CDD

Oh, those wacky mixed-up Christians and their warped authoritarianism. There’s this…thing… going around called Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD), in which Heads of Households (HoHs; there are lots of acronyms here) are encouraged to spank their wives. That’s right, it’s always husbands doing the spanking — anything else would violate God’s natural order, of course.

Christian Domestic Discipline, or CDD as its adherents call it, is a movement that seeks to carry out God’s will. Which specific plan of God’s? Oh, you know, just that all women obey their husbands fastidiously — a dynamic that CDD thinks is best maintained through doling out out corporal punishments. Its few thousand practitioners, however, claim that it’s not domestic abuse.

The very-serious practitioners have this discipline have conveniently put together a 50 page guide to spanking your wife (pdf) — somehow these obsessive cranks always get carried away trying to justify their abuses. It’s terrible and ridiculous. Read the thing, and all you learn is how much these kooks want to infantilize women.

I get email

Sometimes it might even be well-meaning, even when I suspect it probably isn’t.

Dear PZ,

You need to get over your obsessive phase with the shallow feminism displayed by Internet “feminists” and begin to think critically about the world again. Yes, vaginas are objectively gross. This is essentially an objective fact, except for “feminists” who believe being a feminist means women poop butterflies and rainbows, such as yourself. (I’m disappointed, as a biologist you should know better.) This isn’t because women are gross. It’s just part of our biology. You know what else is gross? Balls.

Many people, including comedians, have talked about balls being disgusting. Somehow I doubt you’d be all butthurt over this, for instance http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/vw576k/stand-up-whitney-cummings–balls-are-disgusting

Those are also funny commentaries on genitalia by comedians. Yet because they’re about men, not those oh-so-fragile women who dare not hear that their genital-that-is-an-orifice is gross, it’s funny. Hypocrisy, much?

Honestly, PZ, you have gone from a critical thinker into a stereotype of feminism. I know groupthink is hard to break, but if you don’t break it, you’re only doing the world and yourself a disservice. I hope you can, if not for your sake, then for the sake of the freethought movement. And if not for the sake of the freethought movement, then at least for the sake of a rational feminism that is not on a witch hunt for good people who organize rallies to fight sexual violence, but happen to think body parts that ooze are gross, regardless of the sex they belong to. As it stands, you’re doing that rational feminism a disservice. And by unintentionally helping to discredit feminism by affirming the stereotypes about feminists, you’re hurting women in the long term, despite your (hopefully) good intentions.

Best wishes,

Nancy

Is that a fallacy of the excluded middle I see up there? Why, yes it is! Has Nancy ever considered the possibility that there other attitudes somewhere in between “Yuck, that’s gross and disgusting!” and “Oooh, pretty butterflies and rainbows!”? And really, “objectively gross”? How can you say a subjective impression like that is at all objective?

As a biologist, I do know better. All this talk about “grossness” is culturally shaped. Apparently, many people now regard pubic hair as gross — is that an objective truth, too? A great many people have no objections to fluids and squishy oozing things and slippery slimy stuff all over the place — again, it’s cultural conditioning that calls reveling in that abnormal.

I am impressed with the twisty kind of rationalizing that ends up arguing that not finding vulvas hideous and horrible is hurting the cause of feminism. What next? Declaring that the complexions of black people are objectively horrible, and therefore avoiding saying how much more delightsome the skin of Europeans is would be racism?

Also, my balls are very sensitive and delicate, and I find your rude dismissal of their beauty very hurtful.

Putting the profit in rape

Kickstarter has a lovely new project to fund: a self-published book on how to seduce women. Well, if you call this seduction.

All the greatest seducers in history could not keep their hands off of women. They aggressively escalated physically with every woman they were flirting with. They began touching them immediately, kept great body language and eye contact, and were shameless in their physicality. Even when a girl rejects your advances, she KNOWS that you desire her. That’s hot. It arouses her physically and psychologically.

And that’s one of the milder recommendations from the author of this book. I am relieved that I was never exposed to these kinds of ‘dating tips’ back when I was a-courtin’—I might be even more of a jerk now, and I’d probably be living alone.

If you’re appalled that such a book should be so grossly rewarded, register a complaint with Kickstarter.

Do Texas legislators have some kind of bet on who says the dumbest thing?

I have to ask, because a Texas Republican has just argued that abortion needs to be banned because fetuses are masturbating.

As the House of Representatives gears up for Tuesday’s debate on HR 1797, a bill that would outlaw virtually all abortions 20 weeks post fertilization, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) argued in favor of banning abortions even earlier in pregnancy because, he said, male fetuses that age were already, shall we say, spanking the monkey.

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” said Burgess, a former OB/GYN. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

Hey, I watch embryonic zebrafish do all kinds of flips and kicks at an age before any of the descending motor outputs have grown into the spinal cord. Motor activity is simply not a necessary indicator of cognition.

But also, I think the good Christians of Texas ought to regard this as an argument for abortion — the sinful little self-polluters must be punished!

The saga of Scott Adams’ scrotum

Scott Adams is up to his old obliviously obtuse act again. You may recall that the creator of Dilbert is an apologist for creationism, a pathetic anti-atheist wanker, and a narcissistic sock puppeteer, but did you know he’s also an obnoxist sexist pig?

Oh, right, you did already know that.

OK, but now he’s revising his personal history and making up stories about being a poor oppressed man, crushed by the matriarchy.

Eventually, corporate America excreted me. My bosses explained that I was unqualified for any sort of promotion because I had boring DNA and a scrotum. That’s a true story, by the way. Reverse discrimination was a big thing in California in the nineties. And for what it’s worth, that was not the first time my scrotum had caused me trouble.

Yeah, the “reverse discrimination” thing is a give-away. It’s a load of hooey.

Now maybe, just maybe, some individual men were mistreated in such a way; women have the ability to be jerks, too. So you might suggest that possibly he was one of those few. Except Zeno did the research: a year after he was fired from his job in 1995, when it was still fresh in his memory, Adams published a completely different account of his dismissal.

I’d told all of my bosses I would resign if they ever felt my costs exceeded my benefits. One of the benefits, of course, was the positive PR. I get interviewed often. Anyway, in the spring of 1995 I got a new boss, and I reiterated my offer to resign if asked. A few weeks later he asked. The reason given was budget constraints. I’m pretty sure it was a local management decision, not one from the top.

It’s funny how his scrotum has now become nothing but a convenient bag to hold his contrived excuses.

Hot tip for comedians: Humor pieces are supposed to be, you know, funny

Wayne Nutnot, a professional “comedian”, begins this fascinating essay with the statement, “I am a feminist.” But his main point — his only point is that “vaginas are icky”.

Vaginas on the other hand are finicky and, objectively, well– gross. There’s just no other way to put it. They are covered in hair. They ooze and slime– and that’s when you’re doing a good job! Which, frankly, isn’t often. Unlike the always responsive penis, your vagina simply doesn’t reward hard work. Eating pussy often feels like a difficult chore. Like vacuuming or doing the dishes using your tongue if the dishes were covered in smoked salmon that’s been sitting in the sun for a day.  No thank you!

Follow-up essays will explore the mysteries of girls’ germs and cooties, and to class up the joint a bit, a connoisseur’s dining column on boogers, worms, and paste.

If you want to read something where someone addresses the clown more seriously, here you go.

I’m a professional “biologist”!

Vox Day/Theodore Beale really is hilariously easy to trigger into paroxysms of foolishness. He now refers to me as a professional "biologist" in those lovely scare quotes, because he thinks his understanding of “genetic science” is better than mine. He explains what he meant by his remarks that he, a white man, and NK Jemisin, a black woman, are not equal.

You see, Africans are pure homo sapiens sapiens.  Non-Africans are not. NK Jemisin, being of African extraction, is almost surely more purely homo sapiens sapiens than I am.  Or, for that matter, than PZ Myers is. 

"Previous research has revealed that Neanderthal DNA can be found in the genomes of everyone who isn’t of African extraction. But, as Pääbo said, "The Denisovans had contributed DNA only to people in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Australia, and other places in Melanesia." In other words, modern humans entering Asia interbred with Denisovans. But the Denisovan DNA didn’t wind up circulating to other areas of the world the way Neanderthal DNA did."

So, everyone who isn’t African possesses DNA from other homo species, including Homo neanderthalensis and what is either Homo denisova or Homo sapiens denisova.  This is why I often mock those who believe in both evolution by natural selection and human equality, because humanity is not only NOT all the same under our skin, we are not, according to current genetic science, even all entirely the same subspecies.  If we apply their idiot logic, then I was actually claiming that I am not fully equal to Jemisin rather than the other way around.

Pure what? What is a “pure” human? Every single person on this planet belongs to the same identical species, Homo sapiens, so his distinctions by differences in alleles is irrelevant. I must also mention that his habit of capitalizing the binomial name is a bit irritating. We teach a class in science writing here that hammers on a lot of the scientific conventions, and we literally tell our students that one of the first signs you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t know basic biology is that they get the punctuation wrong.

The existence of individual variants, even regional patterns, is an expected aspect of the genetic complement of a population. A species is not ever assumed to be genetically homogeneous, so it’s ridiculous to point to one member with a particular admixture of genes within a group and say they’re more a member of the group than someone else with a slightly different genetic complement.

It’s pure typological thinking. Theodore Beale has a crude version of 19th century biology (to be generous) rattling around in his head, and he thinks it makes sense.

Oh, look, Sinfest has a comic just for Theodore.

newknowoldass

Theodore Beale, racist asshat (and not embarrassed by it)

I recently highlighted NK Jemisin’s speech in Australia, which pointed out the disgusting degree of racism still common in the US. One small part of the speech noted a remarkable recent occurence.

…the membership of SFWA also recently voted in a new president. There were two candidates — one of whom was a self-described misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole. In this election he lost by a landslide… but he still earned ten percent of the vote.

It was clear who she was talking about: flaming hatemonger and regressive thug Theodore Beale, who also goes by the name Vox Day. Not a good person, a really nasty, unstable, vicious wackaloon. And of course, Vox Day noticed and flew into a furious snit, demanding apologies and threatening lawsuits, because he’s so annoyed at being called a racist.

So he wrote a post denying the accusations and making his demands. He also insists that he can’t be kicked out of the Science Fiction Writers of America because he’s a paid-up lifetime member.

If you go to his page now, here’s a sample of what you’ll find.

Reality isn’t racist, Mr. Sanford. Neither is history. They simply are. And you can’t escape the fact that Ms Jemisin lied about me and about the state laws of Texas and Florida. As some of my Australian readers have already pointed out, Ms Jemisin has no idea what she’s talking about concerning Australian race relations either.

Oh, that doesn’t sound so angry or racist, you may be thinking. But what you’re seeing there is the stripped-down, cleaned-up version of his original racist rant, probably revised when he realized that threatening lawsuits for being called a racist while flinging racist insults was probably not a wise idea.

Fortunately, screen shots of the original tirade were captured. It’s rather different. Another short excerpt from the ugly:

So, perhaps their assertions should be taken with at least a small grain of salt. And it should be obvious that, being a libertarian, I am not actively attempting to take away anyone’s “most basic rights”. Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious reason that she is not.

She is lying about the laws in Texas and Florida too. The laws are not there to let whites “just shoot people like me, without consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence,” those self-defense laws have been put in place to let whites defend themselves by shooting people, like her, who are savages engaged in attacking white people.

Keep in mind that Jemisin is black. Here’s Theodore Beale coming right out and saying that while she’s human, she’s not fully equal to a white man, himself (and please, his invocation of “genetic science” is reeking bullshit). And then he says that the racist “stand your ground” laws some states have in place are there to protect white people like him from savages like her.

Or how about this?

Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without significant external support.

Racist as hell.

Hmm. Why do you think he felt it necessary to cut that kind of racist noise out of his post?

There is now a rising swell of people calling for Beale’s expulsion from the SFWA (and apparently there are provisions within the organizations by-laws that allow for that). It sounds like a good idea to me. Remember, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and Beale certainly is setting a low standard. I’m surprised they’ve let him poison the organization for so long.

Then comes the tricky question. What about the 10% who actually voted for that turd?

Oh, wait, I didn’t dig deep enough into the sewer. Beale did not edit his complaint; he posted a cleaned-up version for circulation. The racist rant is still online in all of its feculent glory! The man has no shame at all.

Just how racist is America?

This 11-year-old boy, Sebastien De La Cruz, can really belt them out. Here he is singing the national anthem:

It’s an awful song, but De La Cruz can cope — I hope he’s getting some serious voice training.

But…do you want to hear how people reacted to “a beaner singing the national anthem”? No, you probably do not. There are so many proud and unabashed racists in this country.

The facts are that De La Cruz is a native American citizen and the son of an American Navy veteran. But he’s brown.

Television “science”

Are you a film crew person looking for work in the UK? Multiple opportunities have opened up for the crew for a documentary!

A new Covent Garden-based film company seeks a producer of marketing and distribution, a researcher/presenter, a camera operator, a sound person, a runner, and an editor, for its first documentary, called Laughing with Women. Why are women, on average, slightly less funny than men? Does gold-digging in particular impair women’s joke-making ability? If women publicly reject gold-digging, do they become as funny, or funnier than men?

If the radical and revealing street-based social experiment at the centre of our documentary proves gold-digging does make women less funny (as pre-production research suggests) then our findings will make headlines around the world, our film’s two minute teaser trailer attached to all those news and blog articles. The full documentary will be shot to a broadcast-quality standard and format, giving mainstream television companies worldwide the opportunity to purchase broadcasting rights (if they’re feeling brave enough) whilst we maintain a virtually guaranteed revenue stream from our already established hardcore of supporters and fans around the world, who, along with everyone else we intrigue, will be able to enjoy Laughing with Women on newly launched pay-per-view channel, Vimeo on Demand (VoD) – where VoD itself takes a very modest 10% cut. The documentary has the potential to be translated into several languages – gold-digging a familiar if hidden story in every country, until now.

Positions available…

Producer of marketing and distribution

Researcher/presenter

Camera person

Sound person

Editor

All positions paid at the minimum national wage or above, to be negotiated.

Shooting dates…

The main shoot, testing the documentary’s key hypothesis, and the kind of fireworks it will generate, will take place from August 1st, for 10 days, in central London. Eight to ten other shooting days will be organized for soon after. If interested in getting involved, please email your show-reel and/or CV, along with a paragraph or two saying hello, explaining in a little detail why you are specifically interested in working on Laughing with Women – and what your individual take on it all might be – also outlining your availability. Interesting respondents will be contacted for a Covent Garden meeting soon, where the whole plan, and a closely linked follow-up project can be discussed.

That isn’t a documentary. They’re not building a story around an established science fact, they’re inventing a premise that they simply assume is true, and are then designing an “experiment” (more likely a contrived set of sight gags) to “prove” their claims on video. I can roughly predict what they’re going to do: they’re going to approach women, insult them by suggesting that they’re venal gold-diggers, and then demonstrate that angry women don’t have much of a sense of humor about sexist assmonkeys harassing them. Hypothesis proven! Of course, if women were actually funnier than the men in their sample, you know that wouldn’t get aired — they have a prejudice, and by god, they’re going to make it appear true.

And then they hope that people will be “brave enough” to make their video go viral when it confirms conventional bigotry. If their little dog-and-pony show doesn’t get picked up any broadcasters, it isn’t because they’re afraid to pander to stereotypes — turn on your TV and look, that’s never a problem — but because this “documentary” will be so patently slanted and dishonest that it is a slap in the face to real documentaries everywhere.

Wait a minute…they’re looking for a people to do camera and sound, a produce, a presenter, and an editor, for a show that is going to be a series of confrontations and requires almost no writing. So there is basically no crew at all right now, just a no-talent hack sitting on his ass in his office dreaming of putting together a show to prove to the world that women lack a sense of humor and are all gold-digging bitches. He sounds like every MRA in the world.

I called it. This is the dream of no-talent hack Tom Martin, who brings nothing to the project other than a resentment of women.