Scott Adams is being a self-indulgent, self-pitying dinkwad, again

Don’t be surprised, though. It’s only natural.

Now consider human males. No doubt you have noticed an alarming trend in the news. Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world. The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn’t blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society’s tools for keeping things under control.

The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?

Let us consider the many stupidities he offers us.

“Raping, cheating, and being offensive” are “natural” to men. You know, I have never in my life felt even the slightest urge to rape anyone; I’d go so far as to say that I’d have to be forced to rape, would probably find myself physically incapable of the act, and would find violent assault to be incredibly unnatural. I’ve also never been tempted to cheat on my wife (that’s a little bit unnatural, but then she’s got magic powers). I confess, I can be offensive to people, but that’s just me — most people quail at the thought of offending others. So here we have some presumptions about men that are just plain false.

And what’s with this “natural” nonsense anyway? It’s meaningless. What he’s really doing is trying to justify bad behavior with the “well, everyone else is doing it” excuse. It’s a logical fallacy. It doesn’t work. It especially doesn’t work when everyone else isn’t doing it.

Then he whines about us poor pitiful men, whose “natural” instincts (to rape, apparently) are so restricted, while women just get to run riot and do whatever they feel like doing — “blame and shame” are almost never, ever applied to control women’s behavior.

Stop laughing so hard! I see you out there with my magic blog-o-vision, goggling unbelievingly at the very idea that women are unconstrained by societal conventions.

All Scott Adams has written is a plea to allow him to indulge his whims without condemnation, coupled with a presumably inadvertent admission that some of his whims are pretty damned repulsive. Sorry, guy, if you dream of harming fellow members of your culture, you’re going to be slapped down and told you don’t get to do that. Go live in a cave if you resent having to get along with others and respect their autonomy.

He also descends into comical self-pity. Here’s what he imagines the natural conclusion of his oppression by a society that won’t let him rape women will end.

Long term, I think science will come up with a drug that keeps men chemically castrated for as long as they are on it. It sounds bad, but I suspect that if a man loses his urge for sex, he also doesn’t miss it. Men and women would also need a second drug that increases oxytocin levels in couples who want to bond. Copulation will become extinct. Men who want to reproduce will stop taking the castration drug for a week, fill a few jars with sperm for artificial insemination, and go back on the castration pill.

We already have chemical castration drugs: cyproterone and medroxyprogesterone acetate, for instance. They aren’t big sellers for the pharmaceutical companies (well, the latter is used by women as a contraceptive, marketed as Depo-Provera, so that’s doing all right), but Viagra is a massive money-maker. There isn’t any political pressure to put cyproterone in our drinking water, either. His future is already here, and it doesn’t seem to have worked out exactly like he imagines.

It also seems that some of us men are living happy, rape-free lives with cheerful, unassaulted sexual partners, and are also engaging frequently in enthusiastic sex without feeling like society is forcing us to do something weird and unnatural, and also without feeling that our happiness can only come by causing our partners misery. Poor little Scotty. I get the impression that he doesn’t find his sex life all that satisfying.

Men in skin-tight leotards

If you’ve ever read a comic book, you know the conventions: men must be immensely muscular, women must be full-breasted and wasp-waisted (and we’re not even talking Rob Liefeld here). Furthermore, the superhero costume for women must expose as much skin as possible: bare midriff almost always, low cut top, and the buttocks must be exposed. So in addition to an unnatural physique, the women must strut about in costumes that would look revealing in a strip club.

Megan Rosalarian Gedris is turning that all around. She’s redrawing comics featuring those slinky sexy women and putting the male characters in their costumes. It’s only fair, after all.

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It takes a special kind of man to pull off this look, and clearly, your standard issue bulging bicep comic book superhero is not manly enough to do it.

(via Skepchick)

Haven’t they learned how bad science and bogus tradition is a tool of oppression?

Oh, no. This is the first I hear of the Black Atheists of Atlanta, and what do I discover: they’re pushing the same bigoted, homophobic nonsense that I’d expect to hear from a white Republican teabagger. It’s a choice, it’s unnatural, science has something called the “law of reproduction” that means homosexuality is unscientific, it is justified by tradition to exclude homosexuals. They do have one difference: they claim homosexuality is a wicked Greco-Roman nastiness that afflicts Western civilization, but isn’t part of good African culture. Oh, and gay people in modern Africa are a product of colonialism.

Everything they say is wrong. It’s nothing but irrational, raging bigotry. It’s a shame to see one minority group rising up and speaking out, and what they’re doing is promoting the idea of throwing another minority group under the bus.

Only ugly people do math!

Wait, you mean that’s not the message I should take from this product?

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I’m tempted to get one and hang it outside my office door, just to poke at all the mathematicians with offices on my hallway.

But then, I can afford to use it ironically. I haven’t spent a lifetime having my abilities dismissed because of my sexual attractiveness.* It looks different when you view it that way.

*You must read that thread! When you see a comment that begins, “Gals, a little advice,” you know you’ve hit the mother lode of mansplainin’.

Abortion needs to be taught in our medical schools

Read this horror story of a failed pregnancy.

I was taking an afternoon nap when the hemorrhaging started while my toddler napped in his room when I woke up to find blood gushing upward from my body. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I was experiencing a placental abruption, a complication my doctor had told me was a possibility. My husband was at work, so I had to do my best to take care of me and my toddler on my own. I managed to get to the phone and make arrangements for both of my children before going to a Chicago hospital.

Everyone knew the pregnancy wasn’t viable, that it couldn’t be viable given the amount of blood I was losing, but it still took hours for anyone at the hospital to do anything. The doctor on call didn’t do abortions. At all. Ever. In fact, no one on call that night did. Meanwhile, an ignorant batch of medical students had gathered to study me — one actually showed me the ultrasound of our dying child while asking me if it was a planned pregnancy. Several wanted to examine me while I lay there bleeding and in pain. No one gave me anything for the pain or even respected my request to close the door even though I was on the labor and delivery floor listening to other women have healthy babies as the baby I had been trying to save died in my womb.

Fortunately, a nurse called in a competent doctor to abort the fetus and stop the bleeding — or this woman would have been dead.

My two kids at home almost lost their mother because someone decided that my life was worth less than that of a fetus that was going to die anyway. My husband had told them exactly what my regular doctor said, and the ER doctor had already warned us what would have to happen. Yet none of this mattered when confronted by the idea that no one needs an abortion. You shouldn’t need to know the details of why a woman aborts to trust her to make the best decision for herself. I don’t regret my abortion, but I would also never use my situation to suggest that the only time another woman should have the procedure is when her life is at stake. After my family found out I’d had an abortion, I got a phone call from a cousin who felt the need to tell me I was wrong to have interfered with God’s plan. And in that moment I understood exactly what kind of people judge a woman’s reproductive choices.

The story also highlights the subversive strategy the right wing has followed: there is now a serious dearth of doctors trained to do abortions, so when a necessary abortion case shows up in an emergency, you’ve got a muddle of the self-righteous and the ignorant, all incompetent to do anything, milling about with their thumbs up their asses. She might as well have stumbled bleeding into a church and asked for help…which is exactly what the Coathanger Coalition wants them to do.

Imagine if someone showed up in an emergency room having a heart attack, and for religious reasons, no one had any training in using a defibrillator, and the only one available was in an underfunded clinic across town. That’s the direction we’re going, only we’re suppressing information and skills that would help just women’s lives. Which makes it OK, I guess. No men will die of a placental abruption, so it’s a low priority.

Another cause

After saying that the atheist movement ought to be politically progressive and inclusive, I got a letter saying I left some people out. I’ll rectify that by simply posting the letter!

I’m a long-time reader and admirer of Pharyngula, and I’ve been especially impressed with your call for atheists and skeptics to take up the banner on progressive causes, including women’s rights and being more inclusive to people of colour. As a progressive woman skeptic, I was overjoyed by your support.

There’s another issue though, that I think has been overlooked by the majority of the skeptical community, and I would be honoured if you would also consider giving it some space on Pharyngula: Disability Rights. As a disabled woman, I have to tell you that skepticism, atheism, and disability rights go together perfectly. Obviously, the most prominent example of this is the way skeptics have tackled the “vaccines cause autism” issue, which has led to a plethora of damaging practices being used to torture autistic people, such as chelation, homeopathic garbage, and other “purification” woo. But there are other examples of the damage religion and lack of scientific literacy can do to disabled people: We’re often the most highly represented victims of practices like faith healing and exorcisms. As someone who works on a pilot project to address violence against disabled people, I can tell you hair-raising stories of the parents, spouses, and caretakers of disabled people using the Bible to justify abuse, humiliation, and deprivation of essential needs and equipment for disabled people, in the name of a “Loving and Merciful God”. And of course, the venomous hatred spewed by the most rotten Christian commentators whenever Stephen Hawking discusses the ridiculous claims of Heaven and Creationism offer a peek into just how little the religious truly respect disabled people.

I think that the skeptical/atheist community would be the perfect allies for disability rights activists, if more is done to include them in the discussion, such as courting disabled speakers to talk about their experiences with religious abuse, discussing what can be done to improve their quality of life when so many social services fail and they have to depend on churches and religious-based charities for handouts in exchange for brianwashing, and other issues.

I hope you’ll consider it. As a disabled skeptic, it would make my day.

I agree. We’re about good minds, and we should accept them no matter what the bodies that house them look like.

While we’re talking about advocating equality…

…let’s not forget that other gigantic issue, racism. The secular movement ought to be clearly on the side of the angels on that one, too, and we need to listen more to people of color. I know well the phenomenon of speaking at secular events and looking out to see that sea of paleness — I swear, I could work on a tan off the reflected light from those audiences. And the only way to put more black and native American and Asian faces in the seats is to put more of them on the podium.

We do have a problem with the white assumption of privilege. And the scary thing is that some people think giving a minority a seat at the table excludes a white person.

The study, called ‘Whites see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing’, by Michael Norton and Samuel Sommers, suggests that white Americans surveyed think that they are now more widely discriminated against than black people, and that this supposed ‘anti-white bias’ is a bigger societal problem than the real anti-black bias.

Would you believe that the average white person in this study rated anti-white bias as more prevalent than anti-black bias in the current decade? I was flabbergasted on reading that — that’s insane. “Reverse discrimination” is an imaginary problem — white people get all the advantages by default in our society. I know. I’m one of the lucky melanin-deficient individuals.

That link had a perfect image that I had to steal, simply because it illustrates the situation so well.

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Right now, I get more requests to come speak than I can possibly manage; you know that bigger names like Dawkins or Harris or Dennett are impossibly swamped. We aren’t going to be at all discomfited if a meeting organizer asks a brown woman of wit and intelligence to speak — in fact, a more diverse roster of speakers is more likely to make your meeting interesting. A community of ideas is not going to blossom if we keep recycling the same few communicators of the same limited backgrounds.

This never happens to me, either

Tara Smith is off at a science conference, and she tried to buy some souvenirs from a Retail Sales Guy.

[RSG]: But you can’t be a scientist!

[Me]: I can’t?

[RSG]: No, you don’t look like a microbiologist.

[Me]: Um, what exactly does a microbiologist look like, then?

[RSG]: Uh…

[Me]: Because I’m pretty sure that I am one. (Rummaging through bag, digging out ASM nametag). Yep, that’s my name, and that’s the microbiology conference logo right there.

[RSG]: But you’re too pretty! You should be in Hollywood.

Wait, you mean it’s not just an atheist problem? Women, I don’t know how you cope: you’re held to a higher standard than men on your looks, but at the same time, if you’re looking good, you’re judged not smart enough to be a scientist.

I have had the opposite situation, though, where people look at me, guess my occupation, and say “college professor”. I don’t quite know what it is, because I do share a family resemblance with my father, who was a diesel mechanic (but didn’t have a beard. That must be it!)

How could you, Minnesota legislature?

I leave the state for a weekend, and what happens? The Rethuglican brats passed a vote to have a referendum to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage in Minnesota. We’re about to go through a nasty long election cycle in which the sanctimonious assholes who want to dictate how you run your private life will be on the television every night, preaching at me. It is simply appalling that we’re going to have to waste so much time struggling for what ought to be a basic civil right against hordes of whining, petty, hateful, smug suburbanites.

Here’s the bill.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PROPOSED.
An amendment to the Minnesota Constitution is proposed to the people. If the
amendment is adopted, a section shall be added to article XIII, to read:
Sec. 13. Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a
marriage in Minnesota.

So few words, so much contempt for so many human beings.

Thank the fine bigots at the Minnesota Patriarchy Council and the Catholic Church for pushing this one through and guaranteeing that nothing of substance will be accomplished in the legislature in the next year and a half. Maybe, at least, the state media will be happy to be flush with all that Mormon money that will be incoming.

In case my fellow Minnesotans want to know who the enemy is, here’s a list of the votes. It’s almost perfectly split on party lines, with all Democrats but two voting against it, and all Rethuglicans but four voting for it. Yes, my local Republican representative voted to oppress minorities; all I can say is that he sure didn’t get my vote in the last election, and never will.