Posts Tagged ‘equality’

Well said.

I’m currently reading “The Sex Myth: Why Everything We’re Told is Wrong” by Brooke Magnanti, also known as Belle de Jour. So far it’s a fascinating reading, including a section on how the idea that strip clubs in Camden have increased the rape rate is complete nonsense.

In general, rape is an area of law that suffers a lot of misconceptions.

For example, the conviction rate for rape is 58%. As Amanda Bancroft points out in The Guardian, the conviction rate across all crimes is only 57%. That means not only is the idea that rape convictions are low a myth, but that rape convictions are actually slightly higher than you would expect. That’s good news.

But the perpetuation of the stereotype that rape conviction rates are low is a real problem. As Bancroft also points out, 68% of women are concerned by the low conviction rates (that don’t really exist), potentially putting off victims from coming forward. This disinformation is something we really need to crack down on, to ensure victims aren’t afraid to report incidents.

When Catherine Bennett dared to speak out about MGM (male genital mutilation), there was soon a strong reaction from the right wing feminists condemning the comparison between MGM and FGM (female genital mutilation), pointing out that FGM is worse. The Guardian rounded up some reactions too.

The most severe forms of FGM are indeed far worse than MGM. But what I don’t understand, is how FGM being worse, that is then an argument for the legalisation of MGM. For example, I’ve never seen someone stand up in court and say “Rape? No, I only sexually assaulted her, so it’s fine.”

Obviously, it isn’t, and we wouldn’t buy that for a second.

It’s absolutely right that FGM is very illegal in the UK – so illegal that just getting on a plane to go to a different country to get it done is in itself illegal. Our laws are spot on here, no child should ever be subjected to FGM.

But nor should a male child be irreversibly mutilated into his parents religion for no either. Saying “it’s not as bad as FGM” is no defence when it comes to cutting off the end of a child’s genitals.”

Here is what Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to say on the matter…

Tonight is “Ladies Night” at Oceana. You’ll notice the sexualised images of some young “buff” men in the posters, collectively known as the “Dream Idols” apparently.

This caught my eye because it’s easier to stand behind a claim such as “people should have the right to use their bodies for whatever purposes they wish”, when you’re not the victim. But take this example, it is my gender that is being used in sexual imagery to sell a product (in this case, entry to a night club).

Yet, I’m still entirely behind it. True empowerment and equality come from granting people the freedom to do as they wish. If they want to appear on a poster without a shirt on, who am I to tell them otherwise?

According to Wikipedia’s own figures, 91% of editors are male. According to another set of their figures, it’s 90%, with 9% women and 1% transgender.

Why is there such a bias towards males?

Stereotype threat doesn’t seem a very good fit for explaining – it’s a fairly anonymous system on the internet, and they only know what gender you are based on the answer you choose to give in the editor’s survey. Not to mention that the Foundation itself is dominated by women – Sue Gardner is Executive Director of the Wikipedia Foundation and Kat Walsh is the Chair of the Board.

The New York Times caused quite a stir when they wrote about it, quoting Jane Margolis who suggests “women are less willing to assert their opinions in public”. Meanwhile Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, writing in Business Insider, suggests that would upset many existing editors if they were discriminated against by pro-female initiatives.

Many people have weighed in on the debate too and Sue Gardner has done an excellent job of rounding up the opinions on her blog.

Indeed, opinions are so varied, that perhaps the message we can take from it is that more research needs to be done on the subject. It’s interesting to note that while women are very unrepresented, transgender people are actually over represented (1% of Wikipedia compared to 0.3% in the general population), so suggestions of it being a patriarchal problem wouldn’t seem to stand up.

In the meantime, you can always take some positive action and begin contributing to Wikipedia.

Over the past decade, the term female circumcision has been replaced by the term FGM – female genital mutilation.

It’s almost certainly a more accurate term. FGM is entirely unpalatable, the cutting out of a young girl’s genitals (you could say “before she is too young to consent” but that would be meaningless as almost nobody would ever give their consent for such an act, certainly nobody in the right state of mind) no for no reason than depriving her of one of the most basic human pleasures is a beyond-abominable act.

But such a change, without it’s male counterpart, has one drawback.

At the launch of Pro Life Through Pro Choice campaign, a pro choice group which advocated such a stance was also pro life, Norm innocently used the term “female circumcision”, only to be hounded for the rest of the meeting for having the nerve to accidentally use what some people in the room considered the wrong term.

But, when we used the term male circumcision, no such outcry was heard. Even though we now know such a procedure is just as unjustified as its female equivalent, the voices remain oddly silent.

This is a real problem because it creates a double standard – female circumcision gets upgraded to FGM because it’s so heinous, yet male circumcision is allowed to keep its name because it isn’t as wrong. That, as far as I can see, is the only message you can take away from such a change.

It creates at atmosphere where circumcision remains an acceptable term because we have a whole different term of something that is wrong. This gives the term circumcision a free pass – and it shouldn’t have one. It’s a betrayal of the young boys in our society to grant it one.

That isn’t to say that we should rename FGM back – we could simply rename its male equivalent to male gentile mutilation. But either way, we shouldn’t grant any more credence to the idea that it is more acceptable to mutilate a boy’s genitals, than it is a girls.

EDIT: Since originally penning this article, a friend pointed me to a news story on The Guardian in which some campaigners were quite open about the fact that thought millions of males should suffer in case it jeopardised their own position in some unknown way.

In the final of three blog posts I’ve written about the fall out from the recent Steve Moxon event, I wanted to comment on an interesting debate point raised on the Leeds Skeptics Facebook group, where someone claimed that some things we should just accept as true.

There are some things that should be a given in any skeptical society

I’m not making this up. Someone in a Skeptics group genuinely just said that there are some things we should just not question.

Of course, the equality of our fellow human beings is something incredibly important and something that when challenged, we would defend rigorously. But to suggest we should just same some things on faith is a violation of the very definition of skepticism. But more to the point, such an attitude undermines our own argument. Our position is that all our members are equal and we take this position because we’ve reviewed the evidence, and that is the case. To rule out a debate on it entirely is simply unskeptical.

Let us not forget that we have equality today because someone WAS skeptical about the prevailing idea that black people were inferior to white people, or that women didn’t deserve the rights as men did. Thank the god that I do not believe in, that someone had the courage to challenge these ideas that were just held as true at the time, so that today we can have equality.

After all, if we’re in the right, we shouldn’t be afraid to challenge our own ideas. As I’ve written before, I entertain the idea of cheating on my girlfriend. Why? Because I know I will never do it. I’m secure enough in my relationship, and I know I love her so much, that I can safely consider the possibility without worrying. I know this, because I’ve challenged my own beliefs, and because they still hold true, that only makes them stronger. As Norman summarises…

Not sure how anything can be a ‘given’ in a skeptical society? Surely the point of a skeptical society is that all view points are subjected to a rigorous process of critical analysis, regardless of whether it agrees with our world view or not.

One could argue that it is the very ‘givens’ of our own world views that require even more in depth challenging.

Challenging your beliefs only makes them stronger (or they turn out to be wrong – but I’m as certain as you can be that this won’t turn out to be the case for equality). But perhaps I underestimate how secure people actually are in their beliefs. I mean, are attendees worried that others are going to be won over by bigoted arguments?

Secondly go to the event, witness said MRA speech, and more than likely become angry at the shit he’s spouting. If you decide to argue with him you’d better have the support of the room otherwise you will get shouted down and feel even worse. At the very least you will be sat in your seat seething, possibly feeling upset or unsafe depending on how many other members are agreeing with the speaker.

I’m sure this wasn’t mean this to be in any way offensive, but she did just imply that that everyone else who attends Leeds Skeptics are at best are sexiest bigots who would shout her down if she tried to call someone on sexist nonsense he was spouting, and at worse a bunch of rapists would threaten her safety. Talk about promoting bad gender stereotypes. But it goes on…

What good would come out of it [the event], to balance against the aggressive sexism and racism that we’d almost certainly have to sit through and which would be at best uncomfortable for people who aren’t white males?

Is she seriously suggesting that white males don’t find racism, sexism or any bigotry offensive? It’s incredibly insulting, and sexist (and racist for that matter), but more than that, I think it shows that there is a real need for careful consideration of what we all hold to be true and bring open to the principle of challenging our own ideas.

As I’ve already said, challenging well founded beliefs only makes them stronger.

All I ever wanted to do was run a local free thinking group and stage lively though provoking events. It was a simple dream. Because of this, I don’t tend to read all the skeptics blogs. Fair play to you if you do, a lot of them are good, it’s just that I would rather go out and do something positive.

I compromised my principles along the way. Throughout my leadership at Leeds Atheist Society we operated a policy of positive discrimination to get more women involved in the society. All well and good put there is no such thing as positive discrimination, it’s just discrimination, and “positive” normally means that the flip side, and there is always a flip side, is directed at the majority, so it’s OK to discriminate. In fact, by our third year, six of the nine committee members were female.

I even launched a pro abortion campaign with the society, in conjunction with the then-not-even constituted feminist society, and ensured women were represented on the board of trustees of my charity and that women spoke at my conferences.

But none of this was enough to keep the wolves from the door. When Leeds Skeptics booked a speaker that we originally hoped would provide an empowering talk for women, discussing research suggesting gender stereotype threat wasn’t holding them back, we soon came in the firing line. Not a “hey, I’ve done some more research about this speaker, here it is, maybe you should reconsider”, but a you clearly hate women and want to “punch them in the mouth”. As Trystan Swale points out, I clearly deserve the stake.

Given all the discussions surrounding it however, I couldn’t help but to be dragged into what turns out to have been an on-going debate for several months regarding feminism and skepticism. It seems to be mostly making a mountain out of a mole hill – very serious issues but the resolution seems to be a) put a harassment policy in place and b) don’t bad mouth TAM, and everybody would be happy again. But go read about it for yourself, I haven’t read all the blog posts and I’m sure it’s more complicated than that.

However, now that I have been dragged into some of it, ended up reading one of the most controversial pieces of the whole debates – Paula Kirby’s open letter, Sisterhood of the Oppressed. It turns out to be an excellent read. Lest I not be called fair, you can read the rebuttals and background too.

In it, Paula suggests that a positive attitude of empowering women, it is a much more powerful too than constantly playing the victim card. This is exactly what feminism should be about in the modern day, and indeed, it is the fact that some branches of feminism don’t adopt this attitude that causes such a rift between equal rights campaigners and some of the feminist movement.

While everyone will have their own points of view on the issues raised, I think that Paula should be commended for having the courage to put topics into the public sphere for discussion.

P.S. It is issues similar these that Ken McLaughlin deals with in his new book “Surviving Identity: Vulnerabity and the Psychology of Recognition”, of which he will be discussing at the next meeting of Leeds Salon on Monday. An event I would highly recommend attending for anyone in the Leeds area.

One of the days that religions very effectively control their followers is through guilt culture. The idea is that just living your life, having natural thoughts and urges like who you want to go to bed with, is “sinful.” Of course we’re genetically wired to want to go to bed with people we find attractive and so just being a normal, well adjusted human being leads up to having thoughts, that The Church then tells you is as evil as having done the act itself and that you must repent in a financial way (and as luck would have it, they’re God’s official debt collectors).

It’s a fantastic way of keeping people under your control for making them feel guilty when they haven’t done anything wrong. In fact, it’s impossible not to think like that, so everyone feels the guilt and therefore stays under control.

As with many of religion’s best ideas (and it is one of their best from the stance of their insidious motives), people see how well it works and attempt to emulate it. Make a customer out of them while they’re young for example, has been a marketing technique that has proved hugely successful for McDonald’s – they’re the largest toy distributor in the world. In 2009, I blogged about how the green movement had also adopted a lot of Best Practice from religious institutions.

As an equal rights campaigner, I’ve had the chance to meet a lot of cool people who are also interested in equality. As with any field though there are some people with good ideas and some people with not so good ideas. Indeed, most people probably have a mix of both, I’m sure many of my ideas would be classified by some people as being in the not so good pile.

So called Lads Mags are a good example of this. Some of my friends would frown on me buying a copy of FHM It objectifies women and is therefore degrading – even though they’re professional models who voluntarily choose to have photos of themselves in exchange of large amounts of cash. This view is entirely at odds with equality – everyone should be free to choose what they want to do, and imposing Feminist Ideals to prevent them from doing so no less oppressive than the Patriarchal Culture we’re trying to escape from. Rachel Barker sums the debate up very nicely on her blog. As she points out, there are instances where people are exploited – and we need to work together to stop such cases! But Katie Price’s £45,000,000 fortune does not fall under that banner.

More widely, I resent the attack on men who consume such content (I use the term men, because it’s mostly men who are attacked for it). If I buy an FHM, it is indeed for the sexually alluring content. But you know what – I like looking at tits. That is a perfectly healthy, natural, biological urge that most people have. Human beings, and indeed all reproductive animals, are wired to find others attractive. And I do.

So given I was born this way, I’m not going to apologise for enjoying such content any more than I’m going to apologise for the way I look or the colour of my skin. I shouldn’t feel any more guilty about it than a homosexual should feel guilty about their feelings when a conservative tells them that their feels are wrong or unnatural.

I mean, what I am supposed to do? Should I lie and pretend that I don’t enjoy looking at scantily clad women? Should I go to my GP, or perhaps a mental health provider, and tell them I appear to be suffering from attraction to other human beings? Or is it a case that “it’s fine to have these feelings, we understand you are born this way – as long as you don’t act on them.” Where have we heard that before?

Furthermore, I resent the idea that my entire gender is so simple-minded that just because one of us may look at such pictures, he is then unable to treat anyone with respect. I see my girlfriend as a sex object because I find her very attractive and enjoy having sex with her. I also deeply value her personality, her opinions and her kindness. I see her as a whole human being, sexuality included. Such suggestions of viewing women in a single dimension hold no more weight than the idea that someone who plays violent video games must be a violent criminal.

Attacks against such magazines, freely bought by consumers, featuring models who freely chose to appear in them, are not only an assault on freedom of expression and the right for women to choose their own career in life, but also an attempt to control the population through guilt culture, convincing them that just being who they are is somehow a violation of morality. Such action is bigoted, morally wrong and intellectually bankrupt. It also creates a diving line between Feminist Politics and those interested in equality.

One of my friends was recently screwed over by an agency he was contracting for who refused to pay him a rather large amount of money they owed him. This caused all sorts of problems, including a rather late rent payment, and as a consequence he soon found his letting agent moaning about how they had had the landlady (who owned their house) on the phone screaming that she couldn’t pay her mortgage.

This was something that really resonated with me. Because, it’s nonsense.

As if it’s our job as tenants, to pay their mortgage. That is the risk you take when you choose to rent your second house out, and it’s not our job to cater for your bad financial planning. Don’t buy a house unless you can afford it.

If I wanted the stress of having to make sure I could make a mortgage payment every month, I would buy a house. I rent, because I don’t want that stress.

But much more than that, it is a problem with the inequality in society. These people are so wealthy that they can afford not just one house, the one they live in, but at least a second one, the one they rent out to you.

What do we receive for the privilege of helping these people build their property empire? We get to pay their mortgage for them, keeping them rich and us poor. And we’re supposed to give a shit if they can’t pay the mortgage on their second home while the tenant struggles to find the money to feed his child? Fuck off.