My latest post is up on Big Think, where I examine the ethics of a convicted rapist facing life imprisonment. He is requesting that he be put to death.
In this short piece, I look at whether we should or shouldn’t help him die. Prisoner ethics and the morality surrounding punishment is something I find incredibly important.
Some of you might know I’ve written some pieces on video games and also sexism.
At the moment, I’m doing some research into a piece on sexism and video games, trying to find an effective way to undermine much of the horrible responses that my non-male friends receive who speak out against misogyny and sexism, and speak for more inclusiveness. Indeed, they don’t even need to be speak out: they just need to be non-male and be vaguely public.
I therefore am looking for anyone
1. who has worked with and created games, especially female led ones, and
2. has experienced (or even said) the hateful, horrible things that tend to come from male gamers.
I’ve gotten some great contacts and spoken to some creators already, thanks to my wonderful co-bloggers here at FtB. But I’m hoping some of you out there that can give me more insight and information on this serious topic.
I am really wanting to write this, since the latest batch of Anita Sarkeesian hatred hit the internet like a flood of shit from the mouth of an inter-dimensional rage monster.
I’m part of this industry, as a consumer and very amateur critic. And I don’t want to be part of an industry or group in which people feel marginalised, unable to express their creativity and brilliance, or feel targeted, merely because of their sex, race, sexual orientation, or whatever.
If you can offer any help – whether recommending people or you yourself – please use the Email Me button on my About.me page. Thank you.
UPDATE 17/06/2013:
I’ve received some excellent responses. Thank you all.
Apologies that some comments have landed up in the spam and pending folders. Not sure why. We are having some tech gremline battles here, apparently.
Speaking of, some comments appear to be off-topic and just plain strange. I speak more about it here.
My friend Jacques Rousseau has done me the favour of writing (and improving) the article I was busy with (I was so writing this before him!), before I began having serious Internet problems.
South African media – and perhaps international – has managed to develop a rhetoric of speaking of Satanism as some bizarre evil thing, which tends to involve broken teenagers, murder and/or suicide. This has come as a result of numerous murders and other crimes, where the accused have muttered something about Satanism. This might be what perpetrators call it but that would be doing a disservice to Satanists, Satanism and, more importantly, reality.
Even though we [in South Africa] are ostensibly guaranteed freedom of religion by our Constitution, a minority religion like Satanism (and to a lesser extent, various Pagan religions) are almost universally a shorthand for evil – largely because what people understand by “Satanism” is exactly what Christians would want it to be. [Read more…]
“Only if you’re doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don’t deserve to keep it private.”
Daniel Solove tackled this argument in 2011. As he points out, people making this argument misconstrue many aspects about what constitutes (personal) security and privacy.
“This issue isn’t about what information people want to hide but about the power and the structure of government.”
Thus, how much a government knows and monitors is indicative of that country’s governance. Our inability to know what they’re collecting, how they’re viewing this data and what they’re deducing from it should be our main concern. It is Kafkaesque as well as Orwellian, though it is because of the former that we should actually be concerned. [Read more…]
The British writer Martin Robbins has a long and important battle against what he terms “data-free celebrity science”. This is “science” as touted by those who have established themselves as good scientists or thinkers – among their colleagues – and proceeded to use that goodwill to build a soapbox to spread their ideas.
Here in South Africa, witchcraft is being blamed again for the deaths of some young men, who themselves participated in unnecessary circumcisions. To try criticise even the circumcisions, one is left with the “culture” defense which is worth strongly criticising and opposing.
Look, no matter what it’s blamed for, I can almost guarantee that witchcraft probably wasn’t responsible. But more importantly, it ties into a general attitude of long accepted traditions, which go against reason and science. JT Eberhard makes some good points. [Read more…]
At TIME, Erika Christakis and Nicholas A. Christakis have penned an article criticising Harvard’s endorsement of Oprah Winfrey, with the awarding of an honourary doctorate and as commencement speaker. As their title indicates, “Oprah as Harvard’s Commencement Speaker Is an Endorsement of Phony Science”.
Oprah’s particular brand of celebrity is not a good fit for the values of a university whose motto, Veritas, means truth. Oprah’s passionate advocacy extends, unfortunately, to a hearty embrace of phony science. Critics have taken Oprah to task for years for her energetic shilling on behalf of peddlers of quack medicine. Most notoriously, Oprah’s validation of Jenny McCarthy’s discredited claim that vaccines cause autism has no doubt contributed to much harm through the foolish avoidance of vaccines.
Ms Winfrey does tend to endorse a lot of pseudoscientific nonsense: Rhonda Byrne (who “wrote” The Secret and The Power), Dr Oz, and similar promoters of nonscience and nonsense.
It’s good to see that those working in Harvard, as both writers do, are heavily critical of this decision. [Read more…]
The content of my last blogpost at Big Think was on how often many of us are engaged in “debates” that shouldn’t be debates at all: gay marriage, legalized a abortion, euthanasia, and so on.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t legitimately care about these, nor that these aren’t discussions worth having, or are simple to solve. But, if more people – often opposing – were willing to critically examine WHY they are opposed to these problems – instead of reacting “from the knee” – we would either have less vitriol, less discussions or better quality ones. [Read more…]
Since 18 May, same-sex marriage has been legal in France. Despite the rather obvious nature for why you should support it, many still oppose it.
Thousands of French marched on Sunday, France’s Mother’s Day, to protest the recent legalization of gay marriage. Despite initial worries, the demonstration was largely peaceful, with the police estimating that about 150,000 people took part.
150,000. That’s quite a bit.
Of course, the actual number of those who really think or oppose gay marriage might be less. But then we might have the lazy homophobes who didn’t attend or were away. Or who killed themselves on the Notre Dame altar. [Read more…]
In response to an essay on extreme hardcore pornography (bondage, public nudity and humiliation, etc., all done with the performer’s consent), Rod Dreher writes about why he is concerned.
I have to live in a world in which utopians are working very hard to tear down the structures of thought and practice that harnessed humankind’s sexual instincts and directed them in socially upbuilding ways. I have to raise my kids in a world that says when it comes to sex, there is no right and no wrong, except as defined by consent.
The problem is consent is a difficult topic, by itself. Dreher’s response does stem from his opposition to the goals of people called “utopians”, who are trying to direct sexual instincts toward “socially unbuilding [sic] ways”. A lot of his response is disgust mutating into rushed reasoning, that reads a little too much like Helen Lovejoy. [Read more…]