A Short Interlude: Why I'm Annoyed with the Contraception Debate

Ok, so I know that this is kind of breaking up the flow of my last post. But I kind of just want to voice my entire ambivalence to the arguments that I have recently seen regarding the contraception "debates" that have been going on recently. Mainly two things that I've been thinking.

First: are we seriously at this point where we are arguing about whether people should be allowed to use birth control? I mean... if someone thinks that that's a winner for politics, then ok. But I think that is shows how ridiculously terrible the entire political scene is right now. We've been ceding ground to people who want to take away sexual liberties for the past 40 years, and now we're at the point that condoms and birth control are being debated. That is so messed up that it kind of makes me want to scream. Also, the fact that some religious beliefs may not like birth control, doesn't mean that it's something that they don't have to pay for. I wish I could work for the Quakers and not have to pay taxes that go to war because of my "religious conscience," but I'd still get put in prison.

That is one that goes without saying. The second feeling I have on it is a bit more complex. I'm not Roman Catholic, and I disagree with the Roman Catholic Church on a lot of things, but I'm getting really frustrated by the rhetoric that is going on around this.

I don't think people quite realize the societal level that anti-Catholicism runs in this country, and there have been a lot of comments that I've heard from ostensibly "Progressive" (I hate that term, but it's a self identification) people have given into it. There is kind of the same thing going on for Mormons because of Romney, but I would talk about that later if necessary. But there have been a lot of people spreading rumors and general comments about Roman Catholics, or the Church that I think are pretty suspicious. Insofar as they have a long history in American Anti-Catholicism.

What I mean is, that I've heard plenty of people say things such as "The Catholic Church controls all the Catholics in Congress", or that Rick Santorum would answer to the Pope if elected President, or calling Catholics 'papists'. I've heard that the Catholic Church was why George W. Bush won his second term, because of their massive influence and money. Never mind that those people don't get that Catholics are generally more leftist in politics than the average person. Look, we've heard all of this before, and it was when we had JFK running for President. We can say that Rick Santorum would be a terrible President without falling into rhetorical conspiracy theories that were prominent 50 years ago.

The other thing that pisses me off is the recent mentioning of Catholic child abuse scandals. Now, there are a couple of different reasons for this. One of them is that almost all of them are done in the context of joking ABOUT CHILD ABUSE. Scoring cheap political points by making jokes at the expense of children who have been abused (even if the joke is intended for their abuser) is gross, and the people who do it should think twice before doing it. You're still joking about rape, even if you "mean it for good reasons". The second is that it follows a lot of the unfortunate trends of talking about Catholic child abuse scandals. The emphasis on Catholic priests' sex abuse over other faith traditions echoes both the American idea of priests as homosexuals, but of homosexuals as child molesters. From what I've been able to find, The John Jay Report on Catholic child sex abuse notes that the prevalence of abusing priests is about 4%, which is about the same amount as pedophilia across demographics.

What I'm not saying is that that is alright. But I think the obsession with Catholic priests is one that echoes a long history of messed up attitudes. We don't bring up teachers abusing students every time that they disagree with us, so why do that with priests? I think it comes both from American prejudices of the Catholic Church, along with homophobia, since the abuse is statistically more homosexual than places like schools.

An Open Letter to the Kansas City Star

Kansas City Star;

In response to the news story on December 25th, “KC man charged in fatal Christmas Eve shooting,” I found the language of the story to be unprofessional and demeaning to the victim of what is a tragic murder.

Mr. Bavley refused to use the correct pronouns for Dee Dee Pearson, and refused to use her chosen name. He continued to use objectifying language that demeans transgender people, referring to Ms. Pearson as “a man posing as a woman” and saying that her murder “became aware” that she “was a man.” This language, and the refusal of Mr. Bavley to acknowledge Ms. Pearson’s name and gender, is extremely offensive to transgender people, and seems to condone the stated purpose of the murder.

It is unprofessional for Mr. Bavley to simply accept the story that the murderer claims, since one could imagine that the murderer might have some sort of bias in recollecting his motives.  It is further unconscionable to in effect condone the reasoning of the murder. Mr. Bavley and the editors of the Star should apologize for both this unprofessionalism and the use of transphobic language in reference to an already heartbreaking death.

For some resources, there is http://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender

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I will write more on this perhaps. This is just what I sent the newspaper.

Honestly, what is wrong with people?

Hey, I talk about rape a bit here, so if you're not into that, then maybe sit this one out, cool?

Many people think that I am too kind to people from history. Well, except for Thomas Jefferson, because seriously. But generally, I take the view that if you look at where people were coming from in history, sometimes it  might help us understand that some people who seem totally backwards today might have even been progressive in their time. I guess I do this out of some sort of ideal of 'fairness'/'mercy', but also some sort of egoism. Because I know that most likely I am doing something unspeakably evil. Either things I'm aware of (like buying shirts at the Gap made of slave labor), or not aware of. So I guess if I'm saying that those people were trying to work with what they have, maybe people will give me and our time the same courtesy.

But when I think about some things that have happened recently, I can already think: No way. People from the future, I give you full ability to judge American society in 2011 to be thoroughly messed up. I guess the specific incidents that I have to mention here are the treatment of the Occupy Oakland camp, versus the Penn State Riots.

Occupy Oakland may not be perfect, and it might even be illegal. But guess what? The law that they are breaking is 'Illegal camping', so unless you are some sort of legalistic authoritarian, I don't see how the legality of the protest trumps the actual substance. It's like a person making a perfectly reasoned argument, and the other pointing out a grammatical mistake; it's irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Let alone that public spaces should be open to people anyways. But let's say that Illegal camping should be some sort of sacrosanct law that we have built our society off of (as opposed to say... free speech). The police used tear gas and riot squads attacking people with batons and rubber bullets. Unless this is how illegal camping is generally solved, which I don't believe is true, I don't get why it's being used here. I mean seriously, what the hell?

I mean, in UC Berkeley, the students were beaten (or nudged, if you believe the Associated Press) with batons because they were committing the violent action of linking their arms. I feel like I have to be in some sort of bizarro world where everyone in power must either be incredibly stupid, or just the worst liars on the entire damn planet. God, you'd think that Red Rover would be priority 1 in our schools if this were the case.

However, you have riots in Penn state. Now, let's just stop there and examine why these riots are happening. If they were part of Occupy, I'm sure the police would have gone all sorts of Kent state on everyone, and the news coverage of it would have been nonstop until the media people died from some combination of starvation and rage-induced strokes. But that's not the case. They were in fact, rioting because Joe Paterno stepped down because he had been protecting a child rapist.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Are we at such a nadir as a society that we are honestly having "Pro Child Rape" riots/rallies? I don't care what anyone says otherwise, rioting because your friend/leader/guy you never even met got in trouble for covering up rape is a 'Pro-Rape" event. This reminded me of the "we killed Osama Bin Laden" group celebrations, but angrier. And at least I could even understand the sentiment behind that, even if it was a bit blood thirsty. But when you're sitting down, thinking about yourself, and you come across the thought "You know, I think I'm more concerned about college football than children being raped", at what point does this not ring some sort of bell? I'm not saying that you have to stop liking football, but at least don't treat it as a "break a few eggs/rape a few kids to make an omelette" situation. I mean, I didn't even know this kind of person existed. Jesus Christ.

Not only that, but they broke things and turned over vans! What? Where was the tear gas then? I mean, do I really have to believe that the police are more sympathetic to raping children than to solving income inequality? Because that is seriously the implication of this differential treatment.

I mean, if you're not embarrassed to live in a country that's priorities seem to be so clear of any actual compassion or inkling of justice, then I don't know what to do for you.

What is violence? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more.

Ok. So in case you have either been living under some sort of rock, or refuse to speak about politics with other people, then the chances are that you have heard something about Occupy Wall Street (or you can adjust the name for whatever city you live in). I've had too many discussions about the merits and disadvantages and privileges of this group of protests to count, and I'm not exactly sure that it is helpful to put them up on the internet to argue over. Whether or not it has merit, it is definitely here now.

What interests me about these protests right now is that they are almost universally non-violent. And there is the sentence that gets me hung up: I feel like what we think of as violence, especially in terms of political action, isn't really something people discuss very much. And that is certainly an important definition to come to some sort of agreement to, isn't it? I mean, sure we might not necessarily completely agree, but it seems odd to just think that everyone intuitively knows exactly what 'violence' means, and that we all share the same definition. If I've learned anything at all from what I've studied, it is that assuming people define things the same way as you is a one way ticket to cliched negative outcomes-ville.

"But Joel, surely violence is easy to understand. Why do we have to overanalyze EVERYTHING?" I might hear someone say. Well, first of all random rhetorical device: back off. Second, unless there is something that I am missing, I don't think that I can quite get a cohesive definition of violence from the people I'm listening to. I hear lots of things called violent that seem 'on the edge'; less often, I hear things that I just automatically think are not violent. Putting glitter on people against their will? I'm sorry, that is not violent in any way that does justice to the concept. But, I guess it might just be easier to talk about what is intuitively violent first and then try to see how far we can expand those borders.

I think we can all agree that unprovokedly physically harming someone else is violent. Well, maybe politicians can't, but I try not to associate with people who lead countries into preemptive war. At the very least, we can say that a person who shoots someone else, or conspires to murder, or even mugs another, is committing a violent act.

I'm a pacifist, so I'm also going to include self defense as a violent act. Now, hear me out, because most people think that this is not legitimate. I'm not saying that a person who is defending themselves is equally morally culpable as the person who first initiated violence, but I am saying that self defense is a violent act. Not all acts of violence are equal to each other in terms of moral culpability.

Does causing mental harm constitute as violence? There are cases where it does seem to be violent. Assault, death threats, other such things seem as violent and harmful as any kick in the gut. The torment of bullying can in many cases be worse in the long run for the person being bullied than simple physical harm. Emotional violence has a way of being adopted by the victim, and that can be a much worse consequence than broken bones.

Of course, right now I'm just focusing on things that are done intentionally. The question of unintentional actions is so complicated that I don't even know what to do with it. I might look at it later, but for now we can stick with something a bit easier to discuss.

I also want to note that simple offense doesn't count as emotional violence. To use an example: a racist person might be distressed to have a person who is a minority move into their neighborhood. Does that make the person moving there violent? I don't think so. This is also something that might have to be looked at later: whether offense is just or not.

In any case, we're back to the idea of what is violent. Intentionally harming people physically or mentally is violent. Is throwing glitter on someone violent? I don't think that it quite reaches the levels of harm that I would  call violence; that is to say, I don't see the harm. if maybe someone had a deathly fear of glitter, that might be violent. As the case is, it's merely a flashy way of telling someone you disagree.

Is Yelling violent? There are cases of it being violent, but  there is nothing inherent to it to be violent. We yell over crowded streets, we even yell at someone when we are angry. That's not violent; the content of the yelling is what is violent. This is, of course, not universal: if you find someone who always reacts negatively to yelling, then using this to your advantage to harm them would be violent. But what I mean is that nothing about raising your voice is inherently violent.

Now, the real issue that I want to bring up is something that has been brought up multiple times concerning the Occupy Oakland movement: is vandalism violent? From the news coverage, and even the spoken words of many protesters, the assumption is that vandalism is in fact (always) violent. I want to challenge that idea a bit. Vandalism might hurt people financially, but to compare a company paying a couple of hundred dollars for a window to someone getting murdered seems a bit crass. Surely vandalism (such as hate speech and cross burning) can be parts of violence, but it is the threat, not the act that is violent.

Thought experiment: go out to the woods alone, and take a large window with you. When you are in a space that it is safe to do so, smash it. Don't tell anyone you did it. Did you just commit a violent act? If you don't think so, then it seems to follow that smashing windows isn't violent in and of itself. Therefore whether vandalism is violent is based on whether you do it to harm someone physically or emotionally. Vandalizing a bank might be a jerk move that is terrible PR for your organization, but no one is really thinking that the CEO of Chase is going to be heartbroken or scared for his life. Let alone physically hurt.

The interesting thing about it is, that by talking about vandalism like it is violence, we are basically saying that property and not alive objects are the same as people and animals. We say that harming either is the same class of action, we equal moral weight. It seems to be an aspect of our society that while we treat people like they are objects, we treat objects like humans deserve. In fact, if we had half as much respect for people as we did for corporations or physical property, then maybe we would be improving the world a bit.