “Mommy, is that man a pirate!?!”
*sigh*
I turned and looked him in the eye, then turned back to her and said, “Yes. Yes, he is”. He busted out laughing and we went back to the car to have another talk. I didn’t know what else to do. Kids gonna kid.
Jackie
Comparatively, I’m lucky. My speech was a hassle, but it never caused my any severe problems (though it significantly exacerbated fears about dating and first impressions, etc).
I was just sharing. I’ve read enough of your comments here that I assumed you were handling well. And I know that being the parent of a struggling child can be difficult. I’ve watched my own mother and step-father struggle with one of my younger brothers. I don’t mean to condemn you.
I’m certain you aren’t mocking him. Believe me, I understand. Besides me, two younger brothers also stutter (it’s predominantly a male thing). It’s very cute sometimes. I just had a bit of a flashback to those moments where I knew everyone was paying more attention to the way I talk then to what I actually said. It was never a pleasant thing, even if I was able to shake it off.
Oh my god, that’s friggen adorable. I’ve long since set aside my self esteem issues surrounding my speech (though old fashioned embarrassment and disappointment can rear it’s head), but, if you don’t mind, I’ll pass that story on to my little brother, should he ever be feeling frustrated or worried.
On an interesting (to me) side note: the whole “afraid to talk to girls because of how I speak” thing would’ve been a lot easier if I wasn’t raised in a culture that told me that girls are Others. Had I realized that, really, making friends with a girl was no different than making friends with a boy, I wouldn’t have been so embarrassed about it.
Hee. At the conference and in the museum collections I won’t meet many people I haven’t met before; and in between, I’ll meet Pharyngulites. Little chance for new friends. :-)
Schmier.
“Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence”
“The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word renowned.”
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
My brother and I communicate like scholar/bureaucrat/poets from ancient China: almost entirely in quotes from the classical literature. It’s just different literature… mostly the German version of this.
I was loitering in an unfamiliar neighbourhood yesterday, wearing my chullo, when a young child on a bicycle pointed at me. I smiled and waved, but the kid was too excited to care. He turned to his father and yelled, still pointing at me, “He looks like a dog!” I doubled over laughing.
I know it’s not nearly the same thing as being made fun of for one’s speech or physical appearance*, but I would hope people understand that kids gonna kid.
*Maybe the kid was. Maybe I do look like a dog, even without the hat. My nose does feel a bit wet.
In elementary school, love is inherently ridiculous, so if anything you do can be remooooooootely interpreted as an expression of love, a bully will jump on it where I come from. And if you don’t do any such thing, they’ll deposit a fake love letter in your desk. Or just write your name and someone else’s, chosen largely at random, on the blackboard and draw a heart around them.
Later I spent years wondering if we had finally reached the age where boys and girls were allowed to talk to each other again. “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
I was probably 14 when a girl greeted me – she came into the classroom, and I was alone there or nearly so – and I just couldn’t believe it. What? No, classmate, you’re doing this wrong. I’m a random stranger, and you don’t randomly greet random strangers in a city of 1.6 million.
One of the reasons I like wearing a cowboy hat, button down shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots is the reaction I get from small children.
Jackie
You were lucky. The little one asked me loudly if I was wearing a bra. Yes dear. ARE YOU ALSO WEARING UNDIES?
It was on the corridor of the anglistics department….
But remember, we haven’t seen J*hn Kw*k’s novel yet.
From The American Indian Movement Manifesto on Racism in Sports and Media :
Chas:
It shall begin with Stuyvesant High School. Or Leica Rangefinder.
Ogvorbis, while I don’t have much of a problem with IIRC, I’ve gone with Chas’s way for a long time now, and search first. If I can’t find something, then I go with IIRC.
Caine:
I apologize. I know had crappy my usual googlefu is (yeah, this one was easy). Sorry. Really.
Someone please tell me to stay the fuck out of the AIM thread.
As usual, Ogvorbis, no apology necessary. You’re good with me, as always.
Caine:
Would it really do any good? STAY OUT!!!
Nerd:
Yes. Thank you. Back to drawing.
It’s not a big deal. We all have stuff we know we know and stuff we think we know. If I’m so uncertain that I feel the need to start with IIRC, then I would rather g**gle it than be wrong. Sorry I jumped on you.
Aaargh, must stay out of thread. Must keep temper. Oh, look, it’s almost 5 p.m., time for a glass of wine.
Yeah, colour me failed. Lost my temper and everything. It will get worse, seeing as whitesplainer is back, and I won’t be able to take on all my redsplaining without complete anger in place, so I’m out for the night.
Taŋyáŋ ištíŋma ye.
[dick]
Actually I thought it was easier than this. How can one refer to anyone in a derogatory fashion over something that they have no control over? Simply don’t use the accidents of birth (or life) as a means to belittle people: skin colour, gender, wobbly bits, handicaps, age, …. you get the picture.
What one can, and should, be derogatory about are deleterious chosen attributes: bad ideas, uncalled-for aggressiveness, bad faith, arseholishness and so forth.
……..
@ AE
This is what you need: Lao Gan Ma Sauce
It has saved many a starving student in the wee hours of the morning (and at least one tardigrade). Look out for the black bean style.
Tea Party Negotiating Tactics
See I’ve always wondered something
Does The Kw*kster have any kind of online photography portfolio? I’d like to see if he can shoot.
Because, while Leicas are really fucking nice, they’re also really a big status symbol kind of thing. It’s kind of like driving a Porche. They are high end cameras with a specific kind of target audience in mind. I mean they’ll take great pictures if you know what you are doing. But they’ll just take pictures if a random untalented person is operating them. Like any camera. Not that there is a single fucking thing wrong with that.
One (that one would be me) wonders if he has any fucking talent. Shooting with a Leica isn’t going to cover up shit talent.
theophontes: Looks delicious.
@ AE
Addictive! (No Italian pasta is complete without a blob of that stuff.)
Rev. BDC, I rather doubt Kw*k is any sort of photographer, because it’s one thing he’s never bragged on and on about. He does seem to set very high store by Amazon ratings, and yeah, Leica is a gearhead brand, for those who prefer to argue gear on the ‘net rather than actually shoot anything.
Don’t get me wrong, a Leica is a nice piece of equipment, but hardly necessary to taking good photos.
The AIM thread for isn’t for me, for now. My fraction of Native American ancestry is low, and so is my health, tonight.
My mom was deathly ill once, and really showed the Cherokee. Me, my facial hair only grows in a goatee, and if I wear a furry hat, I look vaguely Mongol.
Kw*k’s novel will suck from the cover, assuming his name will be on it.
As for cameras, the most extravagant piece I got to hold was a 70-year old Rolleiflex. Now that’s some gear to brag about.
Actually, he did once. Billing himself as a “fine art documentary photographer” he had some pretty random-looking B&W shots of a protest march posted somewhere once.
let’s see if the g**gle-fu comes through…
hah! here.
obligatory link re: Kw*k’s novel
@ Chas
Having clicked the linky, I would rather have described them as “ugly crap-looking”.
I thought I was a useless photographer until I saw those. Now I feel like Sebastião Salgado.
I have this problem with Sebastião Salgado. Those immaculately exposed, impeccably framed, exquisitely composed photographs – he makes suffering and exploitation look so beautiful. I don’t think I can express this very well … he makes real people look like something out of Gustave Doré’s illustrations for Dante’s Inferno; beautiful, awe-inspiring, aesthetically perfect. Which is all kinds of fucked up, I’m just not entirely sure exactly where the fucked-upness lies – the commodification of images, our culture that fetichises beauty and makes it almost impossible to hate something beautiful … so, well, problem.
heh!
Jacob,
Please do tell your brother.
Anthony,
My eldest daughter left for school this morning in one of these: http://www.etsy.com/listing/161561311/skunk-hat?utm_source=google&utm_medium=product_listing_promoted&utm_campaign=crochet_mid&gclid=CLXNn9HHoLoCFYdQ7AodRyAAXg
It’s fits. She’s a stinker..har har.
Giliell,
Ooo, that is a good one. I’ve got more!
I had to take the same daughter to class with me once. I was working on a small metalwork piece at a table with some other people while she drew pictures next to me. Suddenly she announced to the table, “Mommy and I are wearing matching panties today”. Before I could shush her one cheeky monkey inquired what color they were and she told them. I blushed while the whole table giggled.
Then there was a time in the car when she told my friend’s roommate the list of naughty words she wasn’t allowed to say. I wouldn’t let him laugh because I knew if he did, she’d do it again. I thought he’d pass out from trying to choke down the guffaw.
My revenge is telling these stories on her now that she’s a teen.
Um. Hrm. I have a bad feeling about this latest Sinfest strip. “Fake women” infiltrating a “women only space”?
That’s an awfully big transphobic dog whistle you have there, Tat.
MM:
How wonderfully transphobic.
My less than a year old laptop died last night. I can kill electronics faster than a speeding bullet. Fuck, I feel like crying. Godsdamn stupid piece of shit.
Is it repairable, Caine?
Also, do you think it is still in warranty?
@Anthony K:
You should have told him: “This is a cunning hat.”
/Firefly
@The Mellow Monkey
Yeah, I had to wonder about that one.
On the one hand, these are diabolical spybots, not humans. On the other hand, we’ve never seen the diabolical spybots try to impersonate anyone.
There are also the friendly spybots that were de-diabolicized by the Buddha, though.
So… Um?
Esteleth:
Possibly. It’s running that horrorshow win 8, so there’s no booting into safe mode, and PoS won’t reach the screen which allows safe mode booting.
No. Didn’t bother with the extended warranty this time, because it’s a cheap PoS, and money was tight. Got what I paid for.
Owlmirror: Yeah, I know. There’s also the dick detector they use to defend their space. I’ve been a little concerned about how Tat is treating the women only space since it was introduced. I’ve given him a lot of the benefit of the doubt, but it’s not looking so great.
Is there any phenomenon of men impersonating women online? ’tis the only straw I can grasp at. That really isn’t looking good.
*****************
Thanks, Jackie.
I’m sorry if I rubbed a sore spot.
Heh. My mother likes to remind me of the time I asked a women in the grocery store why her boobs weren’t totally covered. Embarrassed as she was, she likes to get me back every now and then by telling the story at parties.
She’s also saving some love letters I got to read them out loud at my eventual wedding.
@ opposablethumbs
You will also find this in Ancient Greek aesthetic. Raising the mundane suffering of mere mortals to be part of the Divine. One has to press through this and realise that that which he is depicting is very much real, tragic. I do not think the feeling of being staged is in any way incidental – it is a fundamental part of his message. These are not mere individual sufferings, or acts of defiance. They are outrages, and rebellions, of universal proportions.
Extra: I pressume you have seen the Smashing Pumpkins video tribute to him: Link here.
[Fatwas]
There is a huge growth in the production of fatwas (in large part due to the Internet and other modern media) as every man and his dog climbs aboard the bandwagon. The upside of this, is that for any position one might hold, however rediculous, there is a corresponding fatwa out there. Like oral sex? There is a fatwa to show Allah approves. Don’t like oral sex? There is a a fatwa to show Allah does not approve either.
Obviously the logic does not really stack up. With regard to the above, the previous Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia condemned oral sex:
Woah! No more oral sex then. Okaaay …. what about Doggy Style ™ ? You know – where you have sex like a dog? No that is just fine, according to the same fatwa factory: Linky.
Not gonna lie,t he sinfest thing smacks to me of the umpteen number of times I have seen dudes pretend to be women, poorly, on the internet. This isn’t a matter of misreading identification or struggling gender identity – I mean shit like making a sock puppet named “Slave Girl 420” and pretending to be a submissive woman who is totally okay with all forms of sexism ‘because I want to be an object’, so shut up about that sexism stuff women; dudes, you are doing fine with this objectification thing. Dudes going on feminist sites to try to get the conclusive proof that we are shrieking harpies are the other one I’ve seen a couple times.
Maybe I’m misreading though.
@ opposablethumbs
I just had to post one of his recent pictures here: Linky
This blew my socks off.
Caine:
I know this feeling very well.
I’m sorry about your laptop. Hopefully it can be repaired. *hugs and chocolate
So I can get the free internet if I go stand in the hallway.
I love you all dearly but there are limits.
nightynight
theophontes #69 – wow. Absolutely stunning – thank you for the link! (Ansel Adams eat your heart out :-) (well, not exactly eat your heart out, but. Wow.) ). I agree that his work – which is breathtaking – has that kind of epic/titanic/apocalyptic resonance you refer to in #66. What disturbs me is the way this is also somehow distancing, the way it could almost make the viewer feel that such beauty validates whatever went into creating it – including the suffering depicted. I love his photography, but at the same time I can’t get my head round this.
MM:
I hadn’t noticed the transphobic aspect of that Sinfest cartoon until you mentioned it. I had my old cis white guy blinders on I suppose. Tat is usually better than that.
Caine:
The AIM thread pisses me off too. There are way too many whiny white guys trying to excuse outright racism over there.
Ogvorbis,
How about self-depreciating jokes from government employees?
I’ve been working for less than a year, but I’ve already encountered many situations where something could and should have been easily done, except for bureaucratic bullshit putting it on delay for a couple of months (and making lives tougher for employees, which also affected citizens since our employees weren’t able to work effectively, not by their own fault).
It does support the stereotype, though.
Government employees regularly get shat on here too.
Now that economy is tanking, papers are full of articles about those asshole gov. employees who have all these rights that those working in private sector don’t have. The obvious solution is to demand for gov. employees to have their rights taken away, instead of demanding laws regulating the private sector in a more worker-oriented way.
(following Beatrice in)
For my part, I made that joke specifically because of the right-wing idiots who shut the government down entirely; those were the ones I was referring to. “Bureaucrat” isn’t the same thing as “employee”.
(caveat: I’m a government employee, and heavily involved in governance, so I’ve spent huge amounts of time creating bylaws and paperwork, besides interpreting and reminding people to follow them).
Not to excuse any extra effect that comment had, but to explain where I was coming from.
Dunno about any “phenomenon”, and ignoring p0rn-and-similar, there is at least one quite famous case of that being done: The Gay Girl in Damascus blog hoax.
Used to see it a lot in live-chat rooms. Guys who thought it would be easier to stalk a particular woman across several rooms and “get to know her” was by far the commonest reason.
Beatrice and Carlie:
Sorry. Nevermind.
Ogvorbis,
No!!!! I mean, you don’t have to answer, but there’s nothing requiring a sorry from you.
I specifically wrote in the other thread that I wasn’t going to yell, so that you wouldn’t think moving to thunderdome was a sign you did something wrong.
I was just interested in a discussion. It’s Saturday, and I’m too lazy to clean up the house. :)
Okay, sorry, Beatrice. Here’s my take on that: I am more than willing to joke about incompetent supervisors, policies that make no sense, directives from Washington that give us permission to do wonderful things but no budget with which to actually do these wonderful things. Which is very different from calling public workers lazy, or incompetent, or frightening, or a bunch of jokes.
This has already happened and will happen again. Back in the 1980s, Reagan got real upset that federal workers had a pension plan that was separate from social security. Depending on how many years you had worked, you got a sliding percentage of your high three years (Civil Service Retirement System CSRS)). So they ended it, and now we have FERS (Federal Employee Retirement System) which offers a minuscule pension but includes a Thrift Savings Plan and Social Security. We already have severe limits on political activity.
Plans have been introduced, or promised in campaign speeches, to eliminate the Federal Employees Health Plan.
My point is that yes, the federal work force has some assholes and incompetents but, from my experience in both the private and public sector, it is about the same, or a little less, than in private business. Yes, we get good pay but, take any federal job, do a desk audit for everything that person does, compare it to the position description, and I guarantee that more than half of federal employees are doing far more than the job for which they are paid. And, if you compare what that person does to private industry, they are paid less than they would get for the same job, the same years, the same experience, in the private sector.
Yet the GOP has waged a fifty-year war to make government worker synonymous with evil, incompetent, economy-killing, business-destroying subhumans. And this has been successful.
Yet, after every natural disaster, forest fire, flood, tornado, there is the local conservative politician telling his voters that he will make sure that those Washington bureaucrats do their jobs and they get the money and help they need. And completely ignores the professionals who drop everything to fly across the country to do a job that is often completely different than their office job.
carlie:
But, carlie, the bureaucrats are the employees, the career civil servants. We are the ones who are employed by the bureau, by the agency, by the department, by the service, and implement the decisions made by congress, the President, and the non-professional political appointees. The professional career government worker does not interpret laws or directives or orders, we do enforce them. Interpretation and the creation of directives or orders (and laws) is done by elected officials and the people those elected officials appoint.
Yet it is always the front line bureaucrat, the park ranger doing her job (and not knowing if she will even get paid), who implement the laws passed by congress, who figure out how to implement the latest brain fart from the political appointees at their particular office or unit, who are vilified by the entire GOP, much of the Democratic Party, late-night hosts, SNL, editorial pages, every news network around, and, yes, even federal workers themselves.
I’ve heard, fairly recently, the observation that fat people (I am one) and atheists (ditto) are the only people in the US that one can legally discriminate against. The third group is public employees at all levels.
By the way, that ^ is why I said never mind. I could feel the rant coming. Sorry.
And it is Thursday! Beatrice is a calendarist oppressor!
I’m sorry – I was trying to express that I’ve always thought of bureaucrats as the ones at the top making the laws, specifically the ones who are making bad ones. I see that’s not the general interpretation, and I apologize.
I will just leave this here. I am too ashamed to even describe what it is.
carlie:
My understanding is that the bureaucrats are the professionals who implement the decisions coming from lawmakers and policymakers. At least, that is the historic definition.
Doesn’t really matter what the definition is, though. To the US public, it is always the people at the front lines, the one at the desk, the ranger, the IRS investigator, the inspector, who are the enemy. Never the ones who have created the rules. And the rules are never explained by the policymakers to say, ‘here is why we have this rule.’
Janine:
Did you know that Tpyos has a nephew by the name of Borklinkio?
That is how ashamed I am of doing this.
Ogvorbis,
Thank you for your explanation. It was an interesting rant.
I looked at this differently than carlie. Sometimes, I’m a bureaucrat, with all the name’s bad connotations. It’s just what I have to do, the way I am required to do some things, even if it makes little to no sense.
I try to sneak in a shortcut often, while going through motions of following all the procedures or paperwork. Other times, I can’t escape it. I’m happy I’m leaving that kind of environment. It’s depressing, to know you’re able to do your job better, but being unable because that’s not what the book says and your heads don’t really care about efficiency if it’s not by the book (and the book usually requires 3 forms for every little shit, signed in tears of your firstborn. Sucks for those of us without kids).
There’s probably a minority of people who like being bureaucrats, enjoying the opportunity to screw people up, often their own colleagues.
But I realize most people don’t see it that way. While I agree with you in all you say about politicians using government employees as scape goats, and the evil of bureaucracy that you can’t escape because the law forces you to follow it, I have a slightly different interpretations of who a bureaucrat is.
I will try to lay off bureaucrat jokes (I remember using you bureaucrat here as a mock insult), since they do reinforce the stereotype.
Anecdote:
I couple of weeks ago, I met a guy from high school. He was complaining about working for a private dentist where he had to work unpaid overtime*, and how great it would be if he could land himself a cushy government job (a jab at me). I answered that we’re welcome to change, since I’m not actually getting payed (I’m getting a small financial help from unemployment office). Because no, cushy government jobs aren’t all that cushy, unless you’re a big head of something. I know plenty of people in my place of work on crappy contracts, with little pay and no job security that is considered the default for government employees.
*which is of course bad, but I was too pissed off at his jab at me to go into detailed explanations. We talked just for a couple of minutes anyway
Ogvorbis,
Agreed.
Not just the US, though.
Caine
I don’t know if this will be a long-term solution, but with a live CD or live USB of ubuntu, you can probably boot it long enough to recover your files.
Jacob Schmidt
Yes, there is, as Rutee and Daz note a little further down, but I don’t know how prevalent is is these days. There was a joke going around in the late 90s about “The Internet: Where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents” (the latter bit referring to the ongoing practice of catching pedophiles by impersonating someone much younger online).
Ogvorbis
Not that the private sector’s usually any different on that score. The poor sod who’s on the phone or behind the counter gets all the anger and vilification, when they usually can’t ever talk to the people who set policy, nevermind ask them what the fuck they were thinking with this bullshit.
http://dryogeshd.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/consciousness/ My article on consciousness @PZ Myers
opposablethumbs:
All photography is distancing. All photographers are distanced from their subject, it’s part and parcel of photography. When the subject matter is disturbing or overwhelmingly beautiful or poignant, it evokes a very strong response in people, because it looks as if it might be a door, but you know it’s a splinter of frozen time, that the moment it was shot, it was over, that things have happened and taken place since that moment, and no, you can’t reach through that door. You cannot touch the beings in that frozen splinter; you cannot visit that place, you cannot help, you cannot change things.
Good photography not only evokes emotions, it often causes cognitive dissonance. To a photographer, there is beauty in all things, even a trash heap. It’s up to the person behind the lens to pull that beauty out, and create that frozen splinter.
Caine:
What laptop and what is it doing “wrong”?
Dalillama
Ah, yes, that I’ve heard of. Just never in the context of invading women’s spaces.
There’s a person … maybe a libertarian of some flavour … over at Avicenna’s, arguing that universal healthcare/socialised medicine is no good!!! because apparently a) social security only works in racially homogenous societies, and b) it makes physicians into “profitless serfs” (as opposed to e.g. those selling entertainment or cigarettes for profit). Also, according to this person, most of the world’s healthcare innovations come from the USA and its (admittedly not quite perfect) for-profit system.
Said person has not yet, as far as I can see, explained why the universal healthcare/socialised medicine countries get better outcomes for much less money than the for-profit system (with its attendant multi-billion dollar health insurance industry. Imagine if that money, or even just some of it, actually went into healthcare). I’m not so much as a fraction as knowledgeable as most of you on this, and even I can see there’s a downside to placing profits above patient health.
I have to go out now, but I just thought I’d mention it in case anyone happens to be in the mood.
https://proxy.freethought.online/amilliongods/2013/10/16/how-to-cripple-healthcare/
NightShadeQueen, it’s Boot Error 0xC0000098 (Windows Boot Configuration Data file does not contain a valid OS entry). I can’t get to the screen which allows for safe mode booting, and holding the shift key while mashing F8 doesn’t work. There are a few fixes for this, which I’ll try, come Sunday night or Monday, as I don’t have media – my netbook doesn’t have a CD player, so I can’t burn anything, and I don’t have a restore disk. Already tried the usb trick, no go. Oh, PoS is a Toshiba Satellite.
I’m not heartbroken, just annoyed as all hells. If I lose it all, I won’t lose much, last back up was less than a month ago. I’ll lose some fresh bookmarks, which is always very fucking annoying, but not much else. Mostly, I’ll try to resurrect because I cannot afford anything new right now, and won’t be able to for quite some time.
Rutee Katreya
Good lord is that ever fucking creepy.
Mind, I have seen women arguing along those lines, but said women are typically confusing “objectification” with “sexuality” i.e. they want to have active and casual sex lives, and they’ve bought into the ridiculous myth that, when people complain about objectification, they mean any sort of open sexuality.
Caine,
Ah, that sounds like the exact error I have (and teh exact same laptop series) :D The bios key changed, it’s now something stupid like “d” or “u” or “c”; or maybe f2 or f12.
[I haven’t gotten around to fixing my laptop yet, the Ubuntu half it still works heh]
Caine
I’m pretty sure I’ve got a live CD around here somewhere, or some blanks. I could send you one if you’re interested.
opposablethumbs #94
This is one of the standard lines, and really shows how much libertarianism is pretty much a dogwhistle all by itself. They claim that ‘those people’ will somehow ruin a single payer healthcare system, rather than admit that they just don’t want to see ‘those people’ getting any healthcare.
Dalillama, thank you for the offer, but Mister has a fucktonne of that stuff in his office somewheres.* He’ll be home tomorrow night, and the messing about shall begin. Or I’ll just toss it back at BestBuy and let them hassle it.
I know there’s an Ubuntu disk in there someplace, because I gave it to him. He runs Fedora on his laptop, which is the same make as mine.
What should a parent do if their four year old son acts too effeminate? According to this preacher, punch him.
But don’t you fucking dare criticize him, that would not be showing respect to his religion.
We just had a big accident on the highway out front, involving a girls’ soccer team. My shithead neighbors keep letting their Pomeranian run wild and this time he caused an accident. One of the witnesses to the accident followed the dog back to the neighbors’ house and yelled at the husband. His response was to lock his dog in the house and then take off down a backroad to avoid the first responders.
They had to bring in ambulances from outside the county, but no one seemed to be in life-threatening danger when they left. Hopefully everyone will recover just fine.
My nerves seriously can’t take this any longer. Every goddamn day there’s some new tragedy. Can I please stop living in a shitty soap opera now? Just a week or two of abject boredom would be awesome.
Mellow Monkey,
I’d steal the fool neighbor’s dog and get it into a good home. I’ll chant for some boredom for you… won’t help, but can’t hurt.
I hope everyone is okay.
morgan, I’ve fantasized about that many times. He’s a tiny, adorable little yapper. I’m sure lots of people would give him a good home and actually keep him off of the highway. It would add quite a few years to his life expectancy.
Mellow Monkey, I’m probably opening a can of worms here, but in fact I have done just this in the past. I’ve owned dogs all my life and I care for them well. And they are Never allowed to run free. Breed rescue organizations will do everything to return an animal to its rightful owner, assuming there are no microchips or other identifying elements. Otherwise, they are adopted out to homes of people who must qualify to own the dog. I’m betting your neighbor’s Pom is not microchipped. Dogs that run free seldom are. The poor thing doesn’t deserve to die under the wheels of a car. Good luck.
Goodbye Enemy Janine wrote:
I know it’s wrong, and I’m bad for thinking it, but I can’t help but wish that the “love” he advises others to inflict on their children is returned tenfold to him.
I’d be inclined to put the blame for the accident on the driver. With a van/car full of girls moving at highway speed you swerve to avoid a fucking yapdog? That’s just stupid, unsafe driving.
When I was in driver’s ed, way back in the 1980s, we were taught that the only time we should take evasive action for an animal was if it was bigger than a white-tail deer. I confess, however, that, if I know my six is clear, I will brake for, and have braked for, squirrels, scat, dogs, deer, sheep, and, unsuccessfully, a moose.
Chas, yeah, there’s that. If the animal is shorter than the hood and you don’t have time to check conditions for braking or changing lanes, you and everyone around you are safer if you go through it. Brutal, but true.
Chas, #106
Nope, I put the blame squarely on the dog owner. Most people swerve to avoid hitting living things. If there are no living things in the road, there is no need to swerve.
Chas:
Yes, it is, there’s no denying that. Most people* will swerve to avoid hitting an animal, though, so the dog owner has a lot to fucking answer for as well. People who let any of their pets (dogs, cats, whatthefuckever) run about off property have a lot to fucking answer for. (Like Ogvorbis, we try to avoid hitting anything, and are pretty successful in that regard, but then again, we’re in ND, and don’t deal with much traffic.)
Except for the poor excuses for human beings that intentionally hit any animal, domestic or wild. Every summer I find poor squarshed turtles along the side of roads, where you know it would have been easy to avoid them. Some fucking asspimples think it’s fun to squarsh them.
Oh, I have no love for owners of loose dogs either.
As for people who mush turtles…grrrrrrrrrrrr
Caine,
I have a tiny soapbox I climb up on, just the right size for a turtle. The rant delivered from said tiny soapbox is as follows: Turtles live in a very small range within which they were born. If you find one, pick it up, take it home or elsewhere for whatever reason, it is likely to die. Please take the Turtle Pledge: “I promise to leave turtles alone, unless I’m helping them to cross a road.” And always point them in the direction they were crawling. I ALWAYS stop for turtles and get them the hell out of the road ’cause it is not a good place for a turtle to be.
Morgan, it’s not just turtles that asspimples around here try to hit on purpose. Badgers, porcupines, pheasant, turkeys, rabbits, whatever. You name it, and there’s an asspimple in a big fucking truck who thinks it’s all kinds of fun to kill it.
Well, let’s just hope that those bloody asspimples swerve just enough to damage their own vehicles without causing damage to other living things. Jerks. Ever see an 18 wheeler on its side? It can be a glorious sight.
Caine:
Not to mention snakes. I’ve seen a pickup truck roll (I was behind it) because he swerved to hit a black snake. Asshole.
Ogvorbis, carlie, Beatrice, and Caine:
This. And denigrating a whole class of people based on a single common characteristic is a form of bigotry. Oh, not the same order of magnitude of bigotry as racism or sexism, since who you work for is at least partly a matter of choice, but a sort of bigotry nonetheless.
My father was a NASA engineer; my sister is a computer sysadmin for the federal court system: both bureaucrats by any reasonable definition. And they’re automatically the sort of people on whose behalf a referee would be unwilling to call a foul? Just because of who signs their checks? SRSLY?
The irony of the AIM thread is that people were suggesting Bureaucrats as a replacement for a team name that’s an offensive slur… and then other people came along and used Bureaucrats as an offensive slur. The more I think about it, the less I agree that Ogvorbis’ comment or my seconding it[1] was any sort of derail: I think it was precisely on point. Especially since several of the people doing it are clearly not bigots by their nature, and could presumably benefit from being called out (as we all have on one issue or another around here, including issues of cultural sensitivity).
Additionally, though I myself am not a government employee, I am a political activist, and it’s my observation that the same demonization of government itself that leads to bureaucrat-bashing (and which Ogvorbis quite rightly attributed to the right wing) also does deep and lasting damage to our political culture, and thereby to our nation. The right has gotten plenty of otherwise progressive people to internalize Reagan’s “government isn’t the solution to our problems; government is the problem” BS, and it’s hurting all of us. (Note: Going off on this theme in the AIM thread would have been a derail, but I didn’t, and didn’t plan to.)
And while I’m here (somewhat against my better judgment), re IIRC: When I use that, it’s almost always in regard to something I’m actually trying to recall (i.e., my individual personal experience or knowledge; not just Googleable facts), and the IIRC is meant as a prior acknowledgement that my recollection might be less than perfect. That’s not universal, of course, but it’s worth remembering that IIRC doesn’t always translate to “I’m too lazy to Google it.”
****
[1] I anticipate the suggestion that it was fine for Ogvorbis to comment, but my QFT was unnecessary. I disagree: Multiple cross-validating expressions carry more weight than a single voice, which is why QFT is a thing at all. In my town, when the current mayor expects criticism in the Citizens’ Forum portion of our Town Council meetings, he has a habit of exhorting the people to “not repeat the same message,” invoking the need for moving the agenda along. But this fails to acknowledge that repetition is the message: The difference between one person taking 3 minutes to say “I want a bigger education budget” and dozens of people taking 45 minutes to say the same thing over and over is huge (specifically, in my town’s case, the difference turned out to be $1 million).
Ugh. I hate people who swerve to hit animals. They’re why every time it’s safe to stop for a turtle on the shoulder, I do so and make sure it crosses the road safely. Some jackass at a golf course over here in Wisconsin beat a snapping turtle while it’s believed that she was looking for a place to lay her eggs. She ended up dying of her injuries. It was pretty brutal and most likely done with a golf club.
carlie:
Actually, the top policy positions are mostly either elected officials or political appointees… which is to say, specifically not “bureaucrats.” The bureaucrats are the “permanent” government: the ones who stay in place (or in a career ladder, at least) while political leadership comes and goes.
But I think demonizing political leadership is just as damaging, IMHO, as demonizing government employees. We used to think of government work, whether political or civil service, as public service; in recent decades, the right has convinced people that government is always bad, and that has led our society to the brink of ungovernability.
As we have seen quite starkly over the last few weeks, no?
MM:
Jesus Fucking Vomited. What in the hell is wrong with some people? A snapping turtle won’t bother you if you aren’t busy bothering it, or trying to threaten it.
So who carries a big flat shovel, a cardboard box, some towels, and a thick pair of gloves in their car at all times? We who rescue wildlife do.
REQUESTING A MODERATOR
Could a moderator please take a look at Mr. Bobcat over in https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/10/17/the-discomfiture-of-mras-will-be-a-joy-to-behold/comment-page-1/#comment-708035 ? He has, in my opinion, crossed the line into actively hurting people.
Caine, this asshole is cruel. You have my sympathy.
Ogvorbis
Done. And thank you.
Caine:
*hugs*
Daz: Thanks.
MM @101:
Your scheisskopf neighbors are not only endangering others, they are endangering the dog. In my neighborhood, the dog would either be run over or become coyote food.
Here’s hoping that the soap opera goes away for a while.
Ogvorbis:
Thanks, Ogvorbis. You have mine as well. I suspect that “mrbobcat” is someone we have seen before. There’s something very familiar in all that froth and word salad. The monitors are screaming about him, so as soon as PZ sees our screaming, he’ll take care of things.
Daz, thank you.
Meesterbobcat has met the banhammer.
Good.
I can feel the panic attack coming but it isn’t here yet. Which is weird. I’m tired and I have to work tomorrow but I am kinda scared to go to sleep.
His obsession that rape had nothing to do with power, or voilence, was weird.
ekwhite, I live in a rural village of around 50 people and a two lane highway with heavy semi traffic goes right through it. I’m baffled the dog hasn’t been killed yet, either by a vehicle or local predators. I’ve watched bears lumber around in my garden before and coyotes like to serenade the night. How one tiny Pomeranian continues to survive like this astonishes me.
MM:
Maybe it smells like bad food to the predators.
My first true love age 5, was a half pomeranian half pekingese puppy of my very own. We named him Pugsley. What he lacked in size, he made up for in agressiveness and sheer determination.
Both of these breeds are highly territorial, fierce guard dogs in toy breed bodies. My dog really hated the sound of tires on pavement, especially some bicycle tires. We fenced the yard, and kept him on a lead, but there were still occasions when he would escape the house and scale the fence in order to ward off an passing tire attack.
He considered it his duty to sit in the front of the wagon when we took our youngest siblings for rides, and make sure no strangers so much as touched a hair on their head.
He did eventually lose one of the battles in his quest to kill the evil tires, but he managed to escaped unscathed and victorious for nearly nine years. Agility saved his life on more than one occasion.
No panic attack. had a good night. Took me awhile to come down off the anger, though. A little scary to let myself get that angry.
Glad to hear that, Ogvorbis. Yeah, the fury can be frightening, no question.
Sunday Sing Along
Oliver & Rubin
Testing
Jesus fuck, what’s with all the people doing the ‘lol’ crap lately?
Not to mention ‘lol’ combined with smileys. Seems like over-egging it somewhat. (rofpmsl. Ahem.)
Daz:
Uh huh.
Well, the PoS (laptop) is resisting all efforts at resurrection, so I think I’m taking my glass of wine and going to bed with Joe Lansdale. So to speak.
Oh my, I just have to share this perfect bingo of ridiculous downsplaining on a twitter thread (I think it can be seen without an account): https://twitter.com/DrJaneChi/status/392132594390687744
The white guy and his clueless response goes to amazing lengths all through. Whoa. You’ve even got the bonus “accuse everyone else of being too emotional then claim persecution and hurt fee fees when people tell you to fuck off.”
All I could do was laugh at it.
From Mr Bobcat, posing as M in the “No Self Awareness” thread:
This is just one more reason why we have to stop being careless in our use of intersex, transsexual, and transgender. This ignorant douchegabber thinks that gender=sex if he thinks transgender is comparable to male and/or female.
While Bobcat’s own mistakes are on Bobcat, too often the people arguing the pro-gender justice side get this stuff wrong through carelessness and/or thoughtlessness. It’s got to be confusing for people of limited analytical skills, such as Bobcat when we don’t get it right.
@Ogvorbis, discussing Bobcat
But, but, PENIS! My penis isn’t powerful. It is a tender, delicate source of joy! My poor pee-pee’s fee-fees! Why are you so mean to my penis?
Crip Dyke, what got to me about ‘mrbobcat’ was his fixed idea that rape equaled bad sex.
Everything about Bobcat got to me. Urgh.
I’m confident that i’m much better off with all the M the Atheist comments deleted before I could read them in full, only vague and skeletal outlines preserved through the impressions he made on his surroundings as he decayed.
Crip Dyke:
Ah. I haven’t looked in on that thread again, I’m still drinking tea and waking up, but I saw FossilFishy’s alert about ‘M the Atheist’. Just as well they’ve been disappeared, my temper has been on a very short leash lately.
Oh, nevermind. Turns out ‘M the atheist’ was ‘mrbobcat’. No surprise there.
Ičámna.
Albino brain chiggers. They be falling.
Caine
Cover your ears!
Chigau, done.
Chester has breakfast.
[from here]
You’re mistaken. I’ve never claimed such a thing before in my life. I didn’t even claim it this time; I merely expressed mild skepticism of your claim. Now you say there are examples of experiments–not ‘studiies’ but experiments, those things for which you just expressed such admiration above?–at the Wiki which help form “the backbone of feminism”? When I get some time I’ll look, but there’s a lot of stuff posted there. I’d appreciate a hint about which ones you consider “experimental”.
As for what has happened before, typically I make some limited, specific point (which you and others typically misinterpret as a criticism of feminism generally) and you respond with “These are for you:” followed by some links (which may or may not be relevant to my point). Not a clue as to why they’re for me, or what you think I ought to learn from reading them, or what I ought to be looking for in them. That’s an extremely ineffective and, frankly, lazy way to try to communicate. I’ve got plenty of shit to read already. If you have an argument to make, you should make it. It’s really arrogant to expect me to read your assignments and glean from them your point (if any).
You know, like most people whio have accomplished something in life, I do not cotton well to condescension. Shove it.
No, it is absolutely necessary to begin doing science with observations.
What the everloving fuck? You’re not doing yourself any favors here.
I said “observation plus logic“, and you respond with shit about “ideas” and “models”?
And now ideas can “become science”? FFS, the word “process” was the only thing you got right the first time.
And ideas that get falsified (by contrary observations and/or logic) are rejected, they don’t “become part of science”.
you know, it would have been OK to admit that you didn’t think hard about every word of your crappy definition the first time. This rationalization, backfilling, and retconning is painfully obvious. I’m frankly a little embarrassed for you.
Not what I said. I said a subportion of a sample is itself a sample, which, unlike your formulation, actually makes sense.
um…so what?
Tangentially, most people talk about testing control vs. experimental treatments in terms of comparing two samples.
(btw, fyi, you cannot bafflegab me with statistical jargon. I’ve published numerous t tests, G tests, ANOVAs (with and without repeated measures), ANCOVAs, multiple regressions, mixed-model GLMs, PCAs, etc. and never had to consult a consultant yet. You?)
I don’t know. Unlike you, I am not fond of making up numbers.
What are the odds that adding “answers [that] have an error term” clarified anything for the troll?
I said it was an assumption that amounted to mind-reading, which it was.
For example, had I just seen you use the word ‘science’, I would have had no idea that you were thinking in such narrow and confused terms.
Having taken some stats classes has not seemed to give you much insight into how science works.
That’s an honest observation.
Hey Chas, thanks for linking that article of Chris’s. Infuriating to read, though.
Chas: This isn’t the first time we’ve clashed over science and feminism. This makes the fifth or sixth time this has happened. It would be nice if we didn’t do the same dance, but it appears we don’t get to not go around again.
I have actually tried to explain concepts and/or claims to you, as well as providing links to studies based on your questions, comments and/or claims. That’s the usual procedure when someone makes a claim, asks a question or claims something does not exist: you provide information to them and/or an explanation. And, frankly, it’s generous of me to drop the other things I’m doing in order to hunt studies for you when you ask a question or make a claim, instead of merely calling you names and/or ignoring you (which on occasion, I’ve done because I don’t actually believe you care enough to learn.) I’ve chosen to treat you like you may be honest as a rhetorical stance when you demand proof or evidence of something and are willing to learn if you are willing to ask, mostly because I could be wrong and you could actually learn something if I do.
As far as consulting an expert, I’ve never had to do so. I get consulted by others in my department, actually, for statistical help ranging from explanations of the calculus behind the methods we use to advice on how to treat their variables and help conceptualizing a theoretical approach (with attendant help creating a model to test their theories).
Logic is not experimentation. It’s a completely different arm of math/philosophy, so I would not assume saying that observing honestly and using logic implies experimentation, especially since you seem dead set on criticizing the association between experimentation and science when I bring it up. I don’t know what you do, but if it doesn’t involve testing, I’m not sure how you can tell whether or not something is able to be true (assuming you are in the business of making knowledge instead of reproducing what is already known.)
It looks like you don’t favor experimentation as a way to falsify. We have an impasse, there. I don’t know that you can falsify, assuming again that you are making knowledge and not reproducing what is known, without actually running an experiment (at least in the sciences; in math a proof is sufficient).
Ideas and models have an established place in the sciences. I assume you’re familiar with them because I’m assuming you have a graduate education, so I’m not sure why you dislike the terms. And I’m going out of my way not to bafflegab you or the troll–I’m using relatively small words, and the most technical word I’ve used so far is stochastic, but I provided a link to a definition so that in case the troll (who was who I was talking to) could see it for himself.
As far as taking graduate courses in statistics: last I checked, that was usually how one becomes an expert in a field. It’s possible, but unlikely, to make oneself an expert, and either way the classes help. I’m not sure why you think that’s worth derision.
Mind-reading is not making the most likely prediction based on the input you’ve gotten from someone, especially when their behavior stems from a class of persons who tend to use the same definitions for terms (which is why we make the bingo jokes about trolls–they use a script that we can recognize and predict.) I’m not sure why you think those two things are the same.
It’s pretty clear we’re never going to be besties, and I’m perfectly okay with that, but the venom that you use in our encounters seems a little strong to me. So why is it that you feel this strongly about what I post?
words
mouthyb, if this is how you want to play this, you got it.
That’s a misperception on your part. I have never, ever, even once clashed with anybody over ‘feminism’. Ever. I’m always trying to talk about some much more limited, specific point or assertion. Very often in the past (I frankly can’t remember the last time I responded directly to a comment of yours) I’m talking to somebody else (who is likely misinterpreting what I said) and you bust in trying to teach me something that’s of tangential relevance at best. It’s annoying.
Wow. You’re really confused about this, and you haven’t understood anything I’ve said. What I criticized was your attempt to define science as experimentation. Because that’s bullshit (if you don’t want to buy it from me, listen to David Marjonovic’, who made the same point). Of course experiments are a particularly powerful way to answer certain kinds of questions (basically those that can be phrased ‘what is the effect of X on Y?). And the reason they are so powerful is because they build logic into the collection of observations. But they are not the be-all and end-all of science, and other combinations of observation and logic can be and are fruitfully used to answer lots of other kinds of questions, all of which is also perfectly scientific. OK? That’s the point.
stuff like this.
What? Look again. It’s the best way to do it when you can. Peruse the list linked above and you’ll find papers in the Journal of Experimental Biology and the Journal of Experimental Zoology. Those are experiments that I did. The rest is also science that I did, but not necessarily experiments. Is this getting any clearer?
Try to read for comprehension. I do not dislike the terms. What I dislike is me saying “observation and logic” and then having you argue with me as if I said “ideas and models” instead. Because that’s what you did. It’s all still there; you can go back and check.
No. You didn’t. You provided the link when you were talking to me. You can go back and check that too.
*shakes head* It’s not. That’s why I didn’t deride it. What I derided was your conviction that science consists of inferential statistics and “running models,” period. These are tools that can strengthen the ‘logic’ part of science. They are not themselves science. Same point yet again.
Oh for fucks sake. The guy said sociology is not science and you assumed that you knew what he meant by ‘science’. You assumed it, you didn’t know it (because you can’t read minds). I don’t give a ratshit what ‘class of persons’ you thought you were dealing with or how likely you think you “prediction” (*eyeroll*) was or where you got your ideas about the tendencies of classes to use certain definitions. You assumed all of that. That’s all.
You want to know? You asked: it’s the previously mentioned habit of (misdirected) argument solely by reference, your exceedingly poor reading comprehension that causes you to argue with stuff that nobody ever said, your tendency to succumb to confirmation bias, your tone of great confidence even when saying stupid shit, your reactionary doubling down when someone points out that stupid shit instead of thinking about it, your frequent combination of pompous condescension and wrongness, and what seems to be your tenuous understanding of reason and lack of clarity of thought. That’s all stuff that pushes my buttons, it makes you very frustrating to deal with, and it’s all been on clear display here in this very exchange.
Your definition of science was wrong because it was way too limited. That was my only point. David said the same thing. You could have acknowledged the point, or made some attempt to grok what we were saying, but instead you bullheadedly pushed shit to this point where I have to feel bad for being mean to you. Thanks a lot.
Science is not a simple formula — not everything fits into the dogma of hypothesis-experiment-observation-repeat. I’ve read papers that followed the formula, and were crap science — they were just rote exercises in using technology to churn out data with no thought involved. I’ve read papers without a single experiment, just observations and synthesis, and they were great science.
I don’t have a good definition of science myself. We wouldn’t have a demarcation problem if it were so crystal clear. I do consider empirical observation to be the heart of it all, and experiment is one of the tools we use to confirm observations, but there are so many more tools in the toolbox.
If anything, I’d define science as a thought process, a way of looking at the world. The opposite of credulity, if anything. The thought process that goes [interesting thing is observed] “Hmm! I wonder what caused that! I’m going to find out!”
Of course, that leaves undefined what it means to “do” science. *shrug*
precisely.
“The only rules of scientific method are honest observation and accurate logic.”
-Robert MacArthur, 1972
In the clear light of day and slightly hungover, I regret being so explicit in my penultimate paragraph above. Mouthyb just suffers from a particularly acute case of Graduate Students’ Disease, and I could and should have just left it at that.
Chas, we’ve clashed during many EP threads. I talk about feminist critiques of gender essentialism in EP (critiquing essentialism is central to feminist endeavors, and most of the time when we clash I am explicitly talking about those feminist critiques) and you respond with any of the following:
a) denying that real scientists involved in EP would gender essentialize (see the “I guess I’m not a feminist” thread, in particular)
b) demanding studies and not reading them, refusing to admit that they’re ‘real science’ when they’re provided and refusing to make even the most basic of synthetic moves (such as the move from discussing papers which argue that berry color selection is biologically motivated to general color selection is biologically motivated) and denying the papers have anything to do with what you’re saying (see the “The Fundamental Failure of the Evolutionary Psychology Premise,” “I guess I’m not a feminist”)
c) being outright skeptical that there are experiments involved in feminism (you do that in the thread we started this discussion on, see comment #140 on “No Self-Awareness at All”)
As to the claim that I interrupt you, this blog is a ongoing conversation in which many people speak, sometimes to the same person. Sometimes that person is you. Sometimes that person is a troll. Sometimes that person is me. * shrug * It’s a specious objection.
About my definition for science: this is part my own observations, in part definitions presented to me and in part an ongoing set of conversations with a group of physicists I spend time with–even the theoretical ones I know consult experimental physicists because they have an imperative to try and test their theories. I don’t know what biologists do. Maybe, in your field, science is not experimental. But everything I know of physics so far suggests that science, especially the hard(er) sciences, is oriented toward experimentation as the sin qua non of making knowledge. Is one a scientist without making knowledge? Is there really any idea in the sciences that does not require testing to confirm it?
Isn’t that what you are taught to do, how you learn your discipline (first, by reproducing famous experiments in lab class and then by learning to do your own experiments)?
I’ll take PZ’s and David’s word for it that this is one of the tools of science, even though it seems like science should have a higher bar than the thought-experiment or the generation of models) partially because I don’t know about biology, and partially because they’ve been able to clarify what they meant. I don’t find you particularly clear, often.
I am aware that not all persons in my discipline feel the same way, which is why I’ve explicitly and repeatedly confirmed that I have bias in this area.
As far as making peripheral points, Chas, most of your points when EP and feminism are part of the same topic read as specious and/or OT to me–I’m more than willing to buy many of your biology-specific claims, especially since my reading recently branched into evolutionary work, but your claims about feminist critiques are NOT plausible. To some degree, deciding whether or not something is specious or OT is a judgement call. What seems important to you will not to me, and vice versa. However, if you write something, any part of what you write can also be the topic (as you often do to parts of what I write).
I assumed what the troll meant by science because there is an extant pattern on this blog wherein some dude shows up and makes claims about occupational differences and attributes lower pay to some gendered facility. When they do, they are often referring to science in a way which privileges the experimental model, in addition to any activity thought to be primarily male. This is partially because of the popular tendency to conflate science with some man holding a beaker–I don’t know what education the troll has, so I have no way of knowing (other than egregious problems in his reasoning) whether this is his conception of science. Calling the observation of a pattern based on assumption mind reading does not make it mind reading. Mind reading is magical. Observing a pattern and making assumptions on that pattern may leave you drawing the wrong conclusion, but it’s not magical.
You have attacked my ability to perform reading comprehension repeatedly, and I feel the need to make a few comments on that. It probably does no good to tell you I am top of my class, and have scored 96-99% in standardized test scores for the US specifically on reading comp. This tends to be evocative of some skill in that area, if nothing else than when confronted with academic examples.
I will also note that I have Aspergers. In practical terms, it means that what I perceive is not what other people perceive for a variety of reasons which are, frankly, irreducible. I often have the experience of reading something and having a completely different reading than other people do. It may be that we are at an impasse there, and it may be due to my disability. I read your objections as often specious and incredibly self-serving and you apparently read mine the same way.
I don’t make an argument by reference, I provide references when you make claims and/or mock someone else for making claims and demand to see studies. If I wanted to make an argument, I do (and have, in the threads I mentioned above.) There is a difference between providing asked for or necessary resources and not making arguments of your own–there have been times I provided resources simply for the purposes of clarification when it seemed like there was some sort of need for it.
If you read the original comment to the troll, I said “if you are using” this definition of science. As in, if it is true that you have this definition of science, sociologists use it, too. It could have been read to have been a conditional, on which the rest of the statement depends, but honestly, Chas, I don’t think it would matter.
I don’t believe you to be capable of arguing in good faith with me (partially because of the moves I described above when you are given studies you ask for), nor do I believe that you have any useful critique of me to offer.
biologically motivated –> sexually motivated
Breaking Out the Big Syringes.
Tonight’s Year 7 homework, biology edition, research findings so far:
Wikipedia, you are not helping.
You know, Chas, I’m way angrier than this situation deserves (for a variety of reasons which have nothing to do with this), and my partner has pointed out that I’m being a little shitty here, so I apologize for being shitty.
mouthyb:
First, I really don’t care when people are shitty to me online in general. So no worries on that score. But I don’t have time to go back and edit what I already typed, which follows.
I am not going to rehash previous “clashes”, particularly about evolutionary psychology. In every single case, those discussions have been characterized by you and others arguing from politically motivated preconception and confirmation-bias-caused misinterpretation instead of dealing with my actual arguments. It’s completely pointless and I will not participate in any such discussions again.
However, as a demonstration of good faith, I’ll deal with the one specific example you have offered here.
I can’t even discern what you’re talking about here. There is not a single paper (to my knowledge) that has ever tested the a priori hypothesis that “berry color selection is sexually motivated.” There are, however, two (TMK) papers that have presented data (in the Results section) that they interpreted as demonstrating a sex difference in color preference, and then (in the Discussion section) mentioned possible sex differences in ancestral fruit-gathering behavior as a possible a posteriori heuristic/explanatory hypothesis, NOT as a conclusion. I hope you can appreciate that important difference. Many, seemingly, cannot.
I expressed skepticism that feminism has an “experimental backbone”, which was your explicit claim. All you have to do to allay that skepticism is cite one such experiment. I’ve asked you twice now, and the ball’s still in your court.
By the way, my skepticism about this specific claim has nothing to do with my actual opinions in general about feminism (about which nobody has ever shown the slightest interest).
That was not the point of my claim. I don’t give a shit about being ‘interrupted’ in a comment thread. You are once again oblivious to what I actually said quite plainly.
Look, now you’re just being idiotic. Read what I say for fucking comprehension or don’t read it at all, please.
They said nothing that I didn’t say in so many words. The fault in understanding here is all on you, I’m afraid.
yeah. That’s not OK, you know.
Like what, pray tell? Not that I’m going to respond (see above), I just wonder whether you’re actually talking about something or just blowing smoke.
blah blah blah. Maybe think more, write less?
Because you have clearly demonstrated your lack of such ability repeatedly, including in this very comment. But please tell me more about your standardized test scores *eyeroll*.
I believe you. And it gives me pause about some of the stuff I’ve said to you. However, not having known that before, I have only been able to interpret the words you chose to type and post.
If I had dyslexia, I would rely heavily on spell-checkers, dictionaries, and Preview screens so as not to give the mistaken impression that I was just semi-literate. Similarly, if I knew that my mental processes were apt to perceive things differently from what was meant (or, indeed, from what was actually explicitly stated), I’d make a special effort to stop and think hard about alternatives before I posted a knee-jerk reactionary response.
But that’s just me. You are of course free to continue doing whatever you want.
yeah, you really do sometimes.
well fuck you.
*shrug* Believe what you want to; it’s no skin off my nose.
However, in an attempt to wrest something constructive from this shitshow I am going to make my last words here one honest observation and one piece of sincerely well-meant advice for you.
So first, I have been directly associated with colleges and universities for all 35 years of my adult life, and I have known a lot of graduate students; many dozens. And I have observed that they fall into three categories:
1. Those who already think they know everything and are generally narcissistic and condescending about it. They are wrong about themselves in almost every case (there are a very few genuine genius assholes out there). (Nobody likes these people, with the occasional exception of equally narcissistic professors, whom nobody else likes anyway.)
2. Those who are honest about the truth that they don’t know shit and have a lot to learn, and therefore humbly get down to the business of learning. (In its extreme form, this can result in the famous Imposter Syndrome, which generally lasts only until the realization dawns that everybody really is in the same boat.)
3. Those who are so insecure about the feelings described under #2 that they adopt a defense mechanism of bluffing a #1 attitude. These folks are almost invariably found out eventually, at which point others’ opinions about them shift from dislike to exasperation and pity, which is worse. Often these are the ones who end up dropping out without finishing.
Now by reading your comments here over several years now, I cannot help but peg you as a #1. (You might still be a #3, in which case I am sorry for you.) That’s an honest observation.
Which leads me to the advice. I swear on my daughter’s life that I mean this sincerely and in good faith, and that I am actually trying to help you, speaking as somebody who has mentored a number of successful graduate students (not one of my grad students over the years (mostly women, btw, fwiw) have ever dropped out without finishing or even switched labs):
Mouthyb, your stubbornness, inability to acknowledge a mistake, and tendency to go off half-cocked without thinking are not going to serve you well as a scientist.
I really really would rather you didn’t respond. But I really really urge you to think about that.
[conversation over]
Chas, I have a future art project in mind, involving turtles (what else?), and I need some good reference photos. I wondered if you know of a particularly good site or book with good photos of a variety of different turtles? If not, no big deal, I’ll happily spend time researching.
Before I shut up for good, or for a while anyway, I feel moved to say that I am by no means unaware of my own issues ( a decade of therapy makes such unawareness…difficult). For example, it is because of a lifetime of (sometimes crippling) insecurity that displays of unwarranted confidence in others so get my goat.
Chas! Turtles! Help, please!
Chas:
I grok. I still deal with a lot of insecurity issues, most likely always will, and displays of extreme confidence intimidate the hell out of me, which is one reason I spend so much time researching whatever such confidence is expounding upon, because I don’t trust it, and usually don’t know enough to make a judgement.
(I know, this is different from your issue. I wish I did know unwarranted confidence when I see it.)
Caine:
there’s a decent diversity pictured here.
More authoritative efforts at an online database seem to have stalled a couple years ago.
There’s also a CD-ROM available for $ from here.
hth
That helps a lot, thank you, Chas!
Holy rodents, some of those turtles are breathtakingly beautiful!
amending that to “what I believe is unwarranted confidence”, that certainly explains the very odd fit you threw once when I mentioned trying to get out of prerequisites. Not that this makes being compared to 18-year-old American kids right out of HS any less insulting, but at least now it no longer seems like that one came completely out of nowhere.
Chas @161:
Yeah, that really put the kibosh on Dawkins’ career, dinnit? My sincere advice to you is to lay off the career advice/observations based on a few blog comments. It’s an arsehole move.
Erm, it would be really nice if this didn’t turn into another “oh, let’s discuss all the things wrong with Chas!” sessions. Allow Chas and Mouthyb to have their argument. It’s not as though there is nothing else at all to talk about.
*shrug*
this is the Thunderdome; and if I feel like sharing that I’ve finally found the missing piece to a puzzle, I will.
Jadehawk, your memory’s better than mine. Zero recollection of that one, so no comment.
Grigjanis: the fuck do you know about it?
But here, I’ll indulge you:
a) Dawkins’s career was as an author and science communicator, not so much as a scientist.
b) his blind spots with regard to certain social issues notwithstanding, he has several times admitted mistakes; a 20-second g**gle yielded these two examples: A, B.
c) in the specific (and the relevant) context of science, he has always stressed the importance of admitting mistakes; here’s one relevant quote from TGD.
d) if you have an example in mind where Dawkins was demonstrably wrong about a scientific issue but stubbornly refused to acknowledge it, or went off half-cocked about a scientific issue without thinking, I’m all ears; bring it.
Have a nice day.
It wasn’t an order or anything, and I didn’t have a problem with your insight, Jadehawk. Gad, everyone has to be tetchy. Must be the snow.
Yeah, okay, everyone’s gotta be fierce. I guess I’ll leave the building for a while.
Chas: Thanks. It’s been a great month so far, and the day ended very well.
Caine
They didn’t cover their ears.
Snow? What the fuck is snow?
Chigau:
Yep. Chiggers got ’em.
How about communist communities in neolithic Anatolia?
I am currently reading a fascinating article called “From Çayönü to Çatalhöyük”, which describes (perhaps) the first ever communist revolution in human history. The lesson learned is pretty relevant today. After centuries of oppression:
The people rose up and established an eglatarian society that continued for some 3000 years. Where the previous urban form had consisted of manor houses (in which the materials and means of production were stockpiled) and temples, surrounded by impoverished shacks , the new settlement – under a new status quo – proved to be something quite different:
The above, for the sake of brevity can give only an inkling of how this all occurred. I would recommend reading the entire article. The PDF can be downloaded here.
(This is particularly relevant for the Thunderdome, where I am trying indefatigably to set the opposite process in motion.)
@ AE
I think its that white stuff that builds up in our freezer, ever since that little plastic flap broke.
theophontes #180
I have downloadfail.
They have archaeological evidence?
Very interesting stuff, thanks Theophontes! I’ll read the PDF in the next couple of days.
@ chigau
They have archaeological evidence?
Pretty solid:
This was far better preserved than most more recent settlements. The data is incredibly rich. (We do note, however, that the writer has a horse in this race.)
Is the download problem with your browser? Can I email you this? theophontesathotmaildotcom
Theophontes:
Hah! My kind of peoples. (Yes, I paint on the walls of my house.)
@ chigau
Whoops on the blockquotes…
@ Caine
We have the makings of a Thunderdome book-club. ;p
(My (ardently marxist) prof once told me of a group of German workers who bootstrapped their education through sharing of books and discussion, with impressive results. Sadly I cannot recall more.)
theophontes
My downloading issues are about using an iPad.
If I actually go upstairs and use the RealComputer, there are no issues.
but I have a cat on my lap …
One page overview: Linky.
@ chigau
Ah! Thereby a million sins may be forgiven. The least of which: procrastination.
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/43/17165.full
Thank you so much for that pdf, theophontes, it’s fascinating.
Chas:
Oh, that old time political propaganda. A few years back, I rented Marihuana and Reefer Madness, because Mister had never seen them. We prepped by having a healthy smoke.
@ Chas
By my understanding cannabis could, in principle, be cultivated and sold through a government agency. How the stuff ever got entangled with the same restrictions as poppy (used in heroin manufacture) cultivation seems rediculous.
Time for UN regulations to catch up with the times.
yeah. ‘Ridiculous’ about covers it.
Unfortunately, these stupid, stupid laws continue to fuck up innocent people’s lives.
(this being my real name and all I’d prefer not to go into detail, but, recently, mine included, and thereby my daughter’s.)
Chas:
Oh yes, on more than one level, too. I’m sorry for whatever trouble you’re having as a result. The laws are infuriating, as are the continued actions on the part of the DEA. Supposedly, growing hemp is legal here in ND. Try growing it, though, and you can watch the assholes from the DEA show up and burn your crops.
When the new sheriff in New Salem was installed, he decided to check out his territory and all, I suppose. Had himself a drive around Almont, yeah, okay. Idiot decided to park outside my house, glaring at me and the hop vines growing out front. For *two hours*, sat and glared. Those stupid ass laws and the stupid ass people who think they are a fine thing have a lot to answer for, to say the least.
Theophontes:
Of course it could. If it was legalized in the states, the gov’t could tax the fuck out of it and make a ton of money, and there would be a whole lot less people caught in the legal system, to boot.
@ opposablethumbs
We’ll get there yet!
[Salgado]
It is good to look carefully at Salgado’s images as they are packed with detail. I am fascinated by the person standing immediately behind the two protagonists in the picture we discussed last. (Link: detail)
His eyes are partially (wholly?) closed. Arms crossed. Is he withdrawing from the situation? Pensive? Aloof? Angered? He is moving: forward? backward? Or, on the slippery slope (that he helped create) is he merely trying to maintain his footing, and not slide into the pit? The person behind him is doing likewise?
He is on the verge of something.
…
Context.
@ Chas
Sorry to hear that.
I, too , find the situation beyond ridiculous. Especially having lived in Holland for so many years and seeing what the effects of allowing (doog beleid) cannabis use are. It never brought out the antichrist. Life goes on as normal. When treated by the state as mature adults, people behave as mature adults. People enjoy a puff with friends, over a beer or cup of coffee, relax, and … well that is about it actually. God is not shaken from His Heaven and the state does not collapse in turmoil.
In South Africa, the legality might not have changed, but the unofficial policy has defaulted to live-and-let-live. Smoke away in private (or even in public if such is the general mood of the crowd). No Armageddon, no communist onslaught. (What was all that shit we were told to worry about prior? Why all those years of aggressive pursuit of people lighting up? What a waste of time and resources.)
Even without further refinement, poppy tea can be quite nice (the Finnish word for poppy is unikko, it’s derived from the word uni which means dream)… not that I’d recommend it to anyone, as the amount of active alkaloids can vary wildly. From “what a waste of time to” dangerous.
” to
@ Weed Monkey
The you don’t want to drop some unikko on your sleeve before traveling to Saudi Arabia, or UAE. Or have a poppy seed roll in a London café, or hotpot in Beijing … etc etc etc, before traveling to those countries. Or Singapore. Fuck, what is wrong with those countries?
Or be caught driving a car after eating a poppy seed bagel pretty much anywhere in the world. The lollipop tests police use are notoriously inaccurate.
Chas,
I’m sorry you’re having troubles. Those laws are stupid and they do far more harm to people than the plant ever could.
Better fucking believe I start this with a trigger warning.
More of this “edgy” humor that escapes me. An Esty store sell tee shirts printed with rapes jokes. This is a Rainn change.org petition to close down the store.
And, dammit, it should not even need a petition to close that store.
Rape culture? What rape culture?
Janine:
I had a look. They aren’t intended to be funny, they are intended to be lame. Says so on the site. Even so, hardly acceptable material. I did note they made all of 7 sales since opening in July, and none were rape saying shirts. One sale of a shirt referencing candy and incest, though.
Janine@ 204, thanks for the heads-up. I signed the petition, and added a few choice words (polite, of course) about having thought better of Etsy than this.
theophontes:
Thank you! I look forward to reading it soon.
chigau
I can relate to this.
Janine – Signed.
Caine – *pouncehug*
Janine, also signed. Thank you.
Also signed.
Hugs back, Hekuni Cat.
Chas, is there anything I can do, any way to help?
Caine, naw, but thanks. Either I’ll get a second chance at the job–they have to re-advertise and I’ll just re-apply; presumably I’ve led a clean life for long enough now–or I’ll find another one. (If it was just me, I’d just say fuck em and move on, but the shitty thing is that now my daughter has no health insurance.)
Chas:
Is this the job you moved (or were going to move) for?
Oh hell, that seriously sucks. You always have this worry, “now that I don’t have it…”
yep. Moved. Started the job. Pissed hot (after 4 weeks). Terminated. So stupid.
Chas:
Oh ferchrissakes. Beyond stupid, that. It’s not as if you’re driving a train or something, why on earth what you do on your own time can be cause to fire you…grrrr, it’s infuriating.
Seconding that anger.
What is the thinking there?
What is the horrific impact of having weed in one’s system as it relates to a particular job/occupation? I can understand if you come to work blazed, but if you smoked 2 weeks ago, and nothing since, in what way does the stuff affect one’s ability to do their job?
Or is it that the mere ingestion speaks to flaws in one’s character ?
Question for tech savvy people forthcoming.
Currently, my phone is the only thing that grants me online access. I have an HTC Droid.
The problem: most of the sites I visit are accessed with no problems. However, a few sites present a specific difficulty. If I go to ThinkProgress, AlterNet,.I find I cannot get the sites to load and I usually get kicked back to the Google homepage. When I clicked Janine’s link upthread, the same thing happened. It is quite annoying.
I made a terrible mistake. I looked up my doctor’s phone number using google. Now when visiting FTB, I am now plagued with ads from, you guessed it, my doctor.
What happened to this site. I used to enjoy reading PZ’s take on everything in the “world,” but lately not so much. I typically use my kindle, but it is now impossible due to redirects and pop ups. You can’t even block the pop ups, since the Kindle opens site warnings. Really, does the site need to run ads in the MIDDLE of every article, and generate pop ups ad nauseum.
Too bad I’m an atheist, otherwise I would be saying a prayer.
Venting completed. You may now return to your enthusiastic and didactic discussions.
Take a look at Lousy Canuck’s new feature — we’re debugging a subscription plan that lets readers turn off all ads for a few $ per month. Don’t you all rush over there just yet, he’s doing a phased rollout to make sure everything works, but eventually this will be available site-wide.
Fuck, Chas that’s horrible and unlucky – not to mention incredibly intrusive. I know there are some jobs where this might be (arguably) justified, but unless you’re a surgeon or a pilot …
Makes me wonder, how common is this practice (in the US or elsewhere)?
Tony! #216
FWIW, change.org (Janine’s link) is always buggy even on my PC (lots of script-errors and the like), and the Think Progress homepage has one of those endless-scroll gizmos, which can be buggy on mobile devices, from what I gather.
PZ,
So now I have to spend my money to one party, because another party wants to make money from another party, who makes money from the great Puhbah that wants to turn the “webtubes” into a virtual cash machine. What a pisser!
I’ll just blame my doctor and hope he gets sued for malpractice. That’ll show’em.
Jesus, Chas. That’s some bullshit.
@godwit:
Don’t blame FTB, blame the ad network.
Chas, that really stinks. Sickening.
Caine @ 196:
My idea (well, not mine, I talked it over with a Sheriff in NorCal and I’ve added some things):
1. Legalize all recreational pharmaceuticals.
2. Treat them the same way we treat beer, wine, liquor and tobacco.
3. Mandate a 100% tax on all recreational pharmaceuticals — 25% federal, 75% state (if the state wants a higher tax, go for it).
4. Mandate that half of all state taxes go for free alcohol and drug addiction treatment.
5. All in prison for drug offences — distribution, production or use — are set free. Those who have a sentence for another crime, but drugs, in some way, increased the penalty, would have their sentence reduced by the amount the drugs added to their sentence.
Chas @ 213:
Shit, Chas, that fucking sucks. Hugs to you.
—
Add to my list:
6. Under the influence of drugs or alcohol on the job can be, depending on the job, reason for a personel action; what you do on your own time is, just like alcohol, your own fucking business.
opposablethumbs @219:
Boy was subjected to random drug tests as a clerk at a Turkey Hill Minute Mart. Girl’s boyfriend had to take three drug tests for a job a Dunkin Donuts (he also had to pass a federal background check (no, not kidding) and they couldn’t do it because the GOP was holding the US government hostage). This is common in the US, even for jobs that have nothing to do with heavy machinery or public safety.
(Our train crews and train maintenance crews, whether staff or volunteer, are subject to random drug tests — in 20 years, there have been 2 positives. Both resulted in 30 day suspensions for rail operations and a two-year letter of reprimand in their files.)
… so the ebil gummint can’t be allowed to pry people’s lethal firearms out of their cold dead hands, but it’s just fine for bosses to be allowed to demand a sample of bodily fluids any time they like – regardless of whether it’s of any conceivable relevance to the job ….. ::head asplode::
Sounds like it would be easier to go to work armed, ffs, than with a few fading traces in the bloodstream of a couple of joints at the weekend.
godwit
I have the same problem on my phone; I use adblock on my computer, but that’s not an option on the phone.
PZ
Which would be great if I had any money to spare, but I don’t. Seriously, can something at least be done about the fucking popups?! What arrogant fuckwitted marketer decided that their bullshit and lies were more important to me than the content of whatever site I actually fucking went to go visit? And why do website owners appear to fucking agree that these assholes have something more important to say than you do?
opposablethumbs
Utterly ubiquitous in the U.S. Can’t speak for anywhere else.
Of Course! That’s not the Gummint, see? Those are the Job Creators, whose wisdom is infinite, and we poor peons should be grateful for the opportunity to provide them with whatever access to our bodies they so desire
thanks for the expressions of support and agreement. What makes it triply galling is that, following a period of acute depression and concomitant frequent self-medication, I had quit cold-turkey on the very day I applied for the job, just in case, before I even knew a test would be required. There is literally nothing more I could have possibly done to comply with their stupid rules. (Except for cheating the test. As I pointed out in my letter of exasperation, would they rather employ the type of person who smuggles a baggie of artificial urine in under his or armpit? Unfortunately for me I abhor cheating in all forms.)
PSA:
Adblock Plus is a free, safe, and reliable add-in for Firefox that deals with the intrusive ad problem quite effectively.
A step beyond that is NoScript, which takes care of non-ad annoyances.
Turns out that Freethought Blogs pages run more ancillary scripts than almost any other site I have visited. Speeds things up quite noticeably.
[/PSA]
shld read ‘his or her armpit’
previewpreviewpreview
Chas,
That is super shitty. I’m sorry that happened! I live in a state where pot is now legal, but employers can still fire you if you have any in your system. So not sure how that is going to work out for people. Someone I know who was trying to get work through express personnel (a temp placement agency) tested positive and they were like , ‘meh. We are going to say that you tested clean.’
–
For myself, I’ve only been drug tested at entry level jobs, never at any of the better ones.
The only times I have ever been drug tested were when applying for a pizza delivery job and when I joined the US Army.
My current job does not require drug testing.
Though I sometimes wonder about the people with whom I work . . . .
The real injustice of drug testing is that cannibis, the most benign of restricted substances and the least correlated with criminality otherwise, takes by far the longest to clear from the system. I can see some validity in wanting to know if your prospective employee is a raging cokehead or a narcotics addict, if only to protect against those who might “serve two masters” so to speak. But the de facto imposition of second-class citizen status on those who more or less responsibly enjoy what is quickly becoming a quasi-legal recreational substance the harms of which in general are much less than alcohol, is infuriating.
Sorry to hear of your troubles, Chas. Good luck to you.
crossposted with apologies:
Pharyngulistas residing in California especially, please do what you can to help long-time friend-of-the-blog Chris Clarke do good.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kcetlink/rewild-watchdogging-californias-wildlife-agencies
No need for apology, Chas. That’s a fantastic project. I can’t kick anything in right now, I’m past broke and have a fairly large vet bill coming up, but I should be able to free up some money before Nov. 13th.
Chas:
Are you aware of anything similar to NoScript for cellphones?
Tony!: nope, sorry. I am not a smartphone guy.
Just found my new theme-song:
another one by the same band (Gangstagrass)–true American fusion:
I go hard
In case anyone cares or wonders, I’m alive, but busy with career change, current work, and getting Star Trek Online to work on my travel Macbook before I go to Thailand next week.
Hope everyone is as well as they can be.
Hi rorschach.
What career change?
Okay, but you’re still not showing evidence that it is not PZ Myers who is writing those “testimonies” himself, or that he knows the victims, if there are any at all. You also haven’t showed any evidence that it was corroborated by someone else other than producing anonymous letters.
How you do know they are reliable or cited verbatim and not actually made up by PZ Myers to seem like it did?
Now, where is you evidence that he is a sexual predator other than anonymous letters which are not fortified by any evidence? We can both agree on one thing; you do have nothing but your unevidenced opinions and claims not backed up by anything other than anonymous letters
Watermark,
How do you know you need oxygen to survive?
Gee, how original.
A boring troll who has not read the entire Grenade thread.
If they had, their insipid pseudoskepticism–which is applied to
every claimclaims of harassment or rape, and zilch else–would have been shot down quick. Like, the first page.They aren’t anonymous liar and bullshitter. They are know to people here. Whereas you are anonymous, stupid, and show no evidence for your claims. Whereas PZ was corroborated, unlike you. You have nothing but bad idjitcy, inane sexist opinions, and a mouth.
You see watermark, I don’t dismiss the testimony of women, and because of corroboration, accept what was said. I dismiss your OPINION as it has nothing to back it up.
Because he’s put his reputation and livelihood on the line, fuckwit. He’d have to be as stupid as you to make such things up, or post them without confidence they are true; and that’s inherently highly unlikely, as well as contradicted by the evidence of his blogging.
Oh, and watermark, saying PZ wrote the whole thing from scratch is a claim. Where is your evidence to back up that claim?
watermark2
(What happened to mark-1, by the way? Ockham’s Razor finally caught up with them and burst their balloon?)
Why? You’re making this scenario up, so it’s up to you to give a credible reason why PZ would do such a thing.
They claim they are known. Where is the absolute solid proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are known other than posts on the internet?
How do you know what they said was accurate and true without any evidence? There have been corroborations of Reinhard Bonnke bringing back Daniel Ekechukwu back to life; does that make it true? Where is your evidence that this happened. Proof, please?
watermark2
Have you finished reading all 9 pages of the Grenade thread?
Why would Mr Shermer put his reputation and livelihood on the line by raping those women, repeatedly? Why are crimes committed by people who are perfectly capable of comprehending the consequences of their actions?
watermark2
Oh I dunno. Could it be that Shermer didn’t think through what he was doing enough to think of it as what it is—rape? Could it be because the time-honoured rape-technique of lowering a potential victim’s inhibitions and decision-making capability by means of copious amounts of a mind-altering drug has always been euphemised as “loosening her up” and such, instead of calling it what it is—rape?
Now, I believe you were going to explain to us why PZ would put his own reputation on the line by making false accusations, were you not?
fucking hell
Why did President Nixon order the harassment of activist groups and political figures, using the FBI, CIA, and IRS, ultimately resulting in the Watergate affair and resignation ?
Why did Bernard Madoff run a massive Ponzie scheme for at least 20 years ?
(Two examples of many…)
There is no thing as absolute proof. Except that your use of the term means you aren’t arguing in good faith. There is sufficient evidence to convince this skeptic and scientist that the claims are valid.
What you don’t and can’t understand, is that the claims ARE EVIDENCE, since they are first person testimony. You are being purposely obtuse and overly skeptical. Which means you have an agenda, and aren’t engaging in honest inquiry.
@watermark2
Hold the fucking phone! Since when did we institute a standard of “absolute solid proof beyond a shadow of a doubt”? We don’t use that standard anywhere, outside perhaps abstract mathematics.
How about you start by providing “absolute proof” that any accusations were made against Shermer at all. Go ahead, give it a shot. I think it’ll be educational for you.
I see watermark2 is missing the whole point of that thread. The thread was never about MS per se. It was about warning women that he does engage in certain practices used by sexual predators/rapists, and if they don’t want to become a victim, be aware of the practice.
Now watermark2, tell us how you would publicize the evidenced and corroborated claims that women should beware of MS at cons? Make sure your plan will make all the women aware of his behavior….
According to the “testimony” the sex was coercive as well. Drug-facilitated rape isn’t coercive sex. Why would someone like Shermer take the risk of engaging in coercive sex (rape) with his reputation and livelihood at stake?
His comments in this thread are absolute solid proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that watermark2 is a whiny little asshole.
Prove me wrong.
Precisely. The same thing can apply to PZ Myers.
watermark2
Look, fuckwit. You’re the one advancing a hypothesis: that PZ, for some nefarious reason, decided to falsely accuse someone of rape.
People rape people a lot. Too damn much. This is not an extraordinary claim.
Back up your claim with at the very least a convincing reason for this to happen, or fuck off.
What? Seriously? Are you claiming that using a date rape drug and then having sex with the incapacitated person is not rape? Or that getting someone drunk and then having sex with the incapacitated person is not rape?
They are deemed as evidence because you say so. This can only be properly determined by the law. How can I be sure that it isn’t made up because of the comments he made about women a year or two back?
Okay. But you then go on to say this.
So, you first tell us that you have sufficient evidence to believe it without him being prosecuted in the court of law, then tell us it is about warning women. Now, you warn women by making something stick without prosecuting him with the full arm of the law. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a single ounce of sympathy for him.
I’d start by saying you keep away from all men. Women shouldn’t have to publicise anything, we’re entitled to be safe. As long as there is a man around you, women will never be safe. Every man is your potential betrayer; look at every incident of violence, all men. We women ought to stick together and drive men out of OUR space they’ve invaded. Remember, every person is a potential female – and that is stopped by testosterone a MIH (Mullerian Inhibiting Hormone). Men invade and destroy women in the EXACT same manner.
Dumbest thing said on the internet today.
Never ever do powerful men with reputations and livelihoods ever rape. Nope. Never.
You are a moron.
Not in the slightest. Using a date-rape drug, as the name implies, is rape. It just isn’t coercive sex. They are of two different natures but belong in the same crime category. Anal rape isn’t the same as vaginal rape, but they are both rape.
Rev. BigDumbChimp
Slander!
Libel!
Ad hominid!
It certainly appears you are. I was referring to a fallacious method of reasoning i.e argumentum ad consequentiam.
watermark2
When are you going to publish your personal dictionary?
And what nym were you commenting under before now?
Oh fer Pete’s sake.
This Is Not A Court.
Do you need a sworn affidavit, witnessed by three judges that a particular section of road is dangerous before you’ll warn someone that the corners are deceptive?
And also me, Shermer, the guy down the street, and you.
In the cases of PZ, the guy down the street, and me, there is no known evidence nor any reason to suspect wrongdoing.
In the case of Nixon and Madoff, there is verified evidence (proven in court in Madoff’s case).
In the case of Shermer, there is plausible evidence, albeit not yet proven in a court of law. The comments in this thread are similar evidence from you about you.
@ Daz, this is certainly not a court. But a court is a good place to determine if someone is guilty or not, in fact the only place to do that. I simply want to know whether he is actually guilty, not because I am concerned for his welfare. I think you should, presuming you are a woman from your picture, keep away from all men. Men are by their nature deceptive, waiting for a woman they can destroy. So, warning women about deceptive men shouldn’t be the goal, warning women about ALL men should be our goal.
Our entire history of subjugation stems from the incomplete male of the human species.
Can apply. But does it? You have your work cut out for you. Make your case. Now, here’s where I suggest you start: what motive is there for PZ Myers to stake his career and well-being on promoting known false allegations? Blog hits?
A Man (not just some man, but manly masculine male man) from Manosphere commented on No! Not the manosphere! I can’t take it! .
watermark2@271
Looks like strawmanning Schroedinger’s rapist as an attempt to corner… I hope someone bites and wm2 responds before they see this prediction.
Someone’s testing out their homebrew straw-feminist costume a little early this year.
Sssss! Sssss! Ssssss!
@watermark:
No one fucking cares about whether Shermer is guilty or not of any crime, dear god. We’re not trying him in court and we don’t want to.
What we’re doing is giving a warning to women that “hey, some people have said Shermer is a bit of a sleaze, maybe watch yourself in his presence.”
That’s. It.
It could be a variety of reasons, from being mentally deranged, a typical patriarchal male taking advantage of female issues for his own gain to his male DNA acting itself out. All I’m trying to point out is that the appeal to consequence is a bad argument. Shermer is definitely a rapist by virtue of being a man (as every man will rape a woman one way another), but I highly doubt he is a rapist in this instance.
QFMFT.
adding to Kevin #276: * warning to everyone, bystanders and potential victims of any gender. (Remember Dallas.)
Bam! Game over!
Folks, ‘mark is an Internet Logician. It’s time to admit that you’re licked.
Any non-free granted and consented to sex is coercive sex. What a loser you are. Rape apologist personified.
watermark2 #271
Gawd, I love slippery slope arguments. You paint the obviously impractical “logical” outcome, and use it to imply that warning anyone about anything at a level short of that is silly because look→.outcome!!!!!!!!!!
Hey, while we’re at it, let’s ban hetero marriage ’cause we all know the logical outcome of allowing any marriage is humans marrying gerbils, right?
What an abject loser of a rape apologist you are. Not every man is rapist. But, in this instance, MS did rape a women, since he lacked proper and enthusiastic consent. That is the definition of rape. You have nothing.
Okay. That still doesn’t change the fact that men commit all the violence, everyone is a potential female until an MIH comes by and disrupts this and men are actually incomplete [y chromosome]. This is further evidenced by the fact that women are outstripping men in faculties of education. It also doesn’t change that we’ve been subjugated by men the whole time – our rights denied, treated as baby factories and our inventions stolen.
@pteryxx:
Yes, thank you.
Watermark (part two: the moron returns), when are you going to give us an even half-convincing reason to believe that PZ might make false rape-accusations?
But every man is a rapist. Who continues to maintain the system? Men! Despite people like Obama continually preaching about bringing women to power, or male “kosher salt” feminists talking about bringing equality to women, have they done to help women into power? Have they actually voted for women only? Have they demanded on the streets that women be placed in positions of power, have they gone on hunger strikes? No, male “kosher salt” feminists, like all men are taking advantage of us. I don’t see any proper evidence that he raped a woman in this instance as most of them are anonymous letters.
um humm
Sure you were.
watermark2:
What about alcohol? Or is it just non-alcoholic drugs that make it rape?
It is sex without consent. It is sex obtained through force. It is sex obtained through coercion.
Bull shit at seven no trump. Whether one is using guilt, alcohol, a weapon, or drugs, the nature is the same. Using sex as a weapon to punish, humiliate, hurt, shame, dominate.
Bull shit at seven no trump doubled. It is still using sex as a weapon to punish, humiliate, hurt, dominate.
Why are you here, Watermark2? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you aiming for an “I got my sorry ass Banned at Pharyngula” pin? Or are you just very upset that people accept that a woman is telling the truth about being raped?
Suppose I tell you that I got beaten up outside of a bar last week by someone who is popular, someone you like, someone you respect. Would you demand of me impossible absolute proof? Probably not. That’s something that happens to men and is thus believable, right?
Now suppose I tell you that I was raped, repeatedly, over a period of years by someone who was a pillar of the community, a good family man, and a well respected professional? Would you demand of me impossible absolute proof? By your writings here, I would guess yes. After all, rape is something that happens to women and they lie about it to destroy careers, right?
What is your goal here?
watermark2 #277:
…Because only specific, reported rapes become unbelievable. Abstract rapes are credible, sure, as long as nobody ever comes forward or speaks a name! Like elves! Or ghosts! (Warning: those links are not funny.)
and #284:
…so, the cheap straw-feminist costume has a “Made in Mangrysphere” label in the back. Quelle surprise.
Nope. Coercive sex involves intimidation or threats. Drug-facilitated rape isn’t coercive sex, it’s rape, but of a different nature.
Quit being such a fucking idiot watermark. The vast majority of men are not rapists, but they do provide lots of cover for the rapists by doing such things as defending them.
So keep on defending Shermer, and spouting nonsense about feminism.
We will continue to treat you like a rape apologist fuckwit.
But specific “reported” rapes must have evidence to back them up besides anonymous letters. It isn’t abstract, rape of the woman by men is a reality.
Alright, but it still doesn’t change the reality that men have been suppressing women and will continue to do so until we avoid them altogether.
Men have a brotherhood, you’re right about them providing cover for rapists. Look at Islam, they do the exact same thing. I don’t see any evidence to believe Shermer was a rapist is this instance, thought he is certainly one.
No fuckwit, the opposite of coercion is doing something of your own freewill.
Drugging someone, or taking advantage of someone who is drunk, is rape under every circumstance because the drugged/drunk person did not consent.
watermark2 @293:
So if I were to tell you that I was raped, repeatedly, by an upstanding member of the community, a well-respected family man and professional in the community, you would, automatically, disregard this, tell me that I am lying, because I blog under a (very consistent) pseudonym and offer up no evidence.
for watermark2:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/24/how-so-called-mens-rights-activists-make-actual-work-on-behalf-of-men-harder/
citing: http://prospect.org/article/good-men%E2%80%99s-rights-movement-hard-find
What part of this is not a court of law can’t our wrap your feeble mind around? You cannot try to apply criminal requirements here. It is a category error, showing a MAJOR problem with your illogical thinking.
Alcohol IS a date-rape drug.
<It is sex without consent. It is sex obtained through force. It is sex obtained through coercion.
Bull shit at seven no trump. Whether one is using guilt, alcohol, a weapon, or drugs, the nature is the same. Using sex as a weapon to punish, humiliate, hurt, shame, dominate. Sex obtained without consent doesn’t necessarily involve force. You can inhibit the mental faculties and prey on this weakness, that isn’t the same as using force.
Who is denying this? There are different means of exacting that.
I didn’t get banned, a moderator asked me to move it to thunderdome, so I did. There is no evidence beside anonymous letters and stories on the internet. The court is where someone can be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
@Pteryxx – I don’t know why you’re citing me arguments against MRAs. They are known for their violence from a voice for men’s doxxing of that Redhead lady to their numerous scripts advocating for violence against women. It is a cesspool of stupidity for angry men to gather; Barbarossa and Stardusk with JohntheOther have been exposed numerous times as advocating for violence against women, especially asking for men not to report a crime if a woman is in danger. Surely, anyone with half a brain would know wherever men gather, violence follows? Even more so with the man-children called the MRAs.
Nope, I’ll report it to the police and have them deal with it.
@watermark2: Because there are links in those articles to real resources for victimized men. If you’re hanging around MRA communities, you should know about them and be able to pass them on.
Also, the letter WRITERS weren’t anonymous. They’re known to PZ but not made public. /petpeeve
So wrong!
Just because the names of the women who were raped are not available for you to judge, does not mean that their stories are untrue abstractions. (fuck you very much for dropping that pile o’shit rape apologia here)
Their story is the evidence, and their story has been corroborated by people who aren’t anonymous.
Stop doubting women and protecting rapists!
Fuck your disregard for what the victim wants. You’re going to end up getting someone hurt or murdered if you do that. This shows that PZ has more of a grasp on a useful code of ethics than you do: PZ did not report it against someone’s will.
That you certainly are.
Fuck, I’m falling victim to the false-narrative: PZ didn’t even report this shit, he just passed the word on for the people who couldn’t or didn’t want to come forward in a blog post.
Gee, and have the police blame you the victim and belittle and ignore your complaint? What an idjit you are. Reality is not your friend.
Sorry, there is corroborating TESTIMONY OF WOMEN. Your problem, is you dismiss that testimony. Making you a misogynist rape apologist, not a human being with empathy.
Yes, how nasty of me to report a rapist who WILL rape again and destroy the lives of so many more women and kill them in the process.
PZ is a man, an incomplete human being. I do not care for his “flawed” ethics, men are incapable of knowing what ethics are. Strange how the anonymous reporter was willing to report to the organizers but not the police. I can understand women not wanting to report a crime, but to report it to one institution that has very little power to stop it and refusing to report it to one that does have power.
…you do realize that police (and prosecutors, and judges) are mostly… men.
watermark2
I am still waiting for you to provide anything approaching a half-decent explanation as to why PZ would fabricate this story.
You made the claim that it’s a possibility worthy of consideration. Back that claim up, please.
As opposed to not reporting it at all and letting the rapist walk free who will undoubtedly go on to destroy the lives of many more women and kill them in the process?
Anonymous “women” on the internet. There are also corroborating stories of Reinhard Bonnke bringing someone to life, doesn’t make it true. There is no good reason to believe it unless it is proven in the court of law. No other evidence except for stories with no real backing.
Absolutely true in your case, especially believing stories on the internet with no evidence.
A fuckwit says what?
I did. It could be anything from him being mentally deranged to a typical patriarchal male who will take advantage of issues that affect women for his own benefit. There are variety of defects, especially as he is a man.
Men are incomplete because they lack whole X chromosome; what they have is a diminished X chromosome that looks like a Y. That is the reason why men are incapable of emotion, why they are deadbeat dads, why the man-children at the MRA can actively call for violence against women and claim they are legitimate social changers. Men are there to exploit women, it starts at birth with the MIH (Mullerian Inhibiting Hormone) that stops a perfectly normal female from developing; the result is a man.
watermark2 #313
What part of my asking for “anything approaching a half-decent explanation” was ambiguous?
I’m not even going to bother to address you pathetic claim of possible “mental derangement.”
I agree, white-knighting is common. Making up a story of rape in order to white-knight isn’t. Furthermore, it goes against your own claim in this thread that men cover for each other.
Try again.
Absolutely, but it is women that influenced and changed the laws to protect us. Who got abortion in? Women. Who got marital rape of the female outlawed? Women. Who got divorce laws changed so that we weren’t second class citizens? Women. We’ve played a massive role in changing laws, and they work by those laws now. We basically had to civilize the men.
*rolleyes*
Actually, given the extremely low probability of prosecution, not to mention the demonstrable unwillingness of many organizations to lend any support or recourse to victims, making public accusations was probably the most effective way to prevent future rapes, both by Shermer specifically and other local predators in general.
*snrk* I think I just sprained my irony gland.
That’s not the situation you were commenting on, so don’t pretend like you have a get-out-of-biting-the-bullet card. The situation was someone relaying to you that they were raped by someone that they knew. You have no clue what power that person likely holds over that person who put their faith and confidence in you, or what the rapist is capable of in the case of finding out that one of their victims talked. It is not your choice or up to you to make a martyr out of a previous victim to “save the lives” of others. If you still think that is your right and responsibility then you’re an irredeemable assclam.
Everything that needs to be said has been said. There is no such thing as white-knighting. Men, “protect” women because they desire us like pieces of meat. He could be telling the truth or he might not be telling the truth, but ultimately he stands to gain from it. If he is telling the truth, in his sick mind he might think it will get him laid, if he isn’t telling the truth he might be exploiting this for views. All I said earlier was appeal to consequences was a bad argument, so I countered it with some examples.
And being threatened with an expensive lawsuit was just part of the plan.
And that same person who is a rapist wouldn’t see the desire to continue look for it elsewhere? Does a man only have one women he is close to? Nope, he is close to multiple women. When men do this once, they will go back for more and expand their horizons. Now, the hypothetical situation nowhere said “I don’t want you to go to the police”. If the person doesn’t want me to go to the police, I won’t.
watermark2 #319
Umm
White-knighting is the offer of help or protection in hopes of later sexual favour.
How? If he’s not telling the truth, then the subject of his story does not exist. If she doesn’t exist, then he stands to gain nothing by helping her.
Fuckin’ logic. How does it work?
You have yet to come up with e credible explanation for why PZ would tell this lie.
And being threatened with prison and having the looming prospect of prison sex is also part of the plan for Shermer.
Trollolololololololololo…
I stand corrected in that case.
Citation need, liar and bullshitter.
Wow, you are failing really hard at biology, genetics, logic, and acting like a human being.
Another citation is need. Your unevidenced opinion will always be dismissed.
Beautifully written. I actually agree with you. I’d give you a gold star if I could. This should be done to all men.
*lawlz*
Guess gay and bi men are just right out of luck then.
If any monitors are around, I think a note is in order.
watermark2 #325
BINGO!
So you’re more willing to entertain the idea that PZ might risk his reputation on the chance of vaguely possible future-sex than you are to entertain the idea that Shermer might rape for immediate sex? My, that’s a helluva twisted worldview you have there.
Still waitin’ on that credible reason for PZ to lie, Cupcake.
Rey Fox
There’s already an alert up. PZ’s travelling an’ stuff though, I believe, so any action he decides on might take a while.
Wow. Go back and read my #297 again. Prison is not some sort of gay paradise nor corrective-rape processing plant.
http://www.justdetention.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_gender
Luckily, watermark2 didn’t fall for this obvious ploy.
Men cannot be raped.
You know, I used to think that these rape apologists were just clueless. I used to believe that they were actually concerned that somehow we were making the world less convenient for men by not blaming and shaming victims. I thought they were petty, entitled and wrong. I don’t think that anymore. I’ve read enough MRA and entitled dudebro crap that I’m fairly convinced that they know that we’re only making the world less convenient for rapists and abusers and that’s why they’re so angry. I don’t think we’re dealing with clueless guys who just need a little education and perspective at all. I think we’re dealing with rapists, abusers and wannabe rapists and abusers. Somewhere between all of the “She was asking for it” arguments and the “I’m owed pussy and these lying sluts won’t give it to me because I’m a nice guy” arguments I stopped being able to be charitable.
Watermark, either you are as stupid as a 911 truther or you have a more personal reason for pushing this ridiculous hyper-skeptical narrative. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a combination of the two. Either way, I’m disgusted. You asked why a man would risk his career to be a serial rapist. The answer is simple: He wasn’t worried about getting caught. Rape does not carry much of a risk for repercussion. The more powerful and popular the rapist, the less risk. Shermer is a wealthy white dude with a large following. Others have suggested that he may not have even thought using chemicals to render his victims incapable of consent was rape. I don’t agree. I think he knew full well he could get away with it and if so, he was right. He has gotten away with it. All PZ and Shermer’s victims did was to make sure that he was less likely to get away with it in the future. Even that was going too far for folks like you. Now that the word is out, he still probably isn’t worried. After all, people like you will ride to his rescue asap, ready to believe that rape is an extraordinary claim and women cannot be trusted. It’s called rape culture, dumbass and you are promoting it now. But then, I’m pretty sure at this point you knew that when you came in here.
This is by design.
Well, there’s one problem with that statistic.
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/24/5_ways_sexual_assault_is_really_about_entitlement/
Nope. I said appeal to consequences is a bad argument.
Yep, you are definitely a moron.
Send us a new fucking troll already, this one’s squeaker is getting clogged.
Why do they have to specifically say “Don’t do something on my behalf.”? Isn’t it just as morally justifiable to assume that the absence of consent is non-consent? Aren’t you, by presuming that the answer to whether you should report on someone’s behalf is an unspoken affirmative, forcing that person into a situation that may endanger them or cause them further stress and harm? Your position and actions remain short-sighted and disregards the desires of the victim. Unless you get an enthusiastic “Yes, go to the police on my behalf!” then you shouldn’t presume that doing so will be desired or helpful to the person who matters in all of this.
Pteryxx – but men cannot be raped or be victims of sexual assault from women. Lol, you must be out of your mind to think men can be sexually assaulted and raped. Have you seen them? They are pathetic.
So, now watermark is a female supremacist?
WTF?
I ain’t buying it.
Get back under your bridge, watermark.
[citation very much fucking needed]
watermark2, and that’s why I just gave you resources for men who have been raped or abused by partners. Because you and people hanging around with you need to know they’re out there.
Thanks, Daz. This one’s clearly just throwing up all manner of chaff.
If the person was felt they were in serious danger they’ll tell you. No one goes “oh sorry, I forgot to mention the part where I was afraid of dying”.
fun, cold, hard fact: every human being, man or woman, has one and only one functioning X chromosome in every cell. Why, you could look it up!
separatist.
You cannot be serious.
Chas
Oh shit, that sucks. I’m really sorry to hear that
+++
adds
I don’t mind them, actually, I unblocked them for FtB. And since they often show me adds to craft sites I regularly browse anyway I make sure to click them via FtB.
+++
As for drug tests: Nope, never had any. Not for the styrodoam factory, not for waiting, not for packing saussages…
I don’t think there are any for teachers.
++++
Also, boring troll is idiot
+++
watermark,
Then separate yourself from this blog and your head from your ass while you’re at it.
Thank goodness I had Chester’s link pulled up and ready. I will now bask in his cuteness.
The “personal reason” is that s/he is behaving as an old-fashioned troll, reading the rape-apology script to get a reaction. The only even slightly original twist is the adoption of bogey-(wo)man “radical feminist” straw-tropes.
The banhammer looms.
@ Daz – You need a citation to see that sex is a transfer of value from the female to the male? Really? There is a reason the sex-industry exists and why it’s almost entirely female workers.
On a separate note, I’ll be back after I have dinner.
You didn’t recognize the analogous context of rape in what I wrote. Your logic and reasoning is no different from a rape apologists. Congratulations.
Saying men cannot be raped isn’t rape-apology. They simply can’t as it is a transfer of value from woman to man.
You act like we care. We don’t.
Citation needed. You keep forgetting your unevidence opinion can and will be dismissed. Your lack of evidence makes everything you said today total and utter tripe.
Watermark, #293:
Ah. I see. The Wahabbism-is-liberation school of feminism.
Truly it is said that you cannot reason with the unreasonable.
Yes, someone who lives with the fear of dying or from threat of violence in a circumstance of rape will express it you. Anyone in this situation will mull it over and tell you what they want done.
Yep, this troll needs to be banhammered hard. It will transfer much value to this thread when all of its vile bullshit goes *poof*.
watermark2’s comments are sickening
I’m not sure what hir point is, but I hope those comments disappear before anyone gets seriously upset by the content.
I was trying to read all of this before I commented, so apologies for threadrupt, but right after I posted, I saw this gem from Watermark2 @358:
I’ve heard definitions of rape that were penetration of someone’s vagina by someone else’s penis without the consent of the person whose body includes the penetrated vagina. By that definition, males cannot be raped.
But, reminded of this expression right here on Pharyngula the other day, your statement is fractally wrong. When you look at subsets of the statement, it is just as wrong. When you try to step back from the specifics and divine some meaning free of the actual detailed wrong, it is just as wrong. When you zoom in on the assumptions it is just as wrong.
Saying that safety adheres to who you are as opposed to whether or not a rapist targets you is monumentally sick, twisted, and wrong. “Men can’t be raped” is absolutely equivalent to “good Christian girls can’t be raped”. Men aren’t immune. Real men aren’t immune. Bad ass football players aren’t immune. Thank you for the Madden/Whore dichotomy. I politely request that you flush it with the rest of the waste you’ve been emitting.
Saying that rape is the transfer of value from one person to another is wrong. Victim loses safety, rapist gets safety? Victim loses reputation for sexual purity, rapist gains reputation for sexual purity? What, precisely is this transfer? Is there a resale market in bodily fluids of which I am unaware? How is this valued, since, as you say, it is something “of value” being transferred.
Moreover, the word “transfer”.
Okay, I can’t even start that one, it’s just putrid and the fact that you utter it here speaks volumes about your thinking on rape and assault.
I have to pack up to go, but I’ll be back here later. There is so much more just in this one utterly depraved statement. But before I go:
You know, I always hedged a bit before about speaking about the law and the legal system, but I was annoyed at lawyers and others in/of the system who seemed quick to tell others to shut up about the law. But however badly they have phrased it in the past, the basic point,
is absolutely true.
You obviously have no clue what you’re saying. Courts are not places to determine the truth. Courts are places to decide whether it is reasonable to use the coercive power of the state to benefit or penalize a person. This is related to whether or not claims are true, but doesn’t depend on it. Torts don’t have the same standard of evidence as criminal prosecutions. Moreover, there are times when truth is not even considered: when, in the US, evidence is gathered in contravention of the 4th amendment, it is excluded even when the question at issue cannot be truthfully and confidently answered without that information.
Courts are not the only place to determine the truth. They are one of the places you should never rely on for only truth: it is built into the laws that some things are more important that truth because the function of the court is determining the reasonable limits of state action, the function isn’t determining whether the cookie was eaten by Peter or Paul or Mary.
If you don’t know the basic function of the courts, if you have no idea why courts exist such that you’re willing to say it is the “only place” to establish truth, I hope that no one, ever, takes seriously one word you say about law, courts, or legal systems.
You are a hack who clearly does not care about truth in your argument, to the extent that you’re willing to assert things as fact that are not only false, but we wouldn’t even want them to be true.
May all the people in your life think of you that way.
Sounds to me like watermark is spewing over-the-top female supremist strawman weirdness in order to be able to point to the thread to say “See? I told you they were man-hating fffffffeminists there! Just look at THESE comments! Proof!”
Gosh, watermark2 won’t be back after he has dinner. He’s trolled enough.
dammit
Missed another one.
Oh, well. My teeth are clean.
@watermark2
That’s exactly the kind of thinking that lets rapists get away with it.
watermark2 @ 337:
I am a man.
I was raped. Repeatedly.
I do not exist?
Fuck off.
@ 343:
One right here, asshole.
Oh. Wait. I don’t exist.
@ 358:
According to my rapist, I was a girl and therefore existed only to make men happy. He was teaching me how to be a man.
But, as you already said, I don’t exist.
I feel sick.
What the fuck is wrong with this world?
This whole ‘value’ business (also being done to death in the manosphere thread) is quite the tell of someone who tightly to misogynistic, er, values.
Oy. That should be: someone who tightly holds to misogynistic, er, values.
Sorry. I didn’t see the banhammer. Disregard my #370. Pointless now.
Oggie
Have some *hugs* anyway.
I don’t believe for a moment that watermark2 was a woman, let alone a female separatist. The “go to the police” and “actual rape accusations only count if proved in a court of law” are obvious giveaways: how could a female separatist possibly recommend reliance on these male-dominated institutions? So was “every man is a rapist but there’s no evidence Shermer was a rapist on this occasion”: if every man is a rapist, what could specific accusations of rape matter, whether true or false? Watermark2 was trying to run two contradictory scripts at the same time, an index of his [sic: I’d bet on his gender] stupidity.
Hello, Crip Dyke.
I frequent free thought blogs a lot and I’ve seen extremely intelligent posts from you. The last post you made was by far the most intelligent one of them all and I literally got up and clapped. Your response compelled me to write this and I would like to ask if there is any way we could speak about the law, truth and allegations in private? We could choose any medium you please. Youtube, emails, whatever.
Looking forward to a speedy reply,
Sincerely,
Million2one
Too stingy to leave a tip for your waiter?
No worries, just leave a homophobic rant instead.
Nick Gotts
I agree with Nick on this. Watermark2 started out like every other hyperskeptical MRA, but when xe realized nobody was agreeing with xis bullshit, xe tried to parody being a radical feminist. At that point, xe just sounded stupid and unfunny.
@million2one
I’d be happy to do so. Although I have a lot of background education about social ethics and social contract, legal theory and justice theory and such, I am not a lawyer. You probably know that based on my previous posts since you remember me, but I just thought I’d say that.
You can feel free to e-mail me @ my nym – without the long, whimsical extension – using no space. The domain is gmail. Put Million2One in the subject so that I know it’s you – I do a lot of writing to people I know very little who just happen to be in my activist/educational ecosystem, and often put those e-mails off for a while. Don’t want you to get lost in the shuffle.
Dublin Pharyngulites! You have 3/4 of an hour to tell me if you exist and would like me to visit in mid-December! At least one of the flights home from the US stops in Dublin.
Chicago Pharyngulites! (Nepenthe?) I’ll be in Chicago from the evening of November 13th to the early afternoon of the 14th!
Ugh. So guess who’s £1,200 ($2,000) poorer than they were yesterday?
Fuck you, car with the broken exhaust, and tyres, and general engine fuckedupness.
*harrumph*
—
Chas:
Curse you! *shakes fist* for beating me to both X-chromosome inactivation and fletchings. :-)
Also, commiserations on the job thing. That’s a scunner.
—
Currently reading: http://www.edwardrutherfurd.com/london.html
Fun.
—
*lurk*
It’s The Night of the Living Stupid out there.
I’m going to go clean the cat toilet.
Looks like it’s moved onto The Day of the Living Stupid.
Ayup, I have a crankypants temper going.
Caine, may I ask how Chester is doing? He seemed more relaxed in the last pics, in spite of staring pelt.
Pteryxx, it’s not good. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with, which doesn’t help. Chester goes in to see Angie on Tuesday morning, we’ll go from there. Whatever it is, it’s neurological in nature, possibly a stroke or brain tumour. Chester took a bad dive a couple of days ago, and I thought we’d lose him that night, but he has rallied for the present, and has a strong appetite as of this morning.
Oliver has been playing older brother, rarely leaving Chester’s side, and has been sleeping on top of him when he chills out. Vasco has also been one who has been guarding Chester.
Caine
Tiny hugs for Chester and his Guardians.
Thanks Caine, and I’m glad to see Oliver doing caretaker duty on my behalf.
How do we donate to you for vet expenses again?
Chigau, pilamayaye. I’ll deliver them.
Pteryxx, no need to donate, we’re okay. My thanks for the offer.
Best wishes for Chester. Hope he pulls through.
LykeX, pilamayaye. I hope so too.
Strewth, I just read the trollsplosion here. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that was one of Manboobz’s more persistent, stalkerish and creepy sockpuppets (aka blog herpes); the elaborate persona and pretence had a familiar smell.
Hugs to anyone distressed or disturbed by all that shit.
Extra hugs to Caine and Mister for Chester; I hope he recovers from this thing.
Aaaand I’ve heard the Squirt of Doom, time to clean the litter.
Caine @386:
I hope that Chester pulls through.
Caine
*rat-sized hugs for Chester*
Christ, now that I’m done having a fuckin’ panic attack…I went to get Chester to feed and medicate him, and couldn’t find him. He got out of Playstation East, made it across the studio floor and was in one of the ferret tents. Okay, he’s fed and medicated now, but he’s having a bad night. Mister couldn’t make it out of bed to see him, so I hope Chester hangs in there. I have him tucked up with Vasco, Giles, and Amelia now.
What a day. I’m bloody tired of playing nurse, could use a bit of care myself. Oh well.
Kittehs, ekwhite, & Daz, pilamayaye.
And poor Theo – he boggles the second he sees me, he’s very upset and a bit confused about what’s going on with his brother, and apparently thinks immediate sucking up to me will prevent it happening to him. They are all just breaking my heart.
Caine
More hugs.
I wish I could do more.
Chigau, I know, thank you so much.
Caine
*hugs* for you and the ratties there.
Caine, I’m very sorry – sounds like hard (and exhausting) times. Fingers xd for Chester, and a package of hugs in assorted sizes for rats and humans.
Dalillama & Opposablethumbs, thank you.
Theophontes! The package has arrived. Thank you.
Caine, I’m so sorry for Chester & Theo. USB hugs headed your way.
I’m still wearing da crankypants, I am.
Crip Dyke, thank you. Chester is having a bad day today, I hope he makes it to the doc tomorrow.
Just finished watching The Europa Report. Pretty damn good.
I was wondering about that movie.
Is it more horror, though? If it’s a movie that tries to make you jump, that’s just not my thing. It could be great at doing that, but it’s not my thing.
But if it’s “pretty damn good” for other reasons, I’d like to know, b/c I would definitely then watch it.
Crip Dyke, nope, not horror. Suspenseful and on the claustrophobic side, but riveting.
Ah, good. I was worried that it was a horror movie from some of the description I had seen.
I will definitely watch it when I have a chance, then.
Leon Trotsky was powerful enough to add a word and concept to the English language. Damn. I almost wish I was deluded enough to believe what Bradlee Dean hs to say. Alas, I would be extremely self loathing if I did.
“Christian Nationalism”?
Urgh. My brain goes all Godwin seeing that name.
Caine – *many hugs and much love* for you, *very gentle hugs for Chester*, and *gentle pets* for all your ratties.
@ Caine
The bubblewrap has arrived? Great news. It sounds that the ratties could do with some distraction.
Sorry to hear about Chester. And an extra round of virtual scritches for Theo (and whatever other rats are in reach.)
…
My neighbourhood is going to be featured in the new Transformers movie. I don’t know if that is a good thing or not. The bit with the squealing tires was shot in our street.
The director was attacked the other day by some hoods trying to extract money from the film crew. Life is never boring here.
Hekuni Cat, much much thanks.
Theophontes:
Yes, it arrived, and the post office woman was so taken with stamps from China *gaspgaspgasp*, she asked if she could have the stamps. (We’re considered to be quite the exotic specimens by the post office peoples.) Mister obliged. Scritches shall be given.
@ Caine
This brought out a chuckle. For people here, ND would be très exotique!
Moving this over from the Lounge – I linked a RHR article on ACOG redefining full-term pregnancy as 39 weeks, which Giliell objected to.
from my #445:
Giliell:
my #461 in the Lounge
and yeah, I’m not well versed in the field.
Pteryxx,
Reading the full article you linked, it really does look the way Giliell points out:
I’m not well versed in the field either.
…whoof. Author of that RHR piece on redefining full-term pregnancy:
Well, that’s what I get for checking the medical references before the author page. *facetalon*
That woman’s qualifications… wow.
Beatrice: yeah, the Perez article that Whedon is quoting has an even more egregious absence of references to the pregnant person’s health.
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/04/26/new-recommendations-say-labor-should-begin-naturally-when-will-medical-practice-change/
Wait, what? These new guidelines are just fine for the pregnant person because… a different procedure has been discredited?
And the ACOG opinion she quotes is just that… an opinion that fetal size isn’t a concern, with no follow-up statement about it being PROVEN not to be a concern. (i.e. silly women.) I’m searching for the cites in the full-length journal opinion but I can only read so fast.
Heh, I guess anybody really can write about anything with authority. Birth on the Labyrinth Path: Sacred Embodiment in the Childbearing Year – I don’t even understand the title.
Anyhow. I suppose if ‘mother nature’ induces pre-term labour (I mean, pre the term the article describes), then everything is fine and should proceed according to ‘mother nature’s’ plan, yes?
Induced labour – welll, I’m not sure it’s a great thing, but at the same time, the article seems more against a woman’s choosing when to have birth than any actual medical reasons (for mother and fetus). I think doctors sometimes jump the gun with induced labour here (it’s pretty much obligatory at week 42, calculated as per your ob/gyn’s pregnancy calculation, which may or may not be accurate…), but at the same time labour shouldn’t always be regulated by ‘mother nature’.
Also,
I can understand ‘scheduling for convenience’ in order not to double-book your deliveries, but what about maternal convenience? I’m pretty sure the potential mother herself has a pretty strong say in when her baby is to be delivered (within reason, of course).
Pteryxx
I would argue that fetal size is a very good reason to schedule a Caesarean!! I have nothiing but admiration for my friend who naturally delivered a 5kilo baby (her other two were 4.6 and 4.8, I believe…), but she was a bit pissed off because she had her Caesarean all scheduled when natural labour started… I know what she would have preferred!! [/anecdote]
ND is très exotique in ND. Major expeditions, liking going to get some toilet paper, have been known to simply vanish without trace.
from the ACOG Oct. 22 press release:
…
hang on here… so LOW INCOME women need to be discouraged from ELECTIVE labor inductions, where ‘elective’ means a doctor hasn’t supplied a good reason? In the context of pregnant people’s agency plus worse prenatal care, access to health care, and general risks of poverty (not to mention intersection with race) I’m getting really bad feelings about this initiative.
I’m not sure they are using the word risk the way I would expect it to be used (as in, health condition of either mother or fetus might require a preterm birth), considering they later say:
See, those are two very different kinds of pre-term birth: the kind that you’re at-risk for is usually the medical kind, that involves some sort of condition and emergency medical care (or at least constant vigilance). The elective ‘preterm birth’ kind that they seem intent on stopping is the one where you choose a date, after fetus viability, that coincides well with your and your partner’s work schedules, travel availability, weird numerological preference, etc.
See, this is why the redefinition is bad… They’re conflating medically necessary or medically emergency preterm births with women’s choices. *sigh*
I’m sure there are a whole lot of medical things that can be done to reduce actual preterm birth risks, but an awareness campaign about the whole 39-week time limit resonates somehow as similar to arguments made by anti-choicers. Has that same sort of arbitrary ‘but-there’s-a-heartbeat’ ring to it, except now it’s working from the other end of the pregnancy.
^ this.
Everything I’ve found so far has been about this re-definition reducing ELECTIVE preterm births (for the new definition of ‘preterm’) by sheer education, changing policies, and invoking Mother Nature. The only cited underpinnings are better neonatal outcomes.
example: ACOG committee opinion http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23635710
The few mentions I’m finding of maternal outcomes are conflating elective delivery with elective Caesarians, when they’re not simply tossing off ‘both mother and infant’ with no cites, not even the most casual mention. If anything there may not BE data to be had:
ACOG source
And this sort of thing isn’t encouraging:
http://www.minnesotamedicine.com/tabid/3597/
much less this:
Medscape source
FPS, if they’re hoping to end elective inductions as an option, they’d better have some evidence-based reasons on the invisible pregnant person’s side, and not just go on about how ignorant / confused / frightened / convenience-seeking those darn women are.
Finally found ONE source of relevant research, and it doesn’t say what the ACOG guidelines are saying.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/810671
Pteryxx
Innnteresting. Especially this part:
So the “educational campaign”, it seems, will disproportionately influence those women who do not have a ready source of valid, proper, correct information. Something definitely doesn’t smell right.
The general myth of elective induction is similar to that of the elective c-section: the selfish woman who wants to schedule the birth of her child down to the minute, and is too fancy to push and wait like those lesser women.
I’m not going to say that there are no women like that, but I’m going to guess that they’re not exactly common.
More common: nervous women want to do everything they can to ensure they have a healthy baby and don’t do a good job of interpreting the intersecting risk lines of pregnancy, which do in fact get very snarled looking towards the end. Ob/gyns who are too overbooked/tired/stressed out to help their patients interpret these things properly. Ob/gyns who buy into the notion that at least trying something is better than not trying at all, even if things would have been just fine left alone. Insurance companies who believe the same and push ob/gyns accordingly, because they have been taught so by a jury somewhere after a malpractice suit.
Also more common than the “too posh to push/wait” woman: the woman who develops HELLP syndrome at 37 weeks. The woman who shows signs of pre-eclampsia at 36 weeks. The woman found to have placenta previa at 39 weeks.
All else being equal, it is better for a fetus to emerge at 40 weeks than at 39. Absolutely. But all things are not always equal.
Um, this could be another BIG problem if reducing inductions increases Caesarians:
https://proxy.freethought.online/butterfliesandwheels/2013/10/in-the-post-antibiotic-era/
Ahhh, I see, you had lots of fun without me ;)
rq
There’s a good reason to induce at 42 weeks latest. The risk of introuterine death rises dramatically towards the end of term, especially if you go over the “due date”. Sure, that date is an estimation, but yu need to calculate your margin of error in both directions. If the date is 5 days off and later than the actual pregnancy you still have a full term baby. If you’re wrong in the other direction you’re dangerously close to 43 weeks!
+++
Generally:
Whenever I hear “natural” and “naturally” with respect to pregnancy and childbirth my alarms go off.
Naturally women are good at dying in childbirth. Babies are even better at it.
But everybody and their dog polices women’s bodies because you have to think of the baby*.
From everything Pteryxx quoted earlier it seems like there is little risk in inducing labour early “out of convenience”, it might even be beneficial if it reduces c-sections (which are much riskier for the mother), and quite honestly, I can see the appeal in setting a date, going into hospital and get it over with, even if it takes 2 days rather than going on for three more weeks while feeling like yeast dough in an incubator and being expected to go through your day normally while there’s a good chance that any moment your waters might break and you become an embarassing incident in the shopping mall.
Oh, right, that would be benefits for the woman. Silly me….
*True story: when I was pregnant with #1 and really freaking out because my first pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage my mother told me that I must stop being so anxious, i was harming the baby. Probably gave her autism that way, i suppose.
Anecdotes are anecdotes, but at 42 weeks, my mother’s ob/gyn said, “That’s too far, I’ve scheduled an induction first thing Monday morning.”
Her waters broke Saturday night, and (not a single dose of pitocin later) I emerged, screaming, into the world Sunday morning.
But, indeed, the ob/gyn was correct in saying that 42 weeks is too far and that the risk of not inducing was greater than the risk of inducing.
Esteleth
I confess, I never actually thought about the 42-week limit all that much, since nobody (here, during any of my 3 pregnancies) talked about the dangers – it was just a set limit, and that was that, end of discussion. So it has always felt a little bit arbitrary, and I don’t tend to trust arbitrariness in such decisions. But. I have now looked into it a bit more (also thanks Giliell). So. It seems I have been educated.
Of course, quite apart from the other risks, every day that the fetus is in utero, it is growing. Take a gander at baby 2-3 weeks postnatal. Care to suggest that a woman birth it? The risk to the mother grows as the fetus does.
Well, you know, as I learned more about the misogyny involved in common attitudes towards pregnancy and childbirth (and I held quite some of them myself, I won’t deny it!), I didn’t only become a staunch 100% defender of pro-choice, I also became a staunch defender of the “uppity b*** who want to choose when their baby is born” (and so on).
If a woman says she’s afraid of a vaginal birth* and wants a c-section, give her the relevant information and let her decide. That’s a good enough reason for me. She wants to be induced because that way she can make sure her partner will be at her side? Go for it! Waiting is driving her nuts? Give that woman some Pitocin, for dog’s sake!
The only thing that matters are healthy women and babies, who gives a fuck about the way?
*and she’s damn right to be, it IS scary
Giliell @ 437
Fuck yes. The idea that someone is bad for wanting to avoid pain, uncertainty, physical effort, whatever while giving birth is an echo of the people who said women couldn’t take pain medication for labor because they had to suffer Eve’s curse.
Giliell @ 437:
Yes, it is. It is scary, and there’s really no way to know exactly how a vaginal birth will go, and I for one was absolutely no good at figuring out how it was going, except that it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever been through.
I mean, both mine were normal births as that’s generally defined, but with the first one I had the epidural late – as in, it took effect after the baby was born – and had an episiotomy with no painkiller whatsoever (possibly necessary due to them using the vacuum thingy to get the baby out). There was, let us say, some pain involved, in that there may be nurses at that hospital who still have my fingernail marks in their hands (sorry. I was not too clearheaded around then). The bit some people say, that the area goes numb due to pressure from the baby’s head? No.
I just do not get the whole thing that some people have that, just because pain in this instance is not necessarily indicative of harm, women should just suck it up. It’s pain. It’s a lot of pain.
Chester died today, surrounded by his loved ones. He was in no pain. Thank you all for your support, love, hugs and all the scritches.
I’m so sorry, Caine.
hugs and scritches for everyone
Chigau, pilamayaye. We said our goodbyes last night, while Chester was conscious, so we’re okay, just…sad.
*Hugs and Scritches*
I’m so sorry, Caine.
Sorry to hear about Chester.
The Pullet Patrol lowered their flag to half mast…
Sorry Caine. It’s always hard.
Hugs to you, Caine. Losing a part of your family (well, the parts you are close too (I’m phrasing this wrong but I can’t think of a better way (sorry))) is hard.
Caine, I’m very sorry. Your rats must be some of the best-loved and best cared-for rats anywhere – I hope it helps a bit, knowing that Chester could not possibly have had a better chance than you gave him. Hugs and skritches.
Caine, I’m so sorry for your loss. *offers hugs and scritches*
I’m so sorry to hear about Chester. All my love to his human-and-rat family. I imagine he’s missed hard tonight.
Caine:
So sorry to hear about Chester.
Hugs to you and scritches to all the rats.
Caine, I’m so sorry.
*hugs*
Caine, I’m so sorry about Chester. *many hugs and much love* for you all.
@Chas, based on my comment here and your comment here in the teaching thread.
1. I presume you don’t disagree with my main point, that teachers very often are, even at the college level, sloppy with the basics and this is very bad for a number of reasons.
2. Arrogant? Get real. You try to defend biology teachers who use this language **in the same journals that are trying to argue for chimpanzee culture and possibly chimpanzee gender**. You try to defend them by saying this is a “recent” distinction. Well, sure. Historically it’s pretty recent as a scientific distinction. Not much older than DNA, even. I expect we’ll see biologists catch on to that soon, though.
3. Biologists are ignorant of other disciplines and drawing from their own, separate tradition? Hardly. When the intersex movement critiqued the application of “hermaphrodite” and its grammatical variant to human beings, they never critiqued its use in the biology of animals. Hermaphroditism in the sense of being fertile in both male and female capacities does not exist in humans. It was erroneous and it evoked monstrous and animalistic imagery inappropriate to the discussion of human children. Intersex was proposed as a replacement.
Less than 7 years after this happened and less than 4 years after it got any public play at all, I started to see “intersex” in biology journals instead of hermaphrodite **when talking about amphibians**. Even **transgender** is used to refer to animals. And that, I’m pretty fucking sure, was coined **after** the discovery of DNA. Huh?
Insulated? Unable to adapt to new language? Really?
5. A large problem is that the adaptation is inconsistent. This is why it bothers me so much to see it in peer reviewed journals. If, during the decadal or more frequent style reviews one biologist brought this up, and the others agreed to use find and replace on the submissions, you wouldn’t get this. I’m not demanding biologists become experts in sociology. I’m not even demanding all biologists become minimally competent in issues that only slightly overlap their field. I’m demanding that editors edit.
6. Though not every researcher has to be up on sociology, biologists as a group should be well aware – indeed, their adoption of intersex and transgender shows that they are aware – of developments in related fields that impact biology. Maybe an x-ray crystallographer discovers something about an organic molecule, but if it impacts biology, the fact that a physical chemist originated the discovery is no excuse for biologists not to examine the ramifications.
7. It was common at one time for biologists and doctors to refer to the “negro race”. Shifts to other terms didn’t come about because of some profound insight of biologists, yet biologists managed to make the transition. Race is analyzed all the time in biology and epidemiology. Negro, negroid, mongol, mongoloid, these were all considered biological terms of art at points more recently than the sex/gender distinction was articulated. Moreover, gender actually communicates something biologically important: the limits of hereditarily determined behavior. This isn’t a change of terms, but still using the same concept before, as with using African American. By drawing a boundary at the edge of the field of biology, it is incumbent on biology to both communicate what is known about the boundary accurately, and also to work from its side – as the psycho-social sciences are compelled to work from their side – to define that boundary.
And that boundary can’t be defined if it can’t be articulated because biologists use “transgender” for fucking fish.
8. Let’s get back to arrogant, Chas. You cannot begin to understand me if you cannot understand I am a woman born male. Without gender separate from sex, I don’t exist. Not even a little. Pushing back when people define me out of fucking existence is not arrogance. Saying that sloppy journal editing and intellectual laziness on the part of biologists is an excuse for maintaining corrupted terminology like “mongoloid” would not be acceptable. So why, precisely, when there are not only issues of justice but also issues of accuracy that are relevant to biology, is that an acceptable excuse. When is giving someone a better answer than they have arrogant? When is encouraging justice arrogant? Please, tell me. I’m dying to know. Too many friends have died not knowing why they are seen as the selfish and arrogant ones because they happened to tell someone something correct about sex and gender that someone else would like to ignore, valuing their own convenience in not having to learn about the world as it actually fucking is over someone else’s ability to literally live in a world hemmed in on all sides by other’s narcissistic fantasies of ‘natural’ gender.
Arrogant? Me? Try the fucking biologists for whom gender justice is a bridge to fucking far.
You don’t like trans people criticizing those who keep insisting its no big deal to use sex and gender as interchangeable? I so feel for the deep injustice of your position, How awful it must feel, day after day, to listen to people who think that they are justified in telling you how to use language to fit their oh-so-recent-and-freaky-and-impractical-and-arrogant perspectives on something that matters personally to you.
Gosh. If only there was some way I could fucking understand what you’re going through.
@Caine:
I’m always crappy at this, b/c my instinct is always to try to make an explicit connection by saying that I remember something similar that happened to me. Somehow, it just seems to make many people think I’m trying to make it all about me. Yet when I don’t say that, I feel like I’ve left something out. I can offer you a hug without any understanding of what you’re going through, without any real empathy. But I have more to offer than that, something deeper and more meaningful. And so consider random story from my past inserted here, but only for the purpose of saying this: I’m not merely offering digitized sympathies. I’m offering to be right there with you, in the yucky place. I won’t avoid it. Neither am I only willing to jump down into the ugly because of naive ignorance of what it will really be like. I’ve been right there, and I have to tell you that I’ve been there because I want you to know the measure of my friendship when I offer, voluntarily, to clamber right back into the muck I’ve escaped so that you can have a friend meet you where you are.
This is me, eyes wide open, choosing consciously to drop these crippled feet into the sucking mud so as to get within shoulder distance. And if you don’t need me, if Mister’s enough. That’s okay. I’m here for friendship’s sake, and if I required anything back for the gesture, well, that wouldn’t be friendly at all.
plus, every day you’re pregnant is another day you’re not at work.
Paid maternity leave? what’s that?
at will employment? why no, I don’t need a reason to fire this woman who didn’t give birth when she said she would.
etc.
anyway yeah, if your goal is to discourage genuine “too posh to push” inductions, you don’t start with medicaid; by definition you don’t. This sounds like more “poor women are too fucking stupid for their own good” bull.
I’m sorry, Caine.
I’m so sorry for your loss, Caine!!
Caine
I’m so sorry. But Chester had the best ratty-life and the best possible ratty-care, I’m sure.
Jadehawk
As I said before, I culdn’t care less about “too posh to push”. It’s their freakin’ body and life and their decision. Just because I went through two vaginal births without painkiller doesn’t mean anybody else has to.
Rattyhugs for Caine too.
me neither, I’m just pointing out that they’re bullshitting.
Rant ahead, regarding this:
(from here)
I know that the trend is taking everything that sucks from the private sector and trying to force it into the public sector, which masses love because if I’m going to suffer, so should everyone else, but that’s not exactly a view I would recommend.
Job security is a good thing, something that is steadily being eradicated with various more or less unconvincing excuses, like improving the fluidity of the job market or making it easier to fire layabouts, those who misuse whatever power their job gives them or mistreat colleagues. Being able to fire someone for misconduct should be possible without jumping through hoops for years (or getting the answer that he can’t be fired, but will just be transferred to another office to torment someone else – anecdote), but that was used as an excuse to sneak in the ability to fire anyone for virtually no reason at all!
Caine, I’m so sorry about Chester.
[Chester]
Sorry to hear about Chester. Hugs to Caine and Mr. And scritches to the virtual rodents.
Here’s the thing about sexual dimorphism:
Species that reproduce sexually are sexed. But, not all species have a bright, non-blurry line between the sexes. Here’s three examples of blurry lines:
(1)Intersexuality is a case where an individual that has sex organs who are indeterminate/ambiguous, i.e. not fully delineated into one of the dimorphous phenotypes. These individuals may have sexual function in one or both manners (so to speak), but may have reproductive capacity in only one, but this may be reduced. For example, studies have shown that exposure to these estrogens on eggs and tadpoles tends to increase the rate of intersexuality in some species of frogs, leading to male frogs with male sex organs that are somewhat feminized.
(2)By contrast, there are some species where individuals can transition from being sexually competent males to sexually competent females or vice versa. This tends to occur when there is a shortage of one sex or the other.
(3)There are some species (C. elegans comes to mind) where there are actual hermaphrodites – individuals who have fully functional female and male sex organs simultaneously. The hermaphrodites have multiple sets of sex organs, and both sets are fully functional. Some hermaphroditic species self-fertilize, some do sometimes, and some don’t at all.
These are three very different phenomena, and lumping them together is inaccurate and sloppy. And precise language is really quite necessary – and (hooray!) it just so happens that there’s a handy set of vocabulary that works nicely.
Then! There are all sorts of really cool phenomena whereby you have individuals who – despite expressing a dimorphic phenotype in a typical manner – don’t behave like a typical individual of their sex, but more like a typical individual of the other sex. The reasons for this are many, and this phenomenon occurs in many species. This should be differentiated from phenomenon (2) I mentioned above. Which goes to Crip Dyke’s excellent point on the dangers of conflating “sex” and “gender.” They really aren’t synonyms.
@Caine:
Sadface :( *hugs*
Thank you all so very much. Your support, friendship and care means the world to me. And it helps, really helps. Pilamayaye. I’ll be in my studio all day with the rats, they need a bit of extra care and distraction today. They were all very shook up by Chester’s illness and death.
On a possibly brighter front, I managed to format the PoS laptop, so it’s supposedly functional again. Now I just have to spend all day getting it set up the way I like, and getting all my files onto it. Here’s hoping it doesn’t decided to have a nervous breakdown once that’s happened…:whispers sweet nothings to the universe at large with all digits crossed:
I think a Monitor might want to check this out over at https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/10/29/oh-so-thats-what-they-mean-by-sexual-market-value/comment-page-1/#comment-712313 for nuclearwheelchair. His obsession with child porn is getting really creepy and disturbing.
Ogvorbis
Thanks, and yeah, I decided enough was enough and put an alert up at roughly the same point, as it became clear he was talking very much from personal preference. Yuk.
Thanks, Daz.
That was getting disturbing on multiple levels for me.
I’m having enough nightmares right now. Do not need more.
When I stepped in and saw the troll exploding all over the furniture, I almost stopped reading. After all, I said to myself, it’s unlikely I’ll learn anything new reading an antifeminist troll pretending to be a radical feminist.
Chas@349
And then I learned something new and fun!
If only I could learn something new and fun *every* time a troll asplodes in here….
Thanks, Ogvorbis. Obviously Daz has it handled, but I would have jumped on it if not.
Caine, I’m so sorry to hear about Chester. I’ve been gone for several days or I would have messaged earlier. Hugs and scritches for all the members of your family.
Thanks, Morgan.
I had enough to say earlier, but since Howard Bannister brings back the quote of Chas from 349, to wit:
Thank you for your trans* hatred, Chas. I really needed an additional dose. It’s like oxygen, after 4 minutes or so without being told I don’t exist my brain shuts down. It’s such a relief to get an intense dose like this that can stay with me for a while to protect from withdrawal.
Before posting the long response I’ve been composing offline, I need to say that this is unfair and way off base. How is using the phrase “man or woman” even remorely interpretable as trans* hatred? Didn’t you just say above that you identify as a “woman”? Would “male or female” have been preferable? “Male, female, man, woman, or other”? Please explain.
I am honestly confused. If I have committed some egregious faux pas it was entirely unintentional and I don’t want to do it again. Thanks.
Caine, I’m very sorry to hear about Chester.
Chas @349:
That’s an awfully inelegant way of expressing it.
In individuals who have more than one X chromosome, indeed, all but one of them is effectively nonfunctional most of the time.
That is true whatever that person’s sex or gender. Or species, for that matter – it is a mammalian trait.
Nick, thank you.
and now the long response:
Crip Dyke @#454:
1. of course I don’t disagree with that, which is why I explicitly labeled my comment as an “OT derail”.
2. chimpanzee culture refers to population-level differences in tool-using, nesting, grooming, and courtship behaviors that are not believed to be genetically heritable. In the present context: so what? You’re going to have to provide a link to the thing about “possible chimpanzee gender” if you want anybody to know what you’re talking about.
But, of course, chimpanzees and bonobos are the closest extant relatives to humans, so if any non-human animals had human-sense genders, it would be them; if you had complained about usage in the context of chimpanzees you might have had a point. But your chosen example was zebrafish.
I try to defend them by pointing out that it is a recent distinction in an entirely different field of study. You left that last part out.
Your sarcastic comparison to DNA is so stupid and off base in so many ways that you ought to be embarrassed about it.
3. The reason that intersex amphibians are called “intersex” is because they are not functional hermaphrodites (as Esteleth points out). As for “transgender” being used for animals, I’m going to need a link to evaluate the context. My guess is that it’s from a journalist, not a biologist. I could be wrong. I also wonder about your assumption that the term ‘transgender’ was first used for humans and only later for fish. I don’t have time to look this up.
And again with the stupid snarky DNA thing. See above.
4. There is no #4.
5. Talk about misusing biological terminology: look up “adaptation” why don’t you.
What you’re demanding is that editors of biological journals edit according to the usage rules of an entirely different discipline (which just happens to be yours). Good luck with that project.
6. I do not get the relevance of your example. We are not talking about scientific discoveries, we are talking about word usage.
7. We are not talking about anthropologists and doctors, we are talking about zoology. Zebrafish, remember?
The rest of your pompous verbiage communicates nothing relevant.
Waiting for your link to a biologist (other than maybe Joan Roughgarden)–not a journalist–using “transgender” for fucking fish.
(Even if you have one, nobody would be confused into thinking it’s the same thing as human transgender. Because the context would be fucking fish.)
8. I’m not sure how I was supposed to understand that you are a woman born male when it was a fact of which I was previously completely unaware. Like everybody else, I am very poor at mind-reading. But now that I know it, it explains your passion but does not improve your arguments. I do not, of course, deny the gender/sex difference–in humans. I do deny that they have ever been, or are now, separate concepts when applied to zebrafish.
My point was and is that what you see through the goggles of your own identity and academic training as “sloppy journal editing” and “intellectual laziness” are not that at all, it’s simply the entrenched and traditional usages of a different field of academic training, usages that long pre-date your revisionary human-centric preferences.
I certainly do not agree with your feelings that a peer-reviewed article about zebrafish in a specialized biology journal that uses the term ‘gender’ instead of ‘sex’ is any threat at all to justice in the human sphere, nor is it in any way reflective of “narcissistic fantasies of ‘natural’ gender”, whatever that means. It’s just a different and older usage than you prefer, that’s all, and because in context it is not confusing or misleading, it’s just not the big problem you want to make it. It’s not.
I get–now that you told me–that it is personal to you. But claiming that I “don’t like trans people criticizing those who keep insisting its no big deal to use sex and gender as interchangeable” is just unfair.
What I don’t like has nothing to do with you personally, nor your friends who have died, nor the social causes that matter so deeply to you (and, less deeply, to me too). What I don’t like is attempted across-discipline word-usage absolutism. It’s kind of (but of course not exactly) like a biologist insisting that jailers and monks have to quit calling those little rooms ‘cells’ because we use the word to mean something different and only our usage is Correct, because. That would be stupid. Analogize.
Your anger at me is misplaced. I have already long ago acquiesced to your “demands” (as I already mentioned in my Masters-defense anecdote) and do not, by personal choice, use the word ‘gender’ at all for non-human animals. And I have published on sex differences in behavior and performance capacity in lizards and on environmental sex determination in turtles. So I don’t take your criticisms personally. Nevertheless, they are IMO misguided and unfair. If it makes you feel better, I’ll drop the ‘arrogant’.
Esteleth @#465: I hope you’re addressing the lurkers, because I guarantee you won’t get far trying to lecture me about organismal biology. Because I am not feeling very charitable at the moment, I’m going to respond:
This term is not used as you have for species with separate sexes. That would be ‘dioecious’. ‘Sexual dimorphism’ refers to phenotypic differences between sexes other than the primary sex characteristics. For example, eagles are dioecious but not dimorphic.
except, you know, for those that aren’t: isogamy.
Agreed. Who are you suggesting has done such lumping?
yeah…so?
Are you suggesting that such behaviors are homologous with the concept of ‘gender’ in humans? Because that would require a lot more than simple assertion, let alone oblique implication. The reasons for such behavior probably are many, but not a single one of them is well understood, at least not yet.
No, they are not, not in humans, but that’s because of a recent, specialized (and, I’ll add, perfectly justifieds) redefinition* of the word ‘gender’ in the human-centric sciences and quasisciences.
This redefinition has not occurred in the separate and largely non-overlapping field of zoology, and arguably there is no reason why it should. My original and only point.
*Maybe someone who isn’t completely pissed off at me by now can answer a question that this brings up. When, as a nascent and curious feminist ally back in the late 1970s, I learned the then very recent distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, gender was said to mean an entirely cultural set of imposed roles of behavior (i.e. masculine vs. feminine). Nowadays, particularly in the context of trans* people, it seems to be used differently, as an intrinsic and non-cultural property of the mind. Are these usages as different as they seem to me, and how is this discrepancy being dealt with in the relevant fields? Honest question.
That’s exaclt what I said, in slighlty different words. How is your formulation more ‘elegant’?
Chas @480:
Borked the blockquote. Chas’ first quote ends after “honest question.” The second quote is delineated.
@chas:
It is impossible for a person as attentive to language as you not to realize that
is read, without intervening context as two ways to state the same thing:
1. every human being
2. men + women
If you consciously chose not to mention trans people, why are men and women more worthy of attention than persons who are not men & women? Do transgender chromosomes function differently? What is the purpose of leaving transgender folk out?
If you did not recognize that the sum men + women fails to total “every human being,” how is it possible for you to know of the existence of persons who are neither men not women and yet still in your brain conceive of a category of “every human being” that does not include transgender people?
I contend that both of these are expressions of trans hatred. This does not mean that conscious hatred motivated a conscious choosing of your words in the hope that trans people would feel hated, but that both of these formulations (“Men+women” covers everyone whose important to speak about; “every human being” does not include at least the large subset of transgender people who identify as neither men nor women) are expressions of an attitude towards trans* people in society that is so dehumanizing it can only be understood as hatred.
It is like saying using “firemen” as a general term is an example of misogyny. It is not necessarily used with conscious hatred of women, but we never would have created that word in that form with a generalized meaning without a long-standing culture of woman-hate.
I don’t need to know what was running through your brain to say that equating “men+women” and “every human being” to assert with confidence that that was a heaping helping of trans* hatred.
As to whether or not I fit into the category of woman and therefore into “every human being” in this particular case is not necessary to resolve the question of whether the formulation is trans*hating. I don’t need to be murdered to call out trans*hating murders, and I don’t have to be the direct victim here to call out a trans*dehumanizing phrase.
Caine, I’m so sorry. Chester had as great a life as a rat could hope for thanks to you. *scritches* to you and Mr and Theo and all the rattie crew missing him.
—
Chas, srsly?
so are you Christian or Muslim? Because clearly those are the only two possible options that humans can be, right? *snorts*
I see others have addressed why “every person, man or woman” is improper, so I’ll not. :)
Pteryxx, pilmayaye.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but it might be helpful to have a simple (read: for idiots style) primer of trans* inclusive language, eh? Go for the constructive.
@chas:
The long answer is here.
The short answer is that gender itself has subcategories, just as someone could “explain” to you that sex is about having a double X chromosome or an XY pair of chromosomes…and they would right in a sense, but they would be wrong in many senses.
Gender is the set of behaviors and patterns of behavior that are psycho/social and presumptively distributed according to sex. Gender includes:
1. Gender Identity – how one identifies oneself in relation to gender categories
2. Gender Assignment – the official imposition of a gender category or role, usually occurring only once at or near birth
3. Gender Attribution – the assessment of others’ gender that an individual makes (If I think that you, Chas, are a man, the moment that I make that assessment or assumption, I have attributed a gender to you)
4. Gender Role – the sets [plural] of acceptable/encouraged behaviors imposed upon a person on the basis of gender assignment. It is clear that there are two gender roles in the US. It is unclear and arguable whether there are more. It is also hotly debated whether one individual can have more than one gender role.
5. Gender mores/punishments – the sets [plural] of consequences one can reasonably assume a given society will use to redress violations of gender role
============
The definition you are discussing is that of gender role. It is common to call a gender role “a gender”. When someone says, “I resent the gender ‘man’,” they mean the gender role, “man”.
You may be seeing the application of gender identity more lately. Even feminists were pretty terrible at fully uncovering the consequences of the phrase “biology is not destiny”.
How one names one’s gender to oneself is gender identity and appears to be what you’re getting at with “property of the mind”. Intrinsic means different things – are you trying to say that we intrinsically have gender as part of having a mind or are you saying that individual minds determine gender identity in a way that cannot be altered without altering other properties of mind? Gender identity can be said to be intrinsic in neither of those ways: we simply can’t perform the expedient necessary to determine whether someone raised in a society without gender cues or references would spontaneously and inevitably develop a gender identity.
However, gender ID is often spoken of by transsexual advocates as intrinsic in that second way. Again, we can’t know if it is deterministically produced by properties of mind. Though, because of how our world functions, **in this world** we can say that it’s impossible to imagine someone’s gender ID changing substantively without changing other properties of mind. But there’s a good case to be made that this is because we (more or less consciously) base many things on gender, rather than that gender is anchored to some gender-producing trait/s that must therefore be changed in order to effectively change gender.
There is a reasonable sense that **in this world** you might as well speak of gender identity as innate since changing it would change so much else that one’s “properties of mind” change far beyond just how one identifies oneself to oneself. So I have heard gender ID spoken of as innate and understood it this way, though sloppy thinkers may cling to the idea we can “know” that our gender identities are “innate” in the first sense I described.
===============
Finally, about culturally created/ culturally produced/ culturally constructed:
People really misunderstand this, but every single category, idea, name, or what have you that has ever been communicated is culturally constructed. Even if my gender ID was in some sense mechanistically and inevitably produced by physical properties of me, it would not be inevitable that I would attach the word “woman” to my self-description. Perhaps I would attache the word mujer or femme. Moreover, those feelings that are the fundamental truth that is supposedly being expressed in gender identity can stay the same while producing different gender IDs even when all the alternate-universe me’s speak English if some alternate universe has 7 different feminine genders and 13 different masculine genders and 48 genders that are neither – all with their own abbreviations for easy etching on my driver’s license.
My gender ID can therefore be said to be a product of my culture even without knowing for sure how gender ID is produced.
But people don’t talk about the cultural construction of distinctions between “fork” and “spoon”. Though this is for some admittedly good reasons [no sporks take offense at phrases like, “all eating utensils, forks *or* spoons”, nor do they fight with the chopsticks over movement priorities nor with runcible-spoon proponents over language] people tend to encounter cultural construction only in relationship to sex, gender, and (to a lesser extent) race. So people hear “product of culture” and fear that use of this will lead non-trans* people to believe trans* gender IDs are articulated with all the care of deciding whether or not to see a movie from the trailer. So people tend to emphasize how important and enduring are these IDs – sometimes even overemphasizing them, at least with respect to people encountering this line of argument multiple times in multiple venues.
I can’t do more to address your honest question without more input, but I hope this brief note is useful to you in sorting out the confusions you do have.
With a few minutes here & there, I will attempt to respond more within the original dialog I was having with chas. These will be in no particular order.
i. you have not given me any idea why biology should have responded to critiques of the biologically useful term “mongoloid” that had a long history in the literature, but should not be expected to respond to critiques of the biologically useful term “gender”.
ii. you have asserted that using the terminology interchangeably in the biology literature has no effect outside the biology literature. In the absence of good, systematic observations and reproducible analysis of the data, why should we assume that biologists don’t confuse or conflate sex and gender outside of the professional literature after practicing day in and day out to use them to mean the same thing? Are you asserting that confusing/conflating sex and gender is never injurious, is not a problem?
iii. examples didn’t roll off my keyboard. I was looking for a paper by an Alaska researcher that studied mounting behavior in rats and called the mounting behavior “transgeder[ed?]” in a minor, but published, article. It came to my attention because I saw the researcher speak, not because it was an important paper. I can’t say with any certainty that this has been done more than once, but as I read very few biology papers, I strongly suspect that having happened once that came to my attention is an indication that it is not terribly uncommon, at least within some specific sub-fields.
Nonetheless, from an institution of which you may have heard comes a piece of professional writing that does confuse sex and gender fairly explicitly:
Sexual differentiation is the process in which males and females develop different bodies, brains and behaviors. The principals of development of physical sex differences in humans are known to be very similar to that of other animals; however we know less about how sex differences in behavior and the structure of the nervous system relate to what is seen in other animals. Thus this discussion will concentrate on what is known about non-human species and we will then do some speculation about what might apply to humans.
Admittedly this is on a website, but the writing is on the official faculty page of a University of Minnesota, Morris biology professor and seems likely to be problematic. Not least because “sex differences in behavior” often come from studies that do not methodologically require a determination of sex – gender is a sufficient approximation for these studies. While in the grand scheme this doesn’t introduce large errors, in any individual study of limited numbers of participants, one or two trans folk could statistically skew the results quite easily. The author should be saying “gender differences in behavior” or possibly “sex or gender differences in behavior”. Nonetheless, the author displays no awareness of the typical method of separating study participants – namely by gender, not by sex. This is something that may impact accuracy. Thus it’s something that should not be ignored. Yet “gender” refers to having “a penis or a vagina” and various other purely anatomical and physiological characteristics. It would seem odd in the extreme if the professor managed to maintain an awareness of these methodological limitations, but then wrote the above quote as if gender and sex are, in fact, the same thing.
I was not expecting you to know this.
I was saying that that phrase (I am a woman born male) does not even make sense – no matter how I wrote it, I couldn’t communicate the idea – if sex and gender are in fact the same thing. Asserting an identity between sex and gender is asserting a world in which it is literally impossible for me to exist.
Well, formatting the PoS didn’t work. Not even two hours after I had it up and running, had my files transferred over, all that…while I was *out of the room*, PoS decided it had a problem and restarted on its own, only to be stuck again, back in limbo “oh, there’s a problem and you’re fucked!” Yeah, thanks Hal.
So, looks like I’ll be using my teeny tiny netbook for the forseeable future, until I can get another fucking laptop. *sigh*
Caine – I’m sorry about your PoS laptop. *hugs and chocolate*
‘t’is very quiet here at this part of the diurnal cycle on this day
*whew*
Caine, how old is your PoS laptop?
The most likely point of failure would probably be the hard drive. Those things are almost always due to fail in 3-5 years thanks to the moving parts, and the symptoms you describe are consistent with that.
If you have a spare external drive, you could try reformatting with the external as the boot drive. Which isn’t ideal but at least you’d have a functional computer until you get a new laptop.
Caine, I’m so sorry about Chester (and the laptop). I’ll be over here helping feel the sadz for you.
Ok, found the message saying it’s just 1 year old. It could still be the harddrive, though. Is it still on warranty?
Hekuni Cat & Dontpanic, thank you very much.
Amphiox, actually, the PoS is less than a year old. And doing anything with it is utterly pointless, it has never functioned correctly, from the first day I brought the damn thing home. Mister has the same effing laptop, same make, same model, all that. His has never given him a moment’s problem. Mine? All problems, all the time. After I stopped cussing and had a think, I figured out what probably caused the meltdown – telling it not to sleep. When I first brought it home, I set it to not sleep and it had a major tantrum, took me quite a while to find and apply a fix. This time, it had a complete meltdown, locked up and went back into a repeating loop. And yeah, I know the drive has got to be bad, but it’s always been bad, so, eh. I won’t risk my external drive on the stupid thing.
I am not going to sit around, reformatting that damn thing, getting it barely up to acceptable running standard, only to have it decide to pitch a fucking fit hours later. It’s not worth it. I tossed it to Mister to save it being sledgehammered to splinters. He’s going to take it to work and give it to one of the IT guys to play with. I wouldn’t trust it under any circumstance now, though.
Oh, yes, it’s still under warranty. I don’t care. I don’t want it ‘refurbished’ and I sure as hell don’t want another one.
@Caine:
You might get it refurbished so that it has some resale value, which you could then apply towards a new laptop?
Depends on how much work it would take on your end to get it fixed though…
Crip Dyke, it was a cheap laptop, about as cheap as you can get, so it’s not worth any time or serious effort to get it fixed, and I’d feel less than right about fobbing it off on someone else. Mister has gotten all stubborn about it, and if he wants to go to the trouble, he can, I won’t fight it. I’m just washing my hands of it, so to speak.
Besides, I have the distinct feeling that even if it was refurbished and handed back to me, all sparkling, it would be no time at all before it started acting up again. I do not have a good track record with electronic anything. Stuff powered by electricity starts acting up just by me walking in the room.* My teeny netbook is the only thing that has continually run for me for over two years. I think that’s because it doesn’t run well, but it won’t die, either. Kinda like a volvo. ;D
Mister does not find it amusing that the blu-ray player will decide to power down when I wander into the room, and so forth.