Tough Questions: On Shaming Your Kids

A couple weeks back, a discussion came up on TYT that got me all conflicted, as it sometimes does. I've realized that when you agree with some people 95% of the time, that only makes the 5% you disagree on feel more jarring. This case had to do with parenting, and whether or not it is a viable parenting strategy to shame your kids.

 

 

Jimmy Dore and Karamo Brown - a new occasional co-host on TYT, disagree quite strongly on whether or not subjecting your child to public humiliation is a good parenting strategy. Viscerally, I disagreed with Karamo Brown, but I wasn't quite sure why. There were other instances of publicly humiliating kids that had been covered by TYT which I did agree was a good strategy, despite the fact that Ana often comes out 100% against it. In this case, however, I found myself siding with Jimmy Dore, although it took a while for me to wrap my head around why that was.

It all clicked when I was watching an old episode of the Atheist Experience. Discipline and parenting had come up, and Matt Dillahunty had a very interesting perspective on the different ways to parent. Paraphrasing, he came up with two scenarios involving kids who misbehave in a restaurant. In one scenario, you tell the child that if they misbehave they will be grounded, if they behave they get an ice cream. In the other scenario, you teach the child why it is rude to misbehave in a restaurant, you teach them to empathize with the other patrons, asking them how would you feel if someone was disrupting your favorite pastime? In the short run you probably get the same result: a child which behaves in the restaurant. However, in the long run, the child who understands the reasons behind their behavior are more likely to be empathetic, and are less likely to misbehave if, for instance, the person doling out the punishments or rewards is not present the next time they go out. It is parenting through instruction, rather than through fear, which I have always been in favor of. Now of course this is a simplistic example necessary to illustrate the point, and all parenting is a combination of instruction and punishment/reward, but I have always found myself in favor of erring on the side of instruction. I have also found myself using this example to illustrate why hitting your kids is not an effective strategy, just replace "grounded" with "smack in the face" or, as per this video, "old man haircut".

Another layer to it is that I have noticed, in my working with children (despite not having any of my own as of now), that (especially when they are quite young) the more delayed the consequence, the less likely it's going to work. When they're getting picked on in school and bullied and laughed at they're not going to remember that it was because they talked back to their mother or they misbehaved in a restaurant, they're going to know that they're feeling miserable right now and their parents put them there. That might inspire fear of crossing their parents (and hey, some parents think that's a good thing for some reason), or it might harbor resentment for them, but it is often not an effective way for them to connect their current misery as a consequence of a previous transgression.

So give all of this, why was I conflicted at all? It seems as though I pretty much come out against publicly shaming your kids. Why the need to ponder it?

Well, because there have been some cases of public shaming of children when I came out firmly on the side of the parents. However, after going through the previous scenario I understood why.

All of the times I have favored shaming kids, the kids were 1. teenagers, and 2. bullies.

I realized that the reason I felt it was good to shame these kids, was because the shaming was the lesson in empathy. They were kids who routinely laughed at their peers, put them down online or bullied others in one way or another. Knowing what it feels like to be the target of that kind of abuse is something that can teach them to empathize with others.

It wasn't a delayed punishment meant to create misery for a previous transgression, it was the learning experience.

To be fair to Karamo Brown, he did couch his example of shaming his own child in a lot of sitting down, explaining and teaching language, which I am sure contributed to my feeling conflicted, and which is why I didn't really disagree with him as strongly as I might have in a different context. It wasn't until some time later, when he came on TYT again and made some very sex-negative comments, to the effect of 'well, if you have sex in a deserted field, you deserve to be filmed by a pervy cop! WHAT IF MY KIDS HAD SEEN YOU?!' 

 that's when I realized I'm really going to be disagreeing with this guy. It's very shallow, but when I find someone as breathtakingly attractive as Karamo Brown (calm down every one, I know he's gay, doesn't make him any less of a beautiful beautiful man) the vehemently disagreeing part always comes as a bit more of a disappointment.

Tough Questions: On The Limits of Personal Freedom

Despite my extremely patchy posting, I found that I had to re-address one last aspect of the issues that I brought up surrounding Savita. As usual, thinking about the victims of backwards, brutal religions just gets me thinking about all of the ways that these religions infringe on the rights of human beings to be healthy. I think not only about people who die because of dangerous pregnancies, but about circumcision, acid being thrown in girls faces, AIDS because of a lack of access to condoms and children dying of preventable diseases because their parents were told not to believe in a certain medicine. 

When thinking about the horrors that many religious people impose on their own, especially their children, it is very easy to say things like "You know what asshole? If your adult self wants to be a dumbass and not take a blood transfusion to save your own life go right ahead, one less idiot on this planet, but don't let your child die because of your lunatic beliefs!" I am sorry (am I? I'm not sure yet) to say that I also have said this more than once, and am usually of this opinion, but this recent tragedy has really gotten me thinking. 

First of all, any regular reader of this blog will know that I am one HELL of an advocate for personal freedom. I feel that if you are an adult, are fully capable of making your own decisions and are not hurting anyone else in the process you can pretty much to whatever you like. I have taken this idea to some pretty dark extremes, defending even things that make my stomach turn in the utmost disgust. You can see my post on incest, for instance. When that story came out about that German guy that looked for a guy on the internet who loved the idea of being eaten, then killed and ate him, I said he shouldn't get life in prison because the guy not only volunteered, he really really wanted to be eaten - and shouldn't what happens to his own life be his choice and no one else's? I once even saw a documentary about these rare cases of voluntary amputation (if I find it again, I'll update and link it), where these people cannot live with a limb and try desperately to cut it off in any way possible, finding it of course very hard to find a doctor willing to amputate a perfectly healthy limb, and thinking that if I were a doctor I'd try to help these people out. Coming from this perspective, you'd think that my being OK with an adult doing something unhealthy because of their religious beliefs would be absolutely nothing, right?

And yet, there were two examples that stuck in my mind which made it very difficult for me to continue shrugging my shoulders in the face of weird choices that I will never understand but have no interest in shaking my finger over. One of them is the case of adult women electing to be fully circumsized, which a South African friend of mine tells me is the norm in the small town where he is from. The other is the idea of a woman getting a symphysiotomy despite knowing exactly what it is and what it will do to her (and yes I know that this was not the case in Ireland). Am I just being uber sexist, and only balk at these things because they involve women? 

I hope not, because there is a very fundemental difference between the two categories. The first category that I described is one in the absence of coercion. A person has a very strange fantasy, or has a rare illness that makes them need something desperately, who am I to tell them they can't have it, if they're not infringing on someone else's rights in the process? In the case of the latter, however, I don't think that is the case. If your community basically tells you you're an unmarriable slut if you elect to not be circumcised, that's not really a free adult making a free choice is it? If a woman is led to believe by her country steeped in patriarchal religion that her only worth on this planet is to make as many babies as possible no matter the cost or risk to her health, how can I possibly be in favor of that? 

The question thus becomes, would I be in favor of putting hard laws against these things that I despise? Just because I despise them, even though adults are (relatively) volutarily electing to have them?

I think that history has shown that laws are the wrong way to go about these things, especially when it comes to limiting adults. While I am in favor of laws preventing these things being done to children (as relatively powerless citizens they need extra protection), having only laws leads to one thing: back alley proceedures. I personally would invest my resources and energy into education, education, education, always. Let's talk about how these things are incredibly dangerous. Let's talk about changing our culture to something that is sex positive, not slut-shaming. Let's change people's minds.

I suppose the fundemental conclusion is this. When someone has an innate, psychological problem, such as the people who desperately want to become amputees, there's nothing you can do to remove that need inside them. They have it and they will be miserable for the rest of their lives if they are forced to keep that limb, and misery pushes people to do desperate and dangerous things. This means that we need to pick the better of two not-ideal situations: allow that person to sever that limb in the safest way possible.

On the other hand, if we have a person whose only reason for wanting something so dangerous and brutal is because they were unfortunate enough to be born into a society which tells them that they are worth less if they don't do it, well that's just not. fucking. fair. I don't want anyone to think that, and I will not want to stand idly by while the vicious cycle goes round and round. While legislation will probably do more harm than good - pushing an already unsafe proceedure underground - tackling the root, the source of the problem is the hardest but the best way to handle this unfairness. 

There's more to struggle with this, but this first part I hope is clear enough.

Sexual Predators: A Double Standard

Yesterday I read an excellent post on Blue Collar Atheist about sexual harassment, and after watching this video this morning on TheYoungTurks channel I felt it I needed to look at my own views, my own possible double standard when it comes to sexual advances towards a teenage boy on the part of a young, attractive woman. 

I am in no way going to deny that there is indeed a double standard in public opinion with regards to this issue. If a 24 year old man made sexual advances towards a 15 year old girl no one would be discussing whether or not that man is a sexual predator. On the other hand, when people look at this attractive, young, blonde woman hitting on a young, virile 15 year old boy, it doesn’t seem to be the same. As Cenk put it, if it had happened to him at that age “best day of my life!”

I’m not going to discount all that, but I want to counter it with a hypothetical of my own. When I was 15 or 16, I was among the girls that were “old for their ages”. Unfortunately for me, I was also overweight and not considered all that attractive. If I was in a tanning salon and a 24 year old, smoking hot Will Smith-type came up to me topless and tried to kiss me, trust me Cenk, best day of my fucking life.

I suppose the source of the double standard lies in the fact that, as a society we assume that there are far more teenage boys than teenage girls that would welcome such advances. This stems partially from the “horny boy” stereotype and partially with our societal prejudices against women or girls who are sexually active and enjoy it. The “sluts” of this world are dismissed as the oddballs, not “proper”, not what girls or young women are “supposed to be”, whereas the horny teenage boy is exactly what we all expect. Neither of these stereotypes are fair, you don’t have to be a “slut” if you enjoy sex (or would die and go to heaven if a hot guy wanted to kiss you), and not all boys at that age are ready to have sex. They shouldn’t be ridiculed for not being ready or not appreciating the advances (as Hank Fox alluded to in his post) any more than a teenage girl should be ostracized for being ready to have sex. Sexual harassment and unwanted sexual advances should be and are already illegal for completely different reasons: if the boy in this case was uncomfortable with her advances and did not want to have anything to do with her, she is undoubtedly a sexual predator. If, on the other hand he was considering it to be the “best day of his life” up until the point that his mom walked in the question thus becomes: what should the age of consent be? If there really is a double standard, should the age of consent be different for boys and girls?

I definitely do not think that there should be any difference, but I find it difficult to pin down an age. Teenagers are so variable in their physical, mental and emotional development that this question is incredibly difficult to answer. I have known 15 year olds that may as well have been 20, and others that may as well have been 10 and very easily manipulated. Then again I have also known legal adults that were easily manipulated, so where do we draw the line?

I definitely think that there should be a different age of consent when it comes to someone in a position of power over the minor, like a counsellor or babysitter etc. If the two people are completely unrelated, on the other hand, I feel like somewhere between 15 or 16 is fair enough. Once again, if there is a 15 year old that is not ready to be sexually active and resists the advances that is illegal for entirely different reasons, just as it is illegal to sexually harass an adult. For those that are ready to have some kind of relationship at that age, however, I say leave them be.

It would be nice to have some science back up my shot in the dark, if anyone knows of any studies conducted on cognitive development in this regard please let me know.

Tough Questions: Would You Be OK With Your Child In Porn?

Don’t even ask me how this topic happened to pop into my head, it is a (fun? defective?) part of my personality to run with a topic in my head and not let it go until I follow it to its logical conclusion, and is one of the main reasons that I started this blog. It happens when there is an apparent conflict in my head, and as soon as I spot one it needs to be resolved.

The premise is this: I am one of those feminists that believes women should not be demonized because they want to take naked pictures or go into porn. Some women are exhibitionists by nature, they love it and their thoughts and opinions should not be judged differently because of it, any more than you should judge a woman stupid just because she’s blonde or a black man uneducated because of his accent. Yes it is true that there is some very misogynistic, violent and disgusting porn out there done by actresses that are drugged or have serious emotional problems, but that is an entirely different issue and certainly does not represent the entire sex industry. You can fight exploitative porn without thinking that porn itself is harmful or misogynistic in itself, and I am one of those people. When I hear stories of women getting fired because they did porn once or enjoy burlesque dancing

it sickens me.

This position being firmly held in my mind, I realized that the contradiction came up when I realized that if a close family member like my mother or my daughter came to me and told me that they were thinking of doing porn, I would have a problem with it. Well why is that? If I truly believe that there is nothing inherently wrong with doing porn, why would I not want someone I care about to do it? I should support them, not try to convince them not to, unless there is still a part of me that is actually not OK with the sex industry. So, where does the problem lie?

I suppose that it comes from the idea that I would rather my daughter, my best friend or whatever would have more opportunities at her disposal. I would want my daughter to be educated, have a job in which her mind is valued, not her body. I would never want my daughter to have to “resort” to porn, or stripping, because she feels there are no other options. I don’t want my loved ones to be objectified, but most importantly I would not want them to have such low self-esteem that they would want to be considered an object, or less important. I would never want them to feel that they don’t deserve better, or (as would be the case for a daughter) to fall into something they don’t really want to do and have to suffer the consequences of those choices later in life.

However, really thinking about it, I realized that when you think of such a situation you automatically assume that those would be the reasons your daughter/mother/best friend would go into the sex industry, and there I am making a huge mistake which is not fair to many. If my daughter really loved the sex industry, if it is something that inspires her and truly makes her happy, I think I would support her. If she goes into it empowered, proud of herself and with no less self-esteem than she would going into any other job, I would be fine with her choice and defend it to anyone who dares tell her she can’t do it. I’m sure I would never actually be able to watch it, that goes a little too far for me, and of course I will have to have a daughter to put this theory to the test, but I hope to be a better person than to ever deny my child the right to choose her own path in life.

What are your thoughts on the subject, on porn itself? What would you think if you’re family wanted to get into porn?

Me? A Woman? HOW DARE YOU?!

OK so it’s time for a little rant, as this has been bugging me for a while now and I figured Id get it out of my head as best I can. First, a little back story.

A few days ago I was chatting on fb with a friend of mine, whom I talk to on a regular basis despite the fact he lives in the US. Now we take little digs at each other, constantly, it’s just what we do, and so when he told me he was watching a tv show I had never heard of I automatically said that if he loves it, then it must be corny (the fact that he loves corny tv shows is a well known fact, two of his favourites being Gilmore girls and the OC). I thought he’d giggle and tell me what it was about, instead he got extremely defensive and very, very pissy with me. This being a completely unexpected reaction, I made a period joke, as the comparison to PMS seemed very applicable, i.e. the getting overly emotional and angry at something that is actually innocuous and realizing, a few days later, that you totally overreacted. I said

Jesus [friend] what are you manstruating today or something? (…)  in a couple of days you wont even know why you were this upset. hormones will do that to your head. i know its frustrating,  but it does stop

Wow, he got really, really mad. Before signing off, he said

trust me, when I have problems to fix the LAST thing I need is to be told I'm not a man

Well I let that go then, I figured it was the wrong time to tell him he was pissing me off ever so slightly when he was obviously actually mad about something else that I knew nothing about. So I didn’t bring it up, until he contacts me the other day, and I ask him if he’s over it. Apparently not, because he gets pissed at me again for bringing it up

if I'm not talking about it then its obviously not something that needs to be brought up

there's just certain things you cant touch. That’s all I’m saying

it wasnt necessarily the things you said, because I allow people to do it and my humor is so self deprecating, people never know that there's a point where they need to just not. So I really have to make it a point now. When im dealing with something the last thing I need is something of the immasculating variety.

Now I’m pissed.

Look, I get he was actually pissed about something else, and hence got overly defensive about something as asinine as his taste in TV shows, but what bothered me was how angry he got at being compared to a woman (when that was not the nature of the friendly insult at all, the nature was comparing his overly-sensitive behaviour to that of a person in the throes of fluctuating hormones). Being a woman is such a terrible fucking thing, isn’t it?! The LAST thing ANYONE needs when they’re worried about something is have someone suggest they were born without a penis! Can’t you see how that is the HEIGHT of self-deprecating humour?

I can hear the girls telling me that I’m exaggerating. Yes, it is common for men to feel that being called a “girl” is the absolute worst thing they could be called (except maybe being called “gay”), but my question is why? Why the fuck is it so acceptable?

Try, for just a second, to change up the roles for one second. Imagine you’re teasing me about my taste in music, and good-naturedly tell me that I might as well have been born in Compton because all of my favourite artists come from there. Say you take it further and say I should get big rims for my car or some other rapper-stereotype in your jibe my way. Then imagine I flip at you, and say

“trust me, when I have problems to fix the LAST thing I need is to be told that I’m not white”

Or

“I get my humour is self-deprecating and all that, and usually that’s fine, but when I’m dealing with something I just really don’t need that. You have to understand how telling me I’m black in that moment would get under my skin. It’s not what you said, I just didn’t need that right then”.

Wow, sounds unbelievably racist, offensive and all-round shitty when rephrased like that, doesn’t it? See how I took something about music and hip-hop, and turned it into something about race? 

Remember that fifty years ago being compared to a black person was a relatively acceptable insult to use. It was telling someone they’re lazy and uneducated, but nowadays public opinion has shifted enormously away from that mental image, and being insulted by someone suggesting you are black has definitely been restricted to a minority.

Now I hear the voices saying “but no, that’s different”. Well, is it? Why is it different? 

Why is being offended by the undertone of disgust with being compared to my gender different from being offended by the undertone of disgust with being compared to my race?

Tough Questions: Are You Allowed To Be Insensitive?

I feel like weighing in on this Jesus and Mo debate, because I think that it is indicative of a larger question that I would like to discuss. While I've seen the cartoon and have decided that I don't think it's inflammatory, racist or insensitive at all, that is my personal opinion and I understand that there are some people that may disagree. I thought it was funny, others might think it was in poor taste, but whatever. Compounded with the fact that the cartoon itself was on the London School of Economics Student Union Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society's Facebook page, not even tacked up all around the university (so if you don't like it, don't go on their facebook page right?) it seems a little ridiculous that the Uni's Student Union would call an emergency meeting over it or have any case to call it "bullying".

But let's put all that aside. Let's say the cartoon was a little more insensitive and racist. Let's say the cartoon was tacked up on campus and not displayed on some Facebook page that many of the people it would be likely to offend would never visit anyway. The issue that is worth discussing is whether or not such things should be allowed. Are you allowed to offend people based on their race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion or political opinion? If the answer is no, where do you draw the line between good natured satire and banned offensive language?

I'll give you an example from my own college years. I started college in Dublin in 2005, and as I've told you before I was a bit of a stranger in a strange land, considered by most to be an annoying American girl and didn't really have that many friends. Also remember that Hurricane Katrina had hit only a month before, I had friends there for the cleanup efforts and what happened was just settling in. My first week in college I, along with all the other First Years, got a free copy of the student-run magazine. On the cover was a picture of the University, almost completely under water, and the title was "Fuck America. We're Fucked Here". Wow. Bad fucking taste, not to mention the fact that it made me feel even more self conscious about my accent, and it made me think that people were going to be even more hostile towards me because of it than they turned out to be. I thought it was insensitive, not to mention completely misdirected. If you're upset with the US government's actions why are you making jokes about the poor peoples lives that were lost in a natural disaster, people that were also foresaken by the US government? I thought it was stupid and they should have picked a better cover, especially for the very first issue given out free to the new students.

Here's the thing though, should they have been allowed to publish it? I vote yes. Sure it affected me in some way or another, but I understand that while I reserve the right to be offended, others reserve the right to offend. I don't think that any club should not be allowed to display or say anything about anyone, even if it is racist or whatever. Let public opinion tear them down and let the racists declare themselves. I never bought a copy of that magazine throught my entire college career. If I was part of a club that displayed something that I thought was racist or homophobic I would no longer be a member, and neither would other students such as myself, until the club would only contain other racist people. If that number is large enough for the club to continue at least everyone knows that they are a racist bunch. If it is not the club is cancelled, but not because they were not allowed to express their racist thoughts.

What I am saying is that, even though I don't think the Jesus and Mo cartoon is racist, or bullying, or insensitive, or anything like that, even if it was I would tell the London School of Economics Student Union to grow the fuck up. You're in college now, get rid of the baby blanket and get ready to step into the real world. There are people that you're not going to agree with, and there are people that are going to be extremely vocal about what it is they are not agreeing with you on. Deal with it.

Tough Questions: Is Eating Meat Immoral?

Ever since I uploaded a Penn and Teller Bullshit! episode about PETA I've been getting a swarm of comments about the morality of meat eating, what I think about it, how I justify myself etc. Not only are 500character comments very limiting, I am also getting extremely tired of repeating myself. Prompted by waking up this morning to the longest PM I've ever seen, I've decided to explain myself once and for all here. If there are follow-up questions ask them here, but please don't ask me to repeat things I have already stated.

I am using the PM in question as a model for my answer as it seems to cover the basics of coming to an opinion on the morality of the subject.  To summarize the main questions that are being asked of me here, I guess they can boil down to the following:

1. How can you justify treating animals in a way that you wouldn't treat humans, when we are all related and species barriers are just an arbitrary distinction?
2. If you don't think it is morally wrong to kill an animal, why is it not morally wrong to kill a human being?
3. If you agree that animals suffer the way humans do, how can you support an industry that thrives on this suffering?
4. Since there are mentally retarded humans that have the same IQ as a cow or a pig, and you base your "OK to kill" morality on intelligence, either it is OK to kill retarded people or it is not OK to kill pigs.

If I have misinterpreted any of these points please correct me.

OK so this is what I think about the whole thing.

First of all, all of us make the distinction between things that are OK to kill and things that are not based on "intelligence", or rather neurological complexity, at some point. We are biologically related to every living organism on Earth, including plants and bacteria. Here, we are going to draw the line at animals that possess brains and are capable of feeling pain, for the sake of argument.

Secondly, it would be an incomplete answer without pointing out that there is a biological precedent for this opinion. Of course there is a biological precedent for giving your own species more importance than any other. It is the most natural thing that exists and there is no animal that would put the survival of an animal of a different species over one of its own. The instinct becomes even stronger when it comes to family members. While mathematically it makes sense that you should kill your sister, or mother, or son to save 10 other people, there are very few people out there that would be able to make such a choice. There is also a biological precedent for eating meat, we have evolved as omnivorous animals and as such it is a normal part of our diet. However, we have developed the neurological complexity necessary to be able to override these instincts in the pursuit of logic and morality, something that we are unique in being able to do as a species. So, given that we are smart enough to be able to figure out ways to survive without meat etc, can we still morally justify our doing so?

I responded that the thing I find to be immoral is causing animals to suffer, whether it be emotional or physical suffering, both for humans and other animals. We can agree that while humans hold first prize in being able to suffer emotionally (especially since right now we're talking about farm animals, not other more intelligent ones that are not routinely killed for food), other animals have the capacity to feel pain. That should not be done in my opinion. Great, so far we agree.

The problem that follows is the anthropomorphic idea that killing a farm animal is the same as causing it pain and suffering. I understand that the US is behind when it comes to legislation with regards to minimizing animal suffering, but in the EU and especially in Italy it is much simpler to buy meat from animals that have not suffered. First of all, EU regulations state that each farm animal be killed in a swift and clean way that does not cause them pain or fear. Cows are taken to a room and killed with a swift blow to the head delivered by an air-pressure gun which gives the exact amount of force necessary to instantly kill, removing human error that might stun the animal and cause it unnecessary pain. Pigs are walked into a chamber that contains CO2, they fall asleep and die without even knowing whats going on (this happens often enough with humans that we are sure its painless, people die in their sleep without even knowing what is happening). Chickens are killed with a swift electric current delivered to the neck, stopping their heart instantly and none of that running around with a snapped neck shit. When I drive past my favorite butchers at Testa di Lepre I can see the cows roaming around huge fields, just as nature intended. Here it is really not that hard to make sure you are buying meat that has lived a normal happy life until being killed in the most humane way possible. For this reason, I do not have a problem with buying and eating this meat. Compared with how their ancestors had it as being prey animals, being chased down (extremely scary) until exhausted and then having their throat gashed (if chased by a big cat) or being disemboweled and eating while still twitching with life (if chased by wild dogs) I'd say they have a pretty sweet deal.

OK so moving on to humans. As I said I do not agree with causing pain and suffering. If you kill a human being chances are you are causing them pain and suffering. Humans know what death is, that they are going to die, and they are often terrified of the idea. Killing a person for sadistic pleasure means by definition causing them pain and that is immoral to me. Even if you sneak up on them and smack them over the head you are still causing pain and suffering to that person's friends and family, just because it is emotional suffering it is still suffering. I also don't think you should kill any animal for no reason. What if you kill a person that has no friends, no family, no acquaintances whatsoever, by sneaking up on them and smacking them over the head so they don't know whats coming, cause them no pain, just kill them. Well what fucking sense would that have??! Apart from the obvious point that you would be extremely hard pressed to find a person that fit that description, I would be also astounded and morally outraged at someone doing the exact same thing to a stray dog. What the fuck would you even do that for? Now surely there is some residual instinct of putting your own species above all others, but there is also one other thing that sets humans apart. Humans are unique in that, because of the fact that they know their life is finite, they have the capability of making choices. I don't mean the choice between turning left or right that might incidentally affect your lifespan, I mean they can make a conscious choice with what direction to bring their lives in, and even to end it if they like. Call me crazy, but I don't like the idea of robbing a person of that choice, because I wouldn't want anyone to rob me of it either. That is why I am pro-euthanasia, I feel that just because someone is not physically capable of fulfilling that choice they should not be robbed of it.

That brings us full circle to the mentally disabled. Here I find a flaw in the science of talking about people with the intelligence of pigs. First of all it is pretty much impossible to give a pig an IQ test, but even if you could I really don't think its a fair comparison. Human brains are just different from pig brains in too many ways. For example, even if a person has the "problem-solving capabilities" of a pig (only for the sake of argument at this point, I am still waiting on any citation of a mental disorder that is said to put that person's intelligence on par with a pig's), would they still have the capability of emotional suffering and distress, of forming social bonds and interacting with humans. Also there are the people around them, parents and loved ones that care for them to take into consideration. The only almost comparable situation could be someone in a vegetative or semi-vegetative state. Someone that is not capable of interacting with others, are not aware of the presence of their loved ones in a conscious way, someone with no hope of recovering the damage done to their brains. In these situations I am once again pro euthanasia if that is what the family wants.

This is my conclusion based on my moral logic. I do not think that others have to reach the same conclusion, because as I have said may times, morality is subjective. Many people morally object to my view on euthanasia, that's fine. All I ask is that your opinion be based on real facts, although I have already dealt with false facts surrounding vegetarianism here. It also irks me to be accused of having an opinion about something "just because", which I have also discussed before.

I hope I have been clear. If there is another aspect of this you want me to address, or I need to be more clear on something please let me know. Just please don't ask me to readdress something I have already stated because I wont.

Anyway, this is going to be my last post for the next four days seeing as I am taking that wonderful "immaculate conception" four day weekend and not taking my computer. If I come across one and I have something to say I might peek in before then, but if not I'll see you all on Monday

Tough Questions: Why Can't Men Hit Women?

As a continuation of yesterday's topic, I figured while I was at it to bring up an old argument that I used to hear in high school (where I was typically called a "feminist" as an insult) all the time. If you really believe that women and men should be treated equally, and that you shouldn't make any judgement on someone based on their gender, then why is it not as acceptable for a man to hit a woman as it is to hit a man? You can't have it both ways.

OK so let's put aside the argument "It's not OK to hit anyone". It's a silly excuse to avoid the real issue: it is absolutely true that it is socially acceptable for a woman to slap a man if he seriously insults her, but if a man slaps a woman when she's mouthing off it is atrocious, even for the majority of women that advocate equality. Is that wrong? Why or why not?

I had to think about this long and hard, the reason being that I did in fact occasionally get into physical altercations with the opposite sex. It began in elementary school when I put the smack down on the class bully who was actively choking my friend at the time for telling him to piss off. Since then my elementary school years were often spent pulling a bully off my friends' younger siblings and giving them a little taste of their own medicine. The bullies in the school were either my age or older, so my teachers never reprimanded me nor did they ever inform my mother, seeing as I was doing what they all wished they could. By the time I went to middle school, however, they had stopped physically bullying and the only kind of harassment that was thrown around was verbal, so the fights stopped. In high school I was still very much considered one of the guys and it was obvious that I was not afraid to throw down if the need ever came up. I defended a couple of my friends from harassment (both sexual and physical) on the streets and I was still the go-to-girl for this kind of vigilante justice. I suppose the fact that I was considered "between genders" in my teenage years made me the ideal person to ask this question, and it really made me think.

As I thoght about it, I came to two important realizations. First of all I realized that the more I was growing up, the more this taboo of hitting girls(/women) was growing, even in my own mind. The second realization was that while I wouldn't have minded if one of the aforementioned boys tried to smack me, because I would have made them regret it for the rest of their lives, I would have been morally outraged if they did the same thing to one of my "girlier" friends, and I would have made them regret it for the rest of their lives. With this second one, the reason for this disparity clicked in my mind.

As I was growing up, the physical disparity between the sexes started becoming more apparent. While girls and boys aged 7-11 are reasonably equally matched physically, they begin to diverge after puberty. This seems like the most obvious statement in the world, but it's at the heart of the whole issue.

The moral outrage doesn't come (at least doesn't from me) from a person with a penis hitting a person with boobs. It's about hitting a person that is not physically matched to defend themselves. I would be just as outraged to see a fully grown man hitting a young scrawny boy. It is the intent behind that slap that makes it. When a woman slaps a man for being rude, she is saying "I will not tolerate you degrading me like this. You are completely out of line and I want to shock you so you remember it". When a man hits a woman (or by extention, a scrawny teenage boy) for the same reason, that slap says "Know your place. You forget I am stronger than you, I can dominate you if  and whenever I choose. I have this power over you, so don't you think of saying something to set me off". The power dynamic is completely different.

I am a woman who has no qualms defending herself with her fists if need be. If a man who is physically matched with me raises his hands with the same intent that he would raise them with another man, that moral outrage disappears for me. If, on the other hand, I see a man raising his hands against a woman who is significantly weaker than him, or one that has been conditioned by society to not defend herself physically, and therefore if the intent behind that slap is the second one I have described, I'll go fucking nuts.

So, can men hit women? The answer is yes only if the intent behind bringing the confrontation to violence is the same as it would be if she were a man, if she has a good chance of defending herself and if she has just as much intention of escalating to that same level. In other words, the same morally justifiable rules that apply for physically engaging another man.

Not such an unequal concept after all is it?

Tough Questions: Is it OK To Hit Your Children?

This morning I watched one of the most disturbing videos I have ever seen, of a judge beating his disabled daughter for having installed a video game on her computer. Watching it almost brought tears to my eyes, but I really had to think about it for a while to really fully appreciate everything about it that made me feel the way I did.

Of course this brings up the question: is it OK to hit your children? There are people who might look at that video clinically and say sorry, it's not that bad. He doesn't punch her, he hits her with a belt, but not with the buckle so it's still legal. It's brutal, but she's not bleeding, nor does he hit her face, there are much much worse cases of child abuse out there and this does not qualify. To which my gut response is, BUT IT'S NOT OK TO HIT YOUR KIDS!

Here's the problem with that initial reaction: It goes completely against the gut reaction that I get when watching videos like this, which is "OHMYGOD if that was my child I'd smack him/her so hard they wouldn't know which way was up!"

So wait a minute, is it OK to hit your kids or not?

I'm going to go with no.

It might happen that once, in the middle of a passionate fight with your teenager you might slap them once across the face, which you might regret and apologize for later when the heat of the argument has died down. But relying your parenting on corporeal punishment can, in my opinion, range from being merely lazy to being the single most damaging experience of your child's growth and life.

Judging what this man did to his daughter goes far far beyond the physical damage he inflicted on her. True, she was not left bleeding or concussed. However I later realized that it is disturbing for reasons far beyond what was physically done to her. It was the fact that her screams and her crying invoked not the slightest bit of pity or fatherly love. If anything, her screams made him more angry and want to beat her more violently. It was the fact that her mother had not a single word of restraint for her husband, and nonchalantly changes the subject in the background while her daughter cowers in fear in a corner. It was the fact that he was visibly containing himself, and the feeling that later on he will be congratulating himself for not having given in to the urge to take it further, instead of feeling guilty for having taken it way way too far. It was the way he cursed at her to lay face down on the bed, and the palpable humiliation she must have felt while trying to find the courage to resist his demands.

I was very lucky in my childhood to not have ever been beaten, outside the occasional slap given in the heat of an argument. However I was an extremely rebellious child, and I can say for certain that beating me would have been entirely useless. One thing I remember vividly however, was the threat of a spanking from my uncle at the age of 10, whom I saw only once every couple of years. I cannot remember what I had done or said to deserve this warning, but I remember him calmly informing me that, although I was not his daughter he was still my uncle, which meant that he was perfectly within his right to spank me if he determined it necessary. He said this in a non-threatening, perfectly placid way. Despite this I remember the humiliation and disgust that boiled in me at the thought of him taking such a road. I said nothing and left because I knew, for a fact, that if he decided to spank me I would have fought him tooth and nail to prevent it, as hard and as viciously as I would have fought someone who was trying to rape me, and perhaps cause a family split because of it.

Now contrast that with the beatings I used to get from the son of a family friend. There was a woman whom I considered to be something of a second mother to me, but sometimes when she was not around her older son would wail on me, despite the fact that I was a child from 7-12 and he was in his 20s. I defended myself like a vicious little cat, kicking and biting, going for the balls, the eyes, anything I could to even the playing field, and usually I got away with little harm done. Yet this to me was not nearly as traumatic as a "spanking" from my uncle would have been. I did not come away from these encounters feeling like a victim, if anything I felt empowered by the fact that I could find a way to defend myself despite the fact that he was so much bigger and stronger than me. I was under no obligation to bow my head and take it. I forgave him for these encounters even long before I discovered that he was a drug addict at the time, I guess because I always sensed that there was something altering his behavior and that he wasn't an inherently bad person. Even though objectively this seems like a much worse case of "abuse" than anything that my uncle would have done to me, I came away from it in much the same way a young brother comes away from a tussle with an older sibling. Those of you who count the bruises when judging a child abuse case, you're missing the most important factor.

Beating you child is not just about the physical scars, it is about the humiliation and hatred you inspire in them. You cannot expect to build a loving relationship with someone you put down in such a way, no matter how much you may think they deserved your punishment. I'm sure my uncle would not have hurt me if he decided to spank me, I probably wouldn't have even felt the pain a few hours later, but I also know that I never would have forgiven him for it, and for the rest of my life it would hang there between us. What is even more sad is that he would have no idea it was there, influencing our relationship in unseen ways, because he has no idea what kind of damage his behavior might have caused.


Am I completely out of touch, because I do not have personal experience with this kind of physical abuse? Is the humiliation factor very different for a young girl being beaten by a man from a young boy being beaten by a woman? Let me know



And a brief message to the girl in the video: you did the right thing. Exposing your father in this way took enormous courage and I applaud and support you.
However, if he does not go to prison, or at least lose his parental rights because of it thanks to his buddies in the judicial system, and he comes back to take out his revenge on you, go for the knees. Do not hesitate, two good strong kicks with your heel directly to the kneecap will take him out and he will not be able to stand back up. Get up, and Run.

Tough Questions: The Legality of Incest

This personal debate with myself started with a Young Turks clip on youtube a while back about Switzerland thinking about legalizing incest. Of course, when I first saw the title, my gut reaction was crazy fucking Swiss. Now I must admit I had the slightest biased against the Swiss government, simply with the issue I have on them portraying such a forward progressive attitude when in reality a lot of the government's policies are really backward, like their ridiculously xenophobic immigration policy and the fact that their women didn't have the right to vote until 1971. So initially, to me this seemed to fall into this category.


But then I watched the video. First of all, the law in no way condoned the rape of children or any such off-balance power dynamic. Pedophilia is outlawed in many different ways so that was not even the question. The question was whether or not someone should go to jail because of a fully consensual relationship between adult family members, like a brother and a sister.

Now I'm an only child, but still the idea of a brother and a sister going at it grosses me out. But still, does something that grosses me out have to be illegal? People that pee on each other gross me the fuck out too, but I'm not going to tell them that they should spend up to four years in jail because of it!

So why is it really illegal in the first place, in a country like the US?

There seem to be two prevailing arguments that people will automatically blurt out when confronted with such a seemingly odd and yet very simple question.


Excuse #1: It goes against people's Christian values

OK so apart from the obvious fact that Christians have absolutely no right to condemn incest considering that the Bible is riddled with it (see this video for a hilarious spoof on this), countries like the US and other European countries are supposed to have separation of church and state, so there should not be any laws made based on a religious belief or feeling. So in that case, this law would have no merit.


Excuse #2: The family members might have children, and those children would have a much higher chance of being born with malformations and genetic diseases.

Yes that is true. But here's my big problem with that argument: there is no other case in which it is illegal to have children based on such a risk. Let's go with an extreme example first. There is a drug on the market called Accutane, a very good drug for people with severe and disfiguring acne. The only problem is that, if taken while pregnant, this drug will lead to extremely severe birth defects, in which the child will be born with head, nervous system and heart defects, many times resulting in death. Of course female patients are warned of these enormous risks and told to use birth control while taking it. HOWEVER, if a woman gets pregnant, continues to take the drug and gives birth to the baby, causing it immense pain and suffering, there is no law to stop her. She will not spend one day in jail. So how can you say that there can be a law against a practice that might cause the birth of a child with congenital defects, when there is no law against a practice that will almost definitely produce a child with congenital defects? The argument simply does not hold water.

So the real question becomes this: legalize (or at least decriminalize) incest, or introduce more laws against practices that could lead to the birth of children with severe congential disorders?

At this point I have to point out the potential disaster of option 2. Yes incest can lead to birth defects, but you know what else can? Alcohol. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is the number 1 cause of mental retardation in the States, and yet it is not illegal for a pregnant woman to have a drink. Well why stop there? Older women have a significantly higher chance of having a baby with Down's Syndrome, are we going to have an age limit on getting pregnant? It all gets a little too much for my taste. I say educate women on the risks involved, offer safe and legal abortion if it doesn't go to plan, and let adults make up their own adult minds. Pro choice all the way!

Well this was my logical train of thought. If you have any conflicting ones, or any other point to add or consider, do let me know!