Has Patton Oswalt assaulted any women, disparaged trans people, made stupid comments about the IQ of black people, or clubbed any baby seals? Just asking, because atheist celebrities seem to have a penchant for flaming out in the most horrible ways possible, and I rather liked this routine. He’s still an OK guy, right?
As I was walking through the halls to my lab, I noticed that the students have been waging a little meme war on the corkboards scattered around the building. I haven’t had to work with students much at all this year, so it’s always good to see a reminder of how wonderful they are.
Here’s an example. At the top, just off center, the College Republicans are advertising with the slogan, “Where women are not afraid to be women. While men are not afraid to be men.” That’s an oddly fearful concern — people are not afraid to be who they are in other campus groups. It’s already been defaced, though: someone wrote “bigotry is scarier than human rights” across it. Also they’re surrounded by an “It’s OK to be non-binary” sign and an ad for a discussion in conversational Spanish. Poor babies.
To the right, the College Republicans try again with a sad, limp NPC meme sign. That never worked, people, except in a self-referential way. Your opposition is flamboyantly rainbow-colored, while you’re the boring gray guys.
Meanwhile, in response to the trite & feeble sloganeering of the CR, we’ve got…this awesome bit of over-the-top mockery.
The Gender Binary is an Imperialist Social Construct
Support Trans People of Color
Signed by Queer Devil Worshippers for a Better Future, one of our many progressive groups on campus.
Yes, it’s a real organization. It’s even been written up in the Daily Caller, which seems to be aghast.
“I’m looking to start a Satanist group at Morris to address the budding conservatism on this campus — which I find abhorrent,” student Reed Larsen explained in the email.
“I’m hoping the group will have a social justice platform and further such a platform through good ol’ devilish revelry,” Larsen also said.
Larsen has christened himself as “Vold Mother” of “Queer Devil Worshippers for a Better Future.”
For the group’s logo, Larsen chose a classic, circle-emblazoned satanic pentagram festooned with the rainbow colors of the gay pride flag.
Their response is interesting — it’s an attempt to minimize the influence of the campus conservatives who put up that NPC sign, and also tack up TPUSA crap everywhere.
The “budding conservatism” on the University of Minnesota, Morris campus consists of handful of groups — a gun group, a pro-life club — which boast perhaps two dozen members combined, a source who chose to remain unidentified told Campus Reform.
That’s a generous estimate. I don’t think they take into account that it is the same handful of people signing up for all the conservative clubs, so they may be counting some of them two or three times. Also note how they are cowering fearfully, afraid to be identified…not because there is a serious threat to them, but because someone with blue hair might laugh at them.
Have I ever told you how happy I am to be at this campus? Because I am. It’s a good place. If you’re applying to colleges right now, you should consider applying.
I recommend you choose the side that’s winning the meme war, though.
The same group of people cheering on the destruction of families at the border are also calling for an end to late term abortions — force those women to bring damaged babies to term, even if it kills them both! Pious politicians are crying over the fact that a woman and her doctor might decide to terminate a pregnancy even shortly before it is due, or during labor, as if they just want to kill babies on a whim. That is not the reality, of course. Read this story of a woman who was 35 weeks pregnant when she got terrible news.
The neurologist delivered more bad news: additional brain anomalies. My little daughter would likely never walk, talk, swallow, or support the weight of her head. She would require brain surgery to extend her life, but no surgery could ever cure her.
“What can she do?” I asked. “Does a child like mine just sleep all day?”
He winced at the question. “Children like yours are not generally comfortable enough to sleep.”
She didn’t have much choice.
Why was she offering me these choices? Didn’t she know how deeply I loved my baby? I tried to respond, but could only manage a question, “There are abortions for women like me?” I was 35 weeks pregnant. I wondered if there had been a mistake.
“We don’t know.” She said. “We used to send women to Kansas. But we can’t anymore.”
I understood. The doctor who performed abortions for women 35 weeks pregnant had been shot by a man who followed him to his church. Somewhere in my brain, the memory of that news story revealed itself along with the stark understanding that I was entering a world in which people might want to shoot me, too, depending on my choice.
There was only one clinic that could take care of her, it was 2000 miles away, and she had to pay $25,000 up front to get it done. That’s the situation we’re in right now, where essential health care is locked up and hidden away by controlling men and Christian bible-wallopers.
But hey, you want a little good news? The city of Minneapolis has approved the construction of a new Planned Parenthood facility.
The commission approved two land-use applications for the three-story building, which will replace Planned Parenthood’s existing Uptown clinic, located at Lagoon & Emerson. The project will allow Planned Parenthood to triple its annual patient capacity in Uptown, according to Jen Aulwes, communications director of Planned Parenthood North Central States.
The organization will provide all of the same services in the new building that are available in the existing building, including OB-GYN exams and pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease testing, according to Aulwes. The center’s services will include medication abortion.
It looks like a lovely building.
I notice the rendering left out the mob of ignorant assholes with signs screaming at patients trying to get in. That makes it much prettier.
He lies about everything, no matter how trivial.
Despite his citrusy complexion and raccoon-like pale circles around his eyes — like the ones caused by goggles inside a tanning booth — the company line is that it’s all just “good genes,” a senior administration official told the New York Times.
He must think we’re idiots to believe that.
Unfortunately, he’s right about that, at least for 26% of the country.
The US government has been separating children from their parents at the border, and at this point they do not even know exactly how many children have been torn away from their families. HHS has admitted that the number “was certainly larger than the 2,737 listed by the government in court documents”, and that they’re going through over 47,000 case files to sort out the mess that shouldn’t have been made in the first place. It’s going so slowly that they’re about to throw up their hands and give up…so they’ve got a new rationalization.
The Trump administration says it would require extraordinary effort to reunite what may be thousands of migrant children who have been separated from their parents and, even if it could, the children would likely be emotionally harmed.
Jonathan White, who leads the Health and Human Services Department’s efforts to reunite migrant children with their parents, said removing children from “sponsor” homes to rejoin their parents “would present grave child welfare concerns.” He said the government should focus on reuniting children currently in its custody, not those who have already been released to sponsors.
It would destabilize the permanency of their existing home environment, and could be traumatic to the children,White said in a court filing late Friday, citing his years of experience working with unaccompanied migrant children and background as a social worker.
Where was your fucking concern for the children when you snatched them from the arms of their mothers, you goddamned pompous bureaucrat? If you sincerely wanted to avoid traumatizing and destabilizing children, the place to start practicing what you should have learned as a social worker was in refusing to tear apart families in the first place. If separating children from their ‘sponsor’ homes would cause them emotional harm, you’ve just admitted that separating them from their natural families had to have been devastating.
These criminal fuckers need to be burned to the ground.
Here’s who America is cheering for today:
Many of us are also thinking this:
Enjoy yourselves, wherever you fall on the chart. My Superb Owl party will consist of a delicious dinner of pea soup and something on Netflix.
I’m not so sure about all the details (did the dogs consent?), but yes, I want a future where a junior progressive congresswoman can make everyone lose their shit spectacularly.
Jeez. Jordan Peterson really hates human rights and gender issues. Those things really fire him up, which suggests there’s something deeply wrong with him. So he’s been meeting with Doug Ford to complain, and it’s disturbing that Ford thinks Peterson is providing credible input, especially when Peterson is raging about basic human decency.
The faster the Ontario Human Rights Commission is abolished, the better @fordnation. There isn't a more dangerous organization in Canada, with the possible exception of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education: https://t.co/xB3IbUV7yu pic.twitter.com/4zsh8tfdb9
— Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) October 10, 2018
Oh, yeah, he also hates education. But that’s nothing: man, is Peterson pissed off about the American Psychological Association.
The American Psychological Association (APA) recently released its Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. It manages to be simultaneously predictable, reprehensible, infuriating and disheartening — no mean feat for a single document. Make no mistake about it: this document constitutes an all-out assault on masculinity — or, to put it even more bluntly, on men.
The coup of the APA undertaken by the ideologues is now complete. The field has been compromised, perhaps fatally. And the damnable guidelines provide sufficient, but by no means exhaustive, evidence of that.
He’s very upset that the APA argues that traditional masculine roles can do harm (I imagine they’d say the same thing about traditional feminine roles, but this document focuses on men and boys), and translates their words to be men who socialize their boys in a traditional manner destroy their mental health.
How horrible! Except it’s true. “Traditional” here means narrow and limited, and they are quite right to say that wedging kids into a predetermined role can be damaging. Why should this be considered controversial? Here’s the specific quote from APA Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men (pdf):
Boys and men have historically been the focus of psychological research and practice as a normative referent for behavior rather than as gendered human beings (O’Neil & Renzulli, 2013; Smiler, 2004). In the past 30 years, researchers and theorists have placed greater emphasis on ecological and sociological factors influencing the psychology of boys and men, culminating in what has been termed the New Psychology of Men (Levant & Pollack, 1995). For instance, socialization for conforming to traditional masculinity ideology has been shown to limit males’ psychological development, constrain their behavior, result in gender role strain and gender role conflict (Pleck, 1981, 1995; O’Neil, 2008; O’Neil & Renzulli, 2013), and negatively influence mental health (e.g., O’Neil, 2008, 2013, 2015) and physical health (Courtenay, 2011; Gough & Robertson, 2017). Indeed, boys and men are overrepresented in a variety of psychological and social problems. For example, boys are disproportionately represented among schoolchildren with learning difficulties (e.g., lower standardized test scores) and behavior problems (e.g., bullying, school suspensions, aggression; Biederman et al., 2005; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). Likewise, men are overrepresented in prisons, are more likely than women to commit violent crimes, and are at greatest risk of being a victim of violent crime (e.g., homicide, aggravated assault; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015).
Those are facts: boys exhibit more learning disabilities, men are more likely to commit violent crimes. Why? The APA argues (and backs up with literature citations) that one source of conflict in the lives of boys and men is the social constraints we place on them — that we socialize boys to belittle education and to deal with conflict with violence. Peterson knows this is true; he’s bragged about wanting to beat people up. These are also real problems that, if you are genuinely concerned with the welfare of boys and men, you ought to want to address.
So what is Peterson objecting to? He wants to insist that the nature of boys is instinctively aggressive.
First, there is no scientific evidence that aggression, per se, is learned. Like fear, pain, hunger and thirst, rage is instinctual. The biological evidence for this is crystal clear and unshakeable.
Whoa. It is definitely true that anger has biological correlates — sure, take blood samples from people in fights, their adrenaline is way up, as is their blood pressure, etc. I don’t even know what he means by “instinctual”, but he seems to think it implies a response that is ungovernable by reason. But that isn’t true! If someone steps on your foot, do you instantly ball up your fists and punch them in the face, in the same way that you’d pull your hand back from a hot stove? You might “instinctively” feel anger or distress, but normal men and women don’t respond automatically with aggression…and you probably also cool quickly if the offender expresses remorse and an apology. You know, those learned responses we have to help diminish aggressive reactions, so we don’t end up in jail or in a bloody melee. I think it’s crystal clear that most of us have social and psychological mechanisms for reducing violent responses, which is a good thing to encourage.
But let’s play Peterson’s game. Let’s give him the idea that males are naturally, biologically, fixedly aggressive, and that you can’t unlearn it. Then where’s the harm in raising them in an environment that encourages peaceful resolution of conflicts and teaches alternative methods for cooperating? If he’s right, it won’t make a bit of difference, that boys will be battering each other and assaulting the girls, and he and his culties will be standing smugly aside giving the thumbs up to all the helter-skelter viciousness. Boys will be boys, you know, and if the APA wants to try and civilize the little thugs it won’t change a thing.
But Peterson wants to also argue that better behavior can be taught — it’s just that the only way to do that is via traditional masculinity, taught by men, and that the real problem is all those fatherless families where the boys are being let down by their mothers.
So the idea that aggression is learned is not only wrong, it’s backward. Aggression is easy. Civilized behaviour is difficult. It is the integration of aggression that is learned. And it is primarily men who teach it, particularly to aggressive boys.
To back that up, he points to the elevated rates of social problems in fatherless families, which is true. He doesn’t seem to appreciate the compounding factors involved here: that these families are often also produced by economic stress and disruption, that fathers are often the ones responsible for the abandonment of their families and failure to teach that “integration of aggression”, and that he doesn’t show how enforcing traditional norms somehow corrects the problems. Nope, none of that. Blame for any problem of learning disabilities or increased incarceration rates falls only on those single mothers — the ones who typically step up and take the majority of the responsibility for raising the kids in those fractured families, for which the fathers are blameless.
And also the APA is the problem. Look at the venom frothing in this characterization:
The primary axiom of the ideologues who generate this kind of propagandistic discourse is that Western culture is to be regarded as an oppressive patriarchy: unfairly male-dominated, violent, racist, sexist, homo-, Islamo- and trans-phobic — and as uniquely reprehensible in all those regards. There is no doubt, to give the devil his due, that human history as such is a blood-drenched nightmare — and that is also true of Western civilization. However, to view humanity in general or the West in particular as solely characterized by its pathology is indication of a profound and fatal failure to discriminate good from bad.
Wait. The APA guidelines are some horrible propaganda that blames all of Western culture, and only Western culture, for oppression, and that it holds all men at fault for this “blood-drenched nightmare”? Wow. I’ve gotta read this dramatic story of feminist accusations against the whole of Western civilization. So I did.
I was disappointed.
Rather than raging against the patriarchy, the document is strongly and appropriately centered on the welfare of men and boys. It’s a set of reasonable suggestions for how psychologists ought to regard the role of men and boys in their lives, and it’s essentially entirely positive. This is a pro men paper, that encourages professionals to respect and treat the unique problems of men and boys. I read it looking for any hint of a “kill all men” attitude, or any sign of victim-blaming, and it just isn’t there. There also isn’t anything about blaming only Western culture.
It’s a long document, so I’ll just pull out the 10 short guideline recommendations. You tell me where this looks anything like Peterson’s mischaracterizations. I tried hard to find the all-out assault on masculinity
or the reprehensible, infuriating and disheartening
content.
- Psychologists strive to recognize that masculinities are constructed based on social, cultural, and contextual norms.
- Psychologists strive to recognize that boys and men integrate multiple aspects to their social identities across the lifespan.
- Psychologists understand the impact of power, privilege, and sexism on the development of boys and men and on their relationships with others.
- Psychologists strive to develop a comprehensive understanding of the factors that influence the interpersonal relationships of boys and men.
- Psychologists strive to encourage positive father involvement and healthy family relationships.
- Psychologists strive to support educational efforts that are responsive to the needs of boys and men.
- Psychologists strive to reduce the high rates of problems boys and men face and act out in their lives such as aggression, violence, substance abuse, and suicide.
- Psychologists strive to help boys and men engage in health-related behaviors.
- Psychologists strive to build and promote gender-sensitive psychological services.
- Psychologists understand and strive to change institutional, cultural, and systemic problems that affect boys and men through advocacy, prevention, and education.
OMG. Boys and men have multiple aspects to their social identities? Horrendous. Everyone knows we should make The Hulk our ideal at all times and in all situations.
“Encourage positive father involvement…”, how evil. Oh, wait. Except that’s what Peterson thinks is good, too.
They want to reduce aggression, violence, substance abuse, and suicide? WHERE DOES THIS INSANE ANTI-MEN AGENDA COME FROM? Probably feminists.
We apparently need a stronger call for gender insensitive psychological services. Men thrive when treated insensitively. Because we’re tough.
I think the real objection Peterson has is that the APA doesn’t endorse the reductionist biological determinism that he, a non-biologist with a demonstrable ignorance of biology, wants to assign to human behavior. The APA doesn’t subscribe to his crackpot theories, imagine that.
Last week, I posted about my deep regrets at ever being involved with New Atheism, and oh boy, have I been getting the hate mail. The most amusing thing was seeing an atheist facebook group filling up with complaints about how awful I am, and simultaneously whining that they never heard of this New Atheism thing, what four horsemen, and hey, wasn’t that just some nasty slur the theists threw at us? Memories are so short, and so easily diverted into safe and easy denial.
But I am not alone in my rejection of the Old Guard. The Guardian is asking “Whatever happened to New Atheism?” as if we didn’t know. I’ll tell you what happened: it foundered on the egos of its leaders, and their desire to steer it onto the shoals of misogyny, racism, and war. Hmm…maybe the “Four Horsemen” were appropriately named after all.
The article tears into the Four Horsemen, but especially into Harris (Hitchens was spared the worst of it by dying, I would guess).
The intellectual path followed by Harris is most balefully illustrative of the poisonous seeds that were always present in New Atheism. At one point here, the men admire themselves for their willingness to consider truths that might be politically dangerous. For instance, Hitchens says, if the notorious hypothesis of the 1994 book by Richard J Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve – that black people are genetically inferior in intelligence to white people – were true, it shouldn’t be ignored. Luckily, Hitchens hastens to add, that example is not viable. Later on, however, Harris brings up the argument again. “If there were reliable differences in intelligence between races or genders,” he begins, before Hitchens cuts him off dismissively. “But I don’t think any of us here do think that that’s the case.”
Hitchens might have been too generous. In 2018, Harris caused a storm by inviting Murray on to his podcast for a weirdly uncritical two-hour conversation. Murray, Harris claimed, had been the victim of a terrible “academic injustice” for the way in which his notions about the inherent cognitive inferiority of some “races” had been rejected by the scientific establishment. (Lest you worry about Murray, be reassured that he is still a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which is funded by the ultra-conservative billionaire Koch brothers.)
This is where the preeningly fearless insistence on entertaining uncomfortable questions can so easily lead. Harris ended up in the company of the “alt-right” and the so-called “intellectual dark web”, populated by people who portray themselves as valiant enough to say what you’re not allowed to say any more, and are constantly invited on rightwing talk shows to say it. For some, New Atheism was never about God at all, but just a topical subgenre of the rightwing backlash against the supposedly suffocating atmosphere of “political correctness”. In its messianic conviction that it alone serves the cause of truth, this too is a faith as noxious as any other.
This was the gigantic strategic error of the New Atheism. The time was right to make a strong appeal to humanist values and grow a movement around basic decency and fairness, and instead, the most influential voices decided to draw on the nascent alt-right and get rich quick off regressive values — they aimed the ship of atheism straight into the Trumpkin swamp, a mob of people who are explicitly anti-anti-religious, and now all they can do to maintain some popularity is to double-down on the ignorance and racism and sexism that that group likes. Reason and rationality have been turned into empty buzzwords. It’s a real shame.
Hey, look — the esteemed scientist who helped shape my education is getting acknowledged for his work. Not the work he struggled with in getting me to finally graduate, but his work on zebrafish. Chuck Kimmel is getting a lifetime achievement award from Oregon Academy of Science.
“Importantly, Chuck saw the virtue of zebrafish as a genetic model for studies of vertebrate development, due to the relative simplicity of its embryonic cell lineage compared to other vertebrates, its optical clarity during embryogenesis and its rapid generation time,” Bowerman wrote. “It is truly remarkable how Chuck’s insight has had such a global impact, with hundreds of laboratories throughout the world now using zebrafish as one of the two leading models for vertebrate development and behavior.”
In case you are wondering, the #1 model is the mouse. Zebrafish are #2, but at least you don’t need to disembowel Minnie Mouse to get access to embryos.
I knew Chuck would do good in his career. Way back in the day we also knew zebrafish would be a popular tool.
