I didn’t do it!

Although I was actually in Guayaquil the day before brave heroes despoiled another cracker&hellip:

In response to criticisms by the nation’s Catholic bishops regarding pro-abortion and anti-family language in Ecuador’s new proposed Constitution, a group of people entered a chapel in Guayaquil, grabbed the Eucharistic host that was exposed for adoration, tore it apart, spat on it, and stepped on it, according to ACI Prensa.

…I was actually a thousand kilometers away on the island of Santa Cruz when the action went down. Clenched fist salute, anyway!

Note that the quote is from the crazy anti-choice site, LifeSite, and that the “anti-family language” is actually pro-family planning language, and is a generally good thing unless you you’ve been infected with a fanatical hatred of contraception and abortion by a nominally celibate man in a dress.

Party in Oklahoma!

All sensible people want to get rid of the shrill kook and raging homophobe Sally Kern from the Oklahoma government — and she has some competition in the coming election. Get out there and party with Ron Marlett at the end of this month, and raise a little money for his campaign!

From Ron Marlett, Democratic candidate

to remove Sally Kern from the public payroll

Dear Friends,

I wanted to let you all know of the “Rock Your Freedom” concert and rally we have scheduled for Saturday, August 30th from noon to whenever the last band hits its last power chord. It will be held at Eldon Lyon Park which is just west of Rockwell Avenue on NW 36th.

For friends living outside of Oklahoma, I offer an opportunity to experience famous Oklahoma hospitiality. Bring sun shade, lawn chairs and kick back and celebrate the freedom of music. We’ll also be raisng our voices to let Sally Kern know that her brand of neo-conservative tyranny will no longer be the rule of this state.

Hope to see you there,

Ron Marlett

If you can’t attend secure contributions can be made from Ron Marlett’s web site. Look for the blue button in the upper right corner. Posted and expanded by Jim Nimmo on his own initiative.

Take me back to the Galapagos

I’ve been gone for 11 days now, and I’m not having a happy re-entry. Trying to get out of Quito this morning was a nightmare — we were up at 3:30am to catch a 4:00am shuttle to the airport for a 6:30am flight, and in order to leave Ecuador they make you stand in line for over 2 hours. Do the math, and you’ll note that we barely made it. Then our destination was Miami. There’s some storm on the way here, the airport is packed with people trying to flee, and our flight is not until 8:30pm…so we’re just stuck in an airport concourse all day, hoping our flight will get us out of here tonight.

I made the mistake of actually looking at the news last night before going to sleep. What? John Edwards imploded over yet another peccadillo that is no business to the electorate? And worse, Obama pandered to the religious lunatics by groveling before the vapid and cheerfully toxic RIck Warren of the Saddleback Church? I saw a few clips of that sorry spectacle, and once again Obama is making me regret having to vote for him this year. Please, please, let’s not ever nominate a spineless quisling to run for the presidency, OK? At least Barry Lynn offers exactly the right criticism of this move, which cheered me a little bit.

Maybe Lynn should run in the next election…

Anyway, I’m ready to go back to the islands with virtually no internet connection and limited news access.

Another poll for your Monday morning… Canadian style

Canoe’s recent poll asks: Do you believe physicians should have the right to refuse medical treatment if it is against their beliefs? Scroll down to the bottom of the right hand side of the page to find the poll.

To clarify, as it’s been brought up that this is a poorly worded poll: based on the story behind it, it is referring to doctors who refuse their patients medical treatment that will help them based on their religious beliefs.

But nevermind anyways. Apparently this poll was closed just after I posted it. So ignore the link, but feel free to comment on the topic if you like.

Now luckily common sense is already winning out with 61% of the ~2300 voters voting no. However, that still leaves close to 40% of voters who believe this practice is OK. Let’s get to work!

This poll brings up a good point of discussion, I think. I personally have heard of many stories of, for instance, unmarried women having to find a new family doctor because they wouldn’t prescribe her birth control, due to the doctor’s religious beliefs. Obviously, I think this situation is beyond ridiculous.

From LisaJ.

Fragments of a shipboard talk

Since it has been a long time since I contributed any content to Pharyngula…here’s something. I was asked to give a brief talk on the ship, so I’ve tossed my written draft below the fold. With these short talks I like to write the story first, but when I get up on the stage and actually perform it, I don’t bring notes or anything like that, so what is actually said follows the structure of what I wrote, and some of the wording comes through, but it tends to be rather different. Probably a lot different —I know I extemporized a fair bit on the last half. This is all you get until I’ve had a good night’s sleep, though.

[Read more…]

I shall return!

We have had a fabulous week in the Galápagos, and are slowly working our way back — we’re in Quito tonight, getting up for a 4am shuttle to the airport tomorrow morning, with an 8 hour layover in Miami which means we won’t get home to Morris until after midnight. We’re ready to fall over, but look — we’re happy!

i-c62025e2a38b73aaa74d5c1394fc461c-mary_and_pz_on_santa_cruz.jpg

The guestbloggers will have to hold down the fort for at least another day, but I’ll be back in action soon with a lot of stuff to report. Patience!

By the way, can any of you name the two famous islands behind us in this picture?

“Brainwashed” by god into killing her child

LisaJ here again.

Wow. Now here’s a story that just disturbed me to no end. Little Javon Thompson’s mother, 21 year old Ria Ramkissoon, became a Christian at a young age, but when her local pastor disappointed her by pleading guilty to molesting young boys, she left her church and was taken in instead by what is now being described as a dangerous religious cult (I’d like to make the point that even plain ‘ole regular Christianity is a dangerous cult, but that’s beside the point). This cult, called 1 Mind Ministries, is headed by a 40 year old, I’m assuming woman, who calls herself Queen Antoinette, and it appears that the relatively small group lives together and operates under the extremely god-driven Queen’s direction.

What happened to Javon, Ms. Ramkissoon’s little boy, in 2005 is what has me so disturbed. The ONE year old child was denied food and water for two days because he wouldn’t say “Amen” after finishing his meals. This outrageous punishment killed him, and none of his caretakers intervened to save him. Police say that the group viewed this child as a demon, and that they left his lifeless body in a backroom of their apartment for more than a week while they simply prayed to god to raise Javon from the dead. Instead, the boy’s body began to decompose and no resurrection occurred, obviously.

Reportedly, after the cult members accepted that Javon would not be resurrected they stuffed his body in a suitcase. His mother lovingly added mothballs and fabric softener to the contents of the suitcase, and occasionally sprayed some disinfectant inside. The case, with the child’s body still inside, was found earlier this year, after it had been stored behind a home in Philadelphia when the cult relocated to New York City, over a year earlier.

Javon’s mother Ria and four other cult members face first degree murder charges in this case. Ria’s mother, however, contests that her daughter was brainwashed by the cult. Her attorney has recently declared that “the members of this cult, who were more than twice her age, were calling the shots,” and that “she bought the program hook, line and sinker.” So because this young woman was reportedly brainwashed, does this then mean that she should not be prosecuted with her child’s murder? To put this into perspective for myself, I was raised catholic, and there are certainly many faulty decisions I made while growing up that I consider to largely be the fault of my indoctrinated mindset. But murder? I have a really hard time swallowing the brainwashing excuse as justifying your active involvement in your child’s murder. And besides, even if her supposed brainwashing is really at fault here, someone this stupid to allow someone to talk her into effectively killing her child, under the guise of god, should be put away where she is no longer a danger to herself or anyone else.

This disturbing story highlights perfectly the dangers that society faces for teaching people to believe in whatever god they’re confronted with, instead of thinking for themselves.

A problem with normal

MAJeff here.

LisaJ’s Danio’s (hangover error) posts about Usher Disease (I and II), as well as my own syllabus preparation for the upcoming semester, have gotten me thinking about issues of intersexuality. In particular, her noting of the geographic issues related to the prevalence of various forms of Usher disease reminded me of the concentration of five-alpha-reductase deficiency in parts of Turkey, Papua New Guinea and the Dominican Republic.

Some folks are probably asking, “What is this intersexuality thing?” Basically, it’s a range sexual development disorders in which people’s bodies develop in such a way as to place them in a “border region” of sex. Hermaphrodism is what people usually think of, but there is a wider range of conditions, including hypospadias and congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

If any of you have read the novel Middesex you already have an idea of what I’m talking about with five-alpha-reductase deficiency. People with this condition are genetically XY, but during fetal development something happens such that in many people the testicles may not descend, the scrotal sac may not fuse, and the penis can appear more like a clitoris (such an ambiguous thing is often called a microphallus). Because of these developmental issues, people with this condition are given a female gender designation at birth. Once puberty hits, though, the testicles descend, the penis may enlarge, the “labia” fuse to form a scrotum, and other male secondary sex characteristics appear. One of the things I find so interesting about this particular condition is the way that it has been routinized in the patterns of life and cultural systems in parts of the Dominican Republic. The people living in these areas have their own term for the condition, “guevedoce” (“eggs/balls at 12”).

In class, I often use a video produced by the Intersex Society of North America, an organization that shut its doors this years in favor of a different advocacy organization, the Accord Alliance. In particular, this segment of that video talks about, and interviews, someone who identifies as a guevedoce, as well as his family. (YouTube won’t allow it to be embedded.)

It’s this issue of how people with various conditions are integrated into social life that is my primary concerns. One of the things intersex activists have been challenging for the past decade or so is infant genital surgery. When children with some sexual development disorders are born with ambiguous genitals they are quite literally made to fit into one of the existing gender categories. “Fixing” them means surgery to make their genitalia more closely resemble “normal” genitals. If the phallus falls inside the middle range, where it’s “too long” for a clitoris or “too short” to be a penis, well, it’s snip-snip time. Many of the decisions to engage in surgery are based not on medical necessity, but social preference. Questions such as, “Will he be able to stand to urinate?” or “Will her partners be turned off by such a large clitoris?” or “How will the parents deal with looking at such a strange body while changing diapers?” can become more important issues when determining whether to operate than such things as “Will cutting part of the phallus off affect this child’s sexuality later in life?” (Ann Fausto-Sterling has an excellent discussion of these issues.)

Not surprisingly, surgeries do affect folks. Many report a loss of sensitivity from having such operations performed on them. (As one of my students once said to the other women in the class about the possibility of having half a clitoris and no sensitivity, “Wouldn’t it just make you tense all the time!”) It’s more than loss of sensitivity, though. There are often other complications that require more than one surgery. Ongoing pain or recurrent infections are not uncommon.

This is one of those spaces where I get all anti-normalization. These people’s bodies are being normalized–they are being reconstructed so they fit within normative assumptions about what genitalia must look like based on statistical averages. And, it’s done without their consent. Intersex activists have been successful in increasing awareness in the medical profession, but there are still issues. Many of these flow from the gender order we have in this society. The problem with such medically unnecessary genital surgeries isn’t these babies’ bodies, but social beliefs about what those bodies are supposed to look like.