Worst marketing of an identity ever

Incels. Jesus. This is how most of us see them: nasty little creeps who can’t imagine women as independent human beings, who see women as tools for their gratification.

Once upon a time, I would have assumed everyone would recoil in disgust at the murderous selfishness of incels, but I guess I was wrong. Here’s how Ross Douthat sees them:

One lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this: Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane.

What he’s setting up is the argument that maybe the incels are right, and that maybe everyone is owed sex to some degree, and he’s going to bring in an “authority”.

…it brings me to the case of Robin Hanson, a George Mason economist, libertarian and noted brilliant weirdo. Commenting on the recent terrorist violence in Toronto, in which a self-identified “incel” — that is, involuntary celibate — man sought retribution against women and society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved, Hanson offered this provocation: If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?

After all, he wrote, “one might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.”

Robin Hanson is also icky. He’s another example of how libertarianism is a corrupt ideology of greed that is destructive to the social contract. And he’s a tenured professor!

It’s a disquieting example of how what we might call hyper-misogyny has crept into academic discourse via sexually frustrated and clearly angry men who believe men are not only entitled to sex but entitled to sex with women they find attractive. It’s not lost on me by any means that the idea that women owe men sex is not at all new. But this is a new frontier in embedding these ideas into formal public policy proposals, particularly ones that ape the language of rights and equality in much the same way modern racists groups do.

That these people are making analogies to the redistribution of wealth is particularly odious. Such a comparison falls apart quickly, for a couple of reasons.

Wealth redistribution is about flaws in capitalism. The system encourages cheating: you can leverage inequities to cause undeserved gains to those individuals who have initial advantages in capital — it is not a system that rewards effort and skill, but one that gives the ones with the mostest more. If you want to talk about fairness, and fair distribution, and equality of opportunity, you’ve just removed yourself from any possibility of doing that within the context of capitalism (or its even more pathological brother, libertarianism), because those words don’t exist in that context. “We ought to share fairly, just like we do in capitalism” is a nonsense sentence.

Unlike money, you can’t accumulate sexual desirability by stealing it from others — it’s not something that can be gathered at the expense of others. And it can’t be redistributed. You can’t arrest Scarlett Johansson for hoarding sexiness, and fine her for 3.2 pounds of good looks, which are then to be given to PZ Myers, who was clearly a bit of a loser in the attractiveness sweepstakes. It just doesn’t work that way. So instead they want to think that sexual attention is something they can demand, that it would be “fair” to insist that attractive people and women in general be compelled to surrender their autonomy. Not just their money, or possessions, but their selves in involuntary service.

Isn’t it odd how a philosophy of individualism and worship of liberty has now come around to arguing for depriving individuals of their freedom…as long as they are young attractive women? The only way they can do that without their heads exploding over the conflict is by denying the humanity of women, which is apparently something conservatives are comfortable with. No surprises there, I guess.

Again, this is a consequence of the near-religious worship of dogmatic capitalism. Everything is viewed as a transaction, with profits and losses, with numerical values that can be auctioned off. Every time someone utters the evil phrase, “sexual market value”, you are hearing the canonization of a true perversion of human relationships. But this isn’t how sex works! It’s a gift of shared intimacy, voluntarily given, between two or more people. You can’t compel that (which is not to say that some generous people can’t give it in return for money — but even that is a willing exchange. Sex work isn’t rape. Rape isn’t sex work.)

That leads into the other problem with Douthat’s perspective. Incels aren’t just young men howling in frustration for more sex, because heck, that would be almost every human being going through puberty. These are people who want to punish and kill women for being objects of desirability, who have so twisted their idea of sex that it becomes nothing but a violent act in their minds. All the talk of impractical policies of sex redistribution is a smoke screen, irrelevant to the real issue: these are horrible damaged people who think murder for the sake of their penises is justifiable, and who have such a misbegotten idea of what sex is that they think hatred and violence will satisfy their sexual urges.

Of course, Douthat is just using this as a stalking horse for his own brand of sexual perversity.

There is an alternative, conservative response, of course — namely, that our widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility might be dealt with by reviving or adapting older ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chastity and permanence and the special respect owed to the celibate.

Those “older ideas” also involved demanding the submission of women and denying them autonomy, it was just a more genteel version of the same resolution, where a wealthy gentleman with an income above £10,000 a year could purchase a young lady of good breeding to be his kept spouse, once again reducing everything to a simple quantifiable transaction, where the women are kept in line with an absence of capital.

Do I even need to touch that Catholic nonsense of special respect owed to the celibate? Why? What does celibacy add to the virtue of a person…especially when so often it was only the appearance of abstinence?

The Incel delusion

How wrong can you be? How twisted can your perspective get? Just ask an incel.

So wrong it makes creationists look reasonable. I’m not even going to try to address any of that BS, except to note that anyone who bases their arguments on sexual market value is delusional and anti-science. Is there a stronger prefix than “anti-“? Like so far to an extreme contrary position that you’re ripping a tear in the fabric of space-time?

Yeah, found on We Hunted the Mammoth.

Speaking of redemption for the irredeemable…

Remember Kevin Williamson, the pundit who tweeted that women who get abortions should be executed by hanging, and lost a job at The Atlantic over it? I’m not sure what should be done with such horrible people, but not being hired as an opinion writer ought to be the least of it. But guess what the Washington Post has done? They’ve given him an opportunity to write on their opinion pages! A one-time thing, I hope, because I’d rather just see him vanish.

But no. Now he gets a prominent space to rehash his ugly views. I’m going to go find a puppy to kick so I can get space where I can write more about puppy-kicking.

Shockingly, the first thing Williamson does is…denial.

So what would it mean as a practical legal matter to outlaw abortion? That is a question I have been asked frequently since being fired by the Atlantic over a four-year-old, six-word tweet and accompanying podcast in which I was alleged to have voiced an extremist view on the matter of criminalizing abortion — that it should be punished by hanging.

That isn’t my view at all.

What is this “alleged” BS? There was the tweet, which he has since deleted, closing his whole Twitter account. But then also, he was
repeatedly asked if he was joking or serious, he calmly affirmed that he was.

When Johnson pressed Williamson about whether he was serious, the National Review writer responded: Yes, I believe that the law should treat abortion like any other homicide.

He was asked about it in a podcast, and he strongly affirmed it.

And someone challenged me on my views on abortion, saying, ‘If you really thought it was a crime you would support things like life in prison, no parole, for treating it as a homicide.’ And I do support that, in fact, as I wrote, what I had in mind was hanging, Williamson said.

My broader point here is, of course, that I am a — as you know I’m kind of squishy on capital punishment in general — but that I’m absolutely willing to see abortion treated like a regular homicide under the criminal code, sure.

He even expanded on his point to say that the doctors and nurses who assisted in an abortion should also be executed! So what’s with the weasely “alleged” nonsense now?

He is lying and pretending he didn’t say it. Further, he’s now piously declaiming that he just wants moderate laws regulating abortion, just like France’s.

France, like many European countries, takes a stricter line on abortion than does the United States: Abortion on demand is permitted only through the 12th week of pregnancy. After that, abortion is severely restricted, permitted only to prevent grave damage to the mother’s health, or in the event of severe fetal abnormalities. France is not a neo-medieval right-wing dystopia.

The law in France imposes penalties on those who perform illegal abortions, ranging from forfeiture of medical licenses for doctors to fines and, in some cases, incarceration (for providers, not for the woman obtaining the abortion) ranging from six months to 10 years. Those sanctions seem reasonable to me. Why not start there and see how it works?

Start there…that’s his key point. He sees this as the point of a wedge, leading to, he dreams, full criminalization of abortion. And look: making it illegal for unqualified people to rummage around in women’s uteruses is a good idea, and I suspect is already consider criminal under existing laws about doing physical harm to people, but that’s not what he wants. He wants to arrest and punish certified doctors, nurses, and women who want an abortion. I don’t think France does that.

But these are just Williamson’s unoriginal excuses. This argument, that they just want to be like Europe, has been around for quite a while, and is an outright lie. Katha Politt has specifically addressed this stupid anti-choice talking point.

Here’s what’s really different about Western Europe: in France, you can get an abortion at any public hospital and it’s paid for by the government. In Germany, you can get one at a hospital or a doctor’s office, and health plans will pay for it for low-income women. In Sweden, abortion is free through eighteen weeks. Moreover, unlike the time limits passed in Texas and some other states, or floating around in Congress, the European limits have exceptions, variously for physical or mental health, fetal anomaly or rape. Contrast that with what anti-choicers want for the United States, where Paul Ryan memorably described a health exception to a proposed late-term abortion ban as “a loophole wide enough to drive a Mack truck through it.” If a French or German or Swedish 12-year-old, or a traumatized rape victim, or a woman carrying a fetus with Tay-Sachs disease shows up after the deadline, I bet a way can often be found to quietly take care of them. If not, Britain or the Netherlands, where second trimester abortion is legal, are possibilities. (In 2011, more than 4,000 Irish women traveled to Britain for abortions.)

Here are some other differences: in Western Europe, teens get realistic sex education, not abstinence-only propaganda. Girls and women have much better access to birth control and emergency contraception, which are usually paid for by the government. In countries that require mandatory counseling, it is empathetic and nondirective: nothing like our burgeoning network of Christian “crisis pregnancy centers” and state laws requiring women to endure transvaginal ultrasounds, hear fetal heartbeats and look at sonograms. European doctors are not forced to read scripts that falsely warn women that abortion will give them breast cancer and drive them to suicide, and tell them that an embryo the size of a pea is “a unique living human being.” In countries that have waiting periods, distances are smaller, and just to repeat, abortion is widely available and integrated with the normal health system, not shunted off to clinics in a few
cities and college towns. You do not have to travel eight hours four times to get the counseling and fulfill the waiting period—or sleep in your car or the bus station till the time is up.

And just because you’ve read this far: there are no screaming fanatics thrusting gory photos at you as you make your way to your abortion. No one takes down your license plate in the parking lot and calls you—or your parents—later with hateful messages. Doctors who perform abortions do not wear bulletproof vests, nor are they ostracized by their communities and shunned by other doctors. The whole climate of fear that makes many doctors reluctant to perform abortions and makes some women postpone going to the clinic does not exist.

OK, Kevin Williamson, I do want something like that. But that is not what you want: you want gibbets installed in every town with those wanton women who didn’t want a baby hanging from them.

No one is fooled. Except, apparently, the editors at the Washington Post who were happy to let a vicious troll lie openly on their pages.

How to profit from your own sleaziness

The entertainment industry leads the way in turning exploitation into money by adding another layer of exploitation. This sounds like the worst television show idea ever.

Disgraced CBS anchor Charlie Rose is being slated to star in a show where he’ll interview other high-profile men who have also been toppled by #MeToo scandals.

Among the people Rose would interview are Matt Lauer, Louis C.K., and Mario Batali. They intend to use their own notoriety as harassers to drive an “entertainment” program where they’ll schmooze with each other and talk about how unjustly they were treated and how they ought to be given a second chance. I suspect their accusers will not get a moment in the limelight, and that their accusations won’t even be discussed.

There’s a really good piece by Lindsay Zoladz on these efforts to reward very bad men with an unearned redemption, as if they haven’t been soaking in their ill-gotten rewards already.

But in what felt like some sort of quota for needlessly sympathetic stories about odious men, the very same issue of The Hollywood Reporter in which Miller’s C.K. story was published also contained a lengthy, much-criticized feature that asks, in the gently curious tone usually used when one wonders where a beloved child star is now, “What Happened to Charlie Rose?” (What happened to Charlie Rose, you’ll remember, was that 17 women said he’d committed sexual harassment and misconduct, including groping, making unwanted sexual advances, and “walking around naked in front of colleagues who were required to work at one of his New York homes.”) In the months since the accounts, if you were wondering, Rose has mostly spent his time reading and ordering takeout in Bellport, Long Island, where he owns a waterfront home valued somewhere between $4 million and $6 million. In case you would like more information about the other multimillion-dollar homes the accused sexual predator owns, in Manhattan, Washington, D.C., and North Carolina, The Hollywood Reporter printed fawningly descriptive blurbs about each of them at the end of the story.

So brace yourself. These nasty men are plotting their comebacks, and there are plenty of enablers in the upper echelons who want to give it to them.

“The consensus is that while his behavior was clearly wrong it was not at the level of a Harvey Weinstein, James Toback, or Bill Cosby,” Miller wrote in his piece about Louis C.K., before quoting a flippant and painfully unfunny joke that the comic Gilbert Gottfried made about the “different levels of misbehavior” enacted by these men. Sure. I am not denying that there are different levels of sexual misconduct — and, like the New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, I am sick of people assuming that feminists are inherently denying or unable to see that. As Tolentino wrote in January in an excellent piece about the inevitability of the #MeToo backlash, it is incredibly frustrating when people are more willing to see nuance on the side of the accused than the vocally critical. And yet it is crucial that we also see the way that the forgiveness of a “lesser” predator paves the way for one “at the level” of Weinstein, Toback, or Cosby to be redeemed. To welcome someone like C.K. or Batali back into the fold not six months after these accusations broke is to intimidate other victims from speaking out, because it will make them think their stories don’t matter, or that the power granted to them by the #MeToo movement was just a temporary spell. To write about them sympathetically, to give them more ink than the names and achievements of their accusers, to run headlines suggesting a “likely” comeback, is to participate in the very culture that allowed these men to behave badly in the first place. It is a failure to imagine a different story, a better world.

C.K., Batali, Lauer, and Rose are all rich, having profited for years off a system that protected them from accusations leveled by people with less money and power. They don’t need to rush back to work. They can afford early retirement or lengthy public hiatuses ensconced in one of their multiple properties. And fans who miss their work and are eager for a “comeback” can buck up and let themselves be sated by many alternatives: In the streaming age, women who create the kind of dark, self-loathing, confessional comedy preferred by C.K. are currently thriving; lord knows people can find other recipes for marinara sauce or cinnamon rolls. But to demand that these men return to the spotlight too early, or in some cases at all, is to risk a cascading effect that will undo the necessary work of the #MeToo movement and to intimidate victims back into silence. Be warned: After Louis, le déluge.

How to deal with a Shermer attack

It could happen at any time. People are still inviting Shermer to give talks at various events, despite his sordid history. He could suddenly show up on your campus! Do not fear, however. One thing we know about the Shermer is that he’s toothless. He’ll bluster and threaten, but he’ll back down, just as he did in his threats to Santa Barbara City College and their campus newspaper, The Channels.

Following threats to pursue legal action against The Channels, Professor Raeanne Napoleon, and City College as a whole, Dr. Michael Shermer announced in an email Saturday that he was dropping his case.

Although we have an excellent case that I was defamed, it is not worth the time and cost pursuing legal recourse for what is (hopefully) an inconsequential incident, Shermer wrote in his final letter regarding the matter. The letter was circulated on campus email by instructor Mark McIntire.

This is what he always does. He tries to silence people who mention the ugly things he has done with legal intimidation, and when that doesn’t work, he wilts. So don’t let it work! Stand strong!

His threats are empty. The Channels did stand strong.

The Channels maintained its position that the article was not libelous, and again decided to ignore the request to remove it from the website. The editors agreed at this point, however, to postpone publishing any more articles related to Shermer.

“It seemed apparent that there was no case of libel here,” said Aidan Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of The Channels. “Because of that, we didn’t feel it was necessary to respond to the letter at all, let alone fulfill the demands.”

On April 4, Shermer sent a second Cease and Desist to Wallace and Beebe, listing the same demands, but with an extended deadline of 5 p.m. April 12. This time, Anderson responded to the lawyer via email on behalf of Wallace and The Channels.

He wrote that The Channels would not take down the article, and instead invited Shermer to submit a Letter to the Editor. In that letter—which The Channels would publish—Shermer could outline his objections with the article. Shermer never responded.

I guess Shermer’s lawyer agreed. I suspect Shermer’s lawyer has a stack of form letters at hand, ready to go, whenever he gets a phone call: “Who are you mad at today, Michael?”

But also notice that his complaints were effective: “The editors agreed at this point, however, to postpone publishing any more articles related to Shermer.” That’s exactly what he wanted, and he got it.

You should read Shermer’s surrender. It’s pitiful. One of his major complaints is that it was stated that he was investigated by the police, and he quotes his accuser to show…that that was…NOT true?

The newspaper did not fact check the claims nor did they even offer me a chance to respond. That was bad enough, but Napoleon did not simply repeat lies told about me in these blogs, she added a new one:

Although the police did not bring formal charges against him, there have been many witnesses that have publicly corroborated the stories of the victims.

What police? Where? When? Never in my life have I been investigated by the police—or any law enforcement agency—for anything anytime anywhere.

You will not be surprised at his other defense. It was Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed has a solid news division that is quite distinct from their goofy listicles and quizzes section — I think we can guess which one brings in more ad revenue — so it has become de rigeur for the pseudoskeptics to dismiss any uncomfortable facts that the news division brings up by pretending it’s just another bit of clickbait. Read critically, people.

Fact Checking. That’s all it takes to debunk Alternative Facts and Fake News like this, which is why the way The Channels newspaper handled this issue is so inexcusable. There is a reason why no newspaper or print publication or journalistic source of any repute has ever published anything about the allegations against me: they fact check. The author of the BuzzFeed article that launched this whole affair four years ago is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. There’s a reason he ended up publishing it on a click-bait site that features such articles as “Butt Facts That Will Surprise You” and “Can We Guess Your Favorite Sex Position?”

Yeah, and the Los Angeles Times still publishes horoscopes, and the New York Times publishes David Brooks (I’ll leave you to decide which is more appalling.)

There’s a reason why I am still a professor at Chapman University, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, a regular public speaker at colleges and universities around the country, and my books are published by one of the most respectable book publishers in the world: they fact checked the allegations against me and dismissed them. Social justice activists whose priorities veer far from the truth-value of claims and allegations have actively tried to get me fired and failed. Why? Fact checking.

That is incorrect. Before I posted any accusations against him, the first thing I did was check the facts — they’re pretty much unassailable. Multiple women stepped forward to complain about his creepy behavior. The reason is not fact checking at all, it’s more like fact ignoring that permits him to get away with it. There are two real reasons he still gets that positive attention:

  1. His chosen domain is the skeptic movement, which you may have noticed has a sexual assault and harassment problem. Major figures in that movement have a history of turning a blind eye to harassment problems. This is the kind of response he gets from skeptic leaders:

    “Shermer has been a bad boy on occasion — I do know that,” Randi told me. “I have told him that if I get many more complaints from people I have reason to believe, that I am going to have to limit his attendance at the conference.

    “His reply,” Randi continued, “is he had a bit too much to drink and he doesn’t remember. I don’t know — I’ve never been drunk in my life. It’s an unfortunate thing … I haven’t seen him doing that. But I get the word from people in the organization that he has to be under better control. If he had gotten violent, I’d have him out of there immediately. I’ve just heard that he misbehaved himself with the women, which I guess is what men do when they are drunk.”

    He only misbehaves himself with women. Well, that’s alright then!

  2. The other reason, the biggest reason, is that he is goddamned litigious. He is litigious as fuck. If you listen to his accusers, he will cheerfully sic a lawyer on you.

I just want you all to know that the power of #1 is fading, as more of these enablers in the movement find themselves out of power. And he’s effectively weakening his main tool, #2, because he threatens but backs down. He has to back down, because if he followed through he’d find himself exposed in the court of public opinion.

Your stereotypes are not helpful

Fascinating. My daughter is a graduate student in computer science at the University of Colorado. I wonder if Colorado is just like Maryland, where the TA handbook has different advice depending on your sex?

Advice to male TAs, in summary: Take charge and pay special attention to your male students, and watch out for the female students, who may be trying to get into your pants for a better grade.

Advice to female TAs, in summary: Be patient and friendly with students, and face it, people aren’t going to regard you as a professional in your career anyway.

Both sets of advice look terrible.

I don’t think my daughter is the type to put up with much nonsense, and she’s got more professional experience than any of her students, or many of her peers. Maybe UMD ought to rethink the message they’re sending here?

Fortunately, UMD recognizes the problem and has deleted the advice.

Have you ever wondered why the #MeToo movement hasn’t caught up with Michael Shermer?

I can tell you why: it’s because he bullies people, is litigious, and does his best to make life miserable for anyone who squeaks. I publicized a woman’s first person account of how he took advantage of her at a conference — she was terrified that he’d go after her and he did — and he responded by encouraging conference organizers to blackball me, and threw a lawsuit at me (he later backed down, since it was just going to be a parade of witnesses describing his deplorable behavior).

That turns out to be a common reaction on his part.

Shermer spoke at a west coast college lately, and one faculty member objected, sharing articles others had written about his behavior to the college’s in-house e-mail list. Shermer went ballistic. He sent a long, angry email to the professor; had another person who writes for his magazine contact them; made legal threats; defamed them (confirmed by a lawyer); sent multiple aggressive emails to the campus email list; blustered as he does, and eventually backed down on his threats of a lawsuit, after compelling my correspondent to hire a lawyer to deal with all the sabre-rattling. A portion of their email to me:

Shermer was a recent campus speaker at my college and after I shared articles about the allegations against him, I received legal threats from him (among other things in a 10 paragraph long email), intimidation from someone that writes for his magazine, I had to retain a lawyer, all while my college administration knew it all has been happening and stayed quiet (and then sent a late night email saying “let’s not get distracted…” after the campus faculty and staff generated a 8k gofundme account so I could afford a lawyer, but I’ve digressed…). This Saturday Shermer sent his second all-campus horrible email defaming me for the second time and said even though he has a “really good case against me” (he doesn’t) he’s decided to not sue me (when really his lawyers probably told him there is no case after my lawyer responded twice). There’s a million more details that I’m leaving out for now.

Now doesn’t that sound familiar? It’s what he did to me, except, at least, he didn’t spam my campus email server with his diatribes. This is how he always reacts, rushing to silence others’ free speech.

Somehow, though, those alt-right/right wing crusaders for “FREE SPEECH” never get around to criticizing their libertarian hero. I don’t know why, other than that it’s entirely clear that they’re actually interested in suppressing some free speech…just not their own. Another email from my correspondent:

I guess he’s shut down now, as he sent a second letter to my campus (that was sent all campus for the second time by a problematic adjunct faculty member who is acting like Shermer’s lap dog), but what bugs me is he gets to do this over and over again to people. He sent me two cease desists from his attorneys. Luckily my attorney shut it down both times. I knew he had no case from her go, as all I did was share articles written years ago with my campus.

His first letter that went all-campus (literally everyone I work with!) was 10 paragraphs of vitriol where he threatened to have a restraining order against me and his wife was going to be on “the look out for me”. He defamed me in it (actually defamed me, as confirmed by my lawyer).

Why does Scientific American employ such an asshole? As you know best, he’s been accused of this stuff multiple times by multiple people and even had a title ix investigation on him at Chapman….and he’s uses heavy handed letters to silence people. I was hoping someone would write an article about his tactics. Is that not interesting in the wake of the me too movement to see how people like him operate to silence people? Perhaps you have grown tired of him, but maybe you know someone in your circle that wants to pursue this further? After living through his reign of bullshit of a month, there’s a level of Justice I haven’t felt by him getting the last word on my campus AGAIN with his nonsense with “I’ve decided not to sue.” (When he had no case).

I’ve also read some of the responses of his defenders on campus. Some are shocked and regretful — they’ve been using his articles in classes for years and never heard about any of this (Why haven’t they? Because Shermer launches lawyers at anyone who mentions it). Others flat out lied, saying that all of the accusations against him had been formally debunked. That is flatly untrue.

My correspondent was willing to publicly identify themselves, and it was my decision to keep them anonymous for now — although, at least, there’s enough information in this post that Shermer could figure out who his accuser is. Maybe. It could be there are so many of them he can’t be sure. But they did ask that I include one additional comment — they aren’t going to back down from his bullying behavior.

These horrible attacks by Shermer are intentionally hurtful and you can add mine to the voices objecting to this treatment.

I also have to repeat their question. Why does Scientific American employ such an asshole? It’s not as if he’s even producing competent articles, as has been noted yet again recently.

If only she’d said “no” 91 times…

It’s unbelievable what we men can get away with. Here’s an account of an ongoing trial in which a naval officer is accused of raping a junior officer.

The junior officer testified that Neuhart forced his way into her home and attacked her, only stopping when her screams alerted a neighbor. Neuhart ran out a back door and was caught by police after he fell and broke a leg.

Forces his way into a home, attacks a woman who screams so loudly a neighbor shows up, and then runs away. This is an open and shut case so far, right?

During the trial both sides acknowledged that the woman was intoxicated after drinking heavily with Neuhart earlier at a hotel bar. Hotel surveillance video showed her hugging and kissing him. They drove back to her home in a limousine.

Jurors heard video from Neuhart’s cellphone in which she screams at him to leave and tells him some 90 times to stop trying to have sex with her.

They’ve got an audio recording of the woman clearly saying “NO!” 90 times? That she was drunk and affectionate earlier shouldn’t matter at all.

In case you’re wondering how they came to have a recording sufficiently detailed that they could count how often she told him to stop, this is the unbelievable part — the rapist gave it to them. He thought it was exonerating evidence.

Neuhart testified that the woman consented to going home and having sex with him. He said he recorded part of their encounter in case the woman later alleged rape.

Our foreign enemies will quail before the brilliance of our naval commanders. He’s like Horatio Hornblower made flesh.

If your jaw is hanging open in disbelief at this guy, just leave it there, maybe grab it with one hand to keep it from falling off: the jury was deadlocked. This was declared a mistrial.

People still insist there is no such thing as rape culture.

Uh-oh. This might just turn everyone gay.

It’s the Straight Pride pin. I am horrified by how boring it is.

This is supposed to represent my sexual orientation? It just makes me look back on my life with regret. Put it away. Honestly, I have no problem with being a straight married man, I just think the symbol for my lifestyle ought to communicate at least a little joy and happiness and enthusiasm, rather than this tepid blandness.

It doesn’t even have any squid on it. What is the point?

The pay gap is painfully real

How about this for a revealing graphic? It’s a plot of average salaries for biology majors in a range of occupations, from airline pilots on the left (almost entirely male) to dental hygienists on the right (mostly female), and the gray dots and pink dots connected by lines show the relative salaries for men and women in the same job. Yikes — it turns out that being a gray dot means you get paid more money, no matter whether it’s a “female” job, or a “male” job.

I had to look hard to find exceptions to that rule. Women who are dishwashers or bank tellers get paid slightly more than their male counterparts. I wonder how much they use that biology degree in those jobs?

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, says Michelle Ball, a career counselor at the University of Virginia. “Do teachers get paid less because the workforce is largely female, or is it that education is just underfunded and women are willing to go into it anyway?” she asked.

Even in such female-dominated professions as nursing or teaching, men are paid more. And the pay gap is even more severe for women of color: While college-educated white women earn only 55 percent of what college-educated white men do, college-educated non-white women earn even less.

I think we can answer that question from the graph: the proportions of men and women in a workforce doesn’t seem to matter at all, women will get paid less. How much less, and how badly screwed are people of color?

How can we change this? One cause of the difference is that the labor of raising a family falls almost entirely on women’s shoulders. We could fix that by changing the culture and having men share more of that labor (sheeyah, right), or employers could recognize that and adjust their practices to take it into account.

The labor of raising a family, then, is one of the biggest sources of divergent career paths for women and men who attain the same degrees. A recent U.K. study found that universities with generous maternity leave policies employed twice the number of women professors as those without, and a 2009 Center for Work-Life Policy survey found that among college-educated women who had left their careers, 69 percent said that they wouldn’t have done so if their companies had offered more flexible work options.

There are a whole lot of smart, ambitious women graduating from our biology program every year. Maybe employers should think more about what it takes to attract the best and brightest?