The serial harassers who suffer no loss to their career

Salon, very sensibly, decided to ask Jennifer Saul to explain about sexual harassment in philosophy. Saul is the philosopher who set up the blog “What is it like to be a woman in philosophy?”.

 Inspired by discussions with other women philosophers who were worried about the gender  gap in our discipline, I set up a blog where philosophers (of any gender) could share anonymous stories — positive or negative — about what it is like to be a woman in philosophy. I was not prepared for what happened.

Almost instantly, I was deluged with stories of sexual harassment. [Read more…]

Acid

Remember Taslima’s extraordinary (horrific) post last summer about acid attacks?* I did a little alert post about it at the time. (A post to alert, not a post that was particularly alert.) Taslima’s post has gone viral over the past few days. I’ve been thinking all those new eyes must mean new hope for action.

And Taslima says they have. She’s hearing from people who are creating groups to help victims, and people who are going to the UN to discuss the problem. In some schools teachers are teaching their students about acid problems and handing out copies of Taslima’s post.

This is good. Education is the first step. Awareness is the first step toward change.

Well done, Taslima.

*Warning: there are pictures, and they are horrific.

Extreme Skeptics™

I like this idea of dramatizing life among the Extreme Skeptics™, I want to do some more of it.

Scene 1

The living room. Chris is watching “Hoarders” on tv; Terry enters.

Terry: Let’s go swimming?

Chris: Why?

Terry: “Why?” What do you mean why? For fun, that’s why.

Chris: What’s your evidence that swimming is fun?

Terry: What are you talking about?! I like swimming, that’s my “evidence.”

Chris: That’s just a feeling. Feelings are not evidence. [Read more…]

So far, this is just gossip

PZ has a post on this fun new trick of saying “I am Skeptic, I don’t just believe your claim just like that, I wasn’t born yesterday, I demand evidence for all claims” whenever there’s a woman muttering something about harassment. He does it with a short one-act play about a visit to SkepticDoc, M.D.

PZ: Doctor, lately I’ve been experiencing shortness of breath and an ache in my left shoulder when I exert myself…

SkepticDoc: Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down! See the name on the shingle? It’s SkepticDoc. Do you have anything other than your feelings to justify wasting my time here? [Read more…]

Born in a squirrel

Patricia Churchland once talked to the Dalai Lama. You can guess what they talked about from knowing it was Pat Churchland. She tells Religion Dispatches about it.

Then what about religions that believe in reincarnation, where the soul survives bodily death and is reborn in another body? 

What would it be, this thing? If the brain is the repository of memories and skills and thoughts and perceptions, what would this thing be that goes off somewhere else and gets born in a squirrel or something? [Read more…]

The eros of the podium

We’re arguing about it in comments, so I’ll bring it up here to argue some more. (And watch: now no one will argue any more. That always happens.)

We’re arguing about this question of whether it’s ok for conference speakers to hook up with attendees, assuming mutual enthusiasm and availability.

I’m not on the side my haters* would expect.They would expect me to screek in horror and demand that everyone be taken away in chains. You know the drill – ugly old bitch, crazy bitter ugly angry old bitch jealous of all the hot young people having secks, wants to see them all boiled in oil.

But nah. I don’t see the problem. [Read more…]

All claims

Brian Dalton has a follow-up to his “how to say no to more wine” video.

It’s obnoxious. For some reason he makes a big issue of the fact that the “no more wine thank you, I’m good; see how easy that was?” segment was about this one bit of PZ’s post and not about the other bit. Well I knew that but it doesn’t amaze me that other people didn’t, and anyway, I don’t see why he makes a big issue of it since he didn’t spell that out in the original video. If you do a parable and people don’t figure out exactly what the reference is, it’s conceivable that that’s your doing and not theirs. It’s obnoxious to get belligerent about it.

And then there’s the fact that six seconds in he casually refers to “Slandergate,” as if that were a real name.

And then there’s the text on the screen at the end.

P.S. All claims require evidence, whether they are extraordinary or not. And a claim, in and of itself, is not, by definition, evidence.

Oh, please.

In the first place, what does that even mean? What does it mean for a claim to require evidence? He must mean something like “all claims, to be reasonably believed, require evidence.” But that’s not what he said. Claims don’t require anything.

In the second place, a claim is evidence that a claim has been made.

In the third place, lots of claims can be reasonably believed without evidence. Countless everyday claims can be perfectly reasonably accepted and believed and acted on without evidence, and yes that is partly because they’re so ordinary. If a friend says she’s thirsty it’s perfectly reasonable to believe her unless you have some reason not to. Belief is the default with ordinary claims like that. Dalton doesn’t mean “all claims” at all. He probably means something like all contested claims, or all controversial claims – but then he should have said that. He shouldn’t have made such a big smug obnoxious deal of setting us all straight on the matter and then done a sloppy job of it.

So – meh.

Dunning-Kruger morality

It’s the turn of “Ardent Atheist” Emery Emery to try to peddle the line that all this talk of sexual harassment is actually a campaign to stop everyone having sex. It’s a campaign to shut down pleasure and fun and joy and good things altogether.

The in-groupers at FtB have been attempting to redefine flirting as sexual harassment and sexual intercourse as rape. The problem with this tactic is that it obfuscates actual acts of sexual predation while criminalizing very healthy sex-positive human interaction.

No actually we have not. Not at all. We’ve been attempting (as have many others – we sure as hell don’t deserve all the credit for this) to define sexual harassment as sexual harassment. Flirting is mutual; harassment is unilateral. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to sexual intercourse and rape. [Read more…]