I tried this once before, but wasn't able to build enough momentum in time.
Different platform this time.
Click, sign it, make the world a better place:
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/a-35-hour-work-week-will
Read more about why this is a fantastic idea on my post about the first attempt:
http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2011/10/dramatically-reduce-unemployment-by.html
Showing posts with label United States. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United States. Show all posts
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
Wednesday, 17 July 2013
Cops Shooting Unarmed Black Men
Do you remember the very large, loud, and extended public outcry over the deaths of Jason Kemp, Jordon Hatcher, Ibragim Todashev, David Silva, John Torretti, Daniel Sanez, Roy Jacobs Jr., Thomas Schroeder, Jacob Grassley, Zachary Premo, John Schaefer, and Jerry Waller?
All of these men were killed by the police, all of them just in the past 7 months (2013). In almost every case, they were unarmed.
Schaefer and Waller were both armed... they were both 70+ year old men, on their own property, with legally owned handguns, which they had out for self defense - one had a pitbull in his yard and had called the cops himself, the other was responding to the same burglar alarm that attracted police attention.Premo also had a handgun - one which he was carrying legally - though from the police report, he apparently didn't not touch it before being shot.
Hatcher was unarmed, but apparently resisted arrest.
Grassley's cellphone was assumed to be a gun, and he was shot while fleeing police.
Sanez was in handcuffs at the time he was shot.
Torretti was hit repeatedly with a baton by officers while pinned to the ground by other officers, unable to move.
Silva was so intoxicated he could barely stand up. Between 3 and 7 deputies beat him with batons until he dies. Officers then attempt to collect cellphones from witnesses that may have video on them.
Kemp was unarmed, and not fighting, when he was shot at point-blank range in his home, when he refused to let the police in without a warrant.
Jacobs had called the cops himself, to turn himself in when he found out he had a minor warrant, and the cops shot him in front of his family the moment they walked through the door.
You can be forgiven for not remembering the public uproar, the protests and articles, the petitions and signs, because there wasn't any. In fact, unless you happen to live in the city in which these men were killed, and follow the local news closely, you most likely have never heard of any of them.
You may think that this just goes to reinforce what we already know - that black men are constantly being unjustifiably killed by law enforcement, and except for the most extreme cases, the media ignores it.
Except there is one major twist. Not a single one of those people were black.
Most of them are white.
It turns out it is very challenging to find examples of cops killing unarmed white men.
Again, at first this sounds like it is supporting the idea of racial bias among cops.
But it isn't hard to find because it is so rare.
It is hard to find because when the media reports these cases, no one mentions the race of the suspect / victim.
On the other hand, in EVERY case that cops shoot an unarmed black person, race is explicitly mentioned.
So, yes, there really is a media bias. And it is toward perpetuating the belief that black men are victimized by cops.
They don't do this for any political agenda. They do this because media makes money via ratings, and nothing gets ratings better than outrage. Unfortunately, relatively little objectively reported facts generate outrage, so the only choices are to make stuff up, or to play up any extremely rare cases that happen.
This is true not just in sociopolitical issues, but in general.
When a plane crashes (such as at San Francisco last week) everyone in the country hears about it.
That crash killed 2 or 3 people.
It was the first commercial plane crash in the US in 4 years. In that span roughly 150,000 (one hundred and fifty thousand) people died in automobile crashes in the US.
3 vs 150 thousand.
Of the 150 thousand, zero made national news headlines.
The 3 deaths from a plane crash made national news BECAUSE IT IS SO RARE.
The lesson to learn from this is that if you see something on the news, that alone is very strong evidence that it almost NEVER HAPPENS. Anything you read in the paper is rare. If it was common, then it wouldn't be news.
One black man was shot in the back while in hand cuffs at a commuter train station in Oakland in 2009. There have been calls to disarm the entire transit police force. The grand total of potentially unjustified shootings by the agency, in its 37 year history, was 3. In 2008 alone there 123 murders by private citizens in Oakland.
To look at it another way: if something were really a widespread phenomenon, it would be shown by statistics. In order to make people believe something which is actually untrue, the focus has to be on individual isolated anecdotes. If all the attention of a supposed trend is on one instance, it would be a good idea to look at the stats before extrapolating that it is common.
This most recent "outrage" involves, instead of law enforcement, a neighborhood watch captain.
People are pretending that this is representative of - well, anything.
Where are all the other cases of neighborhood watch captains killing black youth in the past decade?
Having trouble thinking of the exact cases? Might it be because there are none?
A sample list of one single isolated incident does not make a trend. There is no trend. The exact details of the Zimmerman / Martin case don't matter, because this case is not representative of anything. Its just a random unfortunate thing that happened, and, just like the 12 cases listed above, if Martin had been white, and every other detail had been exactly the same, you and I would never have heard of him.
This doesn't reveal widespread racism among neighborhood watch captains. It reveals that media like to sensationalize anything they can (surprise!), and even more it reveals an eagerness of Americans to see racism and injustice. A bunch of white guys shot by police doesn't fit the narrative that we want, for some reason, to believe, so we ignore them. Instead we focus on the one or two cases of black men shot by police, pretend that they represent a larger trend, and presumably get some sort of emotional fix by being angry and outraged and raging against the system.
What does this accomplish?
Well, one thing it won't accomplish is meaningful reform, because there is no problem to begin with, therefore nothing to reform.
What it will do is reinforce the feeling among Blacks that law enforcement is the enemy. This will increase the likelihood of confrontational behavior. And that will end up causing more black people to be stopped, detained, arrested, and, in some unfortunate circumstances, occasionally killed. Because we, society, all want to believe it so bad, it makes it more likely to happen. It can become self-fulfilling prophesy. Or, at least it could, if not for police over compensating for the public perception, because despite any cultural propensity toward resistance to law enforcement that may be reinforced by media and activist's misrepresentation of profiling, in the past year fewer unarmed Black men have been killed by cops than non-Black. Proportionately less, even after considering population demographics.
And WAY less, considering violent crime rates.
We finally get to the huge issue that almost everyone (except white supremacists) desperately wants to ignore, and will even actively deny when the topic comes up in these kind of discussions: Black men commit more violent crime (proportionate to population demographics) than white men, (or than women of any race). In fact, the difference in rates by race is about as high as the difference between the genders.
Everyone can accept without apology or explanation the (accurate) fact that men commit violent crime - somewhere on the order of 5 to 20 times more often than women do. Nobody claims that this apparent disparity is because of police profiling or prejudice in the justice system or inherent bias in the law against males. No one even claims it has to do with poverty or history or education. We see the statistic that between 1980 and 2008 males committed 89.5% of all homicides, and we take it at face value.
(Of course, as I've pointed out previously, the general public tends to think women are more likely victims, despite 76.8% of homicide victims being male - when facts don't fit the popular narrative, we are quick to ignore them)
There is almost definitely some truth to racism affecting conviction rates: black youth are arrested for drug crimes at higher rates than white, despite similar rates of drug use, and blacks are given longer sentences for equivalent crimes by judges and juries.
But while a cop may look the other way when he finds a white kid smoking pot, cops don't generally let homicide slide with a warning, regardless of skin color. And these statistics are only looking at the actual commission of homicide, not of sentencing, conviction, or even arrest. Considering that, the numbers are far too dramatic to be explained away by faulty reporting or any other justification.
The data shows blacks are more likely to be murder victims than whites: 50.3% white victims vs 47.4% black (which, given the higher population of white people, means blacks are murdered disproportionately more)
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf
However, the rate at which blacks commit murder is even higher in comparison to whites: 45.3% white murderers vs 52.5% black. Again, considering the higher population of whites, this represents a pretty dramatic difference:
20 to 175. That is almost 9 times as high.
If black youth did not commit violent crime any more often than white youth, than (like with drugs), any difference in their treatment could only be due to racism. But that is simply not the case.
It sucks that this is true. I don't like admitting it, never mind talking about it, or going out of my way to draw attention to it. But it has to be said. It has to be admitted.
We have to take that into consideration before we call it racist for a person to be more wary of young black males than young white males. We have to take it into consideration before we call it racist if cops stop young blacks more than young whites. We have to take it into consideration before we call it racist that more blacks are in prison than white. And we even have to take it into consideration before calling it racist that cops may be in situations where they mistake cellphones and wallets for guns more often when the suspect is black.
Racism is assuming that any specific person is a criminal, regardless of their individual actions, because of their race. But thinking any random person of a particular race is more likely to be a criminal is not racism, if it is in fact a statistically accurate belief. It is no more racist to fear a black stranger more than a white one, than it is to fear a male stranger more than a female one. As it happens, both groups commit violent crime more than their counterparts at roughly the same rate.
Given that a young black male is statistically 9 times more likely to murder you than a young white male, wouldn't you expect someone who feels vulnerable to be more likely to cross the street to avoid one? Given that a young black male is 9 times more likely to commit murder than a young white male, wouldn't you expect them to get more police attention, get into more altercations with police, and, as a result, get shot more often by police?
If you wanted to break that trend, what would likely be the best way to do that?
By trying to convince everyone that the statistics - which are confirmed by each of our individual experience - are wrong, and convincing cops to give black suspects the benefit of the doubt?
Or by working to reduce violence in the black community?
If the latter, does repeatedly telling black youth that cops are the enemy further that goal? Or does it work against it?
Does telling black youth that they are victims of the system, that they are discriminated against by every aspect of society, that their own actions have little if any bearing on their perception by white America, do these things encourage black youth to become non-violent, responsible adults?
These are rhetorical questions. They do not. Blacks are not unfairly victimized by cops, but that message being repeated constantly by both media and activists does encourage them to be disrespectful, to resist arrest, and to use violence against police officers. It does encourage them to use crime as a means of getting ahead, as opposed to education. It does teach them that they have no responsibility for or role in rising out of poverty, that they will be down-trodden no matter what they do.
Every low income young adult in America is eligible for a Pell grant, which can more than cover the cost of tuition, fees, and books at many junior colleges, and a significant portion of costs at public 4 year universities. Everyone who applies for a Pell grant gets one. Yet only 11% of them go to Black youth. Together with the school's own scholarships, any low income person can get a college education.
The lower rate of Blacks with college degrees is not a consequence of institutional racism. Its a consequence of Black people not applying for college. It's the consequence of a lot of individual choices, made largely on the basis of cultural expectations. A person is told constantly that they will not succeed, because the system is against them. So they don't even try. Lacking an education, they stay poor. Being poor, they are more likely to resort to crime. Being criminals, they are more likely to have run-ins with cops. And the cycle continues.
When we choose to protest extremely rare events in an attempt to call attention to a trend that doesn't exist, we perpetuate and reinforce that cycle. It is counter-productive.
As a black male, watching all these well meaning activists actively making the situation worse is hard to watch. Even worse, this inaccurate and destructive message has gone mainstream, and almost everyone is buying into it. It is born of a combination of confusing the past for the present (blacks were at one time discriminated against by society, therefore it must still be happening) and white guilt (if we say that blacks commit more violent crime, that must mean we are racist).
Until we can get past those two things, nothing will improve.
It is very gratifying to people to be outraged. Take a breath, step outside of the group-think, and ask yourself what the problem is, what you want to accomplish, and what the overall effects of your reaction are likely to be. If you are like the majority of outraged people, at best, all you are doing is feeding the advertisers of news media. At worse, you are reinforcing stereotypes are creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. Either way, you probably aren't helping. People enjoy being outraged, but resist it. Think instead.
Do you want more racial equality in America?
Instead of encouraging black youth to hate cops, encourage them to go to college.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Schaefer
> http://www.statesman.com/news/
Jerry Waller
http://blogs.dallasobserver.
Jason Kemp
http://www.thedenverchannel.
Jordon Hatcher
http://www.innocentdown.org/
Ibragim Todashev
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
David Silva
http://www.policymic.com/
John Torretti
http://sacramento.cbslocal.
Daniel Sanez
http://www.elpasotimes.com/
Roy Jacobs Jr.
http://www.spokesman.com/
Thomas Schroeder
http://stjoechannel.com/
Jacob Grassley
http://www.mlive.com/news/
Zachary Premo
http://www.duluthnewstribune.
Full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
All of these men were killed by the police, all of them just in the past 7 months (2013). In almost every case, they were unarmed.
Schaefer and Waller were both armed... they were both 70+ year old men, on their own property, with legally owned handguns, which they had out for self defense - one had a pitbull in his yard and had called the cops himself, the other was responding to the same burglar alarm that attracted police attention.Premo also had a handgun - one which he was carrying legally - though from the police report, he apparently didn't not touch it before being shot.
Hatcher was unarmed, but apparently resisted arrest.
Grassley's cellphone was assumed to be a gun, and he was shot while fleeing police.
Sanez was in handcuffs at the time he was shot.
Torretti was hit repeatedly with a baton by officers while pinned to the ground by other officers, unable to move.
Silva was so intoxicated he could barely stand up. Between 3 and 7 deputies beat him with batons until he dies. Officers then attempt to collect cellphones from witnesses that may have video on them.
Kemp was unarmed, and not fighting, when he was shot at point-blank range in his home, when he refused to let the police in without a warrant.
Jacobs had called the cops himself, to turn himself in when he found out he had a minor warrant, and the cops shot him in front of his family the moment they walked through the door.
You can be forgiven for not remembering the public uproar, the protests and articles, the petitions and signs, because there wasn't any. In fact, unless you happen to live in the city in which these men were killed, and follow the local news closely, you most likely have never heard of any of them.
You may think that this just goes to reinforce what we already know - that black men are constantly being unjustifiably killed by law enforcement, and except for the most extreme cases, the media ignores it.
Except there is one major twist. Not a single one of those people were black.
Most of them are white.
It turns out it is very challenging to find examples of cops killing unarmed white men.
Again, at first this sounds like it is supporting the idea of racial bias among cops.
But it isn't hard to find because it is so rare.
It is hard to find because when the media reports these cases, no one mentions the race of the suspect / victim.
On the other hand, in EVERY case that cops shoot an unarmed black person, race is explicitly mentioned.
(As a result, the only way for me to find all those examples was to go, one by one, through every instance of police shootings in the US, eliminate those where the suspect was armed, and then search for a picture of the victim. Each case is linked at the bottom of this page, along with a link to the list of all police shooting so far this year)
So, yes, there really is a media bias. And it is toward perpetuating the belief that black men are victimized by cops.
They don't do this for any political agenda. They do this because media makes money via ratings, and nothing gets ratings better than outrage. Unfortunately, relatively little objectively reported facts generate outrage, so the only choices are to make stuff up, or to play up any extremely rare cases that happen.
This is true not just in sociopolitical issues, but in general.
When a plane crashes (such as at San Francisco last week) everyone in the country hears about it.
That crash killed 2 or 3 people.
It was the first commercial plane crash in the US in 4 years. In that span roughly 150,000 (one hundred and fifty thousand) people died in automobile crashes in the US.
3 vs 150 thousand.
Of the 150 thousand, zero made national news headlines.
The 3 deaths from a plane crash made national news BECAUSE IT IS SO RARE.
The lesson to learn from this is that if you see something on the news, that alone is very strong evidence that it almost NEVER HAPPENS. Anything you read in the paper is rare. If it was common, then it wouldn't be news.
One black man was shot in the back while in hand cuffs at a commuter train station in Oakland in 2009. There have been calls to disarm the entire transit police force. The grand total of potentially unjustified shootings by the agency, in its 37 year history, was 3. In 2008 alone there 123 murders by private citizens in Oakland.
To look at it another way: if something were really a widespread phenomenon, it would be shown by statistics. In order to make people believe something which is actually untrue, the focus has to be on individual isolated anecdotes. If all the attention of a supposed trend is on one instance, it would be a good idea to look at the stats before extrapolating that it is common.
This most recent "outrage" involves, instead of law enforcement, a neighborhood watch captain.
People are pretending that this is representative of - well, anything.
Where are all the other cases of neighborhood watch captains killing black youth in the past decade?
Having trouble thinking of the exact cases? Might it be because there are none?
A sample list of one single isolated incident does not make a trend. There is no trend. The exact details of the Zimmerman / Martin case don't matter, because this case is not representative of anything. Its just a random unfortunate thing that happened, and, just like the 12 cases listed above, if Martin had been white, and every other detail had been exactly the same, you and I would never have heard of him.
This doesn't reveal widespread racism among neighborhood watch captains. It reveals that media like to sensationalize anything they can (surprise!), and even more it reveals an eagerness of Americans to see racism and injustice. A bunch of white guys shot by police doesn't fit the narrative that we want, for some reason, to believe, so we ignore them. Instead we focus on the one or two cases of black men shot by police, pretend that they represent a larger trend, and presumably get some sort of emotional fix by being angry and outraged and raging against the system.
What does this accomplish?
Well, one thing it won't accomplish is meaningful reform, because there is no problem to begin with, therefore nothing to reform.
What it will do is reinforce the feeling among Blacks that law enforcement is the enemy. This will increase the likelihood of confrontational behavior. And that will end up causing more black people to be stopped, detained, arrested, and, in some unfortunate circumstances, occasionally killed. Because we, society, all want to believe it so bad, it makes it more likely to happen. It can become self-fulfilling prophesy. Or, at least it could, if not for police over compensating for the public perception, because despite any cultural propensity toward resistance to law enforcement that may be reinforced by media and activist's misrepresentation of profiling, in the past year fewer unarmed Black men have been killed by cops than non-Black. Proportionately less, even after considering population demographics.
And WAY less, considering violent crime rates.
We finally get to the huge issue that almost everyone (except white supremacists) desperately wants to ignore, and will even actively deny when the topic comes up in these kind of discussions: Black men commit more violent crime (proportionate to population demographics) than white men, (or than women of any race). In fact, the difference in rates by race is about as high as the difference between the genders.
Everyone can accept without apology or explanation the (accurate) fact that men commit violent crime - somewhere on the order of 5 to 20 times more often than women do. Nobody claims that this apparent disparity is because of police profiling or prejudice in the justice system or inherent bias in the law against males. No one even claims it has to do with poverty or history or education. We see the statistic that between 1980 and 2008 males committed 89.5% of all homicides, and we take it at face value.
(Of course, as I've pointed out previously, the general public tends to think women are more likely victims, despite 76.8% of homicide victims being male - when facts don't fit the popular narrative, we are quick to ignore them)
There is almost definitely some truth to racism affecting conviction rates: black youth are arrested for drug crimes at higher rates than white, despite similar rates of drug use, and blacks are given longer sentences for equivalent crimes by judges and juries.
But while a cop may look the other way when he finds a white kid smoking pot, cops don't generally let homicide slide with a warning, regardless of skin color. And these statistics are only looking at the actual commission of homicide, not of sentencing, conviction, or even arrest. Considering that, the numbers are far too dramatic to be explained away by faulty reporting or any other justification.
The data shows blacks are more likely to be murder victims than whites: 50.3% white victims vs 47.4% black (which, given the higher population of white people, means blacks are murdered disproportionately more)
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf
However, the rate at which blacks commit murder is even higher in comparison to whites: 45.3% white murderers vs 52.5% black. Again, considering the higher population of whites, this represents a pretty dramatic difference:
The rate of homicides committed by white male young adults (18 to 24 years old) was 20.4 offenders per 100,000 in 2008.
The rate of homicides committed by black male young adults was 175.8 offenders per 100,000 in 2008.
20 to 175. That is almost 9 times as high.
If black youth did not commit violent crime any more often than white youth, than (like with drugs), any difference in their treatment could only be due to racism. But that is simply not the case.
It sucks that this is true. I don't like admitting it, never mind talking about it, or going out of my way to draw attention to it. But it has to be said. It has to be admitted.
We have to take that into consideration before we call it racist for a person to be more wary of young black males than young white males. We have to take it into consideration before we call it racist if cops stop young blacks more than young whites. We have to take it into consideration before we call it racist that more blacks are in prison than white. And we even have to take it into consideration before calling it racist that cops may be in situations where they mistake cellphones and wallets for guns more often when the suspect is black.
Racism is assuming that any specific person is a criminal, regardless of their individual actions, because of their race. But thinking any random person of a particular race is more likely to be a criminal is not racism, if it is in fact a statistically accurate belief. It is no more racist to fear a black stranger more than a white one, than it is to fear a male stranger more than a female one. As it happens, both groups commit violent crime more than their counterparts at roughly the same rate.
Given that a young black male is statistically 9 times more likely to murder you than a young white male, wouldn't you expect someone who feels vulnerable to be more likely to cross the street to avoid one? Given that a young black male is 9 times more likely to commit murder than a young white male, wouldn't you expect them to get more police attention, get into more altercations with police, and, as a result, get shot more often by police?
If you wanted to break that trend, what would likely be the best way to do that?
By trying to convince everyone that the statistics - which are confirmed by each of our individual experience - are wrong, and convincing cops to give black suspects the benefit of the doubt?
Or by working to reduce violence in the black community?
If the latter, does repeatedly telling black youth that cops are the enemy further that goal? Or does it work against it?
Does telling black youth that they are victims of the system, that they are discriminated against by every aspect of society, that their own actions have little if any bearing on their perception by white America, do these things encourage black youth to become non-violent, responsible adults?
These are rhetorical questions. They do not. Blacks are not unfairly victimized by cops, but that message being repeated constantly by both media and activists does encourage them to be disrespectful, to resist arrest, and to use violence against police officers. It does encourage them to use crime as a means of getting ahead, as opposed to education. It does teach them that they have no responsibility for or role in rising out of poverty, that they will be down-trodden no matter what they do.
Every low income young adult in America is eligible for a Pell grant, which can more than cover the cost of tuition, fees, and books at many junior colleges, and a significant portion of costs at public 4 year universities. Everyone who applies for a Pell grant gets one. Yet only 11% of them go to Black youth. Together with the school's own scholarships, any low income person can get a college education.
The lower rate of Blacks with college degrees is not a consequence of institutional racism. Its a consequence of Black people not applying for college. It's the consequence of a lot of individual choices, made largely on the basis of cultural expectations. A person is told constantly that they will not succeed, because the system is against them. So they don't even try. Lacking an education, they stay poor. Being poor, they are more likely to resort to crime. Being criminals, they are more likely to have run-ins with cops. And the cycle continues.
When we choose to protest extremely rare events in an attempt to call attention to a trend that doesn't exist, we perpetuate and reinforce that cycle. It is counter-productive.
As a black male, watching all these well meaning activists actively making the situation worse is hard to watch. Even worse, this inaccurate and destructive message has gone mainstream, and almost everyone is buying into it. It is born of a combination of confusing the past for the present (blacks were at one time discriminated against by society, therefore it must still be happening) and white guilt (if we say that blacks commit more violent crime, that must mean we are racist).
Until we can get past those two things, nothing will improve.
It is very gratifying to people to be outraged. Take a breath, step outside of the group-think, and ask yourself what the problem is, what you want to accomplish, and what the overall effects of your reaction are likely to be. If you are like the majority of outraged people, at best, all you are doing is feeding the advertisers of news media. At worse, you are reinforcing stereotypes are creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. Either way, you probably aren't helping. People enjoy being outraged, but resist it. Think instead.
Do you want more racial equality in America?
Instead of encouraging black youth to hate cops, encourage them to go to college.
(P.S. This should in no way be taken as a claim that racism no longer exists.
See my previous posts:heading 14; in which reparations are still due
Race (Whites still winning)
and
Awareness of white privilege VS actually working to change it
for more)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Schaefer
> http://www.statesman.com/news/
Jerry Waller
http://blogs.dallasobserver.
Jason Kemp
http://www.thedenverchannel.
Jordon Hatcher
http://www.innocentdown.org/
Ibragim Todashev
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
David Silva
http://www.policymic.com/
John Torretti
http://sacramento.cbslocal.
Daniel Sanez
http://www.elpasotimes.com/
Roy Jacobs Jr.
http://www.spokesman.com/
Thomas Schroeder
http://stjoechannel.com/
Jacob Grassley
http://www.mlive.com/news/
Zachary Premo
http://www.duluthnewstribune.
Full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Saturday, 6 July 2013
If I Were Elected King of the Country
My new friend asked me a few weeks ago, "what would you change about the world, if you had the power to?"
She said she tried to ask all new people she met that question.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Election day would be a national holiday. No one could be forced to work more than a 4 hour day on election day.
Anyone not registered to vote would pay a small annual penalty with their taxes.
Anyone not registered to vote would pay a small annual penalty with their taxes.
Judges would be subject to recall by popular vote.
Congressional, presidential, and governor terms 6 years.
All term limits would be eliminated.
All elections would be instant run off type (or another equivalent to eliminate "lesser of two evils" votes).
Party, primary, and electoral college systems eliminated.
Party, primary, and electoral college systems eliminated.
Voter initiative process on federal level, and all 50 states.
All campaign related ads would be banned from TV, radio, print, direct mail, and billboards, starting 1 year prior to any election. Each candidate or initiative would receive expanded space in the official election guide. All statements made that could not be verified by an independent 3rd party fact checker would be marked with an asterisk.
No individual could donate more than $500 to any campaign or political organization in a year. No company or corporation could donate any amount to any campaign or political organization. No union, church, or other group could donate without 100% unanimous consent of all members, and then no more than the equivalent of $100 per member. For any amount an individual spent out of pocket for a campaign, they would have to contribute an equal amount to the public campaign fund. All of this would be less important, giving the ban on media ads.
Media (of any form) which reports any mistaken information or error as factual, would be required to report the correction with equal or greater prominence and length of time as the original mistake (if error was headline for 3 days, retraction must be headline for 3 days)
Public school would be paid at the national level, by number of students (regardless of performance). Any outside income (gifts of cash or supplies by parents for example) would reduce funding by 50% of the amount of income (i.e. parent donates $100, then federal funding is reduced by $50), used for the pool, to benefit schools with less generous parents.
Teacher training and classroom curricula would be evidence based
No multiple choice test could be used for assessment. Guiding principal should be teaching for understanding, not just retention of facts.
Preschool and kindergarten would both become mandatory and free.
2 and 4 year college / university would be voluntary, free for any family below median national income.
All college finals would be administered one semester after the end of the class (to test for long-term retention)
Public school teacher salaries would be cut by roughly 5-10% (approximately the amount private school teachers make), principals and administrators by 25-50% (to be within 25% more than teachers). All of this extra money would go to hiring more teachers to reduce classroom size.
Teachers would have at least 15min of prep time for each 55min of instruction.
They would be eligible for overtime after 112 hours per month(equivalent annual hours to other jobs, considering summer and other breaks - after reduced work hours, (see below))
Cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and predictable irrationality would be a required course in middle school, high school, and college (beginning, intermediate, and advanced, respectively).Teachers would have at least 15min of prep time for each 55min of instruction.
They would be eligible for overtime after 112 hours per month(equivalent annual hours to other jobs, considering summer and other breaks - after reduced work hours, (see below))
Drug use would be decriminalized. Selling without a license would not be. Prostitution and gambling would also be legal, (though regulated and taxed).
No law or regulation could stay in effect unless it can be shown to tangibly benefit some individual or society as a whole.No censorship of "indecency" (nudity, sex, language)
Sex ed would be taught in preschool, 5th grade, and 12th grade, each class more advanced and in-depth (the first would be similar to current Jr High level, the last would be equivalent to college Human Sexuality course). It would be a graduation requirement, so no opt out.
It would be illegal to formally teach any child below the age of 18 any form of religion, (other than in a historical or sociological context). This would include attending services.
Churches would no longer be tax exempt.
No government recognition of religion or God, even in a neutral, non-specific way (e.g. "...One Nation, Under God..." or "In God We Trust")
All pronouns would be replaced with gender neutral ones.
All restrooms and locker rooms would be unisex (with individual stalls, and/or separate areas of the room optionally)
Combat and infantry roles would be available to women in the military.
No government or business could mandate different dress codes by gender.
This would include that women could be topless anywhere that men could.
Public beaches and parks would be clothing optional.
All laws on sexual assault, age of consent, marriage, etc would be gender neutral (this would, among other things, inherently legalize gay marriage). No cosmetic surgery (including circumcision and pierced ears) before the age of 18
All subsidies and price controls for feed crops would be eliminated.
Minimum standards for animal welfare would include daily access to outdoors and a diet resembling a "natural" one - i.e. herbivores could not be fed animal by-products, nothing would be fed manure, nor its own specie, nor a reciprocal specie (i.e. Animal A is fed animal B, and animal B is fed animal A)All new cars would be governed to a maximum of 65mph, or to the maximum of the state is is sold in, whichever is lower.
Each lane on any highway with 2 or more lanes in each would direction would have specified lane speeds. A two lane would have a maximum speed of 65 and minimum of 55 in the left lane, and max of 55 and minimum of 40 in the right.
For a 3 lane, from the left, the speeds to maintain would be 60mph, 50, and 40 (each +/- 5mph). A 4 lane would be 60, 55, 50, and 45 (+/-5). A 5 lane would be 60, 55, 50, 45, 40 (+/-5).
For a 3 lane, from the left, the speeds to maintain would be 60mph, 50, and 40 (each +/- 5mph). A 4 lane would be 60, 55, 50, and 45 (+/-5). A 5 lane would be 60, 55, 50, 45, 40 (+/-5).
Speeds on all highways would be monitored by randomly placed, (and periodically moved) radar machines - a combination of the radar systems that say "your speed is:" and the camera detection system that catch red light and toll violators. Like the latter, they would look up registration by plate number, and mail you your ticket.
The first 2 violations would be warning. The 3rd would be a $100 fine. The 4th would be a $500 fine. The 5th would be one week mandatory community service. The 6th would be license suspension for a year.No one could get a drivers license without an intensive driver's ed class (50 hours minimum). It would cover all the basics, plus: changing oil, checking tire pressure / fluid levels, changing a wheel, and safety check - cone tests, parallel parking, driving in reverse - calculating speed, distance, and time, as well as braking distance and impact force at different speeds - fuel economy, basic hypermiling - safe and legal bicycle operation - auto crashes, causes and prevention - practical accident avoidance, using simulator - poor weather handling, rain, ice, snow, fog, and glare - driving with manual transmission. The final test could not contain any multiple choice questions, and would cover all topics, some as hands on skills tests.
Driving class (as above) would have a 2-3 day mandatory refresher course every 10 years - every 5 years before age 25 and after age 60, as well as after every moving violation or accident
No communication device while driving (including hands free) except 2-way radios used in the course of a job which involves driving (truck and taxi drivers, emergency services)
Public safety tax based on weight for all motor vehicles, added to annual registration (i.e. one pays for the additional risk to everyone else caused by their choice to buy a 3 ton SUV rather than a 1 ton car) - based on the grand total public cost of all accidents, divided by the total number of registered cars, proportioned by weight.
Anyone found to be 1% or greater at fault in any auto "accident" would be automatically charged with criminal negligence.
Revoke mandatory airbags, seatbelts, crash rating standards.
Traffic lights would flash green before turning yellow (as in Mexico). They would flash red before turning green (so you know to turn your engine back on)
Stop signs would be considered yield signs for bicyclists (as in Ohio)
All 4-way stop sign intersections would be converted to either a 2-way stop, a traffic circle, or a stop light.
All major one-way streets would have timed / synchronized stop lights.
50% tax on retail gasoline, money used to subsidize public transit.
At rush hour, instead of a carpool lane, the left most lane would be for commercial vehicles (being used for work, not for commuting), transit, emergency services, and people with permanent disabilities only. On highways with 3 or more lanes, the next one over from the commercial / handicapped lane would be for carpools of 4+ people, plus toll road paid by electronic RFID tag
The rate for any remaining income tax would be at least half for earned income (wages / salary / commission) as for unearned income (dividends, capital gains, gifts, prizes).
The tax rate on unearned income would be steeply progressive, with a maximum rate of 99% after $100,000.
The tax rate on unearned income would be steeply progressive, with a maximum rate of 99% after $100,000.
No one could have more than 2 households as tenants, and then only if the tenants share the same parcel that the landlord lives on.
Corporate charters would only be granted for very specific circumstances, where it is demonstrated that the product or service offered could not be provided by a privately held company, and that it is of overall benefit to society. Any charter application which met those standards and was granted would be for a specific and limited time period - 1 year by default, 5 years with requested extension, 10 years considered with an explanation of the need for a longer time period.
Patents and copyright would be good for 10 years, or until a 25% return on investment was made by the patent/copyright holder, or until the applicant dies whichever came first.
Business licenses and fees would be by percentage of net income, not flat amounts.
Business insurance companies would be required to offer a broad range of coverage and deductible amounts, so that small scale and hobby businesses with low maximum potential risk could afford coverage.
Any form of business could be run out of one's residence unless a specific risk or harm to the neighbors could be demonstrated. "Lowering property values" would not in-and-of itself be a valid form of harm.
Employers would not pay for the employees' payroll taxes. The employee would cover the full amount of their own social security and medicare taxes.
Employers would also not cover medical insurance, but that would be irrelevant, because there would be nationalized, single payer, health care.
Employers would also not cover medical insurance, but that would be irrelevant, because there would be nationalized, single payer, health care.
1/2 of company profit would be distributed equally among all employees, without regard for title or position. Any increase in efficiency due to improved technology that were not passed on to the consumer would be distributed to employees either in the form of fixed hours and increased salary, or fixed salary and decreased hours.
No one could sue for loss of profit.
A company with more than zero profit could not lay off employees.
Overtime would be anything over 86 hours per month, would pay time and a half, no exceptions by profession, would apply to salary and commission as well. Double time after 172 hours in one month.
No company or corporation could buy another.
No company could have more than one location, except in those cases where the nature of the company required multiple locations (such as delivery service). Exception could be made on a case by case basis, if the expansion could be shown to benefit society as a whole enough to offset the anti-competitiveness.
Overtime would be anything over 86 hours per month, would pay time and a half, no exceptions by profession, would apply to salary and commission as well. Double time after 172 hours in one month.
No company or corporation could buy another.
No company could have more than one location, except in those cases where the nature of the company required multiple locations (such as delivery service). Exception could be made on a case by case basis, if the expansion could be shown to benefit society as a whole enough to offset the anti-competitiveness.
Any company based in the US, or with a majority of US shareholders, or with 1% or more of product exported to the US, must follow all US wage, safety, and environmental laws and regulations, regardless of the location of production. (For example, if a company builds a factory in China, they still must pay US minimum wage if they want to export the product into the US)
No US military protection of private property, on US soil or abroad. For example, US oil companies would have to pay for their own private security to guard pipelines. Private corporate interests could not be considered "national interests", even if the product they produce is of value to the nation.
No US military protection of private property, on US soil or abroad. For example, US oil companies would have to pay for their own private security to guard pipelines. Private corporate interests could not be considered "national interests", even if the product they produce is of value to the nation.
Any action of military or CIA is automatically war, whether or not it is officially declared.
Any action longer than 5 days must be approved by congress. Any action longer than 60 days must be unanimously approved by all 50 states (via senators and/or governors). Any action longer than one year requires majority vote of all US citizens.
Any action longer than 5 days must be approved by congress. Any action longer than 60 days must be unanimously approved by all 50 states (via senators and/or governors). Any action longer than one year requires majority vote of all US citizens.
Military budget reduced by 90% (give or take). It could never be increased to more than 10% less than whatever nation has the highest military budget.
Universal conscription of all citizens at 18, both genders, deferments for medical issues, but no other reason. Everyone must attend bootcamp. After that, choice of 2 years of either military service, or civil service.
In middle school, high school, and college, reversible long-term birth control would be provided at no cost to both genders (yes, the technology exists). This would be voluntary, and either child or parent could choose to opt out for any reason, however it would be the default - everyone would get it unless they actively choose to opt out.
(Voluntary) permanent sterilization would be provided at no cost to all adults.
All forms of contraceptive would be covered in full through health care.
All forms of contraceptive would be covered in full through health care.
Welfare would provide a fixed amount per household - it would not increase with additional children.
Citizenship would not be automatic:
At age 18, each person would need to pass the same citizenship exam that immigrants have to pass (this would be covered in high school).
They would have to go to military bootcamp, and then either serve in the military or in civil service for 2 years. They would have to register to vote.
Anyone choosing not to apply for citizenship would be considered a native resident.
Native residents would not have to pay any taxes.
They also could not vote or run for office. They would not be eligible for public assistance, including health care and (college level) education. They could not drive motor vehicles on public roads, nor sue in court. They would be responsible for the labor, fuel, and expenses if using emergency services such as police or firefighters.
One could apply for citizenship at anytime, up to age 40, however, once revoked, you could not get it back for 15 years, and would have to begin the process from the beginning.
Friday, 28 June 2013
Trespassing in the Commune
I'm not much of one for ideology or party lines.
A few years ago I wrote some about illegal immigration:
http://biodieselhauling.
http://biodieselhauling.
http://biodieselhauling.
http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2006/12/two-
You just might get the idea from those that I have some particular opinion on the issue.
But really, I was trying to point out what one side of the debate prefers to ignore.
That doesn't mean the issue is one-sided or simple.
The other side does just as good a job ignoring what it doesn't want to see.
Just like with the abortion debate, I mostly agree with the progressive side in practice, but I recognize that they are right for the wrong reasons, while in principal the conservative side at least gets the question right, even if they are mistaken about the answer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine a hippy commune, out in the country side. A few hundred people live there together, they come up with house rules, they all do chores, everyone contributes to the property taxes and insurance costs of the land and building and to a communal maintenance and repair fund. Lets say this particular commune works really well, they come up with a system to manage internal conflicts, they are reasonably self-sufficient, but everyone also has real jobs so they have cash for trading with the outside world.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine a hippy commune, out in the country side. A few hundred people live there together, they come up with house rules, they all do chores, everyone contributes to the property taxes and insurance costs of the land and building and to a communal maintenance and repair fund. Lets say this particular commune works really well, they come up with a system to manage internal conflicts, they are reasonably self-sufficient, but everyone also has real jobs so they have cash for trading with the outside world.
Sooner or later people are going to have children, and a new generation will be raised there.
Other times new people will want to join. These people are all about peace and love, sharing and community, but that doesn't mean they won't want to screen applicants. They want to know, as anyone would, if their prospective new member shares their values and work ethic and whether they are responsible. They may want to know about any drug addictions, criminal history, or if the applicant is employed. They may decide to allow someone to join who doesn't meet a particular criteria if they have a good explanation, that could be decided on a case-by-case basis, but it would be hard to find fault in the community for wanting to at least ask the questions. It is, after all, their home, and simply opening the floodgates would mean its rapid destruction.
Now lets say this place is so successful, so popular, that there is a waiting list to even be interviewed by the residents. But its a huge estate, and its hard to keep track of all the residents, not to mention all the guests and visitors, and someone gets the idea that instead of getting on the end of the waiting list, they can just come as a guest, and then just never leave - or maybe even sneak it through an open window.
They find a spare storage room that no one is using and set up a little bedroom in it. No interview, no lease agreement. They don't help pay for the property tax, but they do more than their share of chores, they contribute to the communal maintenance fund, and they follow all of the rules.
They find a spare storage room that no one is using and set up a little bedroom in it. No interview, no lease agreement. They don't help pay for the property tax, but they do more than their share of chores, they contribute to the communal maintenance fund, and they follow all of the rules.
This trespasser has not really done anything terrible. They are contributing their fair share. But they also snuck in without permission. When the residents figure out that they did, they are fairly likely to throw the trespasser out, or at least to consider it. If it takes long enough before they are caught, there's a chance they will have friends and advocates, but the very fact of having snuck in in the first place is likely to be a strike against them. And no matter how good of a roommate they have proved themselves to be, the fact remains that they are taking up a slot that could have otherwise been filled by someone who has been waiting on the waiting list.
Ultimately, whether they stay or go would be up to the official residents.
Would it be unreasonable if their ultimate decision is that the trespasser can not stay?
America - every nation - is essentially a commune: a community of people living together, sharing common interests, property (private property may exist as well, but so does public space) and resources. This land is home to all the people who were born here. As I pointed out in my earlier essays, no one "deserves" to be born any particular place, its nothing but luck - going back to the analogy, suppose none of the residents personally built the commune, say the estate was originally inherited long ago, and an entire generation has turned over since then. It is still their home, and they still have a right to demand that no one sneak into their windows and move in without permission.
When you look at it this way, arguments such as "I work hard", "I have family here", or "I have been here for 20 years" all seem a bit less reasonable or even relevant. If you feel you have a good reason, put it on your application, but its still ultimately up to the residents to admit you or not.
Why should any of that change just because the scale changes?
What does it really imply when someone wants to redefine illegal immigrants as "undocumented workers", because "no person is illegal"?
The logical conclusion is that there should be no boarders, that everyone should be able to live anywhere. New Zealand has low crime, high quality medical care, schools and transportation, and excellent weather. If I want to go there, the country is going to make me apply for a visa - and if I don't already have family there, a high level degree, a special skill and a job offer in the country, or a lot of money and a promise to invest there, chances are the application will be turned down. Just like in America, and every other country. If an American is in Taiwan on a work visa, and gets fired, the country will deport them.
If we open the flood gates, and half of Guatemala, 1/2 of Haiti, a quarter of Mexico and Jamaica, everyone in Somalia and most from Ethiopia, everyone who can scrape together any means of travel and lives somewhere poor, they all come to the US which no longer has any boarder patrol, no longer has any immigration service, no longer has any program for deportation, what happens then? Is life better for the new immigrants, in now ridiculously-crowded-with-
Some people are supportive of "undocumented" immigrants.
They say things like "no human being is illegal" (I just saw that on one of those petition / donation emails). They are focused on not punishing people for trying to find a better life, not breaking up families. They are focused on people, on individuals. They are looking at individual people, they see that people are unhappy, they don't like people being unhappy, so they don't like the situation or the rules, or whatever. But it seems like few, if any, want to take a step back and look at the big picture.
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Obama = Bush Jr??? (hint: the answer is no)
Almost exactly 4 years after I wrote the last article I reposted, on Obama targeting off-shore tax-shelters, I over heard a couple people I'm close to agreeing that, while he gives good speeches, "Obama is really not that different from Bush in policy, and in some ways he's worse", which of course I've heard plenty of times before, generally from folk on the far liberal / leftist / socialist leaning side of politics (which, given where I live, is a lot of folk).
That's not really the sort of comment that will lead to a productive debate in real time, even if I did have a plethora of facts to drop off the top of my head, so I just held my tongue for the moment.
Here on my blog I have time to think through my response, and an easy way to cite references, so here goes...
We all were hoping for "change" to be dramatic. Even though we should have known better, we kept imagining that "change" was meant to imply "revolution". When we realized that the term would be preceded by "incremental"*, our dreams were deflated.
I get it. I really do. Because I am one of those radical liberal lefty socialists.
But, here's the thing: He was elected President. He was not elected Jesus.** The President of the United States has a lot of power, but they don't act in a vacuum. He doesn't even get to write the law. Congress does that, and congress is split fairly evenly between right-wing Christian conservative, economically libertarian extremist Republicans, and socially moderate pro-corporate Democrats.
And despite what living in the Bay Area allows us to fantasize, the American people themselves are mostly split between the same two camps, which is why congress looks the way it does.
The other thing to remember is that Obama never claimed to represent everything you personally stand-for, what ever that may be. He never even met you. He never claimed he was going to end corporate personhood, or dismantle the US military, or return to the 90% top tax brackets of the 1940s. He never said he would eliminate all US carbon emissions or ban all handguns.
So it really isn't reasonable to hold him to those standards.
What he has done is those things which he said were his goals all along (so far as he has had the power to do so).
For example, he never said he would bring all US troops home. What he did say is that he would take troops out of Iraq, and focus on the "global war on terror" and Al Qaeda, and that is exactly what he did. Way back in 2001 we knew that the attacks on America were carried out by Saudi Arabian expats who had moved to Afghanistan to train - and Bush Jr used the fact that those countries are in the general region of "the Middle East" as an excuse to continue his dad's oil war in Iraq, which had zero to do with bringing down the twin towers.
But while in increasing the troops in Afghanistan was Obama keeping his word, at the same time, the number brought home from Iraq is larger than the number sent to Afghanistan, which means the grand total number of troops deployed has gone down overall under Obama.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/the-qualitative-differenc_b_882893.html
He has said the number in Afghanistan will be reduced rather quickly as well, and there isn't much reason to doubt it, given that all his past time tables have been stuck to so far.
Simply removing all troops, all at once, was never realistic, and would very possibly do more harm than good.
Bush Jr started two wars. Obama has ended one, and is working on ending the other. That is not the same. That is not worse. It is the exact opposite.
Here's a few comments on his domestic policies:
http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/jonathan-chait/94211/are-obama-and-bush-really-the-same#
And here is a really long list of things he did, just in his first term, (all with references, in case you don't believe it).
http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/what-has-obama-done-since-january-20-2009.html
If you skip every other link in this post, at least click on this one, and skim through it.
Things which he has not just attempted to do, but successfully done. Almost all of which Jr would not only not have done, but would not have even claimed to want to do.
Pretty much all 212 items in that list from the link above are things which are totally opposite what Bush did or would have done.
So there's that.
And for some people, it still leaves them feeling like he should be doing more.
You want to know why he hasn't done even more?
Instead of just reading, listening, and talking to articles, radio, and people that share your politics, you have to pay attention to what the other half of the country is saying.
There is a whole lot of insight there to be found, if you look for it.
The other side is just as mad at him - but generally for completely opposite reasons. They already think he is a socialist who is destroying America by being anti-business, anti-oil, anti-religion... The things they hate him for include the very accomplishments we ignore when claiming he hasn't done anything positive. Here's some examples, from a conservative anti-Obama site:
Obstructing oil drilling, restricting corporations, moving in the direction of national health care, spending tax money to encourage job growth, separating church from state. Terrible, right?
Here's a much broader perspective, still from a conservative point of view, but with references, and at least a half-hearted attempt at impartiality:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Barack_Hussein_Obama
This is what he has to balance against your personal ideals.
This is why he was elected, and you and I and all of our friends were not. Because we do not represent the American people. Maybe we should, but we don't.
Obama is on our side. He is also moderate enough that he was able to get elected, so that he could get all the stuff done that he has. Stuff that Bush didn't do, and McCain or Romney would never have done.
Now
All that said.
There is certainly a lack of meaningful difference between the two major political parties on a variety of significant issues. This goes not just for Presidents and presidential candidates, it goes for congress, judges, governors, mayors, pretty much everyone with power in America.
A good list of examples is given by bvar22:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2358757
But again, notice: Obama ran as a Democrat. Not a Socialist. Not Green Party. Not Labor Party. The entire democratic party accepts the premise of capitalism, and protecting America's interests abroad.
That doesn't mean there aren't significant and meaningful differences between the two parties. It just means that they don't have all of the differences we would prefer.
Given those two choices, the blue side is the closer one to where we need to be. We can debate all day about whether its close enough, whether incremental change should be replaced with revolution, but the fact remains that there is a difference between the coalition of Christian fundamentalism and libertarian capitalists that make up the right and the moderate socially liberal pro-corporate left.
Throwing up our hands and crying "its not perfect, therefore its pointless" just helps things move even further to the right, as Republicans continue to vote, and we give up because its futile.
Lets continue pushing for more radical change, yes, but there is no reason we can't celebrate the incremental changes that come along the way.
*I would give credit to the person from whom I borrowed that line, except that I have no idea who it was!
** That one too!!
That's not really the sort of comment that will lead to a productive debate in real time, even if I did have a plethora of facts to drop off the top of my head, so I just held my tongue for the moment.
Here on my blog I have time to think through my response, and an easy way to cite references, so here goes...
We all were hoping for "change" to be dramatic. Even though we should have known better, we kept imagining that "change" was meant to imply "revolution". When we realized that the term would be preceded by "incremental"*, our dreams were deflated.
I get it. I really do. Because I am one of those radical liberal lefty socialists.
But, here's the thing: He was elected President. He was not elected Jesus.** The President of the United States has a lot of power, but they don't act in a vacuum. He doesn't even get to write the law. Congress does that, and congress is split fairly evenly between right-wing Christian conservative, economically libertarian extremist Republicans, and socially moderate pro-corporate Democrats.
And despite what living in the Bay Area allows us to fantasize, the American people themselves are mostly split between the same two camps, which is why congress looks the way it does.
The other thing to remember is that Obama never claimed to represent everything you personally stand-for, what ever that may be. He never even met you. He never claimed he was going to end corporate personhood, or dismantle the US military, or return to the 90% top tax brackets of the 1940s. He never said he would eliminate all US carbon emissions or ban all handguns.
So it really isn't reasonable to hold him to those standards.
What he has done is those things which he said were his goals all along (so far as he has had the power to do so).
For example, he never said he would bring all US troops home. What he did say is that he would take troops out of Iraq, and focus on the "global war on terror" and Al Qaeda, and that is exactly what he did. Way back in 2001 we knew that the attacks on America were carried out by Saudi Arabian expats who had moved to Afghanistan to train - and Bush Jr used the fact that those countries are in the general region of "the Middle East" as an excuse to continue his dad's oil war in Iraq, which had zero to do with bringing down the twin towers.
But while in increasing the troops in Afghanistan was Obama keeping his word, at the same time, the number brought home from Iraq is larger than the number sent to Afghanistan, which means the grand total number of troops deployed has gone down overall under Obama.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/the-qualitative-differenc_b_882893.html
He has said the number in Afghanistan will be reduced rather quickly as well, and there isn't much reason to doubt it, given that all his past time tables have been stuck to so far.
Simply removing all troops, all at once, was never realistic, and would very possibly do more harm than good.
Bush Jr started two wars. Obama has ended one, and is working on ending the other. That is not the same. That is not worse. It is the exact opposite.
Here's a few comments on his domestic policies:
http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/jonathan-chait/94211/are-obama-and-bush-really-the-same#
And here is a really long list of things he did, just in his first term, (all with references, in case you don't believe it).
http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/what-has-obama-done-since-january-20-2009.html
If you skip every other link in this post, at least click on this one, and skim through it.
Things which he has not just attempted to do, but successfully done. Almost all of which Jr would not only not have done, but would not have even claimed to want to do.
Pretty much all 212 items in that list from the link above are things which are totally opposite what Bush did or would have done.
So there's that.
And for some people, it still leaves them feeling like he should be doing more.
You want to know why he hasn't done even more?
Instead of just reading, listening, and talking to articles, radio, and people that share your politics, you have to pay attention to what the other half of the country is saying.
There is a whole lot of insight there to be found, if you look for it.
The other side is just as mad at him - but generally for completely opposite reasons. They already think he is a socialist who is destroying America by being anti-business, anti-oil, anti-religion... The things they hate him for include the very accomplishments we ignore when claiming he hasn't done anything positive. Here's some examples, from a conservative anti-Obama site:
Here's a much broader perspective, still from a conservative point of view, but with references, and at least a half-hearted attempt at impartiality:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Barack_Hussein_Obama
This is what he has to balance against your personal ideals.
This is why he was elected, and you and I and all of our friends were not. Because we do not represent the American people. Maybe we should, but we don't.
Obama is on our side. He is also moderate enough that he was able to get elected, so that he could get all the stuff done that he has. Stuff that Bush didn't do, and McCain or Romney would never have done.
Now
All that said.
There is certainly a lack of meaningful difference between the two major political parties on a variety of significant issues. This goes not just for Presidents and presidential candidates, it goes for congress, judges, governors, mayors, pretty much everyone with power in America.
A good list of examples is given by bvar22:
"*The Failed War on DrugsAnd others on that site add a few more:
*The Privatization of our Commons
*The support for Right Wing Death Squad governments in Latin America
and the demonization of the emerging populist true Democracies
*The Patriot Act and the marginalization of The Constitution
*The Use of our military to make the World safe for predation by the Global Corporations (AKA: The Permanent War on "Terror")
*The extra-constitutional perpetual War Time Powers of the Unitary Executive
*Forcing the American Working Class to compete with Slave Labor for their jobs (AKA: Free Trade, AKA:Race to the bottom)
*professed belief and religious submission to an "Invisible Hand" for which no proof exists.
*The militarization and national co-ordination of our local Police Departments
*Submission of the US Government and Legal System to Wall Street Banks
*The protection of the predatory For Profit Health Insurance Corporations
(Wall Street's Incestuous 1st Cousin)
*Austerity, "Entitlements", and "The Deficit"
(There IS some daylight between the Parties here,
but NOT on the Political Position,
only on HOW MUCH we are going to give the Already Rich.
*Lack of support for locally owned businesses in the War against the Big Boxes
(There ARE existing Fair Competition Laws & Regulations that could be used)
*The For Profit Private Prison Industrial Complex
*The Privatization of our Public Schools
*The Privatization of our Military
(Armed "Private" Contractors...AKA:Mercenaries)
*Subsidies for the Richest Corporations in The World"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2358757
But again, notice: Obama ran as a Democrat. Not a Socialist. Not Green Party. Not Labor Party. The entire democratic party accepts the premise of capitalism, and protecting America's interests abroad.
That doesn't mean there aren't significant and meaningful differences between the two parties. It just means that they don't have all of the differences we would prefer.
Given those two choices, the blue side is the closer one to where we need to be. We can debate all day about whether its close enough, whether incremental change should be replaced with revolution, but the fact remains that there is a difference between the coalition of Christian fundamentalism and libertarian capitalists that make up the right and the moderate socially liberal pro-corporate left.
Throwing up our hands and crying "its not perfect, therefore its pointless" just helps things move even further to the right, as Republicans continue to vote, and we give up because its futile.
Lets continue pushing for more radical change, yes, but there is no reason we can't celebrate the incremental changes that come along the way.
*I would give credit to the person from whom I borrowed that line, except that I have no idea who it was!
** That one too!!
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
What does our gut reaction to the word "rape" say about our subconscious beliefs about women's agency?
[NOTE: This article is long than the typical blog post. As an MS Word document it comes to about 30 pages. Much shorter than a book, but longer than a magazine article. Its probably better to think of it as an internet based paper, and not expect to read the entire thing straight through in one sitting. I have broke it into 5 parts to facilitate that.
Also, if it isn't obvious enough from the title, its a very sensitive subject. I am definitely not trying to offend or upset, but I am deliberately trying to be real, which means not being "politically correct" or sensitive for the sake of sensitivity.]
A friend of mine sent me a link to an internet blog article recently:
http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/nice-guys-commit-rape-too/
Also, if it isn't obvious enough from the title, its a very sensitive subject. I am definitely not trying to offend or upset, but I am deliberately trying to be real, which means not being "politically correct" or sensitive for the sake of sensitivity.]
A friend of mine sent me a link to an internet blog article recently:
http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/nice-guys-commit-rape-too/
I read it, it was interesting and insightful and honest and unfortunately rare in its open-mindedness and candor. I didn’t know when I read it, but apparently it was read by a great many people, many of whom did not share that opinion of it.
It was reasonably infamous among feminist bloggers, and induced quite a number of responses - none of which I’ve read.
It was reasonably infamous among feminist bloggers, and induced quite a number of responses - none of which I’ve read.
I did, however, take several days to go back and read the comment thread in its entirety. The comment thread was surprisingly thoughtful for an internet discussion on a topic that causes intense negative gut reactions and has generated plenty of controversy, one which people are passionate and angry about.
So much of the discussion was so good already that I had nothing to add.
So much of the discussion was so good already that I had nothing to add.
The first three pages are almost entirely filled with reasonable, open-minded people having a back and forth conversation on really difficult topics. From all appearances these are regulars to the site, readers and contributors. On page three the sort of knee-jerk responses that you would expect for the topic finally begin appearing, and it appears as though few of the new commenters took the time to read the existing comments before adding their own. Not to say that intelligent conversation does not continue, it does all the way to the end, only that the ‘TL;DR – still have an opinion’ comments start becoming more common, - no doubt as the article began to be read and popularized more and more.
If you are interested in the topic, and have a few hours to kill, I recommend reading all of the comments from the beginning.
If you are interested in the topic, and have a few hours to kill, I recommend reading all of the comments from the beginning.
Though much of what I would have said was addressed, some very important things weren’t, and that’s what inspired this essay that you are reading right now.
One of the most important things I got out of reading the comments was seeing how strongly and instantly so many people made absolute judgments against the protagonist of the story, without needing to know any of the untold details of the situation.
Even those that pointed out potential mitigating factors always went of their way to say “but, obviously, it was still totally wrong”. Then someone else would come along and say “this is cut and dry – this guy is a selfish creep, he knew what he was doing, end of story.”
Maybe they just have very poor imaginations.
But I don’t think that’s it. I think its really more that we have all been socially conditioned to have certain absolute reactions to certain topics, and that those reactions aren’t based so much on logic or reality or harm to others, they are just based on drilling a message into each person at a young age, lifelong repetition, and the fact that everyone around us acts horrified at the same thing.
Even those that pointed out potential mitigating factors always went of their way to say “but, obviously, it was still totally wrong”. Then someone else would come along and say “this is cut and dry – this guy is a selfish creep, he knew what he was doing, end of story.”
Maybe they just have very poor imaginations.
But I don’t think that’s it. I think its really more that we have all been socially conditioned to have certain absolute reactions to certain topics, and that those reactions aren’t based so much on logic or reality or harm to others, they are just based on drilling a message into each person at a young age, lifelong repetition, and the fact that everyone around us acts horrified at the same thing.
In fact what I found most interesting, most inspiring of a response, was not the original article at all. The most interesting thing is the commenters themselves.
The possibilities I’ll point out a bit later seemed fairly obvious to me, at least as possibilities, on first reading. Yet for so very many others these possibilities did not even cross their minds. Is it merely a lack of imagination? Well, even among the reasonable, thoughtful, open-minded commenters who had long back and forth dialogue, only one, it seems, considered any such possibilities… and even when that person suggested it, no one, not even the people involved in a conversation with him, ever acknowledged it. Other than that one, even though we were never told as much, everyone assumed the protagonist was fully conscious and aware of his actions, and aware of the lack of consciousness of the woman he was with. The author, without ever confirming to us that he knew (or even that she believed he did), spoke about it as if it were a given, after having skipped over the crucial few moments preceding the event in question in the story. And on the basis of that assumption, most felt justified in drawing absolute conclusions.
The possibilities I’ll point out a bit later seemed fairly obvious to me, at least as possibilities, on first reading. Yet for so very many others these possibilities did not even cross their minds. Is it merely a lack of imagination? Well, even among the reasonable, thoughtful, open-minded commenters who had long back and forth dialogue, only one, it seems, considered any such possibilities… and even when that person suggested it, no one, not even the people involved in a conversation with him, ever acknowledged it. Other than that one, even though we were never told as much, everyone assumed the protagonist was fully conscious and aware of his actions, and aware of the lack of consciousness of the woman he was with. The author, without ever confirming to us that he knew (or even that she believed he did), spoke about it as if it were a given, after having skipped over the crucial few moments preceding the event in question in the story. And on the basis of that assumption, most felt justified in drawing absolute conclusions.
And these were the GOOD comments. The bad ones occurred on other blog posts written in response to this one, and they included multiple death threats against the author of the post, who was not only not there when it happened, but unambiguously condemned her friend’s actions from the moment she heard of them and without exception ever after. She was condemned for even asking the question of why he did it, and for humanizing a person who is, in fact, a human.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most American’s eat mammals, yet most will be horrified at the thought of eating a dog or cat. Few will change their opinion of which animals are ok to eat even after having been informed that pigs are actually more intelligent than either of our usual pets.
Most people feel incest is immoral between two fully consenting adults, even if they are careful about birth control or are of the same gender.
People find anyone interested in viewing child porn to be morally detestable, even if that person never acts on that interest, even if they do not film it, do not pay for it (thereby encouraging its production), and do not share it (thereby supposedly spreading the interest). The mere fact that they own and view it in the privacy of their own home, which does not affect any other person in any way, is both legally, and in the minds of many, morally, a crime.
People find anyone interested in viewing child porn to be morally detestable, even if that person never acts on that interest, even if they do not film it, do not pay for it (thereby encouraging its production), and do not share it (thereby supposedly spreading the interest). The mere fact that they own and view it in the privacy of their own home, which does not affect any other person in any way, is both legally, and in the minds of many, morally, a crime.
There are a great many people who find the suggestion that, in order to avoid overpopulation (which will likely cause all surviving humans to have excruciatingly horrible lives someday), we may have to find a way to limit individuals ability to reproduce at will. Having children should be a right, most say, end of story.
Well, any time anything seems that cut and dry to you, any time your immediate reaction is righteous indignation or moral outrage, there is a very high chance that you are at least partially wrong, that you have blinders put up.
When you have a strong and immediate reaction, and form an opinion which is unchangeable even in the light of new information or new possibilities, that opinion is not actually coming from the situation at hand. It is coming from something in your past, be it an experience or something taught to you.
A whole lot of people see it as morally unacceptable for one person to initiate sex with the other if one is asleep even if the sleeping partner has EXPLICITLY given permission beforehand. They feel this strongly and without any room for flexibility. Now granted, that is most certainly not what happened in the case of the blog article. But having this opinion makes it impossible to even talk about implied consent, and whether getting into bed naked with a person you have been verbally and physically suggestive and seductive with might constitute it.
So the very first thing that has to be established, before a sane discussion can go any further, is what morality actually means. If you are religious, and morality is something you get word-for-word out of a book, we will just have to agree to disagree, and that’s that. For the rest of us, hopefully we can agree that morality is rooted in harm or help done to sentient beings. That can get complex, but in order for something to be “wrong”, someone or something has to be getting harmed in someway. If there are things you have accepted as wrong as a given, this may mean needing to reevaluate some long-held-but-never-questioned beliefs.
All throughout this essay you are going to notice a common theme. We, society, have all sorts of implicit and explicit rules and beliefs and patterns of interaction, and they generally apply to similar situations even if the specifics change. But nearly anytime the topic is sex, the things which would otherwise apply all get thrown out. Sex is always supposed to be a special case. No one ever says this. They don’t have to. It apparently goes without saying. Everyone learns it subconsciously, implicitly, and it is so universal as to be completely invisible.
For thousands of years, sex in all but the most carefully controlled circumstances – one man, one woman, in a religiously or government sanctioned committed partnership, for the express purpose of reproduction – was considered sinful.
Fortunately, times have changed, and many now accept the legitimate (non-religious) version of morality I mentioned above, and that means that pretty much anything people choose to do is ok, so long as no one gets hurt (unless everyone involved is into BDSM, in which case even that might not apply!)
But humanities collective conscious had been convinced that sex was a Really Big Freggin Deal, and the emergence of atheism and birth control couldn’t very well change that overnight (or even in 60 years), so in order to reconcile sex not being a Sin with it still being a RBFD, in many minds it became Sacred instead.
Even those who don’t consciouslythink it must be either Sin or Sacred, still – apparently – hold that it is a RBFD, an act for which, by virtue of its Big Deal-ness, things that apply to every other area of life don’t apply.
As one commenter pointed out, a stranger coming up and kissing you at a bus stop would be considered sexual assault. Kissing someone you have recently starting dating while they are asleep might be a bit creepy. Kissing a spouse while they were asleep would universally be regarded as perfectly ok. One act which, when done in one context without consent is assault, but that same exact action, done within another context – even though one party is unable to give consent - is considered ok.
Change the word “kiss” to “sex”, suddenly all of the rules change.
Change the word “kiss” to “sex”, suddenly all of the rules change.
For this particular case, the one described in the blog post, there have been a few possibilities suggested in the comments which, if they happen to be true, would change the context of the events we do know about. Because “rape” and “rapist” are such charged words, as soon as people hear them they have already formed an opinion. When an opinion gets formed in advance, if details get left out, people will automatically fill in those details to fit the story they made up in advance. And so quite a few people in the comments are able to say with absolute confidence things like ‘he knew it wasn’t ok while he was doing it, he just didn’t care’, when none of us were there, not even the author, and lots of details were left out on purpose.
I’m not saying any of these things actually happened. But nothing in the story suggests them to be at all unlikely either.
- It is entirely possible that they had begun to have sex before either passed out – and that, due to their intoxication, neither remembered it. Or they could have woken up at some point, begun having sex, and one (or both) passed back out. It is easy to forget things that you do in between sleeps.
Surely it is not uncommon to, for example, mention to your partner (or they mention to you) something about a brief conversation you had after one of you got up to use the restroom at night, and the other doesn’t remember it? And that’s without any drugs or alcohol. Similarly, it is even entirely possible that there was verbal consent, but again, that neither remembers it, given the situation of mutual intoxication.
- It is entirely possible that the two of them were completely naked, both aroused, and spooning, and he was in a position to get inside of her, either before or during sleep, without actively trying to.
- It is possible that he was not aware that she was unconscious – anyone who has slept with another person more than a few times has thought the other person was awake because of the way they turned over, or moved or breathed, and it turned out they were asleep, or thought they were asleep because they were perfectly still, but it turned out they were awake. Again, that mistake is easy to make when you are not intoxicated. It would be a lot easier to make when you are drunk.
We don’t know what happened right before they lost consciousness, we don’t know how physically the act began, we don’t know how long they were out in between.
Before passing an absolute judgment, on not just what term to use to describe the act, but also on the person who committed it, there are a lot of questions that have to be asked.
What we know of the situation is one side of the story, told from someone who was drunk when it happened, possibly days, possibly weeks after the fact. Of his side, we only know those details he shared with his friend. Then, that second hand story was deliberately filtered further by her as an author, to make a particular point in a socio-political essay.
Not only do we not know whether any of the possibilities above might be true or partially true, we don’t even know if the author knows the answer to those questions to begin with. The author never answered the question of whether or not he may have had reason to think that she was awake. We don’t even know if the two people involved know the details of what happened immediately before. Both were some level of intoxicated and semi-conscious in the moments immediately preceding actual sex.
Aside from the validity (or lack there of) of the 3 possibilities raised above, before making any judgment on anyone involved, I would really like to know who took off her clothes, and ideally, when and why. This did not take place in a nudist colony. One could make an argument that nudity shouldn’t have anything to do with sexuality, but this is the society and culture we live in, and the reality is that it does. If she went to sleep wearing jeans, and she was so deeply passed out that he was able to take her jeans off without that waking her, then yes, it would be a clear cut case of deliberate rape. But if she, having basically told him she wanted to have sex with him at some point, made out with him, took off all of her clothes, got in bed with him, put herself in a position that would facilitate intercourse, that could very reasonbly be construed as implied consent. Then, say, at some point she moved and pressed herself against him - maybe she does this in her sleep, maybe she wakes up and does it but falls back asleep right after and doesn’t remember doing it. It doesn’t matter, because she is facing away from him anyway, not to mention its probably dark and he wouldn’t be able to see if her eyes were open even if they were. This action on her part wakes him up, and, given that this position is a potential intercourse position, he thinks this is her non-verbal way of saying she’s finally ready. It is really not a stretch to say he could have considered that non-verbal consent. He discovers that she is already wet, and she reacts to his touch, which confirms his understanding. This whole scenario could play out between any two people anytime, but considering he is drunk, making the mistake of assuming these actions were implied consent seems practically inevitable.
In fact, almost any living human would understand those actions – if she had in fact been awake – to be very clear non-verbal communication. Even if one has learned and chosen to apply the rule of not actingwithout explicit verbal communication to avoid misunderstandings, the meaning of those actions would still be understood.
There is NOTHING in the story, as we are told it, to make it seem an unlikely possibility. In fact, the way I read it, it sounds like a very likely possibility. Obviously I don’t know, I wasn’t there, just like the other commenters passing judgment, just like the author of the article. It is absolutely realistic to think that that did happen that way.
What does it say about us, about our assumptions around gender and sexuality, that (with one exception) these possibilities did not even occur to anyone?
What does it mean imply about society that no one even thought to ask the question?
What does it mean imply about society that no one even thought to ask the question?
It is possible that he intended to wake her up BY having sex with her. One would have to be pretty far gone for something like that to not wake you up.
In which case, if she wasn’t into it, she could tell him right at that moment to stop, which means she maintains the ability to withdraw the implicit consent given earlier at any time. That standard is met. There is nothing in the story to indicate that he was trying to move as slowly and quietly as possible in order to prevent waking her up.
Not surprisingly, she did wake up, and in the original post we don’t know whether she got into it and continued or not.
In the comments the author does eventually say that the woman in the story, upon waking up, did not resist nor verbally ask him to stop.
In the comments the author does eventually say that the woman in the story, upon waking up, did not resist nor verbally ask him to stop.
This is relevant!
Because if she didn’t say no even after she woke up, that means he could reasonably have believed it was confirmation of his interpretation of her implicit consent.
Because if she didn’t say no even after she woke up, that means he could reasonably have believed it was confirmation of his interpretation of her implicit consent.
Anyone who has read the comments – not to mention pretty much everyone who has had sex at least once or twice in their life – knows that the standard of "explicit verbal consent made immediately preceding each instance of escalation of physical intimacy" is fairly ridiculous and absolutely unrealistic.
Nobody, if they stop and think about it, actually believes that this will ever happen, or even should. There’s this thing called “non-verbal communication”. I’m not talking about “signals” as in extended eye contact or flirtatiousness; I’m talking about making out with someone, and then taking off all of your clothes and gesturing toward the bed. Any normal human would understand that. At that point, if you mean anything other than the obvious, it is on youto verbalize what you don’t want to happen.
We are all adults here. At some point it becomes a little immature to expect that you can do anything you want and rely on those around you to take responsibility for taking care of you.
Combining the standard that it is the responsibility of the proactive partner to obtain consent, along with the standard that the person granting it may retract it at any time, taken to its logical conclusion, this would suggest that whichever person is currently “doing the work” is obligated to check in literally constantly with a question along the lines of “is this still ok?” That is obviously ludicrous – everyone can accept that at the point where the activity has already begun, if one partner changes their mind, it is their responsibility to clearly communicate that they want to stop. It is not their partner’s responsibility to take care of them by reading their mind; it is their own responsibility to take care of themselves. If, and only if, the partner willfully ignored an explicit request to stop could they be accused of doing something wrong. Why, if it is the non-consenting partner’s responsibility to communicate their desires clearly during the act, would we expect any less before hand?
That whole last paragraph was somewhat abstract.
Lets say a person is standing on the freeway off ramp with a hand made cardboard sign about being on hard times. You are the first driver in line at the red light, and you reach into your wallet, roll down your window and hold out a $5 bill. Would you expect the homeless person to be responsible to say the words “are you intending to give me this money?” before they took it? Would you accuse them of theft, for taking your $5? Or is it reasonable for the person to figure out from the situational cues that your non-verbal actions constituted consent for them to take the money out of your hands?
If you were just getting money out because you were going to pay for parking in a few blocks, and you put your hand out the window because you wanted to feel the breeze, it would have been on YOU to make a point of saying to the person that you were not offering it to them.
Why should the rules be any different if the context is sex instead of money?
Consider this story from the comments:
Why should the rules be any different if the context is sex instead of money?
Consider this story from the comments:
Honest Questions says:
… I knew this guy once, he told the following horror story: Most fucked up encounter he ever had… met a girl at a bar. They go home. Both drunk. She says clearly before they start fooling around they can do everything except intercourse, and he says yes. They start fooling around. She starts doing whatever, getting him more and more excited, still all the while saying I don’t want sex (intercourse), I don’t want sex. He says yeah, it’s all right. She’s on top. She’s got ahold of his dick, manipulating it against herself (yes, “right down there on that spot” if you know what I mean) and she’s screaming and fucked up and drunk saying “I don’t want sex!” and he’s like Well what the fuck then? And then SHE pushes it into HER. This story ends with HER bouncing up and down on HIM screaming all the while I don’t want sex, i don’t want sex!
Now is it possible he’s totally fucking lying? Yeah. I’m not friends with the dude anymore for unrelated reasons. But the story stands out. Whenever he told it, he was never braggin about it–i could see that clearly. He was fuckin disturbed by this. Scared, you know? Not terrified or anything but the kind of fear that gives you pause–what was the right move here? Fuck if he knew. Fuck if *I* know. The easy answer is stay out of bars. Let’s all pause and sit back and see how many people reading this are gonna follow THAT advice…
I’m not a betting person, but I’d put down money that not only is this a true story, but it is not entirely uncommon.
By the standards of many of the commenters (and possibly the law) – of needing explicit verbal consent and that “no means no”, then the guy in the story above raped her. Both this, and the outraged reactions, the willingness to condemn someone as a rapist while knowing extremely little about the details, they are both symptoms of the same cultural repression we have around sex. As far as we have come, we still have a very, very, long way to go.
Anytime we want to effectively make changes to anything, we have to really understand the way things are currently first, and to understand that, we need to know the history of how it came to be. If you don’t look at what is, you won’t be able to figure out the best approach for creating what you want to be. Sometimes that means looking at something with as little prejudice as possible, and admitting things that you would really prefer not to be true, would rather not have to admit.
Most people alive today never lived in a world without the technical innovations of effective birth control methods and safe abortion.
This allows us to imagine that sexuality is a matter of pleasure and/or love first and foremost, which just happens to also have the side effect of reproduction. Our culture and even language reinforce this idea. For example, we refer to any pleasurable genital contact as forms of “sex”, when, technically, sex is a process of allowing the two complementary gamete cells a chance to come together. Anything which could not result in pregnancy is, in the strictest, most literal sense of the word, not actually sex at all. The entire reason sexual contact is pleasurable is because without incentive to engage in it, nobody would. Any specie which did not have a drive toward reproduction would die out in a single generation.
This is in no way to suggest that people “should” only have sex for reproduction. It is just an observation of biological fact. And its important to keep that fundamental fact in mind when considering any of the more complex areas of human sexuality. Otherwise one may come to conclusions which don’t make sense, and that can lead to action plans that are not effective in the real world. One example of this is abstinence-only sex-ed, or a complete lack of sex-ed all together. Some people choose to believe that the only reason teens are interested in sex is because they are told that they should be, that they wouldn’t even think of it on their own.
This allows us to imagine that sexuality is a matter of pleasure and/or love first and foremost, which just happens to also have the side effect of reproduction. Our culture and even language reinforce this idea. For example, we refer to any pleasurable genital contact as forms of “sex”, when, technically, sex is a process of allowing the two complementary gamete cells a chance to come together. Anything which could not result in pregnancy is, in the strictest, most literal sense of the word, not actually sex at all. The entire reason sexual contact is pleasurable is because without incentive to engage in it, nobody would. Any specie which did not have a drive toward reproduction would die out in a single generation.
This is in no way to suggest that people “should” only have sex for reproduction. It is just an observation of biological fact. And its important to keep that fundamental fact in mind when considering any of the more complex areas of human sexuality. Otherwise one may come to conclusions which don’t make sense, and that can lead to action plans that are not effective in the real world. One example of this is abstinence-only sex-ed, or a complete lack of sex-ed all together. Some people choose to believe that the only reason teens are interested in sex is because they are told that they should be, that they wouldn’t even think of it on their own.
On the flip side, the author of the blog post that inspired me to write actually expresses a similar opinion in suggesting that its because of “generations of training” that individuals hold “the goal of getting dressed and going out is to get the guy or get the girl and hook up or get lucky.” Later, she implies that culture is the reason “…that we sell sex as the reason for everything—from what car to buy, to why to work out to what clothes will help us ‘get ahead’. In our world, sex is the end game. Period.” … “We need to teach people that sex, as awesome as it is, is not the goal.”
All of these quotes are, of course, taken from the context of the events in the story. But they are still illustrative of this idea that individuals are obsessed with sex because of something taught to them by peers and media. People aren’t obsessed with sex because of images in media, or because of cultural bias. Pretending that means any theories or strategies for combating sexual violence are guaranteed to fail. Men see sex as a goal, or women’s bodies as prizes, because without sex with women, the DNA which makes them who they are dies with them, and even though they may have no conscious awareness of it, ultimately everyone’s genes has the final say in their most underlying motivations.
All of these quotes are, of course, taken from the context of the events in the story. But they are still illustrative of this idea that individuals are obsessed with sex because of something taught to them by peers and media. People aren’t obsessed with sex because of images in media, or because of cultural bias. Pretending that means any theories or strategies for combating sexual violence are guaranteed to fail. Men see sex as a goal, or women’s bodies as prizes, because without sex with women, the DNA which makes them who they are dies with them, and even though they may have no conscious awareness of it, ultimately everyone’s genes has the final say in their most underlying motivations.
We can’t “teach” people that sex isn’t the goal, any more than we can teach people that eating food isn’t a goal when we are hungry. We have come preprogrammed by nature to feel instinctively that it is a goal. We, as a specie, would not be here to think about it and have this discussion if we weren’t preprogrammed to feel it was a goal. And if 2000+ years of repression by the Christian church never succeeded in eliminating the human sex drive, there is really zero hope of moving in that direction in the modern world.
In some cases, it certainly is true that violence and dominance add something positive to the experience for a rapist. In a great many cases, probably not. If it were actually true that it the only appeal was forcing one's will upon another, then any time a potential victim consented to sex, the potential rapist would lose all interest. That obviously doesn't happen. People have sex drives. Some (especially males) have very strong sex drives. To those whose isn’t so strong, sex may seem like just a pleasant thing to do now and then. To others, it may feel like a necessity. If it were easy for some people (mostly, but not exclusively, men) to take it or leave it, prostitution as an industry would barely exist, if at all. Gathering food, protecting one’s body from harm, and having sex, are the most fundamental drives of any multicellular organism.
In order to understand rape, we first have to admit to ourselves that at some point in our lives we have felt a desire for sex. Not just a desire for human contact, or for love or acceptance. It’s not a desire to “express your feelings physically”. It’s horniness. It’s natural.
Today almost everyone will object to that claim, they will insist both that it is about power and control, and that it isn't about sex. If that was true, then why would sex be a part of it at all? If one person were to assault or kidnap another, or wrestle them to the ground and hold them there for 20 minutes, or twist their arm and make them say "uncle", then they have established dominance over another human being. That doesn't happen.
In the vast majority of cases where a potential victim used any form of physical resistance, whether punching, kicking, or biting, or simply running away, the resistance is effective in preventing the rape from occurring. Given that the average man is stronger than the average woman, one might expect physical resistance to make little difference. Given the additional factors that most rapes occur by someone known to the victim, in one of their homes, there are frequently psychological reasons why women submit. Given that in over half of all rapes the victim was intoxicated, attempts at resistance might be less effective. However, even considering those factors, when the victim fights back, it is effective 85% of the time. If it was about really about violence and proving dominance, then you would expect that the victim fighting back would add to the appeal of the experience - a cat doesn't play with a dead mouse because its no fun if the mouse doesn't try to get away.
The rapist, however, is not looking for a fight. They are looking for easy sex.
Most of us would never consider raping someone, no matter how horny we got. But that doesn’t mean you can’t imagine what it might feel like to be someone who would. Most people would never punch someone in the face either. Most wouldn’t break into someone else’s house or mug them at gunpoint. But I can understand why some people do.
When someone breaks into another person’s house and steals their TV, nobody claims that the real reason they did it is because they wanted to establish dominance over the person who lived there. The motivation for stealing is obvious – they want the material value of something that someone else has. They believe it will be easier to take it from someone else rather than to earn it themselves. If, for whatever reason, a person felt like getting another person to voluntarily have sex with them was not a realistic option, that person might be tempted to try to get it by whatever means necessary, up to and including by force.
Don’t misunderstand me. The fact that something is rooted in nature does not make it inevitable that it be acted out. Violence is natural, and we as a society have decided it is beneficial to everyone to take proactive steps to reduce it. That means billions of people all individually repressing any violent instincts they may have. And, though there are exceptions, for the most part it works. The vast majority of humans in the modern world are not violent. All throughout history the rates of violence have dropped, they are currently at an all time low, and are likely to continue dropping. This isn’t something that has just happened, it’s something that we collectively have made happen. In-group loyalty is completely natural, and when people are thinking about family or neighbors, they imagine it to be a good thing, but it is the basis for nationalistic wars, racism, anti-immigrant sentiments, all forms of thought where some people are “other”, and “other” is ok to harm. But over time America, and (I believe(?)) the world have been on a trajectory of increased tolerance and acceptance, in direct defiance of our natural prejudices.
To admit something is natural, or may be based on instincts, is not to condone it. The first step is to acknowledge what is, if you want to effectively change the world into what it should be. Sometimes that means admitting something that we really don’t want to be true – like, for example, that maybe the reason some people commit rape is the same reason a person takes anything without permission: because they really reallywant sex, right in the moment, and it isn’t being given to them willingly.
Nobody wants to believe that because it “reduces” sex to an animalistic behavior, when we want to think of it – of ourselves as humans – as “higher”, more meaningful, more beautiful, more noble. But to admit that sex is a basic instinctual behavior doesn’t cheapen sex or deny its ties to the feeling of love anymore than admitting we need calories to prevent dieing denies the culinary arts its place. Sex is neither sinful nor sacred. If we can stop pretending that it has to be at least one of those things, we can look at what the most realistic likely motivator for taking it without asking might be. We don’t have to come up with justifications of “rape culture” or sexism or privilege, just like there is no need to invoke capitalism to try to explain why some people steal, or to point to video games and movies as the cause of violence.
These instincts are in all of us, and the only difference is some of us do a better job repressing them than others. Aside from true sociopaths, everyone tries to repress them. Aside from the occasional saint, nobody succeeds 100% of the time.
This seems intuitively obvious, but we don’t want to admit it to ourselves, because we have all felt horny at some point in our lives. If that is the driving force behind rape, then that would imply that we ourselves could be a potential rapist! That makes it much harder to divide people into distinct categories of “good” and “evil”, which is a very comforting way to look at the world. To admit that on some level every human (including one’s self) has a physical craving for sex challenges the notion that sex is sacred, not merely a biological act, but something with a spiritual component. Something tied to love not just via oxytocin and vasopressin, but by something more meaningful. If sex is just sex, then that reduces us to level of “mere” animals, and we want to believe that we are more important than that, more special. And if sex is sacred, then that means that anyone who would “take” it without permission is not merely selfish and criminal, as the burglar is, but fundamentally an evil person.
To admit something is natural, or may be based on instincts, is not to condone it. The first step is to acknowledge what is, if you want to effectively change the world into what it should be. Sometimes that means admitting something that we really don’t want to be true – like, for example, that maybe the reason some people commit rape is the same reason a person takes anything without permission: because they really reallywant sex, right in the moment, and it isn’t being given to them willingly.
Nobody wants to believe that because it “reduces” sex to an animalistic behavior, when we want to think of it – of ourselves as humans – as “higher”, more meaningful, more beautiful, more noble. But to admit that sex is a basic instinctual behavior doesn’t cheapen sex or deny its ties to the feeling of love anymore than admitting we need calories to prevent dieing denies the culinary arts its place. Sex is neither sinful nor sacred. If we can stop pretending that it has to be at least one of those things, we can look at what the most realistic likely motivator for taking it without asking might be. We don’t have to come up with justifications of “rape culture” or sexism or privilege, just like there is no need to invoke capitalism to try to explain why some people steal, or to point to video games and movies as the cause of violence.
These instincts are in all of us, and the only difference is some of us do a better job repressing them than others. Aside from true sociopaths, everyone tries to repress them. Aside from the occasional saint, nobody succeeds 100% of the time.
This seems intuitively obvious, but we don’t want to admit it to ourselves, because we have all felt horny at some point in our lives. If that is the driving force behind rape, then that would imply that we ourselves could be a potential rapist! That makes it much harder to divide people into distinct categories of “good” and “evil”, which is a very comforting way to look at the world. To admit that on some level every human (including one’s self) has a physical craving for sex challenges the notion that sex is sacred, not merely a biological act, but something with a spiritual component. Something tied to love not just via oxytocin and vasopressin, but by something more meaningful. If sex is just sex, then that reduces us to level of “mere” animals, and we want to believe that we are more important than that, more special. And if sex is sacred, then that means that anyone who would “take” it without permission is not merely selfish and criminal, as the burglar is, but fundamentally an evil person.
Rape is almost universally considered the worst possible crime. Only it and murder are potentially capital offenses – which means a rape like the one is the blog post could be punished more harshly than an act of assault and battery so serve that it left the victim permanently paralyzed. I doubt any serious argument can be made that the physical or emotional trauma of the events in the blog post come remotely close to the physical and emotional trauma of being beaten to within an inch of your life and being left permanently disabled, and yet, while people will condemn both, the latter rarely generates nearly as strong of a response.
The reason the woman in the story quoted just above behaved so irrationally, and the reason why we automatically consider rapein any degree worse than any other crime, are both due to the collective sub-conscious belief that a woman’s sexual purity is her most valuable asset, both to herself, as well as being what makes her valuable to others.
On a basic primal level this is understandable. It is not due to a history of patriarchy. It predates patriarchy, by a whole lot. It is due to the fact that humans take 9 months to gestate, they are produced one at a time, and after birth they require an absolute minimum of one year of nursing, and then more than a dozens years of continued care before they are able to be independent. No other animal requires as much investment for each individual off-spring. Given how much investment human reproduction requires, in a world without birth control a fertile female needs to be extremely selective about who she mates with. Since she only gets a few shots at reproduction, she has to make every single mating count. Human males, while in most cultures having a tendency to stick around and help raise their off-spring, don’t necessarily have any minimum commitment to prevent their child from dying. They can count on the mother to do that. And from this biological fact lies the origin of the classic “double standard”. Of almost all sex based double standards. It also explains why the word “rape” even exists, as a very specific sub-category of assault. It is not merely assault which in someway involves sexuality. Rape classically refers only to a male putting his penis inside of a female’s vagina against her will. Forcing someone to have anal sex is not rape (it’s forced sodomy). Drugging, threatening, or tying down a male, and enveloping him with ones genitals against his will constitutes felony sexual assault, but it is not “rape”. We are not consciously aware of it, but the historical/subconscious reason for the distinction is because having anal sex with someone, or forcing a man to have sex, will not result in the victim having to deal with 9 months of unintended pregnancy and then either abandoning the child, or raising a child whose genetics were not custom chosen.
The legal concept of rape, though, wasn't designed to protect women. By the time of formal law, marriage as an institution had been invented. Instead of two people choosing to stay together out of mutual affection and/or benefit, marriage means that some external authority, be it religious or government, both officially sanctions the relationship, and mandates that it continue.
This forced commitment creates a similar risk for males that exists due to biology for females – unintended pregnancy can obligate him to waste resources on raising children – only in his case, in addition to not being able to choose the timing of them, if his partner has sex with someone else, he may be duped into raising children which don’t even share his DNA.
This forced commitment creates a similar risk for males that exists due to biology for females – unintended pregnancy can obligate him to waste resources on raising children – only in his case, in addition to not being able to choose the timing of them, if his partner has sex with someone else, he may be duped into raising children which don’t even share his DNA.
When laws were being created, the concept of "rights" hadn't been conceived of yet, and women were not really considered to be people. The rape laws dating back at least to the Old Testament were explicit in defining rape as a property crime against a woman's father or husband, for making his property (her) worthless (not a virgin; i.e. potentially carrying another man's child). The only role her apparent consent or lack there of played (and this was determined by whether she screamed loud enough) was in determining whether or not she should be executed along with the rapist. Any restitution for the crime though, was strictly to the father or husband. Times have changed, but the special legal category which has no equivalent for any other aspect of life remains.
These factors explain the ultimate root of much of our collective bias and beliefs, patterns and behaviors around sexuality, but understanding it does not make anything more or less right.
Because it isn’t ancient times. It is today. Birth control does exist. Abortions do exist. And having successfully decoupled sex from reproduction we can and do use it for our own pleasure – no different from how we have been able to decouple food from nutrition by inventing things like ice cream. In addition to using it for pleasure, we use sex for various social reasons, manipulating in both ourselves and our partners the release of love-and-commitment-enhancing hormones oxytocin and vasopressin. So long as nobody gets hurt, there is nothing wrong with any of that.
But culture progresses much more slowly than technology, and somewhere in the very back of all of our minds, we are still thinking that rape is destroying a woman’s most valuable asset – that of not being pregnant.
Because it isn’t ancient times. It is today. Birth control does exist. Abortions do exist. And having successfully decoupled sex from reproduction we can and do use it for our own pleasure – no different from how we have been able to decouple food from nutrition by inventing things like ice cream. In addition to using it for pleasure, we use sex for various social reasons, manipulating in both ourselves and our partners the release of love-and-commitment-enhancing hormones oxytocin and vasopressin. So long as nobody gets hurt, there is nothing wrong with any of that.
But culture progresses much more slowly than technology, and somewhere in the very back of all of our minds, we are still thinking that rape is destroying a woman’s most valuable asset – that of not being pregnant.
In order to move past that ingrained belief, we first have to acknowledge that its there, and then we have to figure out all of the other faulty beliefs that are based on it.
...
...
(This essay is long by internet standards. I believe that these issues are so deeply ingrained that they are invisible, and therefore exposing them requires a lot of background, a lot of examples, a lot of data, and consequently a lot of writing. But I also feel it is extremely important. Feel free to bookmark it, and come back and read more another time. To help make up for the length, I have broken it up into 5 separate pages. To continue on, please click "PAGE 2", just below. Comments are allowed - encouraged!- on the final page, but only if you actually read everything up to there.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)