Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé and the crime of love

Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé has died after being released from prison.

On January 10, 2014, we learned that Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé had died in Cameroon. Roger had been sentenced to 3 years in prison because he sent another man an SMS that said "I’m very much in love w/u" – in a country where it’s illegal to be gay.

The details of how Roger died are not yet clear – but what we know is this: In prison he faced physical abuse and medical emergencies. Out of jail he was attacked and turned away from employment, school, shelter and even critical healthcare.

Actually, we are learning a little bit more about how he died, and it’s horrible. Mbédé had testicular cancer, and had surgery last summer, but had ongoing problems that needed treatment. His family refused him that treatment; they wanted him to die.

Alice Nkom, a lawyer who worked on his case, said he died on Friday after his relatives removed him from the hospital where he had been seeking treatment for a hernia.

She said: ’His family said he was a curse for them and that we should let him die.’

The only curse here was his hateful family.

How do you measure willingness to rape?

I was sent this horrifying data table: an awful lot of people think there are circumstances in which force is legitimate to use in order to get sex.

whenisrapeOK

Now an interesting twist. The source for that table is defunct, but someone else bought the url fearus.org and has put together a fairly detailed analysis of the claims. Before you jump to the conclusion that it was some MRA trying to debunk it, though, read the analysis: it’s substantial and impartial. The original study by UCLA researchers does exist, but it’s more complex than this oversimplified version can accurately reflect.

The actual data contained answers that were on a 5-point scale, rather than just a simple yes/no, so there’s some crunching going on here. But let’s crunch it some more.

Excerpts from the paper reveal that only 24% of men categorically rejected all use of violence against women…so apparently, about 76% of us considered some of those circumstances a possible reason to rape. That is disturbing.

Also disturbing: only 44% of the women categorically rejected all uses of violence against them. So 56% have absorbed the idea that they can be at fault for leading men on? Weird.

Anyway, the fearus site is an interesting effort to dig into the original data. It’s a little off — it seems obsessed with the idea that it is a gross error to simplify a 5-point scale to a yes/no answer — but it does make the excellent point that it is disgraceful that it is so difficult to get access to the original, published scientific data.

I have something in common with Ally Fogg

I knew I wasn’t alone in this. The most common dismissive argument I get from the men’s rights crowd gets repeated to me on a daily basis. It’s tired and old and stupid, and is a prime example of projection. Ally Fogg gets the same thing.

So what is this rancid little snotbubble of idiocy? It’s the tedious cliche that says any man who says or writes something which could be perceived to be sympathetic to women or feminism must only be doing so in the hope of getting a shag.

My critics usually follow up with something about how I’m also fat and old and have a beard and am boring and look hideous. Apparently, I’m so desperate because of my appalling unattractiveness that I’ve had to stoop to feminism to try and get laid.

It’s all wrong. Well, not the old homely part, but the rest is stupidly false. I’m not interested in having sex with anyone but my wife — I have, surprisingly, had a few outside invitations which I have politely, respectfully, and with much appreciation turned down. I have a good strong relationship with my wife so such suggestions only make me uncomfortable. It’s like I have been dining every day on gourmet meals prepared by an attentive chef, and someone offers me a delicious pastry on the side…I’m not at all hungry, it’s pretty easy to demur.

But feminism is good for one thing. It may not get you a quicky shag, but it turns out that respecting another human being as a person and treating them as an equal might sometimes get you into a long term mutually happy relationship.

I also like to point out that with 7 billion people on the planet, half of them women, you’re going to have sex with an infinitesimal fraction of them, no matter how much of a Don Juan you are. If you only see people through the lens of your penis, you have lost sight of the overwhelming majority of human possibilities.

Sikivu tells it like it is

She tears into a phenomenon that bothers me, too: white evangelical ministers jumping ship for atheism, being embraced by atheists, and tainting atheism with the Christian culture. In particular, there’s this awful parasite, Ryan Bell, who’s only just trying out atheism for a year, which is simply ridiculous — it’s not a set of superficial practices, it’s a mindset. What’s he going to do at the end of the year, erase his brain?

A thriving brand of secular tourism can now be definitively filed under the category “stuff white people like”:  Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta has sponsored a crowd-funding campaign for a white male former pastor named Ryan Bell who—in a bit of brilliant PR stagecraft—“decided to…give atheism a try” for a year.  As a result of his “experiment” Bell was fired from two Christian schools.  Currently the campaign has far exceeded its $5,000 goal, generating over $16,000 from 700 plus donors in one day.  Bell joins a jam-packed, largely white, mostly Christian cottage industry of religious leaders who are capitalizing off of untapped reserves of atheist dollars, adulation and publicity by jumping onto the “maverick ex-pastor” bandwagon. 

But there’s more to it than that. American culture as a whole tends to be racist, and atheists are following the majority.

In studies conducted by Princeton University researchers, white job seekers with criminal records were slightly more likely to be called back for and/or offered entry-level jobs than African American job seekers with no criminal record. According to lead researcher Devah Pager, “Even whites with criminal records received more favorable treatment (17%) than blacks without criminal records (14%). The rank ordering of (these) groups…is painfully revealing of employer preferences: race continues to play a dominant role in shaping employment opportunities, equal to or greater than the impact of a criminal record.”

That’s the problem: that racism cuts people off at the level of denying them opportunities, so they don’t get a chance to demonstrate competence, providing a self-perpetuating basis for the myth that they’re less qualified. It’ll never end unless everyone consciously opens the doors and encourages more participation; unless we recognize the handicap that assumed white dominance places on all others who have slightly more melanin.

She also points out one egregious example of failure by atheist organizations:

For example, although many atheists profess a commitment to ‘science and reason’ there are still no atheist STEM initiatives that acknowledge the egregious lack of STEM K-12 and college access for students of color. In their zeal to brand predominantly religious communities as backward, unenlightened and unsophisticated in the exceptionalist ways of Western rationality, atheist organizations are MIA when it comes to discussions about STEM college pipelining, STEM literacy and culturally responsive recruitment and retention of STEM scholars and professionals of color in academia.” While white atheists give jobs, “atheist” pulpits and big bucks to American secular tourists numerous black churches support STEM tutoring, mentoring, college access and scholarship programs to confront the gaping educational divide between white and black America.

There are, unfortunately, a substantial number of atheists who declare that anything beyond simply stating there is no god is ‘mission creep’. They can cheer when a prominent scientist like Richard Dawkins endorses atheism, but recognizing that a commitment to science means a heck of a lot more than clapping really hard at a talk is too much for them. They like science, and isn’t atheism supposed to be just about affirming what they already like? Oh, and of course, affirming how stupid people are who don’t like the things we do.

But taking that next step and realizing that a commitment to science means investing and working towards expanding knowledge of science is hard. Exercising political will is hard. Demanding social change is hard. But that’s what atheists need to do if they are to be something more than an empty label.

I’ve been seeing first-hand what it takes to expand an idea, and atheism isn’t doing it. Science is. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to people at HHMI and NIH, and their focus is crystal clear. They prioritize getting science done, and they don’t give a damn whether it is a white hand or a brown one doing it.

The demographic trends are perfectly obvious: America is going to become a majority-minority country in the next few decades (states like California and Texas are already there), which means white people aren’t going to be the dominant default anymore. At the same time, when these grant agencies look at who is doing science, they’re mostly white and minority populations are largely excluded. They can do the math, they’re scientists. It means we can’t afford to discriminate against the largest subpopulation as a pool of potential scientists.

So there are programs in place at all the big science funding agencies to encourage an expansion of that pool, before the trends kill us. Even my little HHMI grant is designed with the goal of giving underserved populations a chance to do science at the undergraduate level.* These represent commitments of money and time to give those who are denied by default assumptions an opportunity to prove themselves. That’s what we need more of, not just lip service.

I know all the major atheist organizations either have a narrower goal, or are making major efforts to grow the atheist community. If your goal is to just grow your membership, it’s always tempting to just focus on the people you’ve already got, and just try to get more. But grabbing a greater share of a shrinking subpopulation is short-term thinking. Long term, you have to invest in recruiting from the faster-growing subset — and the atheist organizations that are still going to be here in the future need to make that commitment now.

*By the way, women are not considered an underserved population in undergraduate education any more. We have no problem getting women involved in entry-level science — the problems come later for women, when it’s time for promotion and moving on to professional status. That’s a ceiling minorities hit as well; these are problems that have to be addressed at multiple levels.

I thought the duty of the police was to support the law

Now some Utah sheriffs are calling for an uprising against gay marriage.

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association on Saturday organized a meeting in Highland, Utah to call for an uprising and to express their opposition to same-sex marriage in Utah, Fox 13 Now Salt Lake City reported.

"The people of Utah have rights, too, not just the homosexuals. The homosexuals are shoving their agenda down our throats," Former Graham County, Ariz., Sheriff Richard Mack said at the meeting.

1) Have they forgotten that there are homosexuals who are people of Utah? 2) The non-homosexual people of Utah have not lost any rights, so they have no grounds for complaint. 3) Could all the homophobes please avoid that phrase “shoving…down our throats” from now on? Save it for the day that there is a law passed that compels all men to have oral sex with another man. That day has not come.

Focus on the Family is coming out with a movie

It’s called Irreplaceable and it’s about…the traditional family. The only allowable kind of family. The family you must have, or face an eternity in Hell after the bigots make your live miserable now.

Watch the trailer and cringe. They start of with a cute little kid talking about the importance of love, and then they start talking about the horrors of modern life: divorce, gay marriage, temporary marriage, single parents, out-of-wedlock births, and they counter it with how much they love the traditional family.

Hey, I grew up in a traditional family, and I have a traditional family — there’s nothing wrong with that. But somehow I can be happy with my lifestyle without insisting that everyone else must live exactly the same way.

One unusual thing here though: yes, go ahead and read the youtube comments. Everyone is calling them out on Focus on the Patriarchy’s hypocrisy. I predict this movie will bomb spectacularly. FotF is one of the most hated organizations around.

‘Corrective rape’ aimed at ‘curing’ lesbians

All right, I have to stop reading world news first thing in the morning. What did I encounter today? A crisis in South Africa — there is an epidemic of really stupid men who believe the way to ‘cure’ lesbians is gang rape.

"If we want to finish lesbians and gays they must be forcefully raped," says one, grinning at the camera. "A man must go back to his manhood. Women must be women. She must be ready and willing to have sex."

"They must be raped so that their gay and lesbian behaviour can come out," adds another.

The third raises his voice, points two fingers at his temple and concludes: "This gay and lesbian thing must end. I say bang bang bang!"

If I were a woman, those men would turn me into a lesbian, I think. Also, no illusions here: this isn’t about converting women to heterosexuality. It’s about intimidation and power. Some of the events in the story are about women being executed after the rape.

The Wall Street Journal op-ed pages are the worst

It’s supposed to be a respectable newspaper, but it has always published the most awful trash — and the latest example is a paean to white people. Not just any white people, though, but specifically well-bred WASPs. He favors a hereditary ruling class defined by race.

The U.S. once had an unofficial but nonetheless genuine ruling class, drawn from what came to be known as the WASP establishment. Members of this establishment dominated politics, economics and education, but they do so no longer. The WASPocracy, as I think of it, lost its confidence and, with it, the power and interest to lead. We are now without a ruling class, unless one includes the entity that has come to be known as the meritocracy—presumably an aristocracy of sheer intelligence, men and women trained in the nation’s most prestigious schools.

It just gets worse and worse. The country has gone downhill to the point where mongrels like Obama and Ted Cruz can achieve high political position. He also sneers at education, other than the social primping done at Andover and Yale; but even they’ve gone to the dogs ever since they began dropping their age-old quotas on Catholics and Jews, lessening the number of legacies automatically admitted, and using racial preferences to encourage the enrollment of blacks.

I know we’ve all been busy rolling our eyes at that racist misogynist homophobic shitbat, Phil Robertson, but maybe we should spare a moment to recognize that not just the A&E network, but one of the most influential newspapers in the US, loves its racism.

Vikings football is rather hard to support now

Not that I was ever much of a booster, but this behind-the-scenes look at how team management operates by Chris Kluwe is disappointing. He was fired from his position as a punter after he’d achieved some notoriety for his progressive positions and lack of religiosity — and he now explains that it’s likely that it was because of those positions. And man, it sounds like he was working in an ugly environment.

Throughout the months of September, October, and November, Minnesota Vikings special-teams coordinator Mike Priefer would use homophobic language in my presence. He had not done so during minicamps or fall camp that year, nor had he done so during the 2011 season. He would ask me if I had written any letters defending "the gays" recently and denounce as disgusting the idea that two men would kiss, and he would constantly belittle or demean any idea of acceptance or tolerance. I tried to laugh these off while also responding with the notion that perhaps they were human beings who deserved to be treated as human beings. Mike Priefer also said on multiple occasions that I would wind up burning in hell with the gays, and that the only truth was Jesus Christ and the Bible. He said all this in a semi-joking tone, and I responded in kind, as I felt a yelling match with my coach over human rights would greatly diminish my chances of remaining employed. I felt uncomfortable each time Mike Priefer said these things. After all, he was directly responsible for reviewing my job performance, but I hoped that after the vote concluded in Minnesota his behavior would taper off and eventually stop.

My limited experience with football coaches suggests that this isn’t an unusual attitude they take. Kluwe also stirred up concern because he said a few harsh things about the Catholic Church — I can relate.

On Feb. 11, I received a message saying, “Please fly under radar please,” from a phone number I would later learn belonged to Rick Spielman. The text message presumably concerned several things I had tweeted that day regarding Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to step down. Spielman later called me and asked me to stop tweeting about the pope because angry people were ringing up team headquarters in Winter Park, Minn. It should be noted that my tweets concerned the lack of transparency and endemic institutional corruption of the Catholic Church, which among other things allowed child abuse to flourish. I also pointed out how that applied equally to financial and government institutions, and reiterated that I had nothing against anyone’s religion, only against the abuses of power that institutions allow. Nonetheless, I complied with Spielman’s request and did not tweet anything else about the pope that day, or in the future.

Now I’m really looking forward to the American Atheists convention in Salt Lake this April — Kluwe is the keynote speaker. I hope I can meet him there, and shake his hand.

But then there are a lot of good people who will be speaking there: Barry Lynn, Maryam Namazie, Matt Dillahunty, Greta Christina, Sikivu Hutchinson, Vyckie Garrison…you should register now!