I love Star Trek: The Next Generation. I can and have spent hours discussing my favorite episodes and interesting aspects of the setting with friends and family. And like everything we love, there are some things about it that drive me absolutely crazy.
Star Trek as a whole has developed a reputation, deservedly or no, for being willing to tackle issues other programs won't touch. I'm not going to get too deep into the behind the scenes aspects and decision making process, because my approach to fiction is very much in the Death of the Author camp. I am far more interested in the in-universe claims of utopia and having gotten beyond primitive ideas like prejudice than I am in the real world conflicts between writers, show runners, and network censors.
And it is through that lens that I see the episode Rascals, which shows quite plainly that even in the utopian 24th century, ageism is apparently alive and well.
The premise of this episode is that through a transporter mishap, Captain Picard, Ro Laren, Guinan and Keiko O'Brien are physically transformed into children while retaining their adult minds.
One of the first things that happens after the transformation is that Picard faces prejudice from his crew. Despite the medical staff confirming that he is the same person, and that his mind was unaffected, his crew is hesitant to follow the orders of a man who looks like he's twelve.
While initially confident he can get through the initial discomfort his subordinates feel, his friends and confidants manage to convince him that his career is, if not over, absolutely going to need to be put on hold until he looks the right age again. He could possibly retain his rank in an honorary fassion so long as he goes and sequesters himself away back in school, but he won't be able to command a ship.
By the episode's end, Picard agrees to a risky procedure with a not insignificant chance of scattering his molecules across three lightyears for the chance to return to normal. Let's go over what that means, because it isn't immediately obvious. Not only was the procedure itself risky, but even if it worked perfectly we need to remember what the intended outcome was.
The medical staff had confirmed early on that if they did nothing, everyone who had been transformed would age normally from that point and would be perfectly healthy if they went that route. The procedure to return them to their normal ages by design takes years off their potential lifespans. Picard's case in particular is significant because he actually has a physical disability in his older form. A finicky artificial heart that nearly kills him twice in the series.
So, to reiterate, the man would rather lose decades of life, reacquire a preventable physical disability, and risk dying in an experimental medical procedure to bring all this about, rather than continue to live under the restrictions and prejudices he would face as a result of looking like he was a child.
Keiko O'Brien's struggles during this were more personal, but no less telling. Her husband Miles is deeply uncomfortable at the transformation, and pulls away both physically and emotionally when Keiko needs support. By the end of the one scene this conflict is allowed, the characters are already mourning the loss of their marriage.
For context, the marriage of the O'Briens has survived multiple instances of demonic possession, losing their daughter in a timewarp, two decades of false imprisonment and a subsequent suicide attempt, the entire Dominion War, and the most severe demotion in observed Starfleet history. They survive all that, but Miles can't bring himself to stand by his perfectly rational, mentally adult partner just because she's currently inhabiting a prepubescent body.
This all needs to be looked at in context. The Enterprise is an interstellar starship with a mandate to seek out new life and new civilizations, dispatched from a government encompassing a diverse array of species with radically differing biology and social customs. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the weirdest thing that has happened to these people. None of this can really be put down to shock when they've reacted with professionalism in the face of godlike beings summoning Mariachi bands, crew members mutating into spiders, and the entire concept of cause and effect breaking down before their eyes.
Now, so there are no misunderstandings, these two scenes are my favorite part of the episode. I adore the emotional impact of those scenes and the way this utterly-insignificant-in-the-grand-scheme transformation threatens to destroy Picard and Keiko's lives in ways they couldn't have imagined previously.
What bothers me about this episode is that those two scenes were all we got addressing these issues, and so much about the context of the situation that I discussed up above was nowhere to be seen in the episode itself. The episode wastes time on wacky hijinks while ignoring both the emotional core of the story and social commentary it was right on the edge of.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
Lying About Sexual History
As I mentioned in one of my earliest posts on this blog, I have strong feelings on the importance of informed consent.
It's a fact that people lie to one another about their sexual history. Men stereotypically inflate their numbers, while women stereotypically deflate theirs. This is, of course, a response to the shaming responses both genders get as a part of gender policing, and most of the time the worst harm it does is in the form of failing to challenge that gender policing. I'm in no position to condemn anyone for the choice to avoid confrontations and difficult arguments in their day to day lives given everything I hold back, after all.
That said, a part of being in a relationship is establishing mutual trust, and within any relationship founded on a lie, informed consent is not a possibility. Those convenient lies that make our day to day lives easier need to be put aside, little by little or all at once if the resulting relationship can be said to be legitimate.
This is doubly the case when discussing a marriage. The "I do"s of a wedding vow can be rightly thought of as conditional on everything the couple has told one another up to that point being the truth.
Ah, but what of the situation where you know the other party will judge you for your past? When you're in love and absolutely sure that you were meant to be together? When you're sure that the truth will ruin everything and cause you both to miss out on a wonderful relationship and life together?
In that case, I ask: Why do you want to be in a relationship with someone who's only there because you lied?
First off, that certainty that your partner will judge you, that's you being unfair to the partner by not giving him/her the chance to show what the real reaction will be. You are so afraid of the worst case scenario that you've already assigned that reaction to your partner in your head, and you'll be blaming and resenting him/her for that reaction. That's poison to the relationship.
Second, if your partner rejects you because of your sexual history, that's his/her choice and you have to just accept that. Your partner is a human being with his/her own standards and expectations from the relationship, and just as much right to say "no" as you have. Whatever happily ever after you think you can build on a foundation of lies, that inkling that "what he/she knows can't hurt him/her" is you denying your partner's agency, violating his/her trust, and by far the more abhorrent act than his/her deciding that you shouldn't be together.
When spouses discover things about one another's sexual history years or even decades after the fact that had been deliberately concealed, it doesn't just mean that the long delayed confrontation is now at hand. It means that, but it also means that they have to deal with the fact that their partners lied to them every day of those years or decades they've been together.
This is exactly the same sort of betrayal that one experiences when their spouse has an affair. Trust going forward becomes impossible in light of the extended deception. The vows are every bit as broken as they would be in the case of the affair, because the person they said "I do" about didn't have that incident in their past.
The fact of the matter is that you aren't entitled to either sexual partners nor life partners. You have to have the fully informed consent of another human being for that, and if you can't get it without deception, you go without. Anything else is just another kind of rape.
It's a fact that people lie to one another about their sexual history. Men stereotypically inflate their numbers, while women stereotypically deflate theirs. This is, of course, a response to the shaming responses both genders get as a part of gender policing, and most of the time the worst harm it does is in the form of failing to challenge that gender policing. I'm in no position to condemn anyone for the choice to avoid confrontations and difficult arguments in their day to day lives given everything I hold back, after all.
That said, a part of being in a relationship is establishing mutual trust, and within any relationship founded on a lie, informed consent is not a possibility. Those convenient lies that make our day to day lives easier need to be put aside, little by little or all at once if the resulting relationship can be said to be legitimate.
This is doubly the case when discussing a marriage. The "I do"s of a wedding vow can be rightly thought of as conditional on everything the couple has told one another up to that point being the truth.
Ah, but what of the situation where you know the other party will judge you for your past? When you're in love and absolutely sure that you were meant to be together? When you're sure that the truth will ruin everything and cause you both to miss out on a wonderful relationship and life together?
In that case, I ask: Why do you want to be in a relationship with someone who's only there because you lied?
First off, that certainty that your partner will judge you, that's you being unfair to the partner by not giving him/her the chance to show what the real reaction will be. You are so afraid of the worst case scenario that you've already assigned that reaction to your partner in your head, and you'll be blaming and resenting him/her for that reaction. That's poison to the relationship.
Second, if your partner rejects you because of your sexual history, that's his/her choice and you have to just accept that. Your partner is a human being with his/her own standards and expectations from the relationship, and just as much right to say "no" as you have. Whatever happily ever after you think you can build on a foundation of lies, that inkling that "what he/she knows can't hurt him/her" is you denying your partner's agency, violating his/her trust, and by far the more abhorrent act than his/her deciding that you shouldn't be together.
When spouses discover things about one another's sexual history years or even decades after the fact that had been deliberately concealed, it doesn't just mean that the long delayed confrontation is now at hand. It means that, but it also means that they have to deal with the fact that their partners lied to them every day of those years or decades they've been together.
This is exactly the same sort of betrayal that one experiences when their spouse has an affair. Trust going forward becomes impossible in light of the extended deception. The vows are every bit as broken as they would be in the case of the affair, because the person they said "I do" about didn't have that incident in their past.
The fact of the matter is that you aren't entitled to either sexual partners nor life partners. You have to have the fully informed consent of another human being for that, and if you can't get it without deception, you go without. Anything else is just another kind of rape.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
On Child Pornography
I must ask what exactly you think goes through the minds of these child pornographers? Are you implying that without this so called "market" that they would be otherwise productive members of society? Safe, normal people don't rape children for the money.
And let's get back to the subject of the so called money. How does that black market economy in illegal information work? Information (including naked pictures of kids) isn't like a bag of crack. It's not a physical object, and can be replicated infinitely from a single artifact. A person so inclined could make available every piece of information he/she had at no charge, underwriting the entire illegal "economy". Image trading sites could decimate any sort of pay site on earth, and smart buyers with similar interests could pool resources, pay only once, and supply the material to hundreds of like minded contributors.
Now, what does that tell you about this business model? It tells me that it doesn't work.
That ignores the issue of trust, which I think is a significant one. Any financial transaction must take place amid an environment of trust. I pay you five dollars, and you provide me a burger and fries. If you don't I can inform the police about this incident and they will retrieve my money. What does a person do when they deal with a child pornographer? Do they also go to the police and say "I sent this guy a hundred bucks and he never sent me any child porn"? Or is the customer to trust in the reputations of these fine, upstanding citizens to keep their words?
Now, with the practical matters out of the way, I'd like to spent a bit discussing the moral matter a bit further. Explain something to me. What difference will the viewing of child porn make to the child depicted therein? Let us assume (as per the business model I've discussed above) that no backing is given to the criminals who created it. What difference will it make to the child? Will the destroying of all the evidence cause the child to be unraped? And how are they to know when the last photo is destroyed? Answer is they won't. From an objective prospective, there will be no difference to the child one way or the other. Either way they've been through a traumatic event (and for the sake of argument I'm assuming that we're discussing a rape rather than a fully consensual act which was simply unrecognized as such by the law), and either way they'll have to deal with that and the fact that it's possible their image is "out there".
It seems to me that there is only one organization which is capable of making a profit in this enterprise. That would be law enforcement. No one questions why the FBI has the most massive database of child pornography on earth. Everyone's so happy when they run their website "stings" no one even questions what they gave away to entice people into ordering their "premium services". What they agreed to do. What they actually delivered in order to "maintain their cover a little bit longer". And who's really keeping track of the money paid to the FBI in the course of these so called stings?
I think there might be a reason why the government is having such a hard time shutting down these kiddie porn rings, and I think it has a great deal to do with the fact that the majority of their customers are within the jurisdiction of the FBI.
A helpful link:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.censorship/msg/af563c6d2efdd2c4
And let's get back to the subject of the so called money. How does that black market economy in illegal information work? Information (including naked pictures of kids) isn't like a bag of crack. It's not a physical object, and can be replicated infinitely from a single artifact. A person so inclined could make available every piece of information he/she had at no charge, underwriting the entire illegal "economy". Image trading sites could decimate any sort of pay site on earth, and smart buyers with similar interests could pool resources, pay only once, and supply the material to hundreds of like minded contributors.
Now, what does that tell you about this business model? It tells me that it doesn't work.
That ignores the issue of trust, which I think is a significant one. Any financial transaction must take place amid an environment of trust. I pay you five dollars, and you provide me a burger and fries. If you don't I can inform the police about this incident and they will retrieve my money. What does a person do when they deal with a child pornographer? Do they also go to the police and say "I sent this guy a hundred bucks and he never sent me any child porn"? Or is the customer to trust in the reputations of these fine, upstanding citizens to keep their words?
Now, with the practical matters out of the way, I'd like to spent a bit discussing the moral matter a bit further. Explain something to me. What difference will the viewing of child porn make to the child depicted therein? Let us assume (as per the business model I've discussed above) that no backing is given to the criminals who created it. What difference will it make to the child? Will the destroying of all the evidence cause the child to be unraped? And how are they to know when the last photo is destroyed? Answer is they won't. From an objective prospective, there will be no difference to the child one way or the other. Either way they've been through a traumatic event (and for the sake of argument I'm assuming that we're discussing a rape rather than a fully consensual act which was simply unrecognized as such by the law), and either way they'll have to deal with that and the fact that it's possible their image is "out there".
It seems to me that there is only one organization which is capable of making a profit in this enterprise. That would be law enforcement. No one questions why the FBI has the most massive database of child pornography on earth. Everyone's so happy when they run their website "stings" no one even questions what they gave away to entice people into ordering their "premium services". What they agreed to do. What they actually delivered in order to "maintain their cover a little bit longer". And who's really keeping track of the money paid to the FBI in the course of these so called stings?
I think there might be a reason why the government is having such a hard time shutting down these kiddie porn rings, and I think it has a great deal to do with the fact that the majority of their customers are within the jurisdiction of the FBI.
A helpful link:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.censorship/msg/af563c6d2efdd2c4
Monday, February 4, 2013
Whispering In The Dark
Much of the material I've posted so far is not new. I've been posting on the internet on various forums, discussion boards, blog comments, and the like for years, refining my arguments and discarding the old ideas that I once held that couldn't stand up to proper scrutiny. Many of my blog posts are ones I've been refining for years in debates and discussions, slightly edited for the blog format.
I've also been banned from a lot of places. I don't post abusive content. I don't troll. I don't drag conversations off topic. What I do is talk openly about pedophilia and acknowledge the fact that I'm attracted to prepubescent girls.
Now, as a rule, I tend to avoid any messageboard where young girls in my age of attraction are allowed to post. I do this for my own legal protection, and to remove from the arsenal of my opponents the ability to accuse me of being on the board for the purpose of picking up kids. That doesn't actually stop them from using that tactic, mind you, but I do put in some effort to make that a non-issue regardless.
People have the right to set whatever rules they like in their own spaces. I can't deny them the right to throw me out any more than I can deny the KKK the right to ban civil rights activists from their forums. The owners of a space can censor and restrict freedom of speech for any or no reason.
This is not me acknowledging that they have some moral right to do so, mind you. That is only me acknowledging their practical ability to do so. The fact of the matter is that I actually value freedom of speech. The free marketplace of ideas is something I value so greatly that I very much will defend, to the death, the right of those who want me raped and murdered to spout their bigotry as loud as they please in the public forum of their choosing.
How could I not value the free marketplace of ideas when it is that very thing which has allowed me to grow and develop my moral and ethical philosophy to the extent that I've managed? If my ideas had never been subject to the brutal scrutiny of my detractors, I might never have abandoned faulty ones I once held, and I might never have seen the contradictions between some of my old ideas. If people had not been so free to try to publicly tear down my arguments, I never would have been pushed to build a case and defend them properly.
But those who hate me will no doubt be heartened by the fact that I'm getting tired. I can force myself into otherwise open messageboards which choose to censor my ideas, in the hope of a few days of argument and potential growth, but it's feeling less and less worth my time to invade these "public" spaces in the face of the draconian censorship efforts made to scrub their forum clean of any trace of my passing.
So I'm left with the question of what to do now. That's part of why this blog exists. I've been getting sick of my virtual posters being torn down before anyone but the censors had a chance to see them. At least if someone ever finds their way to this blog, it'll be here long enough for them to read and consider the arguments herein.
But what good is this blog without people willing to engage with me? What is the value of making arguments that I'll never be able to say have stood up to vigorous attempts to eviscerate?
Whenever I'm banned from someplace, the same platitude is always handed out. "There are plenty of other places on the internet for you to talk, so I don't have to be bothered by the implications of not letting you talk in mine."
In practice, what these people might as well have said is: "Freedom of speech is the freedom to whisper in the dark where no one can hear."
This blog has a strict no censorship policy. Adbots and generic spam will be cleaned out for the sake of facilitating actual conversation, and porn links will be removed to protect the blog legally, but I will never censor anyone's view on the subject at hand, whatever it may be, and however that view is articulated.
I want people who disagree with me here. I want intelligent opposition who can point out the faults and flaws in my arguments. I want overemotional idiots spouting profanities and death threats at me. I want to hear from those who agree with me on a principle, but think I've got the details wrong. And I want any other opinion, good or bad that you have.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Bullying and School Shootings
I've been bullied.
I know that there are those among you who will take the opportunity to use this fact against me, to use it to discount my arguments, and to attempt to perform the closest approximation of violence available through a text based exchange. I know that will be the result because that has been the result countless times I've brought this fact up. If you think any of that is going to silence me, I'll again direct you to reread the introductory post, and you ask yourself why you think you can hurt or intimidate me into silence after I opened with that.
Bullying is my top youth rights issue. More than voting, more than age of consent, more than property rights. So if I care so much about this one, why wait so long to post anything about it? Because the problems associated with this issue are so painfully obvious not one of them would need to be said out loud in a sane universe. And as such, this post requires I put into words basic human decency. And because the heartbreaking consequences of people so universally failing to act on this issue mean I tend to get omnicidal when I resume thinking about it, and that isn't conductive to careful, thoughtful analysis or persuasive writing.
Social rules are a series of lines we draw between ourselves and others. Boundaries need to be agreed upon, and thereafter respected. Much bullying is crossing one or two of those boundaries by just the tiniest degree. Once that's been done, the bully relies on the fact that the infraction was small to shield him/her from consequences, then does it again. And again. And again.
Bullying is not a single incident. It isn't one kid beating you up, or stealing from you. That isn't what it is at all. Bullying is a pattern of such incidents. Bullying is a prolonged campaign of physical, psychological, and social attacks, each individually below the threshold that the authorities would care about, but collectively adding up to be too much for the victim to handle. Bullying is slow torture, and needs to be treated as such.
So much advice we give kids fails to take this pattern into account. We tell them to "tell an adult", but when a kid comes to an adult authority figure with a minor complaint, the adult is frustrated at the kid's inability to deal with something so minor. So that adult says "just ignore it", not recognizing that this is a pattern, perpetrated by someone who will delight in the victim bottling up their obvious discomfort as they proceed to escalate the violence while the kid still has that "just ignore it" advice ringing in their ears.
Which brings us to the "fight back, bullies are cowards" advice. There's only one healthy response to a prolonged campaign of torture that's being actively ignored by the authorities. Whatever it takes to make it stop. And a victim can't simply match like for like. Repaying each small violation with a small violation of their own against their tormenter. The tormenter will simply delight in their ability to provoke this new response. So when we tell the victim to fight back, the only answer for them is to make it stop by any means necessary. If that means someone ends up hospitalized, so be it, if that means someone ends up dead because the authorites refused to intervene when the situation was minor. So. Be. It.
That's why everyone knows that it's the victims of bullying who get into trouble and the bullies themselves are left to roam free. Bullies know exactly where the line is between their victim being comfortable and not, and they also know exactly where the line is where their activity is too minor for any single incident to be responded to meaningfully by the authorities. When a victim fights back, they don't keep that line in mind, because they've learned that the authorities aren't an issue, because the authorities have been ignoring months, or years of torture right in front of their eyes.
Of course, it isn't always that way. Sometimes we have a real simple case for the authorities to handle. A good old fashioned beating incident where the victim is attacked and left bloody. And again the authorities fail. What happened here is called "assault and battery". It is a criminal offense. The appropriate response to it is a criminal trial and criminal penalties.
That is the social contract every citizen is included in, adult or child. Instead, authority figures in the school cover it up. They minimize the incident to the parents, using phrases like "boys will be boys". They pressure parents not to press charges. And they again teach the victim that their pain will be ignored, and that the bully can act with impunity. That the social contract does not protect them, and will only ever be used to hurt them.
Shootings aren't a cry for attention. The victims who snap and start shooting people don't want attention. They know attention won't fix anything. They've been taught that the social contract doesn't apply to them, and that the only way that anything will ever change for the better is if they, on their own, make it impossible for things to continue as they had.
What these people are doing is solving problems in a perfectly natural way. Without the social contract, this is the standard way human beings settle disputes. We created the social contract in order to prevent incidents like this. That is the only reason we have the social contract.
Given how utterly useless the social contract has been in protecting tormented minors who are forced, day in and day out, to spend the majority of their waking hours in close proximity to their tormentors while authority figures ignore and minimize the abuse they're suffering, you should all feel blessed that shootings are as unfathomably rare as they are.
I know that there are those among you who will take the opportunity to use this fact against me, to use it to discount my arguments, and to attempt to perform the closest approximation of violence available through a text based exchange. I know that will be the result because that has been the result countless times I've brought this fact up. If you think any of that is going to silence me, I'll again direct you to reread the introductory post, and you ask yourself why you think you can hurt or intimidate me into silence after I opened with that.
Bullying is my top youth rights issue. More than voting, more than age of consent, more than property rights. So if I care so much about this one, why wait so long to post anything about it? Because the problems associated with this issue are so painfully obvious not one of them would need to be said out loud in a sane universe. And as such, this post requires I put into words basic human decency. And because the heartbreaking consequences of people so universally failing to act on this issue mean I tend to get omnicidal when I resume thinking about it, and that isn't conductive to careful, thoughtful analysis or persuasive writing.
Social rules are a series of lines we draw between ourselves and others. Boundaries need to be agreed upon, and thereafter respected. Much bullying is crossing one or two of those boundaries by just the tiniest degree. Once that's been done, the bully relies on the fact that the infraction was small to shield him/her from consequences, then does it again. And again. And again.
Bullying is not a single incident. It isn't one kid beating you up, or stealing from you. That isn't what it is at all. Bullying is a pattern of such incidents. Bullying is a prolonged campaign of physical, psychological, and social attacks, each individually below the threshold that the authorities would care about, but collectively adding up to be too much for the victim to handle. Bullying is slow torture, and needs to be treated as such.
So much advice we give kids fails to take this pattern into account. We tell them to "tell an adult", but when a kid comes to an adult authority figure with a minor complaint, the adult is frustrated at the kid's inability to deal with something so minor. So that adult says "just ignore it", not recognizing that this is a pattern, perpetrated by someone who will delight in the victim bottling up their obvious discomfort as they proceed to escalate the violence while the kid still has that "just ignore it" advice ringing in their ears.
Which brings us to the "fight back, bullies are cowards" advice. There's only one healthy response to a prolonged campaign of torture that's being actively ignored by the authorities. Whatever it takes to make it stop. And a victim can't simply match like for like. Repaying each small violation with a small violation of their own against their tormenter. The tormenter will simply delight in their ability to provoke this new response. So when we tell the victim to fight back, the only answer for them is to make it stop by any means necessary. If that means someone ends up hospitalized, so be it, if that means someone ends up dead because the authorites refused to intervene when the situation was minor. So. Be. It.
That's why everyone knows that it's the victims of bullying who get into trouble and the bullies themselves are left to roam free. Bullies know exactly where the line is between their victim being comfortable and not, and they also know exactly where the line is where their activity is too minor for any single incident to be responded to meaningfully by the authorities. When a victim fights back, they don't keep that line in mind, because they've learned that the authorities aren't an issue, because the authorities have been ignoring months, or years of torture right in front of their eyes.
Of course, it isn't always that way. Sometimes we have a real simple case for the authorities to handle. A good old fashioned beating incident where the victim is attacked and left bloody. And again the authorities fail. What happened here is called "assault and battery". It is a criminal offense. The appropriate response to it is a criminal trial and criminal penalties.
That is the social contract every citizen is included in, adult or child. Instead, authority figures in the school cover it up. They minimize the incident to the parents, using phrases like "boys will be boys". They pressure parents not to press charges. And they again teach the victim that their pain will be ignored, and that the bully can act with impunity. That the social contract does not protect them, and will only ever be used to hurt them.
Shootings aren't a cry for attention. The victims who snap and start shooting people don't want attention. They know attention won't fix anything. They've been taught that the social contract doesn't apply to them, and that the only way that anything will ever change for the better is if they, on their own, make it impossible for things to continue as they had.
What these people are doing is solving problems in a perfectly natural way. Without the social contract, this is the standard way human beings settle disputes. We created the social contract in order to prevent incidents like this. That is the only reason we have the social contract.
Given how utterly useless the social contract has been in protecting tormented minors who are forced, day in and day out, to spend the majority of their waking hours in close proximity to their tormentors while authority figures ignore and minimize the abuse they're suffering, you should all feel blessed that shootings are as unfathomably rare as they are.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Circumcision
I am a man, and I was circumcised at birth. It was done for "hygiene" reasons as a default by the hospital. This was approved of my my parents. I have experienced no observable dysfunction, and am quite happy with the state of my genitals.
None of that makes what happened to me right.
I'm a big fan of the concept of informed consent. The idea that you don't do anything to another person's body without their informed consent is one of the most rock solid ideas in the whole of medical and sexual ethics.
But what to do when a decision has to be made and the person can't give informed consent? Maybe they're in a coma, maybe they're mentally unsound. That's when you have someone designated to make the decision on the behalf of the patient. For children, that decision often ends up in the hands of the parents in these circumstances.
Most of the time, however, the default when the person can't provide informed consent is that you do nothing and wait until they are able. The only time it's ethically justified to act without informed consent is when there is urgency and there is no expectation that the person will become able to provide informed consent until it's too late.
Circumcision has no urgency to it. It can be performed on an adult who can provide informed consent. It can be performed on a child who has demonstrated the full understanding of what he is consenting to. To perform this procedure on an unconsenting infant is thus completely unacceptable, for exactly the same reason it would be completely unacceptable for a parent to consent to have their infant molested.
I don't hate my parents for being misled into thinking this procedure was in my best interests, and I don't hate my body because of the nonconsensual cosmetic surgery that was performed on me as an infant.That doesn't make what happened right, and the fact that it happened to me with so few consequences is no justification for subjecting other children to it.
There's a genuine human impulse to say "I had it rough, so I'm not going to let you have it any easier." This impulse impedes progress and only perpetuates a cycle of injustice. Fortunately there is another genuine human impulse to see to it that our children have it better than we did.
None of that makes what happened to me right.
I'm a big fan of the concept of informed consent. The idea that you don't do anything to another person's body without their informed consent is one of the most rock solid ideas in the whole of medical and sexual ethics.
But what to do when a decision has to be made and the person can't give informed consent? Maybe they're in a coma, maybe they're mentally unsound. That's when you have someone designated to make the decision on the behalf of the patient. For children, that decision often ends up in the hands of the parents in these circumstances.
Most of the time, however, the default when the person can't provide informed consent is that you do nothing and wait until they are able. The only time it's ethically justified to act without informed consent is when there is urgency and there is no expectation that the person will become able to provide informed consent until it's too late.
Circumcision has no urgency to it. It can be performed on an adult who can provide informed consent. It can be performed on a child who has demonstrated the full understanding of what he is consenting to. To perform this procedure on an unconsenting infant is thus completely unacceptable, for exactly the same reason it would be completely unacceptable for a parent to consent to have their infant molested.
I don't hate my parents for being misled into thinking this procedure was in my best interests, and I don't hate my body because of the nonconsensual cosmetic surgery that was performed on me as an infant.That doesn't make what happened right, and the fact that it happened to me with so few consequences is no justification for subjecting other children to it.
There's a genuine human impulse to say "I had it rough, so I'm not going to let you have it any easier." This impulse impedes progress and only perpetuates a cycle of injustice. Fortunately there is another genuine human impulse to see to it that our children have it better than we did.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Nice Guys, Bad Boys, and Rape Culture
Human beings are social creatures. We build our identities based on our relationships with the people around us. To the extent that our biology dictates anything, it dictates that we will care about what other people think.
Shunning and shaming have been used to enforce social and legal standards throughout human history and across cultural lines. Solitary confinement of prisoners has been rightly called torture, and permanent brain damage has been documented as a result of it.
It will come as news to no one that men and women get different social messages when it comes to sex. Men are told to have it, or else. Women are told not to have it, or else.
That "or else" is not a trivial thing. No one will beat you, imprison you, murder you, or otherwise do physical violence to you if you don't conform to these ideals (usually), but that doesn't translate into the ability to break from your assigned role without consequences. And as I noted, the consequences of social ostracism are very real for social creatures like human beings.
The more observant of you will have noted that the gendered expectations above are contradictory. Men are supposed to have sex with women, but women aren't supposed to have sex with men. It's impossible for both these outcomes to be happening simultaneously. No matter which way it comes down, someone will end up hurt and shunned.
In that context, I think I have an explanation for that old chestnut, "nice guys finish last" as it applies to dating.
Women want to have sex, but are told repeatedly that doing so will have negative social consequences. The term slut shaming has been used in feminist circles to describe this very real and not at all unreasonable concern women have. By consenting to sex, a woman opens herself up to shaming and ostracism.
Pickup artists figured this out a long time ago, and they've picked up on how women manage to have sex while attempting to shield themselves from the worst consequences of slut shaming. They never unambiguously consent to sex. Pickup artists council giving a woman plausible deniability, so that she'll be able to say "it just happened" when all is said and done, so she won't have to deal with the social consequences, many of them internalized, that come when she chooses to consent to sex.
Now, that's a problem for nice guys. Nice guys care about sexual consent. They care whether the other person is uncomfortable, and will always seek explicit, unambiguous consent at every stage of a relationship. And as a result, they're unintentionally denying women the ability to pretend that "it just happened."
Bad boys, of course, provide all the plausible deniability a woman could ask for. They demonstrate at every stage of the relationship that they do not respect other people's boundaries, so a woman with one never has to consent to anything.
It's a tidy arrangement, but for one simple fact. Sex without consent is rape, and women employing this strategy are never having explicitly consensual sex, by design. I can think of no clearer an example of rape culture than the fact that our standard relationship model involves women putting up boundaries explicitly so that men will push through them.
Meanwhile, nice guys are being told they're defective.
Remember those messages men get that tell them just as strongly and just as often that they are supposed to be having sex? So they start asking questions about why they are failing to get sex, often aggressively, because they are being shunned and shamed. Men aren't inherently sexually aggressive beasts any more than women are asexual ice queens. We're both trying to conform to social expectations because there are very real consequences to us when we don't.
So what answers do nice guys get? They get told about confidence, that jerks are confident, so they're more attractive than a nice guy who's feeling like a failure. But that's wrong. It isn't a lie. It's just wrong.
You look at a nice guy and try to see what's wrong with him, and you don't see any flaws. He's decent, caring, sensitive, and has his shit together. But you have to tell him something because what he's doing obviously isn't working, and you are a decent person and don't want to see him continue to be hurt by his romantic failures.
You look at what possible positive traits he could be lacking, and the only thing you can find is that maybe he's lacking in confidence. So you tell him to work on himself, try to be happy alone so that confidence can build up and then he'll naturally be attractive because that was the only thing you could perceive that might be even slightly wrong with him.
But that perception that nice guys lack confidence is rooted in two errors. First is that lack of confidence is an effect, not a cause. He lacks confidence because he's being subjected to shaming and ostracism for failing to conform to his gender role. He's experiencing exactly the same social pressure that you try to avoid when you worry over being called a slut. That's what is eating away at his self esteem, and the only way out of that trap is to either conform to his gender role and succeed at having sex, or to recognize the gender role for what it is and reject it outright.
The second error is mistaking a willingness to push through boundaries as "confidence". Being unwilling to push past boundaries and make someone else uncomfortable isn't lack of confidence. That's respecting the other person as a human being, and accepting the words and signals telling you that your advances aren't wanted.
So, with all that mess, what is a nice guy to do?
First off, you're a decent human being. Don't change that fact. Yes, pushing past women's boundaries in order to let them avoid slut shaming is what they want, but letting them play that game only makes it harder for them to come to own their sexual choices and desires.
Second, you're a decent human being. Decent human beings don't slut shame. When a woman agrees to have sex and owns that decision, never make her feel like she did something wrong. When someone else makes a woman feel like she did something wrong by agreeing to sex, that person is part of the problem, and needs to be called out not just because he's being an asshole and hurting that woman, but also because he's perpetuating the system that makes women think they need to be able to say "it just happened".
Third, and this is going to be the hardest part for decent human beings. Don't let a woman say "it just happened." When a woman uses those words, I recommend (and have used) the following script:
W: It just happened.
M: Were you raped?
W: No...
M: Then it didn't "just happen." You made a choice, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I realize that this is hard to say, but the truth is, you're doing a woman no favors by letting her hold on to her deniability with you. Because whenever you're told "it just happened," it's because she's afraid that if she told you she chose to have sex, you would slut shame her. This script tells her that you are not going to slut shame her, and that she doesn't need to pretend.
This won't get you sex.
That isn't what the goal is. You're a decent human being. You will feel like shit if you start pushing past boundaries and having sex without explicit consent. If you were willing to do that, you wouldn't be a nice guy having this problem in the first place.
This is about confronting the underlying problem that leads to all those boundaries being put up in the first place. The goal is to get to the point where women have the confidence to say they want sex when they do.
You want to have sex with women who want to have sex with you and aren't afraid to say so. Pushing past boundaries, no matter why they were put up won't get you that. Breaking down the cultural expectations that are telling women they're wrong to want sex with you might.
Shunning and shaming have been used to enforce social and legal standards throughout human history and across cultural lines. Solitary confinement of prisoners has been rightly called torture, and permanent brain damage has been documented as a result of it.
It will come as news to no one that men and women get different social messages when it comes to sex. Men are told to have it, or else. Women are told not to have it, or else.
That "or else" is not a trivial thing. No one will beat you, imprison you, murder you, or otherwise do physical violence to you if you don't conform to these ideals (usually), but that doesn't translate into the ability to break from your assigned role without consequences. And as I noted, the consequences of social ostracism are very real for social creatures like human beings.
The more observant of you will have noted that the gendered expectations above are contradictory. Men are supposed to have sex with women, but women aren't supposed to have sex with men. It's impossible for both these outcomes to be happening simultaneously. No matter which way it comes down, someone will end up hurt and shunned.
In that context, I think I have an explanation for that old chestnut, "nice guys finish last" as it applies to dating.
Women want to have sex, but are told repeatedly that doing so will have negative social consequences. The term slut shaming has been used in feminist circles to describe this very real and not at all unreasonable concern women have. By consenting to sex, a woman opens herself up to shaming and ostracism.
Pickup artists figured this out a long time ago, and they've picked up on how women manage to have sex while attempting to shield themselves from the worst consequences of slut shaming. They never unambiguously consent to sex. Pickup artists council giving a woman plausible deniability, so that she'll be able to say "it just happened" when all is said and done, so she won't have to deal with the social consequences, many of them internalized, that come when she chooses to consent to sex.
Now, that's a problem for nice guys. Nice guys care about sexual consent. They care whether the other person is uncomfortable, and will always seek explicit, unambiguous consent at every stage of a relationship. And as a result, they're unintentionally denying women the ability to pretend that "it just happened."
Bad boys, of course, provide all the plausible deniability a woman could ask for. They demonstrate at every stage of the relationship that they do not respect other people's boundaries, so a woman with one never has to consent to anything.
It's a tidy arrangement, but for one simple fact. Sex without consent is rape, and women employing this strategy are never having explicitly consensual sex, by design. I can think of no clearer an example of rape culture than the fact that our standard relationship model involves women putting up boundaries explicitly so that men will push through them.
Meanwhile, nice guys are being told they're defective.
Remember those messages men get that tell them just as strongly and just as often that they are supposed to be having sex? So they start asking questions about why they are failing to get sex, often aggressively, because they are being shunned and shamed. Men aren't inherently sexually aggressive beasts any more than women are asexual ice queens. We're both trying to conform to social expectations because there are very real consequences to us when we don't.
So what answers do nice guys get? They get told about confidence, that jerks are confident, so they're more attractive than a nice guy who's feeling like a failure. But that's wrong. It isn't a lie. It's just wrong.
You look at a nice guy and try to see what's wrong with him, and you don't see any flaws. He's decent, caring, sensitive, and has his shit together. But you have to tell him something because what he's doing obviously isn't working, and you are a decent person and don't want to see him continue to be hurt by his romantic failures.
You look at what possible positive traits he could be lacking, and the only thing you can find is that maybe he's lacking in confidence. So you tell him to work on himself, try to be happy alone so that confidence can build up and then he'll naturally be attractive because that was the only thing you could perceive that might be even slightly wrong with him.
But that perception that nice guys lack confidence is rooted in two errors. First is that lack of confidence is an effect, not a cause. He lacks confidence because he's being subjected to shaming and ostracism for failing to conform to his gender role. He's experiencing exactly the same social pressure that you try to avoid when you worry over being called a slut. That's what is eating away at his self esteem, and the only way out of that trap is to either conform to his gender role and succeed at having sex, or to recognize the gender role for what it is and reject it outright.
The second error is mistaking a willingness to push through boundaries as "confidence". Being unwilling to push past boundaries and make someone else uncomfortable isn't lack of confidence. That's respecting the other person as a human being, and accepting the words and signals telling you that your advances aren't wanted.
So, with all that mess, what is a nice guy to do?
First off, you're a decent human being. Don't change that fact. Yes, pushing past women's boundaries in order to let them avoid slut shaming is what they want, but letting them play that game only makes it harder for them to come to own their sexual choices and desires.
Second, you're a decent human being. Decent human beings don't slut shame. When a woman agrees to have sex and owns that decision, never make her feel like she did something wrong. When someone else makes a woman feel like she did something wrong by agreeing to sex, that person is part of the problem, and needs to be called out not just because he's being an asshole and hurting that woman, but also because he's perpetuating the system that makes women think they need to be able to say "it just happened".
Third, and this is going to be the hardest part for decent human beings. Don't let a woman say "it just happened." When a woman uses those words, I recommend (and have used) the following script:
W: It just happened.
M: Were you raped?
W: No...
M: Then it didn't "just happen." You made a choice, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I realize that this is hard to say, but the truth is, you're doing a woman no favors by letting her hold on to her deniability with you. Because whenever you're told "it just happened," it's because she's afraid that if she told you she chose to have sex, you would slut shame her. This script tells her that you are not going to slut shame her, and that she doesn't need to pretend.
This won't get you sex.
That isn't what the goal is. You're a decent human being. You will feel like shit if you start pushing past boundaries and having sex without explicit consent. If you were willing to do that, you wouldn't be a nice guy having this problem in the first place.
This is about confronting the underlying problem that leads to all those boundaries being put up in the first place. The goal is to get to the point where women have the confidence to say they want sex when they do.
You want to have sex with women who want to have sex with you and aren't afraid to say so. Pushing past boundaries, no matter why they were put up won't get you that. Breaking down the cultural expectations that are telling women they're wrong to want sex with you might.
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