Targeting the Vulnerable

Here's another thing that's starting to really piss me off: religious literature in doctors' waiting rooms. I was at the mediclinic the other day while my partner was having her stomach pains checked out, and while searching desperately for a readable magazine I came across a little stand filled to the brim with Xian tracts. Not even the amusing kind of tracts either; shitty boring-ass ones that nobody who's not already up the fruity lulu river can't possibly get anything out of, they're so full of language code and weird twists of logic that make sense only within the hermetically sealed ideological bubble. For instance the one I managed to glance at started out something like this:

"It's fashionable these days to think that it doesn't matter what someone believes, just as long as they believe it sincerely..."

BAAMF! Wrong, fucktard! Nobody actually believes that! Not even the loopiest hippy-dippy new ager or the most nihilistic, apathetic Goth you'll ever meet believes that every possible belief is equally true. Nobody thinks, because Hitler or Stalin or W or Bin Laden sincerely believed, that it makes them any less of a fucking survived abortion. Out general social ettiquette has evolved to a point where many people feel that in most situations it's improper or impolite to vigorously question the beliefs of others, because they don't want to get into a screaming public fight. And people have largely come to feel that, as long as they're not hurting anyone, it's not their business to try and change someone's beliefs. And we have a number of forums - the academy, the free press, and the political arena - where people are permitted or even encouraged to air their beliefs, no matter how insane or asinine, provided they are also willing to submit those beliefs to vigorous critique. But I sincerely doubt that you will find anyone, anywhere, who would tell you that it doesn't matter what someone believes as long as they believe it sincerely. The only reason you think people think that is because you literally can't concieve that someone would actually think they had a good reason for believing something other than what you believe, so you have to make up this bizarro fantasy world of social relativism and moral subjectivism in which the only possible alternative to the One Holy Truth of Christ Arisen is to completely abandon any possibility of objective truth from the get-go. You've managed with exactly one fucking sentence to convince me that you're so memetically crippled that nothing you have to say can be of any relevance to me whatsoever! Congratulations, you lose!

Then, just today, I was at my GP's office for a routine consult and a physio referral, and I saw a couple of child indoctrination devices - friendly little picture books with titles like 'The Story of Jesus' and 'The First Christmas'. Now, when I see shit like DARE propaganda or pharmacorp advertising materials or Reader's Digest at my doctor's office, I find it fucking offensive, but I see this as being right over the line. Xian propagandists have no business distributing their trash in facilities that my taxes pay for, be it a school, a library, a military base, a jail, or, yes, in this socialist paradise we call home, a Medicare-sponsored doctor's office. And trying to scare people who are sick and nervous and vulnerable and probably have nothing else to read but 7-month-old Popular Mechanics or Babies and Motherhood? That's just fucking low. I don't want to see that shit when I'm worrying that I may be permanently disabled or that my partner may be developing a heart condition, any more than you would want to see a pamphlet titled 'God Doesn't Exist and When You Die You'll Be Worm Food'.

Problematic

I recently was directed to this article by Jodi Kasten on Salon Open titled 'Equal Rights for Men'. Now, I'm certainly in favour of equal rights for men, being that I am a man and like the idea of having equal rights. And I can hardly dismiss this as yet another paranoid, anti-feminist MRA screed, since the writer is a self declared feminist. But although it might be considered more along the line of 'friendly fire' than an attack, I have some problems with this piece, and my biggest problem is a perfect intersection with the problems I have with the MRAs I see repeatedly 'pointing out' these same problems over and over again. It does a decent job of spotlighting some (a very select sub-set) of the problems men face under the patriarchal standards of masculinity, but it does little if anything to try and deconstruct *why* these issues remain so endemic or what is to be done; and there's more than a little implication here that feminists are to blame, or at the least are standing at the roadside without doing anything about it. Perhaps I can be forgiven for finding such an approach problematic, for imagining that Kasten may have inadvertantly taken a sip of MRA kool aid.

To start with, there's the classic litany of male oppression (by women?) that I've come to expect every time I read an article like this. Men practically never get custody of children in divorce cases. Women are perfectly free to treat men like pieces of meat - even at work! - and to make fun of men using the crudest and most vicious of misandrist steroetypes, while women get a free pass. All men are treated as potential child molesters. Men who are domestically or sexually abused by women are laughed at. And, yes, these are all real problems that have to be dealt with on the road to equality.

Now, I'm a strong advocate of the position that socially constructed gender roles hurt men as much as they do women, that men are constrained to a narrow and artificial range of self expression and behaviour that does on balance tend to place them in a position of power greater than that of their femal counterparts (things such as race, class, abilities, &c. being otherwise equal) but not in a position of greater overall freedom. And during the progress of the feminist movement and the sexual revolution, a great many more men, having lost a great deal of the power over their wives and girlfriends, daughters and mothers, female parishioners, employees and co-workers, random women they meet on the street, and the lives of women in general through political and economic subordination that they might otherwise have enjoyed (deep breath) have started looking at their lives and realized, 'Hey! This whole socially constructed standard of masculinity thing is a bit of a raw deal!' And it is so fucking easy to just go the extra mile and start thinking about where our artificial gender roles come from in the first place and why they have to be so restrictive and discriminatory, but I see so many people who could have been allies in the cause of equality turn into bald-faced reactionaries instead because they just refuse to make the bloody effort to fucking think about things for two goddamn seconds. And it really hurts to see a self-proclaimed comrade in arms repeating the same tired line in defense of my equality, however well intentioned. You don't chase a dog away by feeding it steak.

So I'd like to lay it on the line here. This is the first level of analysis you really ought to be going through when examining the issue of misandry and anti-male discrimination from a feminist perspective (just noticing that it exists really doesn't constitute an analysis). Here are a few reasons why child custody cases are slanted against men: women, regardless of their personal qulaities, are seen as inherently better suited to the process of child rearing; men who divorce, or are divorced, are seen as having failed in their duties as 'head of the household' and thus no longer deserving of a household to head; and patriarchy sees fit to place the burdens of single child rearing primarily on women as a check to their economic and political power. The social definition of men (especially single men, or at least those unaccompanied by a proper spouse) as potential pedophiles serves a similar purpose, to build the social case for the constant care and attention required by young children to be delivered primarily by women, as well as shepherding men into their 'proper role' as husband and father; once a man is proudly and openly married, this blanket suspicion tends to evaporate and he is free to demonstrate love for his children (though never of course too physically lest they become effeminate and weak) as well as coach little league or lead the local scout troop. The maintenance of valuable property, of the land and the house, is the man's work since he's the one that really 'owns' the property; the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping, and the decorating is all the woman's job since she just 'lives' there.

Now let's talk about those 'sweeping generalizations about ALL men being stupid, sex driven, lazy assholes', which doubtless allow women who rely on them feel warm inside at getting a leg up on those sexist sons of bitches. It's pretty telling that the stereotypes getting reinforced about men are the ones that give them greater social liscense to act like their dicks control them instead of the other way around; to be abrasive, competitive, and callous, to follow strategies which can gain them power at the expense of others; to leave to the women all of those little routine chores they're so 'incompetent' at (but not, of course, any of the important stuff); and generally to be impervious to new information and ideas, free to concentrate on sports and power politics without getting bogged down in messy 'women's issues'. Not to mention the stereotyping of men who don't fit the ideal of the buff, hard charging Alpha Wolf as lesser beings, weak and dependant, letting women walk all over them, psychically castrated by those vicious feminazis talking in the break room about the hot guy in recieving.

The last several decades may have seen men lose a bit and women gain strongly in terms of relative power positions, but I think it's clear to most that both have gained in terms of overall liberty and power over their own lives. For instance, the fact that divorced men rarely get to keep the kids (saying never is a provable falsehood since I personally know at least one male divorcee who has custody of his own child) looks like a bit less of a problem when you think about how much easier it's become to get out of that joyless or abusive marriage. The kinds of oppression we see against males in our society (a lot of which are hardly new - men who are beaten by their wives have always been considered a laughing stock) are not some sort of institutionalized matriarchal privilege inculcated by an equalitarian feminism drunk on its own power. They're part of the pushback, part of the ways that patriarchal authoritarianism is attempting to re-entrench its own powers and privileges. Women are being sold their own brand of socially constructed masculinity, 'strong enough for a man but made for women', as a means of achieving male power and privilege instead of fighting the hard fight for equality - beating men on their own turf, instead of changing the playing field. You (and your daughters) can have power over men by treating them like meat, by wearing a t-shirt with a sexist slogan, by being an emotionless ice queen who crushes anyone who stands in their way. And for every smirking marketer out there wrapping subjection in false empowerment and selling it in easily consumable units, there's a Men's Rights Advocate ready to hiss and howl about how the feminazis are out to break your balls, steal your children, and spend your hard-earned money on jewelry and shoes.

All of this, in of course a slightly less coherent and more fragmented form, was almost choking to jump out my mouth as I read what is overall a fairly measured, honest, and fair blog post about the problem of equal rights for men. But then I got to the parts of the article that really made me want to scream.

I must say, I don’t know a single man, NOT ONE, who thinks I am a lesser person because I have a vagina. The men I know see women as mysterious, alluring and even holy.

Oh please no, don't even start down that road. Yes, I'm sure that the particular circle of educated, middle class, liberal guys you associate with see women in these terms. Not only is it nowhere near a universal sentiment, it is an intensely problematic attitude to be fostering. Women are not 'mysterious'. They are not magical forest creatures. They are neither saints nor angels. They are not here to be put on a pedestal so we men can adore them (and kick mud all over them when they fall from our artificial expectations of grace into the dirt of reality). Women are people, to be properly interacted with as people. For fuck's sake! This is practically the madonna/whore complex distilled into a single sentence.

What would you think of a man who told a woman he would give her diamond jewelry if she had sex with him? How is that different than “holding out” on a man because he doesn’t give you jewelry? Or take out the garbage? Or mow the lawn? There should be no "price" on intimacy.

Once again, the fact that a lot of women haven't gotten over the patriarchal expectation that men get to buy access to their vagina, and that their job is thenceforth to exchange sex for household upkeep, is a long-standing problem that feminism has been seeking to correct for generations. Yes, it is discrimination against men! It's also discrimination against women! All discrimination against women is discrimination against men, and vice versa, because our socially constructed gender roles are about keeping men in their place, and keeping women just a step below them!

(/rant)

OK, seriously. I understand that Jodi Kasten has good intentions here and I'm sorry if this came off a bit harsh. But this is kind of my personal hobby horse, so I hope whoever reads it can take it in the spirit of honest critique, profanity notwithstanding. I just think we get exactly these arguments coming at us as a genuine attack so often, that the basic rebuttal needs to be made explicit. If men are victims of female privilege, it is because it is in the interest of the system to play men and women against each other, and I've seen way too many hotlinks today in the vein of 'see, even a lady with lady parts gets the fact that feminism has gone too far!' to let it slide.

Life Feeds on Life

Satanists are often accused of participating in 'animal sacrifice' (we're unfairly accused of human sacrifice as well, but that's a topic that can wait for another day). And I won't deny it. In fact, I'll willingly affirm it: I sacrifice animals more or less every day. I'm not talking about the meaningless torture and murder of an inoffensive house pet or forest critter to slake the blood lust of some imaginary demon, but the common and everyday act of eating the flesh of dead cows, pigs, chickens, and fish. Every one of us (except the lunatic fringe of vegetarians/vegans) participate in animal sacrifice every day. In fact, this is the whole point of the classic, 'religious' animal sacrifice - the immaterial soul is offered to the Deity, while the more material parts are distributed to friends and family to enhance the sacrificier's prestige. In fact, this may have been the reason that certain animals were domesticated in the first place.

Life feeds on life. It's one of those inescapable facts of reality that we try so hard to ignore. Working in my garden, pragmatist that I am, I can't help but acknowledge the fact that every time I pull a weed I am destroying a life; that these tiny shoots and leafy vines and glorious flowers I work so hard to nurture are destined to be mutilated, slaughtered, and consumed in sacrifice to my ravening hunger. Now, at this point it is customary for the proponents of giving animals rights on par with those of humans to make compassionate noises about alleviating suffering, and point out that plants do not suffer as cows and chickens do. Now, whatever the merit of this line of argument on its face, I feel like it's somewhat missing the point. I'm all for alleviating the suffering of animals, in part because keeping animals in conditions which cause them to suffer makes for poor quality meat and a distinctly heightened risk of contagion, and partly because I am not a sociopathic monster bereft of empathy for my fellow creatures. But just as there is a clear dividing line between plants and animals which allows the animal rights activist to remain callous to the suffering of their clorophyll-enhanced brothers, there is also a clear line between animals and humans. Just because they feel, does not mean they feel as we feel. Just because they suffer, does not make it inherently wrong for us to kill them and eat them.

Now, as a follower of an essentially egoistic moral philosophy, I feel an instinctive pushback whenever I hear arguments for certain programmes of moral improvement to be undertaken purely for the sake of the 'rights' of those affected. In most cases involving human beings, I can get behind progressive ideals because I see them as being intrinsically beneficial to me and those I love; in part to alleviate the empathetic pains and intensify the empathetic pleasures which evolution has engraved on my psyche, and partly for the material reasons that people who are opressed and impoverished tend to be dangerous to those around them (not to mention the continual presence of opression and threat of poverty in my own life). In these cases I recognize the logic that an injury to one is an injury to all, and thus, an injury to me. I'm even prepared to recognize the rights of nature for the same reason. Nature is pretty damn necessary to a happy, healthy human life; even a committed urban tribalist like myself can recognize this fact, and those who despoil nature are likewise worthy of my wrath for their contribution to the degrading conditions of my own livelihood. But when it comes to the ideal that no animal should ever be used for any human end whatsoever, well, I'm not quite prepared to cross that line. Theoretically, exploited sweatshop labourers, women trafficked for the purpose of sex slavery, and black men wrongly imprisoned on false charges could all become a direct threat to me or those I love. Cows will never be a threat to me. So long as I am satisfied that they have been treated as humanely as is practicable, I feel no compunction whatsoever about biting into a nice juicy steak.

Satanism is a philosophy that sees life and nature as sacred, as an intrinsic part of that which makes possible my existence and thus my godhood unto myself. But the sanctity of life includes as part and parcel the sanctity of death, necrophagy, and natural selection. Were it not for millions of generations of life killing and consuming life, the human race could never have evolved to the level at which we are capable of such systematic cultivation, exploitation and slaughter of plants and meat animals. That I want to eat meat is ultimately all the justification I feel is necessary for me to do so. If you choose otherwise, it is your business and I will neither stand in your way, nor do you the insult of offering you meat or animal products when you have made it clear that you do not wish to partake of them. But if your goal is to force me to stop eating any meat whatsoever, know that the only way you are going to accomplish it is to make it irrational for me to do so, by making it arduous or even dangerous for me to procure the flesh of dead animals; and that I will resist any such efforts to the best of my ability, until it becomes clear to me that such resistance is futile. In some ways, the ALF and other animals-rights terrorists are the only animal activists I can respect, because they at least have the backbone to take their beliefs to the logical conclusion. Hunt the hunters; kill the killers. There will always be that irreducible hard core for which no amount of self-righteous leaflets and grotesque videos will ever be enough.

Random Thoughts

Today my partner and I were at a family dinner at a nice restaurant. The mirror in the men's room is, for some difficult-to-imagine reason, placed perpendicular to the urinals. (There are also TVs in little glass cases above the urinals, but that's not germane to my story.)

While relieving myself of excess fluids, I happened to notice via my mirror reflection how undesirably far my gut has begun to stick out in front of my historically slender body and thought to myself, 'Goth, I'm getting fucking fat.'

I then thought, 'Well, at least I'll have a decent store of calories to live off when the big crash comes and we can't just get food at the supermarket anymore.'

Is it frightening that I'm starting to think this way in random moments of my everyday life?

Anarchy in Action: De-Franchisification

A chain of grocery stores in Ontario has severed their relationship with Sobeys and formed an independant co-op, because the major chain's corporate policy stopped them from purchasing locally produced food. Now granted, this is a fair ways from genuine worker-owned cooperatives and CSAs, but hey, it's a start.

I'm at the Nexus of the Universe!

In an act all but guaranteed to cause the total implosion of reality, Wells Fargo Bank sues itself.

In this particular case, Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium, according to Sarasota, Fla., attorney Dan McKillop, who represents the condo owner.

As holder of the first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which is itself.

"The primary reason is to clear title and ownership interest in a property to prepare it for sale," Waetke said in an email exchange. "So it really is not Wells Fargo vs. Wells Fargo."

Yet court documents clearly label "Wells Fargo Bank NA" as the plaintiff and "Wells Fargo Bank NA" as a defendant.

Wells Fargo hired Florida Default Law Group., P.L., of Tampa, Fla., to file the lawsuit against itself.

And then Wells Fargo hired another Tampa law firm -- Kass, Shuler, Solomon, Spector, Foyle & Singer P.A. -- to defend itself against its own lawsuit, according to court documents.

Wells Fargo's defense lawyers even filed an answer to their client's own complaint.

"Defendant admits that it is the owner and holder of a mortgage encumbering the subject real property," the answer reads. "All other allegations of the complaint are denied."

So, since corporations are persons under the law, does this make Wells Fargo schizopherenic? Ya know, in addition to sociopathic and megalomaniacal, which pretty much all manjor corporations would be considered if they were actual persons as opposed to convenient legal fictions designed to protect greedy people from the consequences of their actions?

Kicking people out of Canada for their own good

A new bill before parliament would give Immigration officers a more or less unlimited power to ban foreign workers from entering Canada if they felt they were 'in danger of being exploited':

Under Bill C-45, tabled by Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney on June 17, a visa officer “shall refuse to authorize the foreign national to work in Canada if, in the officer’s opinion, public policy considerations that are specified in the instructions given by the Minister justify such a refusal”.

The instructions, according to the bill, “shall prescribe public policy considerations that aim to protect foreign nationals who are at risk of being subjected to humiliating or degrading treatment, including sexual exploitation”.

Kenney’s ministry issued a media release stating that the proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act will “protect vulnerable foreign workers such as exotic dancers and live-in caregivers who could be victims of exploitation”.

However, Kurland said that bill is a “blank cheque to refuse people”.

“The path that I see is.…‘Let’s attack exotic dancers because we want to but we’re not allowed to,’ ” he said, adding that exotic dancing in strip clubs is a legal activity. “They can’t use the criminal law so they’re going to use the immigration law on a morality issue.”

Alice Wong, Conservative MP for Richmond and parliamentary secretary for multiculturalism, explained that the bill is intended more for exotic dancers, agricultural labourers, and those who may end up in “sweat shops” than it is for live-in caregivers.

According to Wong, one measure to evaluate the vulnerability of a person is insufficiency of funds. “If we allow them in, we are actually putting them in great risk,” Wong told the Straight.

Wong confirmed that the bill is driven by Conservatives’ aversion to foreign strippers in Canada. “That is one of the major concerns because, legally, according to admissible criteria, these workers can come in but experience has told us that once they come in, they will be exploited,” she said.

[...]

Strip club owners already find it almost impossible to bring women to Canada. In a letter to Parliament’s citizenship and immigration committee in 2008, Tim Lambrinos, executive director of the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada, pointed out that from about 1,000 visas for strippers issued in an unspecified previous year, the government issued only 17 in 2007 and half of 2006 combined.

In a phone interview from Toronto, Lambrinos said that in 2008, only about 10 visas for foreign strippers were granted.

“I want to know the name of one Canadian employer, of an exotic club owner who has been charged or convicted of any crime of any form of exploitation against foreign women working as an exotic dancer in Canada in the last five years,” Lambrinos told the Straight. “There’s not one.

This is so fucking typical. First, let's stir up a moral panic about something prurient and sexual that is actually not a real problem but just a figment of the fevered, sexually repressed autocratic imagination. Then, let's propose to 'help' the people this terrifying non-issue doesn't threaten by subjecting them to increased scrutiny and restricting their movement. Let's kick them out of our 'exploitative' country and back to whatever situation it is they're trying to escape by coming here in the first place. Then we'll oh-so-subtly alter the language of this 'anti-exploitation' measure until it covers pretty much anyone who doesn't already have an advanced degree and a wad of cash. Slapping down uppity brown folks and women who transgress the sexual boundary code - at the same time! It's two, two, two disgusting displays of privilege-entrenchment in one! They'll thank us for it, really they will.

Thanks to Border Thinking for the tip.

Stories like this renew my continual shock that people are still, for some fucking reason, willing to actiually defend the American 'health' 'care' 'system'. I mean, at least some of said people must logically not be directly on the health isurance industry payroll, so what gives!?

Look, everybody!

It's P.Z. Myers in a big rainbow balloon hat!