No Means No, Obviously

That's how language based communication works, words have meanings, and when you say them you evoke that meaning. I read a very interesting article about "playing hard to get," but I disagree with a significant proportion of it. I have to admit I appreciate her extolling people, specifically women but I think it applies to men, not to play hard to get. Although I have yet to meet someone who even remotely seemed to be playing hard to get, that may be because when I am rebuffed romantically I almost always just let the issue lie, and in the couple of cases where I haven't I have more revisited the subject at a later date in hopes that her opinion has changed; in short, when it comes to romance, I try to convince people to change their minds by being awesome, because I am awesome, rather than trying to persuade them to change their minds verbally.

Anyway, while I have yet to meet someone who displays evidence of playing "hard to get," I have to agree that the trope widely exists through our cultural stories. Men are told that to "get the girl" one must put forth some romantic effort. While I disagree with the author that this is inherently undesirable, I do heartily concur with her that it seems to play into rape culture.

However, where I categorically disagree with the author is where she asserts that maybe means no. Of course, I am similarly opposed to the assumption that maybe means yes, for similar reasons, yes, no, and maybe are all separate words with wildly different meanings! Maybe means maybe! And here lies the refuge of people who want to play hard to get, maybe should clearly indicate that one is not acquiescing to the proposed activity, whether it be dancing, dating, or sex, but one is willing to consider it. If one does not wish to consider it further, there is a proper word for that, "no," and it is then the moral obligation of the rebuffed to accept that.

I am not often asked out, and people straight up ask me for sex even less frequently, but people often ask me if I will to go to dance activities. If I want to and am able to go I answer, "yes," because yes I will go. If I have a conflicting obligation or just don't want to go (the latter is rather uncommon) I answer, "no," because no I will not go. If I kind of want to go, but am feeling overwhelmed and kind of don't want to go, then I might answer, "maybe," or, "I don't know... [insert lame excuse here]." At these times I completely welcome people trying to convince me to go, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but it helps me make up my mind. I don't think that I am "playing hard to get," per se, but if someone wants to play hard to get, let them use maybe! It is the correct word to use, "maybe" can mean, "maybe, if you work hard enough," which is what someone playing hard to get seems to implicitly mean.

Maybe shouldn't contribute to rape culture. Maybe leaves the door open to be convinced, but the door can still be closed. Maybe doesn't mean you cannot eventually say no (on a side note, that male friend she mentions complaining about people not being willing to agree with him eventually, creepy!!!). But that should be obvious, because you know what, yes doesn't even mean you cannot eventually say no! Let me expound on that, because it is of some importance, even if someone says yes to sex, if they change their mind, or you start hurting them, or they just get creeped out for some reason and change their mind to no, then that is a no! If you have sex with someone expressing a desire not to have sex with you, even if they explicitly expressed a desire to have sex with you at some earlier point, that is rape! If you decide not to have sex with someone who really did want to have sex with you, but felt they had to say "no" due to cultural considerations you missed having sex with someone who can't honestly express themselves and he/she missed out on having sex with an awesome person who is respectful of her/his desires. Guess which way I think you should err... Hint, which I don't think you should need, no means no!

While I don't think it is harmful to err on the side of no if you get a maybe, whereas it is definitely harmful to err on the side of yes, I don't think it is morally required to pretend that maybe doesn't have it's own, unique, and communicatively valuable, meaning. If you want to play hard to get, I invite you to use 'maybe's, or other such non-committal responses. And, most importantly, for this to work we have to realize that non-committal quite literally means without commitment, one way or the other, so if it becomes a no, then it is a no, end of discussion.

Party Balance Requires Diversity

Well, it looks like we hit 200 posts without any fanfare, which is probably a good sign, because it means I am less surprised to make it that far than I was at 100, but may be a bad thing, if it indicates this blog is an elaborate method for me to have long conversations with myself. Anyway, on to the 201st post!

I hope it comes as no surprise to you that the topic of women in nerd culture is one of some interest to me. One of the benefits of having this fact well known is that people sometimes send me relevant articles when they come across them. One such article about women "pretending" to be geeks in order to get male attention can be found here. The article, like most things, has some good points, and some flaws. Some of the flaws were pointed out in a counter-article, which can be found here, but I have enough of my own thoughts on the subject that I wanted to write my own post.

First off, let me complement some of the things I really did like from the article. The author calls out the misogyny that women who game experience and clearly chastises them. Furthermore, he reaffirms the idea that women can be nerds, are nerds, and should be welcome in nerd culture.

However, he does commit a few things that I would consider faux pas. I don't want to go to deeply into these, so I'll just list them. He makes the, "I cannot be a misogynist, I have a female friend," argument, he equivocates booth babes, who are explicitly at conventions to get paid as models, with women actually trying to participate in nerd culture, finally, and this is the point I want to expand upon, he judges that some women are just "not nerdy enough," for nerd culture.

While the linked rebuttal notes that there are problems with guys deciding which girls are nerdy enough to join, "the boys club," and there certainly are, I think that it is insufficient, but not unimportant, to focus on the gendered implications of this statement. First, let us take a moment to realize how much more mainstream "nerdity" has become. I am extremely fortunate that I can be fairly open about my enjoyment of playing Dungeons & Dragons without being ostracized by my friends, condemned by most churches, or suspected of going psychotic. Twenty or thirty years ago I would not have had that freedom. Also, is it just me or does this sound like a metaphor for being gay?

Anyway, things like gadget mania, the widespread use of computers, an invasion of blockbuster movies based on comic book culture, and the incredible popularity of Nerdfighters among young adults signal that nerd is becoming mainstream. Unfortunately that is a somewhat jarring experience for people who found their nerdity an alienating, rather than accepted, trait. It makes sense for their to be a certain, Hipster-eqsue, tendency for some nerds to think, "I am a true nerd, I was a nerd before it was cool," or to view newcomers as disingenuous in some manner. This will, of course, do nothing to dispel the image of nerds as anti-social misanthropists.

Stereotypes within nerd culture that, "gamers aren't nerds," or that, "serious gamers are nerds, but not those belligerent frat-boy Halo-playing jerks," ultimately harm both people within nerd culture, by keeping it exclusive and preventing it from receiving the acceptance that it deserves and flourishing in the way that it can and should, and those attempting to join it, preventing them from receiving the acceptance that they deserve and joining the, often, fulfilling comradery of some of the weirdest hobbies that could ever be so much fun. I mean seriously, I write numbers down on paper and pretend I'm a wizard, that's weird, and awesome! Hopefully we can accept and validate, if not necessarily hang out with all the time, engineers, video gamers, english lit enthusiasts, ren fair participants and the SCA, board/pencil and paper gamers, people who love Joss Whedon (who doesn't love Joss Whedon), and yes, even people who became enthusiastic about A Game of Thrones because of the HBO series *sigh*.

We Shall Overcome, Someday

Michigan recently passed a bill to prevent public institutions from providing benefits to couples who are not legally married; here is an article on the topic. Although the bill is being challenged and I hope it is overturned, I am not interested, or able, to discuss its legality. I did not study to be a lawyer, I studied to be a philosopher, so what I want to talk about is how very wrong this bill is!

It seems clear that some of the support for this bill originates from an antipathy toward same sex couples; insofar as this antipathy wells out of some sort of Christian sentiment, this makes me sick. There is an incredible hypocrisy within the American "Christian" political movement when it comes to sexual mores. Although premarital sex and adultery are condemned from the pulpit they are ignored when Christians go political, in fact, I have noticed a surprisingly widespread sentiment among Christians that premarital sex "isn't that bad" or "is a fact of life." Perhaps premarital sex and adultery are easier to accept as facts of life because they are things that heterosexuals might desire, making this a classic case of trying to remove the splinter from the eye of the homosexual community whilst ignoring the plank in our own. To make it absolutely clear, I am NOT advocating that anybody attempt to legislate against premarital sex or adultery, simply that people who have somehow accepted that these things should be dealt with in the realm of morality, not legality, extend that understanding to same sex couples. Finally, I must admit that comparing homosexuality, premarital sex, and adultery is not the fairest of comparisons. Adultery seems, by fair, the most harmful and disrespectful of the three, so why are we taking benefits away from same sex couples and blithely permitting them to adulterers?

At best this bill might be described as a way for the state to save a little bit of money, which is something states always seem to need to do. However, even in this more charitable interpretation the bills supporters do not end up looking terribly moral. Now, instead of passing the bill in order to hurt a group of people with which they have a difference of opinion, they are simply looking for a group they perceive as unpopular enough that they can summarily divest them of benefits without office threatening repercussions. Less disgusting, perhaps, but still disgusting.

This bill also highlights why marriage for heterosexuals and domestic partnerships for homosexuals is not an adequate, effective, or moral solution. As long as different couples have different commitments binding them it will be easy and, therefore, tempting to set different standards and benefits for them. Perhaps we will simply have to abolish marriage as a civil institution and issue all couples domestic licenses to reach a compromise with the hard line religious movements, which, insofar as marriage is a religious ceremony, ought to be done anyway according to the Constitution. In the end, two different types of "marriage" for two "different" types of couples is morally untenable, separate but equal is still inherently unequal.

In my last sentence there is an implicit comparison between the Gay Rights movement and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, which is why I am writing this post on Martin Luther King Jr. Day specifically. I think that such comparisons are quite warranted, in fact I would be willing to call the struggle for Gay Rights the Civil Rights movement of our era, since it is, at heart, just that, a struggle for civil rights. By making this assertion I do not mean to imply that we have accomplished our struggle for racial equality and now we can move on. ("But we have a black president now, we must be done!" "No, BAD reductionist! The fact that we consider Obama black is itself something worthy of unpacking.") I simply mean that Gay Rights have been the focus of much public attention and legal action recently.

Although the struggle for racial equality may still be ongoing, I think it is entirely appropriate highlight another struggle on MLKJ Day, so long as one does not try to diminish the importance of racial equality, or any other form of equality. To borrow a concept that I have heard attributed to the Third Wave Feminist movement, in order for any of us to be free from oppression, we must all be free from oppression. I can think of two worthwhile ways to interpret that off the top of my head. As long as anyone is oppressed we must still accept the idea that oppression can be justified, which opens everyone up to the risk of becoming included in an underclass. Or, as long as anyone is oppressed, we must find ourselves entangled in the system of oppression, even if as unwilling oppressors, and systems of oppression hurt all moral beings, be they "oppressed" or "oppressor." I rather favor the second interpretation, but both are interesting.

So, today let us dare to dream of a future free of oppression, then do what we can to move toward such a bright future. We shall overcome, someday.

Holy Uncertainty

Batman.

I have decided that, unless something specific and immediate comes up, I shall not discuss religion tomorrow. I could give some sort of rationalization for this decision, but ultimately it just doesn't feel right. So, you get my religious musings today instead. Of course, if you sleep at a normal time you probably are asleep even as I write this, so, at the earliest, you will read this on Christmas and thus negate all my planning to avoid mixing my religion with your, possibly, holy day, and if not, probably a day you would prefer to ignore religion. Sorry.

Anyway, our family went to a candlelight service this evening, as is our wont. During a prayer the pastor prayed for something to the effect that all Christians proclaim boldly that Jesus is God and Savior, which got me to thinking. While I am ok with boldly proclaiming that one believes this, I feel that proclaiming it as fact is problematic.

On an ethical level, I think a statement of fact rather than belief leaves less room for mutual respect. If I believe something, then someone may disagree with me and, although I think that they are wrong, I will admit that their position seems like a valid one to take. On the other hand, treating something as an evident fact indicates that those who disagree hold invalid positions, and, as such, one is already assuming they are stupid or ignorant.

On a more metaphysical note, I think that we now know enough to know how much we don't know. Or, to put it another way, if all of someone's information was garnered through dogmatic recitation of traditional explanations or personal superstitions, then asserting a belief as a fact would be no big deal. However, as we have developed more complicated ways of looking at truth, and gained more reliable information, I would like to think that we have also gained an appreciation for what we cannot quantify and pin down. We have assumed a more mature attitude of rational, tempered belief, rather than the spoiled assertion that belief must be truth that a willful child might make.

I do not intend these remarks solely for Christians, although theirs is the religion with which I am most familiar, nor even solely for the "religious." This applies equally well to the militant atheists who, with dogmatic certainty, proclaim that deities do not exist. They too tend to denigrate the mental faculties of those with whom they disagree, attempting to substitute ad hominem insults for coherent arguments. I suppose my ultimate message is that we all ought to respect, not agree with, people who believe other things until they give us reason not to, and that simple disagreement is not sufficient cause. I guess that isn't such a bad message for Christmas after all.

Identity

Identity, it's who we are. But it isn't just who we are to ourselves, it is also who we are to other people. I shall try to keep my thoughts reasonably linear, but this is a topic that has come up in a variety of facets recently, so it may be difficult to isolate it from the surrounding context to discuss in a stand alone fashion.

One important facet of our identity is our cultural heritage. This, in some sense, grounds us to a specific place or places in history, "our ancestors were these people and came from here." It might be argued that many people in the United States lack this sense of heritage, but I think that it would be more accurate to say that they have incorporated the American ideal of settlers and intermixing as their heritage.

The question arises, what must be done to lay claim to a cultural heritage? I would assert that the act of laying honest claim to such a heritage validates itself. Of course, if I were to jokingly claim to be heir to the royal traditions of the Incas, this would not carry a lot of weight. However, if someone genuinely believes themselves to be an inheritor of a specific culture, then it is self evident that their identity is shaped by a sense of inclusion in that culture.

On the other hand, one might hold that, in order to possess a cultural heritage, one must take an active role in exploring that culture. While this is a perfectly valid way to organize people into culture groups, I think it is unnecessarily restrictive. At the risk of seeming ego maniacal, I will provide an illustrative example from my own life, simply because it is the only life with which I am familiar enough to say things with confidence.

Among my mix of European ancestors, I have some Germans and some Italians. And, while this has led me to study a little bit of German and put some effort into learning about German culture, I identify more strongly as Italian, despite having invested less effort in my Italian identity. I believe this is simply because my last name, if you unravel some Ellis Island mishaps, is Italian. So, just by identifying myself by name I am asserting my Italian identity, and it has caused people to react to me differently, thus further reinforcing my "Italian-ness."

And here we see how one's self identity and the manner in which others construct identity groups have such tricky interrelation. As I mentioned earlier, I think organizing people into identity groups based on putting effort into claiming a cultural identity is a valid way of organizing people, by which I mean that the groups that one obtains from such organization will likely share some distinguishing characteristics of interest and this organization doesn't seem to inherently promote ethnic cleansings. However, it may be quite at odds with how other people think about themselves, and indeed, how other people organize the world into cultural groups. So, it seems important to acknowledge that people can come to their identity through a variety of methods.

Further confusing the matter is the practice of assuming identities. For example, a European manga/anime enthusiast who feels their hobby confers a cultural legacy from Japan. First, let me note that this does not apply to every manga/anime enthusiast, just those who feel their hobby includes them in the penumbra of Japanese culture. Secondly, while this notion of cultural heritage may be at odds with the traditional notion of culture as inheritable from one's parents, it is entirely in keeping with both my criterion and, it seems to me, with the contrasting criterion from above, as the person in question both self identifies with Japanese culture and is investing effort into the cultivation of this cultural identity.

This highlights a further complication, in that essentializing Japanese culture down to anime and manga; or even anime, manga, and quirky gadgets; does Japanese culture a disservice, and, depending on one's views, may even be insulting. However, otaku are a part of Japanese culture, so one perhaps should not say that this view of Japanese culture is incorrect, insomuch as it is incomplete. So, toward what concept of a culture ought we direct our efforts in order to "earn" cultural inclusion?

So far we have mentioned three reasonable but incompatible methods for assigning cultural heritage; self identification, cultural participation, and parental inheritance. These are by no means exhaustive, geographical inheritance (Italians are people who have lived in Italy for some duration, which varies from person to person) and nationalism (Italians are citizens of Italy), for example, also have adherents. In light of this complexity, I am inclined to broaden my original position. While I still believe in accepting how others identify themselves, I also believe that we should accept that other people will have other ways of organizing people into cultural groups. That said, not all such organizations are "reasonable," which I would like to address at a later date.

In Defense of Man

While I am usually in the habit of observing how our society is structured in ways that disadvantages women and the negative consequences, to individuals and society itself, that they cause, today I thought I'd take a break to talk about how tough men have it. As I have noted before, part of my own personal brand of feminism is realizing the problems current gender norms cause for people of both sexes, so this is entirely in keeping with me overall philosophy. Furthermore, just as my post on issues that disproportionately hurt women are in no way intended to imply that men have lives of wine and roses, this post is explicitly not asserting that men's problems are in some way "bigger" (whatever that means) or "more important" (whatever that means) than women's are.

What I would like to focus on today is the tendency for men to be somewhat overbearing. Although I have been kicking this idea around in my head for a month or two, I found an appropriate Questionable Content strip for the topic last weekend, as I cruised through my obsessive re-reading of their archive. Notice the line in panel two about, "persistence gets the girl no matter how big an ass you make of yourself." I would imagine that this works somewhat less frequently in real life than it does in romantic comedies, especially to people who do not possess Jon Cusack's boyish good looks (actually, I just looked him up to see what he looks like, and his wikipedia picture is kind of creepy). The point is, however, that males experience societal pressures to be the actors and do things to influence the behavior of women.

From the ostensibly harmless, although somewhat invasive and stalker-ish if you think about it, boombox outside the bedroom window, to the much less innocent seduction, to the entirely reprehensible acts of rape, inter-sexual relations are fraught with many examples of males asserting themselves upon females in order to influence their decisions. Of course, we all act at times in a manner intended to increase the probability that someone else will act in a desired manner, I think it is important to consider what is appropriate when attempting to influence people (or to win friends, for that matter). The concept I think is central to the male problem is that of "assertion."

For relevant contrast, consider the stereotypical methods of to romantically influence males. These tend to be less on the assertive side (boombox outside the window) and more on the passive side, such as alteration of appearance through the use of wardrobe and cosmetics (or so I am told) and the like. This is not to say that males cannot utilize wardrobe, and maybe even cosmetics, just that the masculine goal is acceptability, while the feminine goal is approachablity.

This is not to excuse stalkers, rapists, and Blutos, but rather to posit that their behavior may be a manifestation of a common, underlying dysfunction in our societal structure, and hopefully spark a discussion on whether this seems reasonable, and, if so, what might be done to alleviate this problem.

Words of Power

On a walk into school last week I started thinking about cuss words. Since this is a post about cussing, I will include some strong language, if only to refer to the word itself. The departure point for this post is the thought that, although they all refer to the same substance, words like "poop," "crap," and "shit" all have varying levels of social taboo, ordered in increasing order I believe. This highlights that the taboo nature of cuss words, while related to the sensitive subjects they inevitably are about, is not solely tied to the literal meaning of the word. Rather, it, like all word connotations and meanings, is a very cultural phenomenon.

I have sometimes had conversations with people who believed that our hang ups and censorship of such words is ridiculous and ought to be stopped. I have also heard that, for example, the Japanese language does not have such taboo-ed words. Be that as it may, I have always been a champion of leaving some words beyond the pale of polite society.

Usually my support has been of the form that all words have culturally defined meanings, and our culture has defined some words to be rude and disrespectful to say, so saying such words must be rude and disrespectful, to the same degree that a verb must be an action. However, on this particular walk I started thinking about the power given to these taboo-ed words by their very taboo nature.

By habit, I am not inclined to particularly vitriolic language, but I think that causes my cussing to lend greater emphasis to what I say than it would otherwise when I do occasionally cuss. On that note, if any of you are reading this, I would appreciate if that story were not to be posted openly on the Internet, you know who you are. If that makes no sense to you, ask me about it in person sometime if your curiosity must be assuaged, it is probably a funny story, but I am not particularly proud of it, so I don't want it just floating on the Internet.

Anyway, while, by their vary nature, these words cannot lend their emphasis to a statement very often, at risk of losing their power, it is very useful to have them in reserve for those horrible occasions when everyday words lack enough power to convey a sentiment. And do not mistake me, I am using the word power in a very literal sense, it is no coincidence in my mind that magic in so many traditions has some form of verbal component. Ask any mathematician and they will assure you that it is very important for words and symbols to be properly arranged in order for them to correctly channel the idea for which they are intended.

Furthermore, insofar as reality is something shared and inter-subjective, if not objective, then language is our truest manner of interacting with reality. By this I mean that language is our least subjective form of communication. Thus, the words we use to describe our private experiences, our thoughts, reactions, and emotions, directly determine how we enter into the public reality as people. As such, it is important that we have words of power at our disposal, for we are powerful consciousnesses and have powerful experiences.

In fact, I would argue that we do not have enough taboo-ed words! The taboo-ed words we have span too limited a range of emotion, being, for the most part, negative. For example, consider how much trouble we have with the word "love," in its most powerful context, even though we permit the debasement of its meaning through its usage on all manner of trivialities. Now imagine how potent it would be if we had a word which wasn't even considered polite to say, a word whose very usage indicated that it had been ripped irrationally from our tongue by the strength of our passions.

We need words like that, not just for hate and disgust as we currently have, but also for love, joy, and beauty. And we need to be content not to use them. We must resist the urge to clinically emphasize a point by employing them as strong rhetoric, and instead preserve their power in our fear and reverence.

Slut Walk

Random thought: A young person is someone with the luxury of believing they know enough to form what is essentially an indisputably correct opinion. An old person is someone with the luxury of believing they know enough to form what is essentially an indisputably correct opinion and the young people have no idea how arrogant they are to believe the same.

Enough with the heavy topics and the mopey introspection, let's talk about Sluts! After a Toronto police officer advised students to, "avoid dressing like sluts," in order to avoid being sexually assaulted, the social protest phenomena known as Slut Walk was born. Simply put, Slut Walks are organized in order to provide people who believe that what a woman is wearing has no bearing on her being sexually assaulted a public platform to share their opinion. Here's an article on the subject, if you are interested in further reading, it is simply the article I read most recently, not my choice of an exhaustive resource.

The Slut Walk immediately brings up two important and interesting topics, victim blaming, gendered double standards for sexuality, and activism. I'll address them in that order.

While some might argue that what you are wearing has no causal relationship to your likelihood of being raped, and I know that there is good anecdotal evidence for this claim, it seems even easier to argue that there is no reason wardrobe ought have any bearing on sexual assault. As long as one's garb is within the legal limits on decency, I see no reason for it to be mentioned in a court of law. What someone is wearing CERTAINLY does not justify sexually assaulting them. Furthermore, if we consider institutionalizing the message that dressing in a certain manner is likely to incur sexual assault, it seems as though we are perpetuating the domination of women through sexual violence, namely dictating to them the clothing that are safe to wear.

As someone possessed of a rather conservative personal, as opposed to political, morality, I cannot say that I unreservedly celebrate the label slut. However, I certainly do believe it should have the same normative value as the word "stud." If we glorify male sexuality and simultaneously vilify female sexuality, we set an unjust double standard. To be sure, I would prefer that both "stud" and "slut" referred to behavior not socially celebrated, but I definitely think they ought have the same normative content, and I don't particularly like vilifying anyone. Those loyal, long time readers (to whom I am very grateful) may recognize this thought structure from my post last October (ok, November) on Halloween costumes. Surprise, we have not achieved gender equity in the past six months!

Like I noted, I am not entirely copacetic with the message of a Slut Walk. Consequentially I might not choose to show up for such an event should one end up organized near my area. Let's be honest though, show up alone to voluntarily immerse myself in a crowd, doesn't sound like something I'd do even to get more Firefly episodes. However, the Slut Walks have an important core message with which I deeply believe, and furthermore provide people with an option for activism. It is good for there to be multiple venues for activism, from proud Sluts and Slut allies walking the streets, to nerdy bloggers hiding in their basements. Speaking of activism opportunities, Jamie Keiles over at Teenagerie is co-coordinating Chicago's Slut Walk (is it just me, or does "slattern look like it is spelled with a pi?), and her blog is a great resource for discussion on things of gender/activist interest.

Finally, I have a new follower, and since that made me very happy I thought I should mention it, so hello! Their profile picture is Dr Who, so it is even more fantastic!

Crazy? Nah! Just a Little Unwell

Clover, over at Fluttering Butterflies, recently posted a wondrously brave examination of her experiences with mental illness. I really appreciated it, and found some parts of it resonated with me, so I wanted to do a similar thing. Most often Fluttering Butterflies reviews YA fiction books, so if that is of interest to you instead, you should still check it out! If you don't want to read a post where I try to list what I think are the more serious problems with my mind, please feel free not to read this post. Also, please note that I am doing this mostly to reject the social pressure to appear to "have it all together," which stigmatizes the subject of mental health issues, which causes people who are already struggling to feel even more isolated than they are in reality. It is not a cry for help, nor is it the result of diagnosis by a professional. I think the idea of self-diagnosis is even more problematic with mental health problems than with physical ailments, not only is subjectivity an issue, but if there is something wrong with your mind, do you really want to sue that same mind to perform the diagnosis? So, these are my observations about my experiences. Finally, and this is slightly unusual, I want to urge you not to comment on this post. If you have an academic or personal contribution to the discussion, please feel free to make it, but I do not feel comfortable discussing personal issues, so comments about me will just make me feel uncomfortable, and I hope you do not want to do that.

Anyway, I suppose the earliest problem that might be considered a mental health issue that I had was with my body image and with food. I have felt fat since elementary school, and by high school I had grown so absolutely fed up with my fatness that I wanted to stop caring that I was overweight. Mental issues aside, this certainly wasn't a physically healthy mindset. Coupled to my persistent body image issues is a not helpful desire to simply binge on food sometimes. During a car trip in high school, I remember saying something to the effect that I knew my eating habits were unhealthy, but that I wanted to enjoy some part of my life, hardly a positive attitude.

In fact, I kind of view getting diagnosed with mild diabetes last summer as a mixed blessing, as it provided me with the impetus to make some mild, but effective alterations to my life, I don't know if you can grasp how much the revelation that scale numbers can get smaller impacted me, something I knew rationally but didn't actually believe was true for me. By the way, I have mild diabetes, if I hadn't told you it is because I don't particularly like talking about it either, sorry(?). Unfortunately, my diabetes is another source of guilt, because I do believe that my incredible neglect directly led to this condition, furthermore, seeing what my friends who are Type I have to deal with, and were born with, I feel incredibly guilty calling what I have by the same name, since mine is controlled by reasonable diet (something that I ought to have been doing anyway) and oral medication. Anyway, losing weight has actually made me realize that I will probably always consider myself fat, it is simply a part of who I am by now, but it is nice to realize that I am currently less fat than I have been previously, not something I have ever really been able to say.

I guess the second thing I'd address, going in chronological order, is my social insecurity. Those of you who have known me for a while may find this surprising, because by nature I am quite gregarious, but around strangers I usually range from shy, if there are also people I know around and I feel secure, to terrified. Even with people I know well, I often have problems figuring out how I am expected to interact with other people, but after having known someone for a long time I feel fairly sure that they will forgive my social ineptitude so I can relax anyway. It also is worse the more people I am interacting with, as I was just thinking last week, social interactions increase in complexity exponentially as the number of participants increases, although factorially might actually be a more accurate estimation depending on how you consider it.

I remember that after switching schools in elementary school, I would spend recess balancing on the wooden barrier holding in the play area bark-chips, counting how many times I could completely circle around the play area. As you can see, I'm a real life of the party. Fortunately someone eventually introduced himself to me, and I made a friend. I still tend to have a low number of serious interpersonal relationships, and I am extremely grateful for the extroverted people who have made them possible. I love extroverts, not only do I get to meet them, they also facilitate my meeting more people! I tend to score fairly high on the autism quotient spectrum test, but as I have a fairly healthy sense of humor, I tend to believe that autism is not exactly my problem. Mathematically inclined people do tend to score higher on the test, and when you factor in my social anxiety my score seems quite reasonable. However, I do sometimes wish that I had some form of high functioning autism, although I am certainly not saying I wish my personality changed, because it seems like it would be nice to have a simple explanation for my persistent troubles, rather than the nagging worry that everyone has such trials, and I just seem to have failed to cope with them like everyone else has.

Probably related to my social problems is the fact that I just don't open up to people. Even with people with whom I feel comfortable, I tend to avoid discussing my personal life. See above note about diabetes. Although I did try to tell a couple of my close friends, it didn't really make me feel better about it, so I ended up telling people about it as it came up, so as not to appear to be keeping it a secret at least. Similarly, some fairly traumatic, at least relative to what usually happens to me, stuff has happened to me this semester (by the way, no I don't particularly want to discuss it) and I made a point to tell some of the people I trust, but it didn't seem to help too much, maybe a little though. Not enough to warrant the discomfort I go through bringing it up probably. I also tend to, perhaps, over analyze what people mean by what they say. For example, I realize that most people when they say, "How are you doing," are using it as a customary greeting, rather than as the question it literally is. However, when I receive a compliment, I have a tendency to believe that it is a response to a socially recognized obligation to compliment, rather than a genuine expression. Intellectually I realize it is likely that I am wrong, but that is my thought process. That is also why I don't particularly want comments about this, if you try to offer me support I will assume that you are doing so out of a perceived social necessity to provide it, whether or not that is actually the case, and it will end up making me feel worse as I try to decipher if that is the case or not. This extends to a lot of other things, trying to figure out what is socially necessitated and what is genuine is a fairly common worry that I have. My sister noted that in my post on body image, I logically justified my complement, this is because I tend to trust logic, so when I want to make sure my sincerity is realized I tend to explain my complement logically.

The last issue that I want to discuss is depression. This one I think I am working my way out of, thankfully. Although I am not usually the happiest of people, left to my own devices, some of the years proceeding this one seemed worse than usual. When people describe the feeling of not seeing any particular value in their coming day, I can empathize with how that feels. I kind of think that I was very much just going about routine of my life, with varying levels of success, in sort of a stupor. Needless to say, starting to try living my own life again and somehow finding myself in the middle of a PhD program in Michigan of all places has been somewhat of a mind shock. Not that I've ever been good at living my life, even when I am putting forth the effort.

So, hopefully by now you agree with me that I am pretty screwed up. I want you to do that not because I desire pity, which would be fairly hurtful, but because someone this screwed up can get into a PhD program, be genuinely and exuberantly happy a couple times each week, and manage rudimentary human interaction to varying degrees of success. So, if you feel screwed up too, hopefully you will agree that it is possible that the ok life is a possible outcome. Of course, my failure to see a counselor is exactly that, a failure, and I would encourage you to consider seeing one if you think that seeing one could be beneficial, even if you don't think that you are mentally ill, because we all have problems. I have repeatedly considered seeing a psychiatrist myself, but remember that talking about personal issues and talking to stranger each rank predominantly on my list of problems. There you have it, I believe we are all screwed up and I hope this helps someone feel less alone with their feelings of being screwed up. Of course, I also would like to believe I am more screwed up than most, if only because it gives me a reason that isn't a personal failure to explain why I fit in less than most, but I could be wrong ;)

To Hell With Hell: Or "Moral Bullying: Why Not"

"I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God." -Attributed to Rabia Basri

I was reading through a quite interesting article on how a strong undercurrent of anti-contraception politics runs behind a lot of the "anti-abortion" politics we see. For example, consider the recent fight over Planned Parenthood funding, although no federal funding goes to abortion, for some reason the anti-abortion lobby was quite keen to get rid of this funding. Although the article is well worth it, I've given enough extra work recently, if you don't want to read it here is the part that caught my attention.

"'Contraception helps reduce one’s sexual partner to just a sexual object since it renders sexual intercourse to be without any real commitments,' says Janet Smith, the author of 'Contraception: Why Not.'"

Now, as a hopeless and idiotic romantic, I am certainly against reducing "one's sexual partner to just a sexual object." I also must admit that just the other day I was thinking that acknowledging the consequences of one's actions is perhaps the foundation of a moral life. However, this quote seems to be encouraging us to manufacture consequences in order to reinforce a moral code, which I think is completely immoral!

This, of course, inspired me to remember the wonderful quote with which I began this article, if loving God is good, we ought not do it for fear of punishment or desire for reward. I think this extends to all our moral decisions. If we make what might be considered a moral decision out of concern for the repercussions it will have on our self, I don't think we have actually made a moral decision.

Let me once again emphasize that making a decision based on the consequences to others can still be moral, and, indeed, may be the highest form of morality, but insofar as our actions are simply to avoid bad or promote good outcomes for ourselves, they are not particularly moral. Consider, if God had simply wanted to minimize the bad things people do, it seems reasonable to theorize that a world in which deviation from God's will brought swift and messy retribution. However, it seems clear that the element of choice is somehow important, and for that to be the case, there must be multiple viable options from which to choose.

In conclusion, I think a world where sex was treated more reverently and treated as more important would be good, and those of you who know me KNOW how irreverent I am generally. However, celebrating unwanted pregnancies as undesirable outcomes of undesirable actions, or thinking that HIV/AIDS is a just-desserts for homosexual or promiscuous sex, is simply cruel, thuggish, moral bullying. This is another reason I am pro-choice, in the abortion context. I believe that not aborting a fetus is the less morally problematic choice, but in order for morality to come into play it first must be a choice!

The Hunger Games: Or Why Bloodsport is Bad

When asked to do a blog post motivated in some way by Suzanne Collins' book, The Hunger Games, a post decrying the immorality of bloodsport, or watching other people risk their lives for your entertainment, was my immediate thought. I can write it without serious spoilers to the plot of the book, as the eponymous Hunger Games are explained fairly early in to be a competition of 24 children from the twelve subjugated Districts in which at then end, in classic Highlander tradition, there can be only one. However, I was concerned that there might be no need for such a post, as most modern societies find the concept of human duels to the death to be, at least overtly, in poor taste. Upon further reflection I feel that there is a bit to say on the subject, and so I shall say it here.

After my initial moral repugnance to the notion of forcing children to battle to the death for entertainment, my first thought was to ask why I had such an aversion to this practice. The narration makes it clear that even outside of the Arena, site of the Hunger Games, life in the Districts of Panem is fraught with uncertainties. To be sure, a survival rate of less than 5% is a bit bleaker than in society at large, but if the Hunger Games were in a very real sense metaphorical for the struggle to survive in the Districts, was my horror at them explained merely because they were more lethal than society at large?

The answer I came to in the end was no. There was a key difference between the indifferent cruelty that perpetuated a system where starvation was a very real and pervasive threat, and the deliberate sadism displayed in forcing people to kill each other for sport. The difference is neatly summed up by my favorite Kantian maxim, that we ought always respect the agency of other people. We all go into the world each day and take our chances with our newest chance at reality, and every day some of us do not survive to see nightfall again. Certainly perpetuating a system in which a large number of people find their mortal end so young in life ought to be immoral by some other standard, but at least it preserves their right to make their own way through their world. On the other hand, to purposefully place them into a situation of mortal combat is as extreme an example of using other humans purely as an instrument to an end as I can think of.

"So what?" you may be asking, after all, most people agree that making playthings out of people is in poor taste. However, upon further consideration it occurred to me that our society still contains dangerous impulses in that direction. I am not merely referring to our penchant for using other species as playthings, in the cases of rodeos, races, and Mike Vic-esque acts of villainy, but rather the explicit use of people for entertainment. Subtle things like dangerous sports, I have been intending to write a post regarding football injuries since mid-January, and reality television. These endeavors are characterized in that they serve no apparent purpose other than entertainment and seek to convey a sense of danger to the participants.

Of course, you might argue that they are structured so as to minimize, or at least mitigate, the chances of a fatality. One cannot dispute the reality of on-field deaths in professional sports, which ignores the host of lesser ills and injuries that occur with disturbing regularity. I also can remember ads on Hulu for an episode of Deadliest Catch in which one of the, quite real, fisherpeople dies. According to Wikipedia, the episode in question is the most watched in the series.

There is a difference between shows like Deadliest Catch, which tape people doing things that, presumably, they would be doing otherwise, and shows like Fear Factor which contrive to put people in situations of perceived danger. However, I bring it up to highlight our fascination with the entertainment of death. I am by no means immune to this allure. Earlier this year I heard about the movie Grizzly Man, which details the last camping trip of a bear enthusiast and his girlfriend, a trip which terminates in both their deaths in a bear attack. While I admit it is macabre, I find the notion of watching the last actions of people who I know are about to die intriguing on some level. "We who are about to die salute you," as it were.

In light of our continued fascination with our mortality, and the endless opportunities for entertainment therein, it seems like stories like The Hunger Games, which reinforce our aversion to such entertainment, continue to have a purpose. Of course, even if you feel no particular desire to watch people fight to the death for your pleasure, I still recommend the book as an all around good read! I think that I shall write a further, more spoiler-iffic post regarding the series as a whole at a later date.

I Believe in People

As promised, this post is inspired by a TED talk. Specifically, this talk about spoken word poetry. While my post is not intricately related to the talk as a whole, as a spoken word poet, the speaker is fairly enjoyable to listen to.

At one point the speaker asks the audience to list three things they know to be true. This is an exercise she uses with aspiring spoken word poets in order to help them find a story of their own to tell. However, as a side effect of my years of modern education and rationalism, I couldn't think of anything I would go so far as to say that I knew to be true. There are many things in which I believe, some more strongly than others, but there is no single fact that I can think of that is not contingent upon a whole surrounding frame of perspectives and beliefs.

This is not to disparage the project of education and contemplation of reality, which would hardly be in keeping with the message of my blog. I believe there is great value in uncertainty. Although I have beliefs, I think I gain from remaining receptive to finding some truth in new views that people share with me. It also enables me to argue with anyone about anything, a skill that has affected me throughout most of my life, for good or for ill.

Later that evening, as I read through a site condemning historical misdeeds committed by some Christian missionaries in order to make the point that Christian evangelism has not always been sunshine and roses, it occurred to me that a few days earlier I had been defending the author of a book analyzing the most effective way to evangelize to Muslims. Then it occurred to me why I argue against everyone, because when you decide that something must be true, then something must be false, and people who believe wrong things no longer have a new perspective to encounter, but an incorrect perspective to correct. Now, I may not know much of anything, but I certainly believe in people. Not simply that they exist, but that every person has a valuable perspective that is simultaneously amazingly similar to mine in structure and breathtakingly different than mine in particular.

So, if I ever get into a silly argument with you over some point or another, please do not think that it is because I believe that you are wrong, that could not be further from the case. Nor is it because I believe the side I am arguing is right, and I am not trying to change your mind either. I am not playing Devil's Advocate, I am playing People's Advocate, for I believe that there are people out there who truly do hold whatever view I am defending. I am not trying to change your mind, but to open it to the value that these people can bring to your mind. And finally, I would do the same for your position if it seemed necessary.

Kant and the Homeless

I consider this the third, and for the moment final, installment in my series on Kant's categorical imperative. The first dealt with call center employees and the second with romantic relationships, now I shall address the homeless; a topic that has long been on my mind.

For those who do not want to read my previous posts and are not familiar with Kant's caterogical imperative, a refresher is in order. How I most often hear it phrased is that we are to at all times treat other people as ends in themselves, never purely as a means. What this means to me is that we are to be aware that each human we encounter is as complexly motivated as we are, and out of respect for their moral agency interact with, rather than manipulate, them.

Rewind back to last August, as I visited my beloved Oregon. I was wandering the streets of Portland one lovely afternoon when I was addressed by a homeless man lying against a building. Because I think it is rude to simply ignore talk explicitly directed at me, and it violates the categorical imperative as I use the ignored to expedite my current project by ignoring, rather than engaging with, them, I stopped to hold a conversation.

Eventually he seemed to want a hand getting to his feet, and I obliged. Here I am unsure how satisfied I am with my decision, although it was a well lit hour of the day I think it compromised my safety. I guess I would do the same again, but I wouldn't be so bold as to encourage others in this path. Once he gained his feet he maintained a hold upon me, and did nothing menacing or harmful, but I found myself quite uncomfortable. Since he showed no sign of recognizing my discomfort, nor of ending the conversation, I begged leave with the notion that I had to hurry on toward my destination. As this was not quite true, I was running quite ahead of time in order to simply wander the town, here I violated the imperative.

My question, and I don't have a firm answer, is what ought I have done? Bluntly expressing my disinterest in continuing a conversation seems rude, something I try to avoid in general, but especially when in the grasp of a man of questionably sound mind. Can I justify violating the imperative on account of the man's diminished capacity?

It seems clear that our polite interactions are greatly predicated on a set of shared social habits. When one member of an interaction seems oblivious to the sub-contextual messages of the other, the preconditions for polite exchange begin to erode. And here I believe I have answered my own question, as I too feel like I often am missing a layer of information that somehow others interpret instinctively, and I would prefer to be told when I misstep as a result, rather than manipulated into proper behavior. So, I probably ought not to have lied to the nice homeless man, oh well.

One final note, considering the topic yesterday of ethical caring. I find it quite wondrous that, when interpreted through the categorical imperative, Kant's ethic agrees so well with a personal ethic of care. On one hand Kant is often seen as the epitome of universal rationality, and on the other hand is the very particular and personal ethic of immediacy, yet they seem completely in accordance on how we ought meet our fellow humans as we encounter them.

The Good Samaritan: Love the One You're With

Let me first disclaim that I have reservations about the song I use in the title. If you cannot be with the one you love, settling for the one you are with seems to do her (him) a disservice. On the other hand, if you are with someone, I should hope that they are the one that you love. Anyway, moving on.

You might note that this post is about neither Kant nor philosophy inspired by music videos. Since no one commented to affirm my choice for the next two posts, I felt fairly free to change them. I will get to those two posts, eventually, of course. Instead I wanted to take a moment to write a post related to one by my sister on Love, specifically the part about the story of the Good Samaritan, because posting my thoughts as a response to someone else's feels more personal, or relational, than simply broadcasting my own ramblings.

Her post seemed very relevant to what was on my mind, as my walk home was occupied with thoughts about the insufficiency of liberal "rights based" ethics, and universal ethics in general. To explain, what I mean by a universal ethic is a system of deciding what is good to do wherein all moral agents, which you can usually just think of as people but some try to sneak animals into the mix, are given the same consideration. The liberal tradition is certainly universal, as anyone familiar with the little phrase, "[w]e hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal," will recognize. While we may all be, in some sense, created equal, and we may want society to endow us with uniform rights, any personal system of determining good actions which treats everyone as equals turns out to be fairly monstrous.

One quick example, suppose you want to buy your parents a gift for their birthday, because you are a better human being than I am. While you COULD spend your money on a gift, you could also spend it to feed a starving child in Africa, and if we are going to consider all people equally, it seems than preventing someone from starving is more important than purchasing a birthday gift. Thus, in a universal ethic, birthday gifts have to wait until all hunger, curable disease, and similar conditions are taken care of, unless your birthday gift happens to actually be Malaria medicine. Similarly, how could you justify conceiving a brand new baby when there are so many perfectly serviceable babies already languishing in orphanages waiting for adoption? While the world might seem like it would be better if we all subscribed to a universal ethic, I think we would actually end up with a world that was less humane, where the value of genuine care and human relationship was so deformed as to be a caricature of its intended appearance.

This is the problem addressed by relational ethics, sometimes called ethics of caring. Under systems of this form, one is allowed, even encouraged, to give special consideration to the people one encounters most immediately. The Jewish law expert's desire not to love absolutely everyone is a perfectly human response, which by no means makes it the one God would like us to have, but it does make it the one we have with which to work. Notice, however, that Jesus didn't say that the Samaritan was just cruising the desert roads looking for someone to assist. Since the Samaritan left the beaten man with an innkeeper, it seems reasonable to assume he was traveling in pursuit of his own business. However, when confronted with the immediacy of the beaten man, the Samaritan responded with an ethic of care, and cared for the man's injuries.

I am not arguing that we externalize suffering, by buying our fiancée an engagement ring with a blood diamond for example. Simply because we have a higher ethical duty to our loved ones does not excuse sociopathy towards strangers that we encounter, and when we make a choice that effects someone, we encounter them, if in a highly attenuated manner. The immediacy of our personal relationships will grant them higher ethical salience, but this does not entirely negate our ethical duty to the rest of the world.

Furthermore, when we directly encounter suffering, as in the case of the Samaritan and the robbed traveler, then our relationship is quite immediate, rather than attenuated. So I am not arguing against the validity of the parable of the Good Samaritan, just attempting to frame it within a context of immediate caring, rather than universal duty.

One argument against the humanity of current urban living conditions is that the abundance of stimuli overwhelms our ability to process it all. This leads to a dulling of the immediacy of encountered events, as we filter them through more relevance criterion to deal with the sheer weight of information. A dulling of immediacy quite naturally dulls the prospect of encountering a stranger as a fellow human being, which forms the basis of an ethic of caring. Simply put, if one steps over the beaten traveler on the sidewalk, without even noticing that they are there, one never has the opportunity to meet them and relate to them as a caring human being.

In conclusion, someone is born every day, but you really ought to make special effort to remember your parents' birthdays.

Take Arms Against a Tide of Sorrows

Well, I was trying to do something special for my 100th post. Then I noticed that Blogger also counts saved drafts as blog posts, so it looks like I have a few more posts to write before I can celebrate, kick back, and rest on my laurels. So today I'll flesh out one of the ideas I had while being unable to sleep Monday evening. Then I'll be one step closer to my planned self congratulatory celebration!

I was recently reading an article in the State News, MSU's student operated paper, concerning the aftermath of the disasters which occurred last week in Japan. What struck me most was a section talking about the concern for MSU students studying abroad in Japan. I am saddened, but not particularly phased, when I hear that the International Studies program cancels a trip to a South American region due to unrest, or when a friend is evacuated from Niger because of a murder. However, this is Japan!

I felt that this was a thought worth considering, that even in Japan, a fully industrial and, arguably, safer society than our own, tragedy can strike turning the region into a danger zone. This has serious implications for our own sense of safety. We can play the odds, avoid walking alone at night down the streets of Ciudad Juarez, but eventually our number will come up, and something will be the cause of our death. I am not advocating a complete disregard for one's personal safety, but if you are lucky enough to find a cause for which you are passionate, it seems reasonable to weigh realistic decreases to your life expectancy against the fulfillment of pursuing your dream, since no place is truly safe.

That is the extent of my, slightly, nihilistic call that you go forth and seize the day. A few other responses to the events warrant mention, but are not dignified enough to receive well thought out refutations. The idea that this disaster was somehow karmic justice for some historic Japanese offense or another is sickening! That type of filth is no better that the hatred that spews from the Westburo Baptist "church." Trolls who would joke about celebrating this incident, if anything, seem less dignified. At least the hate filled are sincere in their ignorance, to claim to believe that this is a tragedy, then feel it appropriate to publicly joke about to incite a reaction seems a particularly callous response. Do not misunderstand me, I have made some horrible jokes in my time, but I keep their circulation low, and tell them in person so that I may apologize if they seem to offend. Finally, in regards to the lady from UCLA who decided to complain about Asians on their cell phones less than a week after these events, seriously bad timing. I think material of similar tone could be found lingering in obscurity in the darker corners of the web at any time, what makes this one notable is not so much the content, but the timing. Of course the content was objectionable, but I don't think it was any more so than when Rosie O'Donnell made similarly themed comments. Neither event, of course, warranted death threats or such an outpouring of hatred. If you were to devise a strategy to overcome bigotry, would you rather rely on overpowering it with a counter wave of hatred, or winning it over through increased education and opportunities to interact with people of a different background?

One of the, if not the only, reasons I overcame my conservative indoctrination against homosexuals was the simple fact that I met some. It is easy to dismiss or oppress ideas in a way that most of us will not feel comfortable doing to people with whom we have built a relationship. It is for this reason that hate speech and personal attacks have no place on any side of a respectful relationship, we must always be seeking to open up positive relationships with others. If I felt that people making the types of comments I deride in the previous paragraph, a) were going to read my blog, and, b) were likely to respond well to reason, then I would post a rational refutation of these remarks. As it is, I settle for a brief condemnation of these remarks, although not necessarily the people making them, because such remarks must be condemned if we are to move past this type of discourse and embrace our shared humanity.

Amidst all this doom and gloom, let us not lose sight of the grandeur of the shared humanity towards which we aspire. I saw an article earlier remarking on the absence of looting in Japan, as citizens and businesses support each other and chip in to recover. A friend also posted about the extraordinary heroics involved in managing the evolving disaster at the Fukushima Daiishi plant. Humanity may have some ugly warts and serious scarring, but there is beauty too in our tragically flawed visage.

Das Klassenraum

I have not been terribly prolific this March; part of the reason is that I was fairly stressed last week, but mostly it is due to how much mental wrangling this post entailed. Whenever a post tries to tie together wide ranging concepts, I struggle to get my thoughts into a linear form suitable for communication. As to how well I have succeeded in this case, I will let you be the judge.

A while ago I shared this link, on Facebook, to a wonderful, but heartbreaking, post from an Oregonian elementary school teacher. The author clearly feels called to teach, and apparently was quite good at her job. Her love of teaching survived the overwork and underfunding of Oregon's early years cutting the education budget. However, the trend toward larger class sizes and increasingly varied competency in her students have robbed teaching of its joy for her. Pupils with special needs which would previously have been met in supplementary programs such as English as a Second Language or Special Education curriculum began overwhelming her ability to meet each student at their own level, simultaneously homogenization of desired outcomes, signified by scores on standardized tests and rankings for No Child Left Behind and related legislation, leaving her with the sad realization that she no longer wishes to be a teacher

That alone saddens me immeasurably, that someone who clearly loved teaching, and devoted her professional life to its craft, has lost their passion for it. But that is her story, and one she tells, far better than I could, in the linked article. What I want to explore in the rest of this post are the structural changes she talks about, specifically in relation to Marx's theorization of capitalism. If you are having an adverse reaction to Marx's name, I ask that you bear with me, I do not advocate a teacher revolution to solve these problems, I merely intend to explain how these problems fit almost eerily well into a Marxist view of capitalism.

While the battle in Wisconsin has the traditional image of Marxist class struggle, you might be wondering why I would invoke Marx in relation to the linked article. In his work Capital (Das Kapital) Volume I, Marx examines the structure of capitalism. He theorizes that the ability of the capitalist to invest money and somehow end up with more money than originally invested can solely be explained by the capitalist buying labor power (hiring workers) for less pay than the value of the work they did in their time. Since he placed capitalism on this foundation, Marx concluded that it was greatly in the interest of the capitalist to keep labor costs as low as possible, two major tools in this undertaking were keeping labor unskilled and interchangeable.

While related, these are separate concepts. Unskilled labor is easier to produce, which means unskilled laborers have fewer costs which their wages must repay (think student loans for those who have gone to college). Because there are fewer expenses involved in creating unskilled laborers, they are able to be paid lower wages. Furthermore, their lack of skill limits their marketability, inclining them to remain in a position once they are hired. Interchangeability refers to the ease with which a worker can be replaced, or the cost of replacing a worker. If there is a high cost to replacing a worker, then that worker has greater leverage to obtain higher wages, so the capitalist strives to keep interchangeability high. Certainly the less skilled labor is, the easier it is to replace, so interchangeability and unskilled labor are related, but they are not the same. For example, one can increase the interchangeability of skilled labor without reducing its skill level by creating a pool of individuals certified to be skilled laborers from which to choose.

In Marx's day, during the Industrial Revolution, the metaphor of an industrial factory for capitalism was of immediate saliency (obvious relevance). In this metaphor, the recent idea of replaceable parts represents interchangeability while how easy a specific part was to produce correlates with how skilled the labor is. The industrial factory represented the pinnacle of capitalism to Marx for another reason. Once most of the work was being performed by machines, and human laborers were reduced to the tenders of said machines, the jobs humans were called upon to perform were both unskilled and easy to be filled.

If we take this model and examine modern education, I believe that an unsettling trend becomes apparent. Centralized curriculum planning, as represented by standardized tests and the mandate to teach to the tests (teach the material of the test in the manner it is presented on the test), serves to reduce the skill needed to function as a teacher which, of course, also makes teachers more easily replaced. In fact, as noted in the article, this race to the bottom also serves to drive out experienced, highly skilled teachers, so much the better to keep costs down! It seems a little amazing to me that a nation which so soundly rejects any notion of economic central planning, which I agree is a disaster, is so complacent about the rise of educational central planning, also a disaster in my opinion. Perhaps this is because one is bad for the capitalist, while the other seems quite favorable.

A still more horrifying picture is revealed if we look at the effects of capitalizing education on the students rather than the teachers. In addition to providing a set of standardized certifications so capitalists know they have a ready labor pool for even skilled labor, I think that our modern educational philosophy serves to beat a love of learning out of many students. Students of a capitalist education come out of their schools with the specific set of skills for their vocation, limiting their flexibly in the job market. As an undergraduate, I had to take Baccalaureate Core courses, which were courses representing a wide array of subjects from Systems of Power and Dominance to Western Culture to Science, Technology, and Society. I absolutely adored being exposed to this stunning breadth of thoughts and information, but some students complained that it had nothing to do with their program, or wasn't useful to their job. This is also related to the common complaint about mathematics, "when will I ever use this?" which I have addressed previously in my "Three 'R's" post and my sister has also wonderfully argued against.

Lumping all students together in ever larger classes, then holding them to draconian inflexible standards in no way seems like the ideal of education. But it does seem like an efficient way to produce a fresh batch of workers, and if some students are incapable of meeting the standards, such is life, in production there will always be a certain percentage of defective goods. Furthermore, by including students with high levels of need in the standard classroom, and by adding task after task to the teacher's job, we can simultaneously free parents from child raising responsibilities, enabling them to be more efficient workers themselves, and systematically demoralize educators, to keep them from feeling as though they deserve better wages and conditions. All in all, a rather bleak picture of education.

So then, how might one attempt to effect a solution? Smaller class sizes, restoration of special needs programs, and localizing control of curriculum are obviously going to be on my list of positive steps. This may not entail increased educational spending so much as re-prioritized educational spending. A recent examination of Oregon State University's finances, and the Oregon University System's in general, by a third party economist (from Michigan!) produced the recommendation that administrative costs were ballooning at the expense of academic budgets and students' tuition costs. The recommendation was to curtail administrative budgets and focus on the core mission, academics and research. I believe the education system as a whole could benefit from that mentality. I would, of course, also like to see teachers given the type of respect and compensation required to pull some of the brightest in the field into education. Of course, if one feels called to teach, one will probably go into that profession as long as it is a viable life choice, the question is what kind of teacher do we want to make up the gap between the number called to it and the larger number that we need to educate our children?

As always, I welcome further questions, alternate proposals, related thoughts, rebuttals, and any other thoughtful responses that may not be covered by those categories.

Note: For you German speakers, I apologize for the quite intentional grammatical error in the title. Since Raum is a masculine word, it should, of course, be "Der Klassenraum," but this loses some of the desired analogy with "Das Kapital." I could have switched to "Das Klassenzimmer," but that is no longer an obvious English cognate, so I took some artistic liberty with the language.

Apologies

Just a few apologies I have accrued the need to make over the past week. A short post and then to sleep.

First off, and most importantly, I am sorry to Natalie Munroe for caricaturizing her. Reading two of her posts, including the most controversial, carefully, it appears that she does not cuss out her students, only laments that cussing out students is not an option. While I still feel that her behavior toward her students in her blog leaves some respect to be lacking, certainly their behavior towards her, in the comments and the classroom, does the same. Whether or not her behavior was appropriate, it was not instigated in the context of the classroom, nor directly intended for her students, so I do believe her suspension is an inappropriate response, but that is just me. Her decision to remove her blog irks me somewhat, as it appears to admit guilt and simultaneously makes it more difficult to evaluate the furor in an informed manner. It is, of course, her blog to do with as she likes though.

Next, the Wisconsin debacle. The information that I have received indicates that the unions are willing to negotiate and compromise on pay cuts. Their main issue with the proposed legislation is not the cost saving measures, but the parts that are basically a bald attempt to cripple the unions. So, I apologize to the Republicans in Wisconsin for making the assumption that their policy had a moral leg on which to stand.

Finally, to my sister, I apologize for me Facebook status. Your series on relationships is VERY nice, not to mention incredibly brave to write! I stand by the rest ;)

Now, to sleep, hopefully!

Why Feminism Matters To Me

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." -Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler

Although the above quote may be due to the cited sources, I was introduced to it by the wonderful Professor Lani Roberts of the Oregon State University philosophy department. Although it is not yet Feminist July, I want to take a post to discuss what Feminism means to me. I have recently read a series of wonderful posts by various bloggers about what Feminism means to them. You can find them here, here, and here. The first linked was prompted by the second, the second by the third, and mine, in turn, by the first.

In a post last year I wrote that, "[h]ere I am using Feminist in the sense of one who examines the interactions between one's gender and their lives, a more academic sense perhaps, rather than one who simply believes that they [women] are also people." As I note, this is a fairly academic definition of what Feminist, or Feminism, means. Here I hope to make a more personal account.

I want to begin by saying that the first post makes what I personally consider to be a very important point, so I link to it again. In liberating women from the necessity to reproduce traditionally feminine modes of personality and behavior, men too become liberated to more fully realize themselves, rather than attempting to replicate a traditional mold of masculinity. Thus, women's lib is also shy, caring men's lib, among many others' lib, which is of great personal importance to me. Because the first article addresses this issue at such length with great skill, I shall move on without devoting to it the length its importance deserves.

In addition to my own personal liberation, Feminism also means greater security for people that I love. According to the Domestic Violence Resource Center, 25% of women experience domestic violence in their lifetime, and 20% of high school women experience dating violence. The National Organization for Women reports 232,960 instances of rape or sexual assault in the US in the year 2006 alone. According to Wikipedia there were 155.6 females in the US in 2009, so the rapes and sexual assaults in the year 2006 ALONE represent 0.15% of the female population.

I present these statistics not to scare or dishearten, although they certainly do sadden me, but rather to explain the powerful need that anyone who cares about any women in their life ought feel for Feminism. Statistics such as these provide explanation for the traditional notions of machismo, wherein a male would provide security for a select group of HIS females. However, in addition to being demeaning to women's humanity, this model is clearly dysfunctional considering the rates of relationship violence. In order to make the world safer for the women that we, as either men or women, love, it only makes sense to promote a world wherein all women are safer.

In a final note, I would like to preempt any possible deflection toward the plight of men. I am a man, I recognize how full of suck life can be for men. However, unless you can connect increasing the safety of women directly to increasing the injustices occurring to men, bringing it up in this context seems like naught but a feint or distraction, because male suffering neither invalidates nor justifies female suffering.

How To Cuss Out Your Students

Now, as promised, how to cuss out your students. Before we begin, let me emphasize that I do not condone cussing out your students, they deserve better from you, if not as their teacher, then at least as a fellow human being. But, if you simply must cuss out your students, the method that I advise would be the same way that I vent my occasional frustration with my students, to a colleague (or a wonderful sister who has a similar job) in private.

In all seriousness, I think a good support network is essential to an educator. For one thing, you are dealing with people all day who are not, to some degree or another, your peers. For another thing, sometimes they want a lot of you, without seeming particularly interested in giving back much effort themselves. In short, teaching can be an extremely demanding job, emotionally, professionally, temporally, and in a ton of other ways that I'm sure that I'm missing. So, I strongly suggest you find people with whom you can be honest about your job, and let the crazy soak out of you from time to time.

These people you are honest with; they should not be your students! In fact, if you for some reason feel compelled to cuss out your students in front of every stranger on the Internet, please be very careful to remove all details that could be used by your students to determine that it is indeed you who are cussing them out. By now, you may have guessed that this is inspired by the Pennsylvania teacher who got in trouble for posting a blog where she, you guessed it, cussed out her students.

Having just read some of the hateful comments on her cached blog, I find myself slightly less eager to defend them. However, it has been my experience that the truly horrible students are about matched in number by the truly inspiring, and there aren't many of either. While the majority of your students may be entitled and... unmotivated, they have spent most of their lives in a culture of "social passes," so it should hardly be a surprise when they do not quickly catch the correlation between hand work, education, and grades. On the other hand, for the most part, my students have been altogether decent people, and it has been an honor to know them. Cussing out your students, publicly, does a great disservice to the truly decent among them, even if there are but one or two.

In summary, DON'T cuss out your students, it's disrespectful even if it never gets back to them. DO find someone with whom to commiserate and in whom to confide. DON'T say mean things about your students in general publicly on the Internet. DO love your job, because if you are a public school teacher who doesn't, then there is almost nothing in it for you. Oh, one last one, DON'T simply pass them on to the next grade by virtue of them achieving another birthday at some point during the year, it really does mess them up in college!

Solidarity

I am superseding several topics that I was considering writing about today to mention the debacle unfolding in Wisconsin. Since the whole thing is so much of a mess that I am unsure what I support, I'll just explain my thoughts on the situation.

Let me first make clear that I am against teacher unions. Partially because I believe that they have grown into impersonal systems that actually care about the teachers that they represent almost as little as the entities with which they negotiate. Granted, their business is getting good things for teachers, so they may treat them better than their adversaries, but in the department of being humane I am skeptical. My distaste is more because I do not believe that teaching should be the sort of profession that requires a union.

Unions represent labor that has been robbed of its power due to ease of replacement. Because individually the laborers lack power, they band together to regain equal bargaining footing with management. However, teachers are highly trained individuals tasked with preparing our youth to take their place in society, a mandate of almost unparalleled importance, that they should need a union seems ludicrous. Unfortunately, the actions proposed by the Republican party clearly demonstrate the continuing need for unions due to the systematic and unbelievable disrespect that educators receive in our culture.

If we want to get rid of the unions, and I am all for that goal, the solution seems to be treating teachers in such a way that the majority of them feel no need for the crude protection that a union offers. Attempting to gut the union of its power through statutory methods is about the farthest thing I can think of from a move designed to make teachers feel comfortable. Additionally, what business is it of the government how teachers decide to organize themselves to perform their bargaining?

Now on to the politicians. In order to prevent the legislation from passing, the democrats have fled the state. Although they do not possess sufficient numbers to prevent the passage of this bill, they have enough members to prevent congress from being in session in their absence. This is the worst form of partisan politics that I can think of, on the part of both parties. Granted I am not a big fan of our two party system, or our government in general, this seems particularly egregious. Because they have such a majority, the republicans have no need to work with the democrats, should congress be called to session. Collaboration flies out of the window in such conditions, and the thought of consensus building becomes laughable. On the other hand, while this might be the only way for the democrats to stall this despicable bill, while they are absenting themselves from government, no other governing is occurring.

In this situation, although I am ideologically more opposed to the republican position, I cannot fault their behavior any more than that of the democrats. However, because they do hold almost all of the power in this situation, the impetus to compromise and restore government to working condition lies squarely on them. While both sides are behaving like spoiled children, in my opinion, neither has stepped outside of the rule of law. This is the fundamental weakness inherent in a system of power invested in abstract, universal laws, although they guard against capricious rule, they also lack the compassion and humanity that is sometimes necessary to pull us through tough times in more or less one piece. Even if both sides play by the rules, sometimes life calls upon us to be better than the rules, and play according to our respect for each other as fellow human beings.

These events highlight two serious problems in our society. Firstly, we are losing sight of the importance of excellence in education, and losing the excellence of our education at the same time. Secondly, our political landscape is ossifying into a two party battlefield, which has consequent detriments of radicalizing each side, eroding the ability of our government to represent the interests of the nation, and distracting attention from important matters that are not current "hot topics." Should we fail to overcome either of these issues, then let me be the first to offer my apologies to whomever, if anyone, comes in to clean up the mess that the United States seems determined to make of itself.