Oh, I Triggered You? Too Fucking Bad!

I've had a long, hard life.

Sometimes that long hard life has been soul-crushingly hard.

Things have happened to me that I don't wish on my enemies.

I've been the victim of abuse, both as a child at the hands of my parents, and as an adult by a woman I thought I could trust.  I've been raped, and then treated as a joke by the authorities I tried to report this crime to. I've suffered broken bones, and lacerations. I've contracted bubonic plague, a disease you only read about in stories. I've seen friends die bloodily in front of me in accidents. I've had my life all but destroyed by people I trusted with everything.

So its safe to say that I know what "trauma" means. Trauma is some form of horrible, damaging experience that usually involves some sort of peril or loss that left a lasting scar, either physically or psychologically. And personally, I deal with my own trauma by talking to people. By writing this blog. By sharing my experience with others.

According to a certain young lady, my entire understanding of what trauma is and is not is completely and utterly mistaken. Apparently, trauma is now defined as "anything that makes you upset". And the way to prevent forcing someone to relive "trauma" is to issue "trigger warnings". That is, a warning that certain material might contain words, themes, or ideas that trigger "traumatic memories" in people who were once upset by something. Its a way for people to avoid that which bothers them rather than having to face it and deal with it. She explained, thoroughly, that a person should be able to expect a "safe environment" where nothing 'triggers" their "trauma".
It was the stupidest thing I've heard in months.

You know, I feel for people who really went through traumatic experiences, but my empathy ends when these people demand that society change to suit their personal desire to permanently avoid ever experiencing bad memories. Its like no one ever told these crybabies that they have no right to expect that they will never, ever be reminded of a bad experience ever for the rest of their lives.

And don't think I'm making an exception for myself. I have problems. There are things that make me flash back to bad times, too. You know what, though? I'll deal. I'm a fucking grown-up, and part of being a grown-up is dealing with the pain of your life. I have never demanded that women in elevators leave so that I can ride with the men, just because the thought of being alone in an elevator with a woman terrifies me. I've never mentioned to anyone how seeing a broomstick in the hands of a woman makes my legs shaky. I do not need to get a "trigger warning" because some TV show is running a storyline dealing with domestic abuse.

You know, my grandparents generation fought the worst, most damaging, most horrific war in the history of our species. When they were done, they came home and built this country into the land of opportunity that it was for the longest time. And they didn't do this by walking around as if the boogeyman was going to jump out at them at every turn. They didn't demand other people change to protect their tender sensibilities. They just dealt with it privately, not imposing on other people,  and lived their lives.

If these people today are so psychologically fragile that they fall to pieces over the merest mention of something vaguely related to their "trauma", especially if their trauma wasn't actually all that traumatic in the first place, they need to seek out serious professional psychiatric assistance. They belong in a mental ward, not in a college.

And they certainly have no place dictating what other people can think, say, and do.

How self-entitled do you have to be to think that you have some sort of right to dictate to other people how they run their lives? To expect everyone around you to cater to your own psychological problems?

Seriously, how narcissistic do you have to be?

So again, if your past bothers you so much that you feel the need to complain about what other people are doing or saying, then get help. See a psychiatrist. Get over it.

Don't try to tell other people what to do.

Just grow up.

Deal.

Because that's how real grown-ups handle life.

I Don't Have to Respect Your Opinion

What's that, you say?  You refuse to accept the literal mountains of scientific evidence that establish the factual nature of evolution because your religion says God did it all?  You mean you want to turn back the clock and oppress and deny someone basic human rights because their existence doesn't jibe with your personal prejudices?  You refuse to have your kids vaccinated because in your opinion an actress who never made it past High School told you there are poisons in most shots, and besides, what do medical professionals know anyway?   You refuse to accept that's you're being a huge, racist douche because you are a member of a traditionally oppressed ethnic group?  Or that you're being a huge sexist douche because you're a member of a traditionally oppressed gender?


And you refuse to listen to counter-arguments because you have a right to your opinion, and I have to respect those opinions no matter what?  That we'll just have to agree to disagree?  Or even worse, that you'll punish me somehow for disagreeing with you?


Well, in that case, let me just say this:  go fuck yourself.


You heard me.  Go fuck yourself.


Yes, you have a right to your own opinions, and I must and do respect your right to those opinions, but I am under no obligation to respect those opinions themselves.  No obligation at all.  And as for agreeing to disagree, how about we don't do that either.  While you do have a right to your opinion, I have a right to point out that your opinion is stupid, and that your insistence on holding it -- especially holding it in the face of contrary evidence that clearly shows your opinion is wrong -- means you are a dumbass.


I see people say these sorts of things all the time when debating over certain issues.  Civil rights, religion, evolution, food safety (especially GMOs), men's rights and violence against men (hell, WOMEN's rights and violence against women!), vaccinating your kids, even history itself.  The problem is, these are not areas where there are gray spots.  But people want to believe what they want to believe, and the facts can go to hell if the facts disagree.


But that's not how it works.  Civil rights, for example, should be universal and if you're in favor of denying other people rights because your holy book says you should, then your holy book is wrong, and so are you.  Or the Theory of Evolution.  Evolution has been so well-investigated over the last 150+ years that there is absolutely no way its not true, so don't bother arguing against it.  Here's one:  if you think anyone getting raped or beaten is EVER justified, or that the victims deserve to be ignored and marginalized, regardless of their gender, then you seriously need psychological help.  And a bodyguard, because if I meet you, I'm going to punch you.  And if you think you are doing some good for your kids by refusing them their shots, then you need to have your kids taken away from you because you are a shitty parent who is endangering their lives.


And that's not my opinion.  All of those things I just said is backed up by hard, cold fact.


Which means believing otherwise is simple stupidity.  And why the hell should I ever respect simple stupidity?


Now, here is something I will concede:  there is no way to force someone to agree with a fact if they absolutely do not want to agree with it.  Doing so is just another form of dogmatic indoctrination, which is the very stupidity we need to cure.  People need to take the step toward education and knowledge themselves or else they'll never learn.


But remember that opinions can be wrong, even when they are baseless.  As for respect, that's a two-way street, folks.  This bullshit about "you have to respect my opinion" is really just a passive-aggressive method of attempting to avoid disagreement.  Its the polite way of saying, "I'm going to listen to you, but the truth is I'm going to ignore everything you say.  But have fun talking."  Sorry, but I think I'd rather have you argue with me, thanks.


People cement their opinions and hold them close, especially when these opinions are related to the individual's moral compass (such as religious beliefs).  Changing those opinions requires the person to acknowledge that their basic worldview is incorrect, and people generally don't do that easily.  I acknowledge this.  The problem is, due to there being so many different people and so many differing opinions, inevitably, some of those opinions will be just plain stupid.


The ability to form and hold our own opinions based on our knowledge and experience is one of the most fundamental freedoms human beings enjoy.  I will defend that freedom, even if I disagree with you, as far as I can.  But if your opinions fly in the face of logic, fact, and common sense, then while your right to hold the opinion is still sacrosanct, your opinion itself is worthless, and I feel no need to respect it at all.


And I have a right to tell you this, because I have a right to my opinions too.

Conservatives Hate the Military

Now, I know what you're going to say.

You're going to say, "But Jack, I happen to know that a lot of people who identify as conservative willingly volunteer to serve in the military!  How can you say they hate the military if they volunteer for it?"

Yes, this is true, many people who consider themselves conservative do, in fact, volunteer to serve in the military.  For that, they have my respect and my thanks.  And most people, conservative and liberal alike, are supportive of our veterans and our active duty service personnel.

When I say that conservatives hate the military, I am once again talking about the so-called "corporate conservatives" I mentioned in my essay "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things."  Corporate conservatives are seriously and chronically remiss in their care and support for American military personnel, both in terms of their own history of service in the military and in how they treat service members when they are in charge of the country.

Again, I know what you're going to say.  You're going to say, "But Jack, how can that be true?  Conservatives are always wearing shiny little flag pins and having their photos taken with soldiers and marines and sailors and they're constantly talking about supporting the troops in their election speeches!"

Yes, they do all those things.

Unfortunately, its all a lie.  They are all posers.

They're exploiting jimmied up, fake patriotism as a means to camouflage their true intentions. 

Now social conservatives (which I also talked about in "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things") are true patriots who are willing to fight and die for their country when and if the time comes.  Corporate conservatives, on the other hand, are the worst sort of "show patriot," who make great public displays of mouthing all the right words to make people think they love their country.  But its all bullshit.  They aren't really patriots at all.

Unfortunately, it seems that most social conservatives haven't caught on to the fact that they are being bullshitted by their compatriots, or to the disservice, disrespect, and disdain that corporate conservatives regularly serve up to active duty personnel and to veterans.

Now, it is absolutely true that corporate conservatives support using (and abusing the hell out of) the troops.  They're willing to send the troops to die for various causes that only vaguely have anything to do with defending America.  Take Iraq, for example; when President George W. Bush ordered troops into Iraq, he did so in full knowledge that there was no need to.  Its just that Iraq was weak, and had oil reserves we wanted, and he assumed that the puppet government he installed after our troops wiped out Saddam Hussein would dance to the tune he called and that the people of Iraq would just idly sit by and let it all happen.  It was a case of schoolyard bullying (and we were the bully, folks) writ large, whose goal was to effectively steal another nation's natural resources.

The common theme is that conservatives are full of piss and vinegar.  No cool, patient diplomacy for them!  No Special Operations approach to belligerents.  Rather, its full on "shock and awe."  John Wayne style.

But then, what can you expect from a group of people who are so starry-eyed over spending billions of dollars on the latest weapons and attack systems, and who appropriate billions of dollars for them, even when the top generals are calling such systems boondoggles?  There is no end to how much of the taxpayer's money these corporate conservatives are willing to spend on military toys and on military adventurism, especially if such toys and adventurism allows the conservatives to funnel that self-same taxpayer funding into their own pockets.  And what fun is it to have a weapon system just sitting around!  They want to play with the toys, even if it means aggravating some situation somewhere in the world into a full blown shooting war.

So they are always eager to send "assets" (funny how they never call them "people) into harm's way.  But after the "fun" is over, when its time for the cleanup, corporate conservatives show their true colors.  When it comes to caring for and assisting wounded veterans, for providing psychological or financial assistance to the solders and their families who face tough times because of their experiences during combat, they suddenly become tighter than a gnat's ass.  When it comes to supporting the troops after the troops come home, these same people become so stingy with money that they won't even tip their hats.

Liberals, traditionally, are the exact opposite.  They are inherently weary of unchecked military spending.  They take Eisenhower's warning about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" taking over our nation's foreign policy seriously.  They place heavy emphasis on diplomacy and negotiation in order to avoid armed conflict whenever possible.  They are reluctant to send human beings into the fire without overwhelming and important reasons to do so.  And they don't call them "assets" because they realize when they talk about the military, they are talking about real life human beings, a consideration that the corporate conservatives dismiss out of hand.

People who are sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives.  For liberals, warfare is a last resort, not a first response as so often seems the case with conservatives.  When armed response finally seems unavoidable, liberals prefer intelligent and clear strategies, unlike the "roll in, shoot some guys, we win" attitude of conservatives that has been so painfully on display in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rather than "shock and awe," the preferred military tactics of liberals has always been surgical strikes:  do everything you can to keep your own people safe, try to minimize the trauma to the innocent local populace, and when you're done, you're done.  Bill Clinton's approach to the Kosovo War was a perfect example.  General Wesley Clark (a self-admitted liberal Democrat) oversaw NATO's strategic bombing to help end that war with zero American casualties.  Similarly, the Obama administration used careful intelligence gathering and surgical use of the Navy Seals to finally locate and eliminate Osama bin Ladin after eight years of the Bush administration's ham-handed floundering and blundering.  And once war is over, liberals move to assist service personnel and their families who need help, while conservatives suddenly decide that these "assets" are now "liabilities." and do their best to get rid of them.

For those of you reading this who are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, please note that the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association (IAVA) graded the members of Congress in terms of their support for veterans, with grades similar to those used to grade school papers.  These grades went from "A" for very supportive all the way to F for "no support at all."  92% of the D's and F's that were assigned were assigned to conservatives.  The truth is, if you are in the military, or have a son, daughter, mother, or father who is in the military, you should absolutely quaver in fear when a Republican becomes Commander-in-Chief.

Let's take a look at how things historically worked out for the troops and veterans when conservatives were in control:

• 1777 to 1778:  Conservatives in the Continental Congress stiff General George Washington when it came to financial and material support.
• 1922:  President Warren G. Harding vetoes the Veterans Bonus Bill, keeping hundreds of thousands of World War I veterans in poverty.
• 1924:  President Calvin Coolidge tries to veto the re-admitted Veterans Bonus Bill.
• 1932:  President Herbert Hoover orders the US Army to attack a camp of homeless World War I veterans.
• 1959:  President Dwight D. Eisenhower rejects a proposed extension of the GI Bill that would aid millions of World War II veterans.
• 1968:  Then Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon lies to the American people by running on a platform of ending the Vietnam War, while privately making a deal with the Communist leaders of North Vietnam to refuse all agreement proposals until after Nixon is in office.
• 1983:  President Ronald Reagan American servicemen into harm's way with virtually no security into Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, a war in which the United States has no stake, resulting in the deaths of over 200 US Marines.
• 1983:  Primarily as a means to cover up his cowardly actions in Lebanon, President Ronald Reagan orders the invasion of the tiny island nation of Grenada.
• 2002:  President George W. Bush sends American troops into not one, but two simultaneous, dubious wars.  In both operations, the conservatives ignore the advice of the consensus military opinion and send US troops into dual combat theaters with no clear overall objectives and absolutely no exit strategy, highly unrealistic expectations, and without proper preparation or intelligence regarding what the troops would encounter and how they would be received by the local populace.
• 2008:  Congressional Republicans unsuccessfully try to block expansion of the GI Bill.
• 2011:  Congressional Republicans unsuccessfully try to block VA payments to veterans affected by the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
• 2012:  Senate Republicans filibuster the Veterans Jobs Corps Act of 2012.
• 2013:  House Republicans unsuccessfully seek to slash VA healthcare benefits for disabled veterans.
• 2014:  House Republicans successfully block the Veterans' Bill.

By now the message of this essay should be quite clear.  If you are in the military, or have as family a member of the military, the last politicians you should be wanting in charge of military affairs are the conservatives.  The notion that they support you is one of the cruelest lies ever devised.  They will nickel-and-dime you to death.  They will use you, and once used will discard you like a soiled piece of toilet paper.  They'll send you off to be killed by a trumped up enemy while they rake in what their really after:  billions of dollars in war funding.  They will sacrifice you on the altar of their greed, all the while telling you to your face how brave and wonderful you are.  And sometimes, they'll turn you against your fellow service-members and veterans, because nothing is easier to conquer than an enemy in conflict with itself.

I cannot say it often enough.  If you are in the military, do not fall for conservative lies.  They are not your friends!

My Problem With Anita Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency, Part 2

So, Anita Sarkeesian...

One of my other problems with Anita Sarkeesian is that she used crowd-funding to generate almost $160,000 using Kickstarter, and then produced two videos about how female characters are treated in video games.

Within a week of posting the first of these videos, entitled "Damsels in Distress Part One:  Tropes vs. Video Games", on YouTube, she disabled all feedback systems on her videos.  She disabled comments, rating systems, and even public access to the video's statistics.  Apparently, Anita Sarkeesian has decided that we, the public, the people who donated money to support her project, are not allowed to have an opinion when it comes to the content and conclusions of that project.

Granted, her videos did generate the usual amount of trollish insults and nonsense, but all YouTube videos generate troll comments.  But -- and here is the point, boys and girls --  in this case, the comments that pointed out legitimate holes in her research, instances where her conclusions were based on threadbare "evidence" or that seemed to obviously misinterpret the evidence or weren't even supported by the evidence, outnumbered the troll comments to the tune of around eighteen to one.

That is, there were eighteen legitimate critical comments to every troll comment.

Rather than address such legitimate criticism, Sarkeesian decided to sweep it all under the rug and pretend it didn't exist.  And when that tactic didn't work and these same criticisms began appearing in blogs, vlogs, tweets, and Facebook posts, she pulled the misogynist card out of her deck and started hitting people who were being "mean" to her with it.

To put it bluntly, Sarkeesian refuses to address legitimate criticism, and loudly and forcefully claims that anyone who dares show that her "research" has problems isn't doing so because her "research" has problems.  No, they're being "mean" to her because they are irrational women-haters.  And when other people point out how she is dodging the question, and how if these issues with her research are not legitimate it should be easy for her to correct their impressions, she just makes more accusations of sexism and misogyny.

And now she's claiming that death threats were made to her.  This accusation came just as talk of an investigation into her possible embezzlement of the research funding has entered public awareness.

Oh, did you not hear about that?  Yeah, it seems those two videos only cost around $23,000 to make, and the rest of the money apparently vanished into the vapor.  She has refused all inquiries into the rest of the money, even as she opened up a new Kickstarter to help her fund more videos.  Now, as I said, she's refusing to answer questions about it, but people who are keeping an eye on Anita Sarkeesian have noted that her wardrobe has taken a noticeably uptick in quality, and she's driving a new $50,000 sports car these days and she's no longer living in a two-room walkup but rather has apparently bought herself a house.

I'm not saying she stole the money and is spending it on herself.  I've got no direct evidence of that.  I'm just saying that its amazingly convenient that just as the unused $135,000 disappeared, she started showing up in new clothes, driving a new car, and living in a new house.  And please make note, the moment people started asking her about where the money went if not into the videos it was intended for, she made several announcements on Twitter that she received death threats.

Thus successfully derailing the inquiry into what happened to the rest of the money.  You'll excuse me if this is something else I find amazingly convenient.

Anita Sarkeesian claims that her refusal to respond to legitimate critics is because there are no legitimate critics.  Only hateful misogynists engaged in online harassment.  Let us take a moment to make note of the response by the gaming community to other misinformed critics of gaming, shall we?

For instance, let's look at the late Roger Ebert, the film critic for the Chicago -Sun Times.  After he famously claimed that video games cannot and will never be considered "art", he received a large number of rather hateful responses, including death threats, rape threats (no, really) and comments questioning his sexuality and sexual tastes.  His Wikipedia page was vandalized (as was Sarkeesian's, I should note in the interest of fairness), and even today, there exists on the internet a subtle hatred for the man among the online gaming community.

So, how did Roger Ebert react to this explosion of hatred?

Actually, he not only ignored the empty trollish comments and threats that he knew were just "the angry ramblings of misbehaving children intent on throwing a tantrum" (his words to describe the people making the threats), he also went out of his way to respond, at length, to those people who responded to his statements with rational, well-thought-out criticism.  And after seeing rational counter-argument, Ebert was mature enough to admit that while he still didn't quite see video games as art, he could at least acknowledge that to some people, they might reach that level.  He also admitted that he might change his opinion after more personal research into the subject.

Anita Sarkeesian, on the other hand, has done the complete opposite.

Not only has she gone out of her way to block and ignore all legitimate criticism, she constantly itemizes and publicizes the "angry ramblings of misbehaving children intent on throwing a tantrum" and advertises it as much as she can.  Now, technically there isn't anything really wrong with this; Sarkeesian has the right to flaunt the fact that she has come under fire from internet trolls if that is what she wants.

However, her behavior does raise an ugly question:  if all this harassment really did put her in danger and made her afraid for her life, why didn't she contact the authorities?

Why did she save all this vitriol up until she was ready to pursue a publicity campaign that made her look like one of the "damsels in distress" she railed against in her video?

If it was so bad, then why weren't the authorities brought in until after the legitimate critics began to outnumber the trolls on her videos?

It has been noted elsewhere that her Kickstarter plea-for-funds video was the only video in which she did not disable comments.  Or rather, the comments were not disabled until her Kickstarter goals were reached.  Or, as one critic put it, only after the hate-mail she received could no longer be monetized.  That's right.  Anita Sarkeesian played the role of the poor helpless of victim of the terror-inducing evil men in order to generate sympathy, and Kickstarter dollars.

Her entire attitude toward this has been "I refuse to even acknowledge the legitimate critics of my work, but see how much I am a victim?  Woe is me!  Give me money!"

Something else that has bothered me about Sarkeesian and her project is the nature of the project itself.  Had video game critic Jack Thompson, or even Roger Ebert, made a series of videos commenting about how all video games reinforce sexist stereotypes about women, no one would have noticed, or reacted, to the overwhelming negative response such an ridiculous claim.  But since a well-known and vocal female pop-culture critic makes the same claim, and receives a negative reaction from the gaming community, she receives praise and a lot of sympathy donations to her Kickstarter.

The misogynistic treatment of women in the online gaming community and in gaming culture in general is legitimately a serious issue.  It needs to be addressed, and something needs to be done about it.  It bothers me to no end that Anita Sarkeesian is capitalizing on this issue to her own gain.  She has treated the entire subject as a means to enrich herself, to make herself famous outside of her usual YouTube haunts, and to turn herself from an unknown researcher whose scholarly claims are under legitimate fire into a famous "feminist icon" who is the victim of "the patriarchy".

She's taking a serious issue, and turning it into a con-game for her own benefit.

Nothing good has come out of this.  Nothing.

In fact, I'd say that Anita Sarkeesian and her actions have actually harmed the cause of gender equality and the better portrayal of women in video gaming.  Other critics have stated that by tossing about the term "misogyny" is a flippant manner, Sarkeesian has actually helped undermine the power of that word.  By attributing to "misogyny" what can better be explained by laziness, profit-mongering, and pandering to the core audience, the meaning of the word itself is undermined.

So... do I think there should be more and better portayals of female characters in gaming?

Yes.  Absolutely.

Do I think Anita Sarkeesian deserved being the target of internet trolls who served no purpose other than to give her ammunition for her claims of misogyny?

No.  No one deserves to be treated that way.

But do I think Anita Sarkeesian needs to stop playing the victim card and stop lumping her legitimate critics in with the internet trolls?

You'd better damn believe it.  She needs to come clean about her research methods, the lies she told her backers, and the fact that she's had enough time to produce the entire series by now, but seems stuck getting past the second video.

Her actions are not those of an honest researcher.  They are the actions of a con-man.

The Four Most Common Ways Male Rape Victims Are Blamed For Their Own Assaults

Whenever the topic of male rape at the hands of women arises, it seldom takes long for the victim blaming concern trolls to show their hands.  What a person who hasn't been sexually assaulted feel they would do in response to being attacked in that manner is hardly evidence of anything other than their own arrogant stupidity.

There is an insidious new idea out there that is growing more and more popular with male-rape apologists:  that male survivors of sexual violence do not get victim-blamed.  For those of us who've been raped, the truth is something entirely different.  Men who are raped, especially men who are raped by women, are blamed much more often than their female counterparts.

This is not a case of "What About Teh Menz" or whatever other sexist bullshit comes to  mind.  This is an appeal to people for humane behavior.  Its a request that you refrain from promoting rape myths regarding male survivors.

Stop this.

Stop this now.

#1:  Men Are Strong (also known as "He Should Have Fought Back")

While male rape victims are not usually asked what they are wearing, or if they did something provocative that encouraged their attackers (though you should not take "not usually" as "never"), their perceived strength and supposed ability to fight back are frequently used by others to deny a rape actually occurred, especially if the rapist is a woman who the man outsizes and outweighs.

There is this ridiculous assumption among people who deny that male rape victims exist that all men have the martial arts skill of Bruce Lee, the tenacity and determination of Charles Bronson, and the cool, unflappable demeanor of Clint Eastwood.  Apparently we are all trained in combat techniques and crisis management since birth.

The truth is, most men (just like most women) will panic when placed in a position where they are about to be raped.  And most people in a panic have no idea how to respond coherently.

#2:  He Must Have Wanted It (also known as "Men Are Always Horny")

This fallacy is based on the common misconception that men are out-of-control animals who want nothing more than sex, sex, sex, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all the time every time, and that they will never, ever turn down sex.  To put it bluntly, this is a stupid and frankly sexist assumption.  Men are just as choosy with their sexual partners as women are, and to assume they want sex just because they are male is ridiculous.

On top of the "men are always horny" fallacy is the "an erection equals consent" fallacy.  Anyone who spouts this nonsense has clearly failed biology.  Erections can be forced, and any teenage boy can tell you they happen involuntarily and unexpectedly all the time.  They aren't something men can turn on and off at whim.  In some cases, a simple touch can result in an erection.  Most adult men experience erections while asleep, and retain them after waking.  Nevertheless, there are many people out there who somehow cannot grasp the idea that a man can get hard when he really doesn't want to.


I sort of get why a woman might believe this.  After all, she doesn't have a penis, and thus has no personal experience in dealing with one except in a second-hand nature.  I get that.  What I don't get is the number of men who apparently have no idea how their own dicks work.

#3:  Women Don't Commit Sexual Violence Very Often At All

The Centers for Disease Control keeps track of official rape figures, and if you only go by those figures, you find that women make up only a small percentage of all rapists in the United States.  The problem arises from the fact that the definition of "rape" used by the CDC specifically only includes forcible penetration of the anus or vagina inflicted on the victim using an object or a body part.  That is, its only rape if one person, the rapist, forces an object or body part into the anus or vagina of another person (the victim).

Which means that the CDC intentionally excludes any act in which one person (the rapist) forces another person (the victim) to penetrate the rapist's anus or vagina with an object or body part.  Rather the CDC calls this "made to penetrate".  According to the fine people at the CDC, being "made to penetrate" is not rape, regardless of the fact that the helplessness, pain, and humiliation that the victim feels is identical to those of any other rape victim.

Cases of "made to penetrate" are not counted when its time to tabulate rape statistics.  They are, in fact, pretty much ignored.  Despite knowing that these numbers have been manipulated, deniers of male rape will parade the CDC's misleading "rape figures" as if they were accurate.  Add these misleading figures to the fact that only an estimated 1 in 6 male rape victims ever comes forward in the first place, we really have no idea how often women commit sexual violence.

#4:  Men Can't Get Raped Anyway

This fallacy is used by the densest of the densest male rape apologists of both genders.  The truth is, even if you use the CDC's misleading figures on male rape victims, there are a heartbreaking 3 million male rape victims alive today in the United States.  Don't kid yourself.  Men get raped all the time. 

On Utilitarianism, the Greater Good, Moral Choices, and Whistle Blowers

In modern America, the prevailing ethical philosophy has always seemed to be utilitarianism, where our decisions are based on the best possible outcome for the most possible people.  Or at least, its supposed to be.  And I also supposed that this is probably the best guiding principle for a truly democratic society.  But I think there are limitations to that philosophy.

I have been thinking about this because I recently read an article about the use of torture on terror suspects and the fact that they (the government, that is) have discovered that some of the "terror suspects" that they've tortured (and let's not use any euphamisms like "agressive interrogation techniques"; let's call a spade a spade here:  it was torture) were innocent people caught up in a wide net and assumed guilty because they were so caught.

Under the utilitarianism philosophy, torturing a few innocent people is acceptable if it results in saving the lives of many more innocent people.  "The greater good" and all that.  If torturing terror suspects gets us information that prevents further attacks, then the cost (that we're intentionally injuring people who have done nothing wrong and do not deserve to be tortured at all... assuming that there are people who do deserve to be tortured) is acceptable.

The problem, as I see it, is that I think we as a society have fallen to the trap of believing that just because torturing people meets the basic standards of our utilitarianist framework, the decision to accept that we will torture people was the right one to make.  We have forgotten that there are some things that are wrong, regardless of the benefits.  Regardless of how many lives a particular action saves, committing that action absolutely, and without question, the wrong thing to do.

We have to be willing to take a stand.  We have to be willing to say, "No, this is wrong by definition and we will have no part in it regardless of any other considerations."  We must draw a line in the sand and say, "this far and no further."

I do recognize that such moral purity is subject to just as much abuse as any other philosophical position. But overall, I prefer to live in a world where someone is willing to stand up and say, "This is wrong!" and mean it.  Especially when we have somehow managed to convince ourselves that it is somehow acceptable to torture people, rationalizing it away with the morally dubious notion that it is justified as being for "the greater good."

I don’t like "slippery slope" arguments, but if we accept torture as an unpleasant necessity,  what else will we accept?  Will we accept the intentional death, the sacrifice if you will, of an innocent child?

This is a horrible choice, but the truth is, we've already seen that under some circumstances, our society has in the past said "Yes" to this very question.  In some cases, the sacrifice of a child, who has no idea why it is being sacrificed and who has committed no wrong we can name, has been judged an acceptable price to pay for the greater good.

So what about two children?

Or how about ten?

Or a hundred?

How about a thousand?  You willing to murder a thousand innocent children if it means the rest of our society is untroubled?  If it serves the "greater good"?

More?

Tell me, people, where do we draw the line?  Where do we stop?

No.  We as a society need to uphold basic standards.  We need to be willing to take a stand on principle against those people who would continue such blatant wrongs and point out that they have lost their way.

As for those people already doing this, you don't have to agree with them, but I think you must respect them.  Because we need such people in our society.  We need to hear them.  Personally, I'd hate to live in a world where such dissent is suppressed so that we can all pretend that everything is hunky dory, while behind the scenes our collective soul is eroded piece by piece due to our choosing "the greater good" over basic morality.

The United States: Not a Christian Nation

The United States is not, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, a Christian nation.

Period.

Even if the Fundamentalists get their way and manage to not only take over but manage to install a theocratic Christian government, it wouldn't be the United States of America.   It would be a zombified imposter pretending at the name.

There is no Christian ideology (or even Biblical ideology) to be found in America's founding ideals.  None of it, not the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the subsequent Amendments to the Constitution, the laws that have been generated since then, and our system of government derived therefrom has anything to do with Christianity or the Bible.  If anything, the American system is a radical and emphatic rejection of Biblical ideas regarding laws and government.

The Bible, in case you missed it, promotes the so-called "Divine Right of Kings" and theocratic dictatorship.  These two ideals are at the core of the Abrahamic governmental tradition, and America just isn't about that sort of thing.

Diametrically opposed to the idea of a God-appointed King and a set of laws that commands you to revere one particular religion (thankfully), the legal system of the United States of America was instead based on English common law, as established primarily by the Magna Carta in 1215, the British Constitution of 1657, the Habeus Corpus Act of 1679, and the English Bill of Rights of 1689.

None of these drew from Biblical government philosophy, either.

Instead, they were based on a pair of pagan legal philosophies:  Greek  democracy (which promoted the idea that citizens got a say in how the government did things) and Roman civil law (that promoted the idea that the law treated everyone under it in the same non-prejudicial way).  Other important inspirations for the American system of government were obtained from philosophers of the Enlightenment Period, principle among them John Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu.  There is also some evidence that Benjamin Franklin brought ideas from the Iroquois Confederacy's form of democracy into the mix, particularly the idea that each state would be an autonomous unit bound to a larger federal whole.

If the founding fathers had intended the United States to be a Christian nation, you'd think they might have included the words "Jesus," "Christ," "Bible," or "Christian" somewhere in the Declaration or the Constitution.  But they didn't.  What, do you think they did that accidentally?  No, not at all.  On the contrary, they intentionally left religion out, and did so for some very, very, very good reasons.

The first reason was that a lot of the founding fathers simply were not Christian.  Along with other great thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment, people like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, James Monroe, and many others were rethinking long-held ideas regarding religious doctrine, religious dogma, and religious "tradition" and were finding much of it contrary to their sense of justice, morality, and spirituality.  They found that some of the most widely-held religious dogma stood in direct opposition to the ideals of freedom and equality for all.  The rise of modern scientific thought had begun to undermine the Bible's simplistic (and utterly incorrect) teachings regarding how the world worked, and as a result these learned men began questioning.  If the Bible was wrong about so many things, what else was it wrong about?  Thomas Jefferson went so far as to publish his own version of the Bible, one that left out everything he personally disagreed with.  It ended up being a comparatively short, rather compact volume.

Many of the founding fathers identified themselves as Deists.  Not Christians.  Not even theists.  But Deists.  They still believed in a god, but refused to believe that god would break his own laws of nature to interfere in human affairs.

The second reason was that the founding fathers were very aware of the disasters caused when religion and government mixed, as had occurred in England and throughout the rest of Europe, as well as in the early American colonies where, for example, being a Quaker in Massachusetts was to court being tried for "heresy" and put to death by hanging.  The founders had absolutely no intention of adhering to "traditional Christian values" of treating those who you disagreed with in a brutal, bloody, and barbaric manner.  They could look at the history of Christian vs. Christian violence that had ravaged Britain and Ireland and Europe during the Thirty Years War, the English Civil War, and the continual "Troubles."  Now would they countenance anything like a government-sponsored religious crusade against "infidels" like the heathen Cherokee or the Catholic French.

As such, the founding fathers made the extremely wise choice to wholly and utterly exclude religion from the government.  Any religion could flourish freely, and hopefully peacefully, in co-existance with all other religions, but would lack any sort of public support or institution.  In the United States, you could be an Anglican or a Quaker or a Catholic or a Muslim or a Hindu or even an Atheist and not be compelled into obedience of anyone else.  It was a brand new concept called "freedom of religion,", though it could easily enough also be called "freedom from religion."  Any way you want to look at it, this freedom is one of the central pillars of our society and is one of the most important building blocks in our collective awareness of what freedom means.

Not only is the idea that the United States is Christian a false one, the idea that we used to be more religious than we are now is also false.  At this time, about 60% of the population of the United States self-identifies as religious (and that's counting all religions).  Religious affiliation as a percentage of the population actually peaked in the 1980s.  In 1800, that figure was only 9%.  During the Civil War, the number of people who identified themselves as religious was only about 20%.  And today its nearly 60%.  So no, we weren't more religiuous in the past.  For the record, the percentage of people who identified as religious has been dropping steadily every year since 1983.  People who do not go to church and who identify with no religion at all are the fastest growing segment of the population.  The number of non-believers currently stands at 20% of the population.  Last year it was 14%.  If things keep going the way they're going, next year it might be 35%.  Pretty soon we'll be right back at the 9% religious population of the founding fathers.

Obviously, a "Christian America" never existed, nor was it ever intended to be created.

But for the sake of argument, let's play a game of "Let's Pretend."

Let's suspend all common sense and fantasize for a moment that America really was supposed to be a Christian nation.  Let's ask ourselves just what exactly that would mean?

What precisely is a "Christian nation?"

What other nations can we hold up as examples of such a government?  Byzanium under Constantine?  Italy during the Renaissance?  Jean d'Arc's France?  Henry VIII's England?  Martin Luther's Germany?  The Denmark portrayed in William Shakespeare's Hamlet?

Which version of Christianity are we going to base our "Christian nation" on?  There are hundreds of distinct variations of Christianity, and some of them hate each other with a rage that burns as hot and bright as a supernova.  Will our Christian nation be Catholic?  Orthodox?  Anglican?  Evangelical?  Episcopalian?  Mormon?  Pentecostal?  Quaker?  Or maybe something really obscure like Milleritism or Cooneyitism?

Would our Christian nation be based on the love, forgiveness, and pacifism of Jesus Christ?  Or on the bloody violent crusader mentality that came along later?

And who gets to choose all these things?  Would we vote on which kind of Christianity we followed every four years, in the same years we voted for a new president?  Might we swing from the "love thy neighbor as thyself, feed the poor, turn the other cheek" kindly Christianity to the "kill them all for God will know their own" bloody violent Christianity overnight when the Christian-Republicans win out over the Christian-Democrats?  Would we be open and accepting of other religions, or would be lynch the unbeliever and heretic from the nearest lamp-post as a warning to the devil-worshipping heathens that their ways will not be tolerated?

Its all very vague.  Just like the real meaning of the phrase "Traditional Christian Values."