[I wrote this piece back in the early 90s when Gwen Jacobs did her thing (yay, Gwen!), but apparently it all still needs to be said. A couple years ago, I was ‘spoken to’ by a neighbour for taking my shirt off on a hot summer day when I was out kayaking. Most amusingly, I was ‘spoken to’ again when I did the same thing just last year, post-bilateral-mastectomy. Which brings to mind Twisty’s hilarious “Cover ’em up if you have ’em and even if you don’t” comment.]
In response to the moral outrage about women going shirtless in public, I offer the following. Continue reading
[I wrote this piece back in the early 90s when Gwen Jacobs did her thing (yay, Gwen!), but apparently it all still needs to be said. A couple years ago, I was ‘spoken to’ by a neighbour for taking my shirt off on a hot summer day when I was out kayaking. Most amusingly, I was ‘spoken to’ again when I did the same thing just last year, post-bilateral-mastectomy. Which brings to mind Twisty’s hilarious “Cover ’em up if you have ’em and even if you don’t” comment.]
In response to the moral outrage about women going shirtless in public, I offer the following.Continue reading
I’m wondering whether it’s just me or…whether most women who never become mothers simply never develop an authoritative manner.Men have it from the get go: they are automatically thought, by themselves as well as by others, to be authorities, and early on, they develop both the habit of telling others what to do and the expectation that they’ll be listened to.
Women don’t.(Unless they’re deluded.)At least, not until they become a parent.Only then do they gain some authority.Only then do they start telling someone what to do and expecting to be listened to.
Sure, the authority they now have extends only to their kid, but it leaks out.As it does with men.When you talk with authority in your house, to your wife or kids, you don’t suddenly ‘turn it off’ when you leave the house.It’s an acquired manner, a way of carrying yourself, a way of presenting yourself that becomes part of yourself.
I’ve never acquired that manner.I’m not in the habit of telling anyone what to do.I don’t expect to be listened to.So, despite my breadth and depth of knowledge and skill, I don’t have any authority.
To read the science journals, one would think animal life consists of nothing but predation and reproduction, both thoroughly competitive in nature.The absence of any capacity for pleasure, or at least for non-competitive pleasure, is frightening.Lining a nest with warm and soft material is not for comfort, but to “increase the survival rate of offspring” and arranging for others to watch the baby during long and deep dives is not from affection but to “maximize reproductive success”.
This is of concern for two reasons.First, to judge by my own life and that of the dog with whom I live, that view is, to say the least, narrow and thus incomplete.
Second, what does it reveal of the scientists?Do they really see nothing but predation and reproduction – nothing but competition for food and sex?If it’s true that we see what we want to see, well, why do these people want to see nothing but that?Is it a projection of their own view of life?How awful –how impoverished one must be –to see life – to live life – as nothing but a competition – and, worse, a competition for nothing but food and sex.Or does it provide some sort of vicarious satisfaction?Either way, there’s the possibility of an ever tightening and dangerous circle: if that’s all we think there is, that’s all we’ll see, and if that’s all we see, that’s all we’ll think there is.Socializing not as a reproductive strategy, but for companionship; playing not as practice for evading a predator or capturing prey, but for fun; lying in the sun not to regulate one’s body temperature, but simply because it feels good – why are these things so unthinkable?
Or perhaps these things are thinkable, are visible, but are considered unimportant, trivial.What a value system that reveals!Not only that food and sex are more important than beauty and laughter, but that competition is more important than cooperation.
These are our scientists.These are the people who are collecting information, amassing knowledge, constructing our view – or rather, imposing their view – of the world.Surely a little more responsibility, a little more maturity, is called for.
Hate speech. Libel. Slander.Threat.Intimidation.Blasphemy.
‘Making words illegal violates our freedom of speech!’Of course it does.But that freedom, like many others, isn’t absolute.Our freedoms are limited freedoms.They are limited by several things (Joel Feinberg identifies six liberty-limiting principles), one of which is the harm principle.That is, when our action harms another person or society in general, it is limited.It is illegal.
‘But speech isn’t an action.I didn’t do anything.I just said – ’Saying is doing.Words are speech acts.They are acts of speech.And anyway, if the result is the same, does the method really matter?
‘Yeah but the result isn’t the same.Words can’t hurt you.’Well, not physically, no.But they can cause psychological injury.[1]And there’s the heart of the matter: should we make causing psychological injury illegal?
Actually, that’s not the heart of the matter.Yes, we should, and we do.The crime of torture includes acts which inflict severe mental pain or suffering (CCC 269.1[1]).
[I wrote this piece a while ago, but have since then, seen the same sort of denial of male agency. Apparently kids are found in pumpkin patches. Yeah. Or the stork brings them. What are you, six?]
[Quite apart from the point about AIDS.]
What has been glaringly absent in news stories about children with AIDS in Africa is comment about why there are so many children with AIDS.“We are going down,” a woman says, “Theft will go up, rape all over will be high.People –”Wait a minute.Back up.“Rape all over will be high”?And that’s just one more unfortunate circumstance beyond their control, is it?What, as in ‘boys will be boys’?
Excuse me, but when someone knowingly infects another person with a fatal disease, he’s killing her.And if someone takes away someone else’s right to life, I say he forfeits his own.And not only is the HIV-infected rapist guilty of murdering the woman he rapes, he’s guilty of murdering in advance the child he creates (whether he himself is HIV-infected or whether he rapes an HIV-infected woman).There’s something incredibly sick about knowingly creating a human being that will die, slowly and painfully, because you have created it.
So, the solution?Drugs, yes.But the kind vets use when they put an animal down.(Or, if mere prevention rather than justice is the goal, castration.At the very least, vasectomy.)I mean, let’s have some accountability here!Those 20,000 kids with AIDS didn’t just appear in a pumpkin patch one morning.Someone made them.With a conscious, chosen, deliberate act.
I think many women realize that their children make them vulnerable; their love for them holds them hostage.So many things they would do (leave?)—but for the children.I wonder how many realize that their imprisonment is physiological.And, in most cases, as voluntary as that first hit of heroin, cocaine, whatever.
‘But I love my children!’That’s just the oxytocin talking.You think you love them because you’re a good person, responsible, dutiful, and, well, because they’re so loveable, look at them!That’s just the oxytocin talking.
All those women (most of them) who didn’t really want to become pregnant, but did anyway (because contraception and abortion weren’t easily available, and sex was defined as intercourse), and then claimed, smiling, that they wouldn’t have it any other way, they love their children—just the oxytocin talking.
"We License Plumbers and Pilots - Why Not Parents?"At Issue: Is Parenthood a Right or a Privilege? ed. Stefan Kiesbye (Greenhaven, 2009); Current Controversies: Child Abuse, ed. Lucinda Almond (Thomson/Gale, 2006); Seattle Post-Intelligencer (October 2004)
"A Humanist View of Animal Rights"New Humanist September 99; The New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist Winter 98; Humanist in Canada Winter 97
have been previously published in Canadian Woman Studies, Herizons, Humanist in Canada, The Humanist, and The Philosopher's Magazine - contact Peg for acknowledgement details.
ImpactAn extended confrontation between a sexual assault victim and her assailants, as part of an imagined slightly revised court process, in order to understand why they did what they did and, on that basis, to make a recommendation to the court regarding sentence does not go … as expected.
What Happened to TomTom, like many men, assumes that since pregnancy is a natural part of being a woman, it’s no big deal: a woman finds herself pregnant, she does or does not go through with it, end of story. But then …
Aiding the EnemyWhen Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang BangWhen a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
ForeseeableAn awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
Exile (full-length drama) Finalist, WriteMovies; Quarterfinalist, Fade-In.
LJ lives in a U . S. of A., with a new Three Strikes Law: first crime, rehab; second crime, prison; third crime, you’re simply kicked out – permanently exiled to a designated remote area, to fend for yourself without the benefits of society. At least he used to live in that new U. S. of A. He’s just committed his third crime.
What Happened to Tom (full-length drama) Semifinalist, Moondance.
This guy wakes up to find his body’s been hijacked and turned into a human kidney dialysis machine – for nine months.
Aiding the Enemy (short drama 15min)
When Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang Bang (short drama 30min) Finalist, Gimme Credit; Quarter-finalist, American Gem.
When a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
Foreseeable (short drama 30min)
An awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
What is Wrong with this Picture?
Nothing. There’s no reason women can’t be the superordinates and men the subordinates. But life’s not like that (yet).
Minding Our Own Business A collection of skits (including “The Price is Not Quite Right,” “Singin’ in the (Acid) Rain,” “Adverse Reactions,” “The Band-Aid Solution,” and “See Jane. See Dick.”) with a not-so-subtle environmental message
Rot in Hell A soapbox zealot and an atheist face off…