First

Cruelty doesn’t get enough attention. Judith Shklar pointed that out; Montaigne pointed it out.

When I drew up that quick secular 10 commandments recently I put “don’t be cruel” first. I kind of take it for granted that that’s essential…but apparently I’m not in the majority on that.

I just Googled the word and I’m a bit shocked to find that most of the first entries are for cruelty to animals, as if cruelty to humans isn’t a thing.

Cruelty to humans is a thing.

Everyday sadism

So that study on sadism I’ve been meaning to talk about for weeks.

Most of the time, we try to avoid inflicting pain on others — when we do hurt someone, we typically experience guilt, remorse, or other feelings of distress. But for some, cruelty can be pleasurable, even exciting. New research suggests that this kind of everyday sadism is real and more common than we might think.

So does regular interaction on the internet, and it’s very depressing. I mean really depressing. I don’t like realizing that a lot of people like to inflict pain just for the hilarity of it.

To test their hypothesis, they decided to examine everyday sadism under controlled laboratory conditions. [Read more…]

Starting to catch up

Alison Bechdel posts on the Bechdel test in Sweden and the news flurry about same.

I have always felt ambivalent about how the Test got attached to my name and went viral. (This ancient comic strip I did in 1985 received a second life on the internet when film students started talking about it in the 2000′s.) But in recent years I’ve been trying to embrace the phenomenon. After all, the Test is about something I have dedicated my career to: the representation of women who are subjects and not objects. And I’m glad mainstream culture is starting to catch up to where lesbian-feminism was 30 years ago. [Read more…]

This is just what happens to women online

Laura Bates takes a look at online sexism. (Cue a rumble of outraged outrage in response.)

The internet is a fertile breeding ground for misogyny – you only have to look at the murky bottom waters of Reddit and 4Chan to see the true extent to which it allows violent attitudes towards women to proliferate. But, crucially, it also provides a conduit that enables many who hold those views to attack and abuse women and girls, from what they rightly perceive to be an incredibly secure position. Meanwhile, the police seem near-powerless to take action, social media sites shrug their shoulders, and women are left between a rock and a hard place – simply put up with the abuse as a part of online life, or get off the internet altogether. [Read more…]

How is that promoting religion?

Actual, not figurative, out loud blurt of laughter. An American Legion post in North Carolina wanted to give the local schools a poster yelling “in god we trust” but the school board said no thank you, and a member of the Legion who is also a pastor has hurt feelings.

“We got an email from the school saying thank you but on advice of their legal counsel they could not accept the posters because of separation of church and state,” American Legion member Rick Cornejo told me in a telephone interview.

Cornejo, who is also a local Baptist preacher, said the decision to ban the posters has resulted in a lot of hurt feelings. [Read more…]

We can treat the great majority of the people equally

Ron Lindsay objects to the way the plaintiffs’ attorney in Greece v Galloway briskly threw the atheists under the bus.

Roberts was asking whether the concerns of atheists had to be considered in
determining whether the prayer practice is constitutional. And, incredibly, the plaintiffs’ attorney responded, “We’ve excluded the atheists.” (Transcript, p. 46.) In other words, to all atheists: Your concerns don’t matter. You’re not part of the community. You’re a special case and your constitutional rights are limited. Or, if you prefer blunter language, eat shit.

What Laycock said really is rather tooth-grinding.

We can treat the great majority of the people equally with the tradition of prayer to the almighty, the governor of the universe, the creator of the world –

Yes but you can treat all the people equally by skipping the putative tradition of prayer at a government function altogether. Treating just the great majority equally isn’t what you should be doing here.

Back to Ron’s post.

CFI, joined by other secular groups, filed an amicus brief before the Supreme Court, arguing that the reasoning behind the Marsh decision is fundamentally flawed. [Read more…]

The Bechdel test in Södermalm

Movie theatres in Sweden are introducing a new rating system to highlight the scarcity of women in movies. It’s a Bechdel test rating. That’s not even a joke or a figure of speech: they’re using the Bechdel test.

I love Sweden.

To get an A rating, a movie must pass the so-called Bechdel test, which means it must have at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.

“The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, all Star Wars movies, The Social Network, Pulp Fiction and all but one of the Harry Potter movies fail this test,” said Ellen Tejle, the director of Bio Rio, an art-house cinema in Stockholm’s trendy Södermalm district. [Read more…]

Harris and Klebold

The article I’m reading in Slate is from 2004, and it’s about what the FBI ended up concluding about why Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot up Columbine High School. It wasn’t because they were bullied; they weren’t. Klebold was depressed and suicidal, and Harris was a psychopath.

It’s not just that his private journal bristled with hatred. It was more than that.

It rages on for page after page and is repeated in his journal and in the videos he and Klebold made. But Fuselier recognized a far more revealing emotion bursting through, both fueling and overshadowing the hate. What the boy was really expressing was contempt. [Read more…]