Jennifer Hancock, from her website

Jen Hancock was kind enough to reach out to the SheThought writers and offered me a chance to read and review her book, The Humanist Approach to Happiness: Practical Wisdom. The book is aimed at teens and young adults as a way to teach ethics, critical thinking skills and decision-making to young people. If you’re more interested in the book than anything I have to say, just scroll to the end and there’s more information on the special deal she’s offering SheThought readers.

This is perfect for me because, as someone who automatically hates everything and thinks grown-ups are stupid, I am exactly the right audience for a book aimed at teenagers.

So I suppose that’s a good place to start. I didn’t totally hate it, but I didn’t love it either. Some parts of it were really good, and some parts really rankled. It is written in an easy to understand way with plenty of examples and metaphors that are appropriate to a younger readership. The writer clearly has a very keen memory of her teenage days and isn’t afraid to mine them for engaging examples.

One of my bigger problems with the book came from formatting choices. There seemed to be some errors with the margins, which is fairly minor, but the author also made the decision to pepper the book with quotations from famous speakers. Now, I’m not against quotations, but giant quotations in between connected paragraphs makes me feel a little bit off kilter. When the quotes intrude, I feel the need either to read the quote and then re-figure out what I was reading or to skip the quote entirely.

There’s a lot of great stuff, however, on what makes people “good” people, and what makes people not so good. Her three required traits are compassion, ethics, and responsibility, and these seem pretty accurate to me. She’s also happy to list bad people as well, people who generally don’t follow those three guidelines. She’s neither pro or anti-religion, at least not explicitly, and simply says that people can be good or bad regardless of faith and the only real caveat she gives in the book is that if you or someone you know is grieving, don’t assume your faith is the way they want to deal with grief. And be skeptical about supernatural claims, because that stuff is ridiculous and can get you killed!

My favorite part is where she insists that everyone is a dork. Because we all are dorks, and the sooner we embrace it, the sooner we can move beyond lame attempts at being cool. She also thinks we should be more eager to engage in lifelong learning and learning from our elders. Amen to that. We are all dorks who should hang out with old dorks.

And then she starts wandering a bit away from things I agree with into territory I feel a little confused about. She insists that people should aim for simplicity generally, including in their diet. Now, I’m all for simple tastes and simple lifestyles, but I am always skeptical about diet claims of any kind. Insisting on food simplicity strikes me as faddish and there are no references that make it seem like she’s making scientific claims, just personal ones. Why is a drink with chemicals worse than a drink with no chemicals? Am I really to believe that natural means healthy? I mean, arsenic is natural.

And she goes on to really discourage people from indulging in “sinful” pleasures (her quotes). Now, I appreciate that a book aimed at a young audience isn’t going to say go try drugs and sex and rock and roll because they’re interesting and part of the human experience… except that’s exactly what I think it should say. This is clearly just a difference of opinion between the author and myself, but I feel a little confused as to how her view is the only one justified by humanism, though perhaps it isn’t trying to claim to be the only point-of-view.

And then there’s sex. The author and I are clearly coming from totally different worlds on this one. Her advice to play the field while dating and wait for sex are things that I don’t personally find compelling, but I don’t think it’s necessarily bad advice. But when she says things like women who hate their dads transfer that hate to all men; and people who dated can’t really be friends and shouldn’t contact one another for at least a year; and, no matter what they say, women who say they’re OK with a solely sexual relationship are really just looking for an emotional relationship, whether they know it or not; and people who watch porn lose sense of reality and it’s a catalyst for bizarre violent activity and it’s addictive… when she says things like that, it is all I can do not to punch the screen. Where are the citations? Why on earth does she think this stuff?

The book ends, however, on a high note, in a sense, about grieving. This is the best part of the book and speaks from personal experience and love. I’ve never seen much literature on the humanist perspective on grief, and this handles it gracefully.

So, there are good and bad bits and, if you rip out the section on relationships and sex, I think the book is a great read for young adults. I think few adult readers would find it challenging, but there are still some enlightening moments to it.

More information from the author:
Even though the book is explicitly Humanist, I’m finding that moms of different stripes and interestingly enough, religious folk who work with teens, are interested in the book.  My book is currently in the curricula for the Royal Military College of Canada to teach cadets critical thinking and decision-making skills. It’s also going to be in the new curricula for the UUA for youth education in the areas of critical thinking and character development.  Oh, and it’s enjoying its third month atop the Kindle best seller lists for Parenting/Morals&Responsibility and Parenting/Teens.

For a copy of the book go to: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/22621  20% off both the ebook and the paperback formats, Coupon code: UT36F – Price will be $4.80 instead of $6.00 – this coupon expires Oct 1st 2012.

For the paperback go to: https://www.createspace.com/3463716 and use the discount code: 2SV7A43M  20% off the list of $12.98 - so the price will be $10.38

The book is also available at whatever online book retailer you might prefer to use.

PS – I’ve also got a new little e-book out – Jen Hancock’s Handy Humanism Handbook – I’m giving that away free to people who sign up for my email list and the Humanist of Florida Association are giving it away free to anyone who donates to them or becomes a member.

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This post, Book Review: Jen Hancock’s Humanist Approach to Happiness, originally appeared on She Thought on September 28, 2011.
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There have been some aftershocks, though, from Jen’s boobquake and her subsequent rise to blogostardom. For one, getting all that attention led to some pretty hefty criticism from other people in the communities that have seen Jen’s writing. This likely wasn’t a big deal when only a few people saw what was said, but now that thousands of people know about Boobquake and Jen and maybe some of the aftermath, Jen gets to be a favored topic of discussion, and so do her boobs. This has resulted in her being somewhat unhappy with the behavior of others towards her and toward others.

As if being picked on, in general, for her complaint, isn’t bad enough, even PZ Myers is in on this bandwagon.

I’ve written about this in other places, before, but I think it needs to be restated. The problem is partly that women really are harassed and commented on in ways that are inappropriate in some parts of the community – not just this community, most communities. The other part of the problem is, people are sexual beings and have a tough time deciding when it is appropriate to act on sexual stimuli in public situations. When is it appropriate to be told one is pretty? When is it appropriate to pretend you didn’t just think that? When is it appropriate to be offended that your body parts have caused something to happen in someone else’s body parts and they somehow made this event known to you?

First, let’s talk about if it is appropriate, in a public forum, to mention if someone is pretty, since that is apparently what ultimately caused Jen to want to abandon discussing boobquake. Highlighting someone’s attractiveness in the setting of trying to highlight personal merits in an academic sense or an activist sense, as was done at the American Atheist Rapture RAM might have been bad form, at least. If you’re trying to show the world why your group is awesome, saying “hey, we have pretty things,” is really not a great way to make a case for yourself, especially when those pretty things have much to offer. Imagine if you went to a conference where Neil DeGrasse Tyson is referenced, but instead of discussing his work in making science accessible to the public, the person just says he’s got nice hair. To audience members unfamiliar with Tyson, all they know is what the speaker tells them, so they go away from this talk with only the rapidly fading impression that Tyson has nice hair and oblivious to the fact that if they read about Tyson, read his writing or saw one of his appearances, they might learn something. THAT is the problem with offhand comments about a woman’s appearance over her work in these situations.

In Jen’s situation, she’s seen as someone useful in the community, but is mostly recognized for boobquake. Boobquake now overshadows things she does, bad or good. When she does something people don’t approve of, boobquake gets thrown in as if it is an added insult that she thought of such a thing (though, participation in boobquake was actually pretty widespread and it wasn’t until after that the larger amount of mockery over it began). When she does something people do approve of, it gets highlighted as some really great thing that she did, as if that really great thing is an umbrella item of goodwill that casts its shadow over whatever else she has accomplished. I can see how that might be a problem for Jen. Then, when you top that problem off with the tendency for people to think that just because they talk about boobs, that they can be approached with specific discussions about their boobs, the problem becomes even worse. The reasoning seems to be that if Jen talks about boobs, or even her boobs, that her boobs can then be the subject of anyone’s conversation in any way that person sees fit. While that person has every right to talk about Jen’s boobs, though, that doesn’t make it totally acceptable for them to talk to Jen about her boobs in any way they like. In case you’re still not getting this, let me give you a little verbal illustration where you’re in the same or similar situation. Imagine someone you find to be completely out of the realm of people you’re inclined to have a sexual conversation with. Next, imagine that you’re trying to accomplish something important that shows the world the skill you have that you value the most. As you are trying to accomplish this thing, the person you have no intention of ever having a sexual conversation with makes a sexually suggestive remark about either your crotch or your chest. That’s what Jen’s complaining about.

So, does Jen have a right to complain? Yes. Do the women who were mentioned at the event Jen attended have a right to be offended? Of course. Does that mean that nobody should call anyone pretty or that we should complain about every compliment any person ever gives to an intelligent, attractive individual? No. Context is an important factor with these issues. Being highlighted in a public speech as an example of something is very different from courtship behavior in a bar.

Not really having discussed it with her extensively, I can’t tell you where Jen’s boundaries are when it comes to what type of conversation she’s comfortable with in regards to her body and appearance, but I would say that if someone came up to her and made a sexually suggestive comment to her without having any kind of social tie to her, that’s probably poor social behavior on the part of the person who did it. Jen, and the women who were mentioned at AARRAM (not a well thought out acronym), above, have other traits that people can give their attention to and their physical traits are already going to be apparent to anyone who sees them, you don’t have to point them out above whatever other traits the person has.

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This post, The Quake Heard ‘Round the Internet, and Her Chest, originally appeared on She Thought on May 24, 2011.
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I hate writing about feminist issues, because every time I do I get accused of being a feminazi or caring more about women than men, or of buying into victim culture, or any number of accusations that come with the territory.  Feminism isn’t generally my main issue, and so I’m always hesitant to distract from all the other things I care about by getting into knock down, drag out fights about why should I care about how women are treated or how they’re portrayed in the media.

Occasionally, of course, I do write something about feminism, because I’m upset enough to ignore the warning lights in my head that say I’m going to have to deal with a lot of BS because of it.  As you might imagine, this post is me ignoring those warning bells.

Skepticism has a woman problem.  It’s been said more than once, it’s been pointed out countless times, and it’s being addressed in a lot of positive ways that should absolutely count in its favor.  I don’t want to dismiss or underplay the fact that there are a lot of men in the movement who care a lot about this issue and are actively working to fix it.

That said, the amount of privilege and harassment

I see coming from a number of the powerful men in the movement is really distressing.  The assumption that young women are taking advantage of older men or that men have the automatic right to presume sexual interest and the right to sexually harass young women is a problem, and it’s a problem within this movement, not just outside of it.

This problem came up today, because Lawrence Krauss, a respected scientist and one of the featured speakers at TAM9, defended his buddy Jeffrey Epstein, a man who plead guilty to hiring underage girls, some as young as 13,  to have sex with him.  Krauss is skeptical of the claims because he always thought the girls around Epstein were 19-23 and apparently thinks it’s ok to have sex with a 13 year old so long as you think she’s 18.  He also doesn’t seem to understand that a 13 year old having sex with a powerful, rich man has been coerced into it, no matter what.  Ignorance is no excuse there, it’s rape and it’s taking advantage of a child.

He is also skeptical of the claims made by the prosecution, despite the fact that Epstein plead guilty and they did an 11-month sting operation documenting his activity.  And they have his, apparently horrific, diary.

It gets worse.

DJ Grothe, on the Skepchick article about this, comments , saying basically that he doesn’t know anything about the situation, but he lied about his age when he was under 18 so that he could get laid, so maybe underage prostitution isn’t that bad.  I appreciate that he’s not saying that sex with a 13 year old is OK, he specifically says it isn’t, but since that’s what actually happened, I’m really not sure why he felt the need to defend Krauss.  Nor do I understand how he is also missing the power play aspect of this.  Epstein took underage women who were not prostitutes and coerced them into sexual acts, using money and power.  This is not acceptable behavior, even if you’re OK with prostitution and 16-year-olds having sex.

This isn’t a question of the legality of prostitution or what the age of consent should be.  This is a question about abuse of power, non-consensual sex and sex trafficking of minors.

I wish I could tell you that this blindness to abuse of privilege and power existed only in response to this one issue, but it permeates the skeptic movement.  Many of the men in this movement are guilty of abusing their power to take advantage of the women in the movement or to hurt them when they won’t agree to sex, or turning a blind eye to the behavior or other men who are guilty of similar behavior.

If I could tell you all the horror stories I’ve heard, all the individuals who have been mistreated, insulted, taken advantage of by men in this movement, you’d be shocked.  If I told you the number of men I’ve been told that I need to be careful around because they have a “problem with young women”, you might not believe me.  Unless you’re a woman, and then you’ve probably heard some of it yourself.

I believe these stories because I’ve been at the receiving end of some egregious behavior and I’ve seen a lot of it with my own eyes.  The women in the movement ignore it because it’s less important to us than our desire to be part of a community that matters to us.  Hell, I don’t even feel comfortable talking about it because I know it’s going to make me unpopular, I don’t want to list anyone’s name because I just don’t feel comfortable with the backlash that would come with it.  I can’t bring myself to do it and I feel absolutely ashamed for that.

When a powerful scientist asks a young women who is trying to be taken seriously in the sciences if she’d like to be his next mistress after meeting her once,  that’s an abuse of power.  When a powerful man implies he’ll help a woman out if he sleeps with her, that’s an abuse of power.  When a powerful man implies he will blackball a woman if she doesn’t sleep with him, that’s an abuse of power.  When a powerful man dismisses or insults a woman because she doesn’t want to sleep with him, that’s an abuse of power.  There’s a word for coercing women into having sex.

I doubt this will be read by powerful men in the movement, but if it is, I just want to say that you have a responsibility to set an example as to how women should be treated and where their value should come from.  If you think women are only sex objects and you only care about the young, pretty ones who don’t seem too frigid, how on earth are we going to be taken seriously by everyone else?

Why is it that when I go to conferences I have to be hyper-vigilent to the behavior of men whose opinions I respect?

*http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tits+of+gtfo

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This post, Skepticism: Tits or GTFO?*, originally appeared on She Thought on April 7, 2011.
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With all due respect to the writers of the post on BlagHag called When Gender Goes Pear-Shaped, this is going to be a breakdown post.  I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable, but the way ideas are conveyed in that post fueled this whole affair (though unintentionally, I’m sure), and I think some complaints were valid, but not all. So I’m going to try to address all the bigger issues one by one.

Right now, if you look at the post in question, you’ll find that there’s a little blurb at the beginning that says:

Guest Post by Sharon Moss, President of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio with Lyz Liddell, Director of Campus Organizing at the Secular Student Alliance

These are the views of individuals and do not represent the views of the Secular Student Alliance or the Humanist Community of Central Ohio.

That second part wasn’t there in the original version that I read, but there are two things that I think are important that contributed to some of the backlash to this post. Firstly, you should note that Jen McCreight did not write this post, but it is posted on her blog. When people first started responding to this, Jen got to feel the initial flames because Jen is held accountable for whatever does end up on her blog. This resulted in people accusing Jen of creating drama, then Jen objecting by pointing out that it wasn’t her words, but she believed in the message and then parties on each side of the fence not listening to each other and turning up their music louder, alternately, until all the neighbors decided to move away for all of the noise. Jen is correct that people shouldn’t be pointing fingers at her and holding her accountable for what other people write. People are responsible for their own words. At the same time, Jen is responsible for what is posted on her blog. So Jen can’t really be blamed for the drama, but she can be questioned about why she supported it, which, she answered in a later post:

Yesterday I allowed Sharon Moss and Lyz Liddell to do a guest post on my blog. I rarely let people do guest posts, but I trust both of them immensely and have a great personal interest in making women feel more welcome in the atheist community, so their post seemed appropriate. They even waited a week before writing it, so they had plenty of time to think about their opinions and reduce a reactionary response. And while the comments have erupted into what I can safely call a clusterfuck, I’m here to stand by my decision to let that post go up.

Honestly, she could have stopped there. That’s where her responsibility over this whole thing ended. Sadly, she clearly felt the need to defend the writers of the post because that’s what she ended up doing, but she didn’t have to. Jen’s clear objection to the chicken-gluing that’s going on in her comments coupled with her accurate description of the situation as a ‘clusterfuck’ inspired me to give it various related names; as a result of her defense, now she’s become enmeshed in this battle and it has become obvious that even she doesn’t seem to know where she stands. She had every reason to trust these other women with her blog, they are people with experience and even some authority in the community. But Jen is still in the process of learning (she’s admitted this, herself) and her defense of the writers of this post ended up seeming reflexive. I’ll discuss more on that, later.

The original post by Moss and Liddell began with a very modern-aged dramatic comment that had appeared on Sharon Moss’ facebook:

If the freethought community doesn’t have a problem with sexism, why did I just spend 20 minutes in the bathroom consoling a woman who was publicly insulted when she asked the panel a question about sexism in freethought communities? Note to dudes, it doesn’t matter if it is sexism or biology, if you’re making people who come to your group uncomfortable, you’re doing it wrong. — Facebook status, Sharon Moss, 1/30/11

This comment, alone, could easily send any mass group into a frenzy over a variety of problems. For one, who in the freethought community thinks we’re sexism-free? The video of the panel that I watched involved an entire conversation spun off of the idea of sexism in the community. Of course people involved in that discussion would be offended at this comment! As I mentioned, before, the “weaker sex” comment was probably a bad idea. That guy should be forced to listen to a hundred babies crying inconsolably (because they just got vaccinated, of course) for three days as punishment for his ill-timed jest. Note that I am not chastising the joke, even I laughed when I heard him say it (after this controversy had begun to unravel) but the situation in which it was dished out was inappropriate because he used it to smack down a legitimate concern that someone had and he effectively ended that aspect of a conversation that could have been interesting and useful. One guy’s comment, though, doesn’t mean that the entire community is saturated with that kind of sexism. It means that guy – that one guy – was responsible for a sexist comment that sent a woman into a bathroom, crying. It wasn’t a matter of if the freethought community, itself, has a problem with sexism. That was a matter of one person’s bad behavior. We can’t pin his behavior onto an entire community. That would be poor judgment on our part.

As for the second part of this facebook post, it is unfair to blame women feeling uncomfortable in a community entirely on the ‘dudes’ (and if we’re complaining about terms used to describe women, shouldn’t we also be concerned about terms that we use for men? Not that ‘dude’ is an offensive term, but it is clearly used in that comment as a divisive term). That was the point of the panel discussion, wasn’t it, to figure how why there are fewer women and how women may become more attracted to the movement? There’s really not that much evidence, as was mentioned, that men making women feel uncomfortable is a reason for women not being at these meetings. It appears to be the case that there is something else going on. Blaming the problem entirely on the ‘dudes’ keeps us away from examining the problem objectively so we can find an answer.

Sharon Moss explains her use of the facebook status, thusly, calling it sarcasm:

I’m not one to post snarky facebook status updates. I generally view snarky facebook statuses as the realm of the powerless. And, damn, did I feel powerless.

Actually, snark can be a pretty useful tool. In fact, in a strange twist to this story, I seem to recall a moment when someone was being snarky on a certain panel and said something that might have been somewhat unwise that ended up setting the blogoshpere afire. As I recall, it was something about the weake … uh, oh. I really do think that the weaker sex comment was inappropriate in the context it was in. I wouldn’t have gotten my panties in a wad over it and I would have thought it was funny, but I have to agree that comment was an overall destructive thing to have been said. I also think that Moss’ facebook comment was just as destructive, for the same reasons. This opening quote contributed, significantly, to the aftermath of the BlagHag fustercluckacalypse. It set the tone for the whole post and it effectively shuts off the opposition, from the beginning.

I’m going to skip over the background information and things I’ve already mostly covered, but I do want to address this, from the Moss/Liddell article:

The all-too-common problem came up of a woman showing up to a meeting and every dude there hitting on her. First, the panelists grabbed a theme that had been floating around all weekend: that men hitting on women is just biological (therefore excusable), making it sound like a woman in that kind of situation shouldjust STFU and get over it.

I have already talked about something related to this problem once before, here on shethought. As much as nobody has the right to shut down women’s sexual behavior, nobody has the right to try to shut down men’s sexual behavior. Courting rituals are a part of the sexual behavior of men and women. As long as these men are not forcing themselves on to women, it is not our place to stifle it. Yes, it is overwhelming to someone when they are outnumbered, at a conference, 2 to 1 by the opposite sex, so you will encounter a higher frequency of men hitting on you. But what they are doing is not hurting you. If you feel uncomfortable by it, it is not because they are doing something to bring you down or to be malicious. They wouldn’t be hitting on you if they thought you were not something of value. The appropriate response to a situation where you’re getting unwanted attention is to point out for the guy that it is unwanted attention. It is completely socially acceptable, though it may harm someone’s ego, to tell the random peacock, fanning his feathers at you at a convention, that their beak is inadequate to help you build your nest. Then, you just walk away.

The article continues:

Then the moderator asked the women in the audience, as if it were a rewording of the same question, whether they would feel harassed or flattered if they showed up to an event and a few guys started flirting with them. We women in the audience, pressured to respond to the question at hand but feeling duped because we knew it wasn’t the same thing, gave an honest response. Sure, a few guys flirting with us is sexy. BUT!!! (we all screamed in our heads, even though the panel never let us say it out loud) 20 guys our father’s age blatantly staring at and talking to our cleavage is a totally different situation! It’s not sexy, it’s gross and creepy.

Based on what I saw happening in the video I linked to in my previous article, I feel this isn’t a great portrayal of what happened. Also, while the authors imply that everyone in the audience thought the same thing, I really doubt that they did. No single woman can speak for all women. Also, I dislike the theme that exists that seems to say that a man staring at a woman’s chest is somehow wrong and that they can’t function in any appropriate way towards women, when they do so. How insulting is that idea to 1) all men and 2) women with chests so large, Mount Rushmore could successfully motorboat them? The idea that a particular view of another person can so successfully override all neurological pathways in such a manner as to excuse the brain itself from any rational functioning is pretty absurd. Yes, sometimes a person can be caught off-guard by their attraction to something, but that is certainly not the dominant trend. Also, sometimes our anatomy betrays us. Some women are cursed with breasts so large that they have to wear a bra while they sleep, for fear of smothering themselves. These women, sadly, have to deal with stares all of the time, too. Are they to assume that because the rest of society thinks men are so dysfunctional that they can’t function when they see cleavage that they (these busty women) will never, ever have an intelligent conversation with a man?

Furthermore, to add a little science to the matter, if you were really worried about a man lusting after you while he was talking to you, you’d worry about him looking at your face. Studies have shown, and being int he industry I’m in, I can anecdotally verify, men want to see faces when they’re aroused. They look at the face of a person in porn before looking at their body. It isn’t that the body is unimportant, but the face is usually a priority. So if you’re really all that concerned then you should probably start worrying more the next time a guy at a convention stares back into your pretty eyes.

Also, ‘it’s gross?’ I’m not sure what the appropriate response to that comment should be, but I feel bad leaving it hanging without a comment. I do understand someone feeling creeped out when they’re being watched and the onlooker’s gaze is unwelcome, but why would it be gross? We aren’t kids in a schoolyard, anymore. Looking at people or looking at people’s body parts is a useful thing to do, it isn’t ‘gross.’

I already covered much about my opinion on the exchange between the woman in the audience and the panel, but I don’t want to leave out a comment on this:

Her question focused on the language the panel had been using – “female” instead of “woman,” and pointed out that it made us sound like livestock rather than people.

While I agree that the word choice is awkward, it is because the word ‘female’ is more of a general term, not because it implies livestock. A ‘female’ can be a human or it can be an animal, this makes it not really equivalent to the word ‘woman,’ which only applies to females who happen to be human. I think that using the term ‘livestock’ and ‘animal’ to state the position of ‘this word seems awkward and is perhaps a bad choice,’ could very well have added another barrier to making this a productive conversation to have. It is interesting to examine why the term ‘female’ was used, but by claiming it implies something it does not, to pretend it is dehumanizing, shut down the potential for questioning it further. If it was really used because people were uncomfortable using the term ‘women,’ then that makes some sense. There are feminist groups who refuse to use the word ‘woman’ or ‘women’ because it linguistically links men and women. In order to attempt to disassociate the terms, many feminist groups resort to different spellings, as if that would somehow change the history of the term: womyn, wimmin, etc. Someone trying to avoid the controversy altogether might then face a bit of a dilemma when they have to reference women. There’s the camp who thinks the misspellings are absurd and the people who dislike the word ‘women’ and there’s a distinct lack of better terms. Thus, it might seem to be a great solution, for everybody, to use the term ‘female.’ So, the word choice was irrational, but it is quite likely that it was irrational because they were trying to avoid another problem that, too, was irrational.

The next part of the article focuses on Sean Faircloth’s presentation. Interestingly, it is tough to even find out what was said or what happened because even though Jen McCreight says she saw a video, I couldn’t find a link to it anywhere in the comments section of her post or in any of her posts referencing it. I looked, I couldn’t find it and since I couldn’t get into contact with Faircloth (I really tried), I am limited in what I can say about it. Given her own limitations to properly assess what happened, Jen took a small part of what was said about Faircloth’s presentation out of the original post (but I have a copy of the original and there was still much criticism left in) and even after saying she saw a video of the presentation, she didn’t put that part back up. From what I can gather from the comments section of the original post and based on what I’m finding about Faircloth and what I read on JesusFetusFajitaFishsticks, Faircloth really was misrepresented. At the very least, his presentation was presented as one-sided, with encouragement to the men to lustily scope out the women as if they had a huge incentive to do so. In reality, it seems to be the case that he had extended a similar encouragement to the women, using the incentive as an illustration about a sociocultural perspective, not as a reason to be a dick to all women in the audience.

Yes, some men respond to women, sexually, and some women respond to men as well. At conventions, there are frequently sexual hookups and I even know of at least two long-term relationships that began as the result of hookups at conventions. Basically, anywhere humans go, sex (as a behavior) is likely to follow. It is not our right to make that go away.

Again, my post has become a terrifyingly long one and I fear your brains may all be suffering as a result. I have yet to cover every aspect of this debate, though.

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This post, When Sex Gets in my Apple-Bottomed Jeans (Part Deux), originally appeared on She Thought on February 13, 2011.
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By flare up, I don’t mean a regular tar and feathering over there, I mean people seem to be smearing each other with the sticky, black substance and gluing entire chickens to each other without plucking. I’m really feeling very sorry for those poor chickens, I really am.

Having already lodged myself firmly into related debates, somewhere between the big boulder that is ‘the anti-sex-in-anything-interesting’ debate and the hard place known as the ‘aren’t-all-sexy-people-complete-morons’ debate, I have decided perhaps now is a good time to comment on this tar and chicken blood bath that has been boiling over at Blag Hag. In order to do so, it is first important to understand the trigger to the whole event. Thus, I encourage you to have a look here, at this video:

American Atheists SERAM – Panel Discussion – Second subject

In the video, which is a recording of a panel discussion at a conference, there is considerable time spent on trying to find solutions to the problem of making women feel welcome in the atheist community. Many related communities have voiced concerns over this problem, and as you might see from the video, there is a wide range of ideas on what is causing the differences in the male and female populations within the community. Where the controversy really begins, though, is when a woman pointed out a kind of awkwardness in the use of the word “female” by the panel, instead of using another term, which means the same thing but is less broad. I have to admit that her wording of her question was less than ideal. It makes it sound as if she was offended over the exchange of one word over another, but after I carefully considered what her stance might be, I realized that there was something odd about using a more general term to refer to women. But, based on the commentary on each side of her question, I don’t think any bias was intended and the contributors to the program certainly didn’t seem to be interested in dragging women down through a single word choice.

It was this event, though, that inspired the dual-authored post (not by Jen McCreight) on blaghag.com. Now, I don’t agree with what the woman in the video objected to, but I do think that one reaction to her complaint was uncalled for. Note that towards the beginning of the video, one of the participants repeated the now oft-quoted Phil Plait’s (courtesy of Wil Wheaton) sentiment of, “don’t be a dick.” Yet, during the discussion following the complaint that the panel’s title used the word “Female,” one person suggested using, instead, “the weaker sex.” Funny? Yes. Appropriate? No. In fact, that comment can now show us exactly why the don’t be a dick policy is a good one. Look at the aftermath!

The jury is divided, though, on if this incident should cause offense at all (and by “jury,” I mean you, the denizens of the Internet and by “offense” I mean all this tar & chickening going on). I can understand that, too, but in order to explain why I can understand that and simultaneously agree and disagree at the same time, I need to discuss some things about human behavior.

First, there is what I call “the strip-club heckler effect” (yes, that’s a technical term. Why? Because I just made it up). Strippers spend much of their time soaking in the compliments from their hard labor, much of which is correlated with how attractive patrons of a club seem to think they are. This translates into that which will ultimately pay their bills, clothe their children, buy their house and get them those frackin’ wild shoes with the heart-shaped skulls over crossbones on them. While a stripper’s beauty is actually not all of what makes her money (contrary to popular opinion on the matter), her beauty is seen as something of tremendous value. And, just as with anyone else, she doesn’t want to be told that she’s fat, ugly or lacking in grace or class. This is where the heckler comes in. This woman (I’m defaulting to a gender for the sake of illustration, not to pretend male strippers don’t exist) who hears compliments for most of her day can quickly have a great day go bad by one comment from someone who says she’s fat, ugly or that she smells like a dust mite who endured the relative tsunami on the living room couch from the partially-digested blowback from her boyfriend’s innards after he consumed copious amounts of chili cheese burritos and a gallon of beer. That one comment can literally alter her perception of an entire day. Strippers aren’t the only ones who face this problem. The thing that causes a stripper to suddenly have a bad day after the curve of her buttocks has been unfairly critiqued will also effectively create a bad day for a grocery store bag boy who’s mental capacity for the proper handling technique of a box of soda is questioned.

To make this an even bigger problem, it isn’t just the blowback-stained stripper dust-mite that suffers from the behavior of the heckler. Those who witness such events transpire or for whom the story has been either reenacted, made the subject of much gossip or read from a blog seem to often possess this thing we call ‘empathy’ and empathy has a nasty habit of getting in the way of properly analyzing a situation.  You may be wondering to what extent empathy can possibly wreak havoc on such a situation? Well, bear in mind that most dictators use emotional appeal to gain and keep the loyalty of their subjects (I would give you an example or two involving Hitler, but I fear that I might grow a tiny, vertical stripe above my lip which extends up into my nose).

So, while the guy who made the weaker sex comment on that panel really didn’t intend to cause harm and while I can understand why people don’t understand why there was such a fuss over that panel, I can also see how the the comment by one person was such a major bad move that an entire community is chicken-glued over it. It was a badly-timed joke that met with the natural behaviors I just described to create what I think we might safely call McCreight’s non-consensual clusterfuck debate (It took every inch of my brain’s self-control center to prevent myself typing “tar-fuster-cluck,” just then).

The problem doesn’t end there, though, there are many other things that were brought up in the complaint post by Sharon Moss and Lyz Liddell on McCreight’s site that need to be discussed, as well as many of the things brought out in the aftermath. This post, though, has gotten horrifically long and I fear for the future of those still clinging to my every letter, at this point, as I’m sure there are tummies to feed, rest to be had and, perhaps, a job to actually spend time working on. It is quite likely that, in a future post, I will address why I called this “McCreight’s non-consensual clusterfuck debate and why I referenced sex in my apple-bottomed jeans.

P. S. JesusFetusFajitaFishsticks should at least get credit, in this debate, for referring to herself as “the lone vag” in such a way that I imagined a human vulva doing things that human vulvas don’t typically do but is befitting of an old western littered with bigotry and poorly portrayed history.

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This post, When Sex Gets in my Apple-Bottomed Jeans, originally appeared on She Thought on February 10, 2011.
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In news that will shock and confuse dacryphiliacs everywhere, (but make John Boehner more secure in his manhood) scientists have “discovered” that women’s tears DO NOT turn men on.

Now before you get upset wondering why scientists are trying to figure out the mysterious and elusive male libido instead of, let’s say ocean tides (freakin’ tides, how DO they work) it is important to understand that the study was not about sex. At all.

Christie Wilcox, PhD student at the University of Hawaii in their Cell and Molecular Biology program studying fish population genetics and venom biochemistry, breaks it down for us on her science blog, Observations of A Nerd:

It’s no wonder that the general public sometimes questions whether science is important. If that was truly the aim of this paper, I’d be concerned, too!

Of course, Brian Alexander missed the point. This paper wasn’t published as a part of a women’s how-to guide for getting laid. Instead, the authors sought to determine if the chemicals present in human tears might serve as chemosignals like they do for other animals — and they got some pretty interesting results.

In many species, chemical signals run rampant. Scents, pheromones, and other chemical cues are deliberately and unconsciously given off to tell other individuals anything from “Back Off – MY Tree!” to “Hop on and ride me, baby!” But despite how common they are in the rest of the animal kingdom, the function of chemical signals in humans is hotly debated. Years of searching has yet to find human pheromones (no matter what those websites tell you), and while scent seems to play a role in communication in people, there is still relatively little knowledge as to what chemicals and why.

Imagine that. A journalist takes the sensational aspects of a research study, and uses that to get his story sold.

Sex sells, right? We should be happy that ANY science story is making news and leave it to the public to create their own opinions about the research, right?

NO! Again, Wilcox explains the problem:

Why do I care so much? It’s not just that they got it wrong. It’s that their interpretation of research isn’t labeled as opinion. It’s that the vast majority of people who have any interest in science news are going to read inaccurate (if not downright insulting) news articles and think studies like this one are either misogynistic or frivolous. It’s that dumbasses like Brian Alexander undermine good science for the sake of attention grabbing headlines. And as a scientist and a writer, it’s a double insult.

The irony here? By writing this piece, Brian Alexander made thousands of smart, sexy, scientifically literate women cry . . . literally cockblocking himself.  Not sexy Brian, not sexy at all.

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This post, Illogical “Phallusies” – Viewing Scientific Research Through Penis Colored Glasses, originally appeared on She Thought on January 8, 2011.
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Ok, so this week, I am filling in for Sophie, from “Sex and Science”. So, in her honor, I thought I’d kick it with a post about sex.

Dictyostelium discoideum (from Dan Rhoads at Bitesizebio.com)

So, if you strip away the boring plumbing aspect of it, sex is, as it core, a mechanism for the mixing of genes. Now, any bonobo worth his salt will tale you that I am over-simplifying here and that sex also plays other role, it is, for example an important social mediator. That’s quite a cogent point, especially coming from a chimp, but still, the core evolutionary drive behind the evolution of sexuality is a mechanism of gene mixing. That explains why sex is fundamentally about male and female, dichotomy is the most basic principle for mixing. Once again, I am only talking here about the core genetic aspect of sex. If you want to consider the human social and psychological aspect, the situation gets incredibly messy, as you would expect of any activity that see so much activity and consideration devoted to it, and sex is no longer a matter of switch between male and female but rather a slider, a multi-directional one really, as they are, pretty much, as many sexual orientations as they are people …

Anyway, back to the genetic. Sex, as said, being a mechanism of genetic mixing requires two individuals to mix their gene and produce the new genome. That has been the norm since the first bacteria started clumsily experimenting a few billion years ago…

Interestingly, there is, at least, one major exception to that norm and its name, as you probably gathered from this post’s title, is Dictyostelium discoideum. This amoeba, sometime unflatteringly referred to as ‘slime mold’, is a soil-living amoeba. Its diet consist mostly of local bacteria such as E. coli.

The amoeba actually have a very complex, and quite fascinating on its own, life cycle: It spends most of its time free leaving, reproducing asexually in a stage called the vegetative stage. Then, when conditions gets bad, mostly when food becomes scarce, D. discoideum’s can switch to one of two other life style.

In the first one, is the social cycle, studied by the Strassman and Queller group, the amoeba will start secreting cyclic AMP. This is chemotactic and will attract other amoeba (up to 100,000). Soon, they all aggregate into a large colony. The colony will then start secreting cellulose that will allow it to migrate slowly until it finds a more suitable environement. There it will flatten and its center will rose on a cellulose-reinforced stalk, until it looks a bit like a tiny slimy lollipop. From there it will release unicellular spore that will enter a new vegetative stage.

Various stages in Dictyostelium discoideum's social cycle (M. Grimson, R. Blanton, Texas Tech University)

A third cycle occurs when two amoeba likes each other very much. Unsurprisingly, at this point, the two genomes recombine generating a new one. That’s the sex part that give this third cycle its name.  Then will start secreting cAMP alongside sex pheromones. Others amoebas gather, like during the social cycle, attracted by the sweet but deadly promise of cooperation. Deadly, because this time, these aggregating amoeba are not integrated into a social colony like during the social cycle, instead, they are devoured by the future parents, leaving a cellulose rich shell of their dead relative to surround the happy couple (if this reminds you of any happy couples that you know, well, don’t be so mean-spirited) forming what is called a macrocyst. The newly recombine amoeba will multiply and be released as free leaving organism to enter another vegetative cycle.

The life cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum (Picture from Strassman and Queller group).

The creation of the macrocyst (from Kessin, 2010).

Now, that’s pretty cool, right? Wandering slime monster. Cannibalistic newly-weds. Hollywood gold! But wait, there is more!

I mention the sexual recombination and, as you remember from earlier in this post, generally, sex involves two sexes. Not so much for Dictyostelium discoideum. Sure, there is the type-I, it was shown to carry the gene for one particular protein, called matA that allows to fusion with type-II. Delete the matA and the amoeba becomes ‘sterile’, restore it, and it can mate again.

Type-I amoeba will shun other types I and will, just as conservative radio host intended, only mate with types II (amoeba carrying gene for a slightly different molecule called matB as well as two different genes called, you guessed it, matC and matD). Type-II will, in turn, distrust other type-II but will swap (genes) ugly with the type-I. The researchers were even able to remove the matA gene and replace it with the MatB, C and D genes, transforming the amoeba from a Type-I into a type-II. Fair enough so far, pretty straightforward.

But then, there is the type-III. Genetically, it looks a lot like a type-II, it carries genes that are pretty similar to those of mat C and D. But it lacks mat B and can reproduce with either Type-I and Type-II amoebas.

The various mating genes (from Bloomfield et al., 2010).

Looking at it more closely, it would seem like TypeII is actually the newcomer here, a recombination of type-I and Type-III. It also seems like both the MatA (or MatB, remember, the two genes are quite similar) and the MatC, D (or Mat S,T) genes have two similar functions. They act like a both an on and an off-switch. They are required, for mating, the on switch. But they also serve to prevent the amoebas from mating with another amoeba carrying the same set of genes, the off switch. Presumably, this later function allows to prevent mating with a clone produced during the vegetative state, as such mating would have no beneficial consequence in term of genetic diversification. They are different enough between each others that they do not cross-react and the type-III can mate freely between both.

So, there you have it, quite a rare find in nature, a three sided reproduction system; really, really cool and unexpected…

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This post, Dictyostelium discoideum is pretty cool…, originally appeared on She Thought on December 13, 2010.
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Picture from Duncan Riley from the Inquisitr.

Yesterday was the presentation of the case to the 9th circuit.  Now, it’s not the full 9th circuit, which means that whatever these three judges decide, they may well have to reconvene with the rest of the 9th circuit if whoever loses this round decides to appeal.  It’s sort of a weird situation but it appears that, whatever they rule, the loser can then appeal either to the full 9th or to the Supreme Court.  If they appeal to the full 9th, they will probably then appeal to the Supreme Court anyway.  It all feels a bit futile when you know that it’s going to get appealed all the way up.

The three judges on the panel are, from most liberal to most conservative, Stephen Reinhardt, Michael Hawkins and Randy Smith.  Both Reinhardt and Hawkins seemed to agree with Judge Walker’s logic, while Smith seemed to be a bit more on the fence.  Even he, a fairly conservative republican, had a hard time with the idea that California had given a right and then taken it away — this led to one of the better lines of the day, in which a judge asked if it would be OK for California voters to reinstitute segregation.  Smith did, however, think that promoting procreation and a biological mom and dad family environment was a reasonable rational basis for excluding homosexuals from the instituion.

His biggest problem with the prosecutorial case came with the question of standing.  For those not following, the official defendants named in the case refused to defend the law, so several other people joined the lawsuit as Defendant Intervenors.  The DI aren’t people who would normally even be allowed to participate, but because no one was defending Prop 8 in California, they were allowed to join the case.  The question now is whether they are qualified to be DIs in a federal court.

The answer basically appears to be no, especially since SCOTUS has been tightening restrictions on who can be a DI in federal court over the last couple of decades.  The problem Judge Smith has, and I actually agree with him here, is that California has a process that says that the Governor cannot veto something voted on by the people and that, by refusing to defend Prop 8, he’s nullifying what the people want.

So, I don’t think that any of the DI actually deserve standing, but in the absence of an official Defendant, I feel like to respect the legislative process in California, it might be necessary for the 9th court to recognize the DIs in this case.

I made a flow chart yesterday that explains exactly how convoluted all of this is, but if the 9th Court determines that the DI don’t have standing, and SCOTUS agrees, then Walker’s ruling stands and gay marriage is legal in CA.  If it’s determined that the DI do have standing, then it’s a much longer road to a final opinion, but there’s a chance that that opinion will legalize gay marriage nationwide.

By a longer road, I mean a wait for the 3 judges to rule on the constitutionality of Prop 8, then an optional wait for the full 9th court to rule on it, then a wait on SCOTUS to see if 4 judges want to have a hearing, and then finally a wait for SCOTUS to make a final ruling.

Now, in terms of argument, it has never been clearer that the DI simply don’t have one that goes beyond “gay people can have children, but they can’t do it accidentally and, even though there are no fertility requirements on straight people, we think that calling an institution marriage promotes responsible child-rearing, and we don’t think encouraging gays to responsibly procreate is something that marriage should do because they do it anyway.”  And, revealingly, the judges asked how wide a ruling that agreed with Walker would have to be — in other words, if they agree that Prop 8 isn’t constitutional, do they then have to say that gay marriage is a right in their jurisdiction?  Olson wiggled a bit, saying that that’s what he’s asking for without trying to bind their hands.

Being able to watch this all on live video just underlined how bad the lawyers on the DI side are and how good Boies and Olson are.  I know that sounds like a biased opinion, but even ignoring the strength of argument, the DI lawyers stuttered, stammered, and weaseled their way through their arguments, only to be repeatedly called on it by the judges who threw out such gems as:

“Is there anything  in the record to indicatate that she has any authority whatsoever?”

“You’re repeating yourself now.”

“If you don’t know the answer, say you don’t know.”

It was painful, but since it was televised, I really hope that some people who weren’t as familiar with the trial got the chance to see just how illogical the DI position is and how eloquent, intelligent and prepared the prosecution is.  If you get the opportunity, I urge you to watch it, I will probably watch it again myself.

The DI also continue to shoot themselves in the foot by saying things like “the word is the institution,” which just underlines that even if gays had access to everything but the word, they wouldn’t have access to the institution itself.  I’ll let Therese Stewart end this, because she is amazing (paraphrased from here):

If the word is the institution, then the argument is just that gays and lesbians would “stain” the institution. The fact that Prop 8 is symbolic, it makes the insult obvious. This is classification for its own sake, and it violates the equal protection clause. Taking these components together, it infers animus.

If we only passed Prop 8 to show that same-sex couples aren’t as good, or as worthy as other couples, then isn’t the equal protection argument plain to see? It reveals the naked schoolyard taunting aspect of Prop 8. Nah-nanny-boo boo, you aren’t as good as me. And frankly, nanny-boo-boo isn’t a valid use of state authority.

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This post, The Long Road to a Final Opinion on Prop 8, originally appeared on She Thought on December 7, 2010.
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Notre-Dame as seen from the South-Eastern side of the île de la Cité.

An editor of SheThought  came upon this article on Jezebel, and, being the only French guy she had immediately available, asked me what I thought about it… That article, by the way, lead to a few rounds of humorous banter between SheThought writers, as well as to an earlier post by Kitty.

So hum… I wonder, did the guy actually got outside or did the whole experience take place in his feverish imagination? (I guess, from a humane point of view, it actually is a good thing he did not, he might have bump into my dear sister and try that shit on her. The results, let me tell you,  would not have been pretty. Predictable, clearly, hilarious, most likely, but pretty, not by any stretch…).

I am honestly trying to see how somebody could live there and get the impression that ‘consent doesn’t exist’. I guess, one could say that it is probably more acceptable to be overtly flirtatious, even with strangers. Off colour jokes are also much more acceptable. One could also argue that the limits of personal space and the limit beyond which a socially acceptable, innocent flirting become excessively sexualized are a bit different between the two places, reflecting a difference in culture. And France is less puritanical than the U.S so people might be more open about their hook up making them easier to notice if not necessarily significantly more common. Finally, one must mention the fact that the rate of rape, in France, is about half of that in the U.S. This allows, one would assume, a bit less formality in the exchange of consent, which can be more implied than clearly uttered…

I also notice a personal anecdote in the article when the author states ‘falling madly in love’ with a woman, meeting her numerous times and yet failing to express his attraction overtly. To me, this might be hinting at an inexperienced young man, presumably from a conservative background. The differences, therefore, that he found so shocking might just be between the particular subset of the American culture he grew up with and the one he move in rather than between the two countries…

And that my friends, is the problem with anecdotal evidence. They can’t really be extrapolated.

The article also seems to contain wishful thinking and quite a bit of confirmation bias. The author is currently writing a book “about love he wrote while living in Paris”. Did he go to Paris to do some research on the subject (now, where did I hear that story before?)? Wouldn’t it have coloured his expectations?

But, mostly, I think that he just missed some of the subtle clues of human interactions, because they were not where he expected them and simply assumed they didn’t exist… And that, my friend, is the reason why Anthropology is an actual real job and not just a way for cunning academics to get their holiday travels played by public money…

I could be wrong, of course, and might consider setting an actual experimental procedure to test the author’s thesis… On the condition that he will accept to pay for the extensive testicular reconstructive surgery that, according to my expectations about the reaction of the “test subjects”, I will most certainly need…

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This post, An American Douchebag in Paris -Part 2: Return of the Douchebag., originally appeared on She Thought on November 26, 2010.
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His plea, since he is no longer in Paris and able to enjoy those “fun loving” Parisian women, is summed at near the end of his article. “I’m not suggesting that a woman have sex with someone she doesn’t want to, but I’m hoping we can start having more guilt-free sex by any means necessary. If we turn the volume down on consent, perhaps we’ll get closer to this kind of liberation.”

My first thought was that this poor young man was confused and had not lived in Paris, France, but rather in a fraternity house on double secret probation in Paris, Texas. The article shows a total lack of knowledge of Paris and of the United States.  Did this man never watch “Jersey Shore” before he bemoaned the lack of American women to hop in the sack on a whim?

I can only give my own take on Paris.  For one thing, the majority of Paris is now not what many would consider French.  Immigrants, most from a religion that frowns on PDA, make up the majority of men.  Obviously our American horny boy writer never hung out with those Parisians.

I am familiar with most of Paris and have to say that attacks on women (“Oh mademoiselle, I was zo carried away wiz your beauty I had to shove my tongue down your throat”) just aren’t as common as this man claims. And while MY Parisian nightlife experience may not be the same as the author, even my daughters, who greatly enjoyed the single scene, said that Parisian men had somehow managed to avoid assaulting them, no matter how tempting they were!

The Parisian/French experience IS indeed different than what a woman might have on the streets of Sheboygan.  Frenchmen can be very vocal in their appreciation of women.  And they appreciate all women.  I should know, at my age I take any attention I can get!  But the physical assault described as appreciation that “empowers” Parisian women is something I have never experienced.

Parisian men will come up to you and say “Your daughters are very beautiful, like their mother.”  Parisian men will “meow”.  If this guy does not know that Parisian men “meow” he wasn’t paying attention.  This “meow” is not a tasteless “cat call”.  It is a quiet “meow” of appreciation just meant for the woman.  No loud “MEOW” here, simply a gentle purr of appreciation.  My younger daughter had a generous amount of men offering to marry her, or saying “you are SO beautiful, I can die happy now!”

Yes, Parisian women, and women visiting Paris, enjoy this little flirtation.  It’s different than what men might say in the US, but it’s the same “game” that goes on around the world.  Parisians are no different than people in Moscow or New York.  Their pick-up lines might be different, but they are still pick-up lines.

Being a skeptical investigator who just happens to have many photographs of the city in question, I decided to examine some of these photos to see if I could find any sign of this Pepe LePew behavior, or of women acquiescing to this “appreciation” and saying “To heck with it!  Let’s DO IT”.

Exhibit A – My youngest daughter in Paris. Hmm, must not be good looking enough to attract attention.

Exhibit B – Perhaps Parisians aren’t leg men?

Exhibit C – WAIT!  Obviously some Parisian Zombie that can’t resist her devil duck.

Exhibit D – These women are clearly under attack by the nice old man.  In this part of Paris, music is played and women and men just meet up to dance – you don’t have to KNOW anyone!  Any moment now this man will show his appreciation for his partner by grabbing her ass.

Exhibit E – The only explanation I can give for the myth of Parisian party girls is that maybe the author confused this statue outside the Paris Opera House with real life.

In closing, I can express my opinion of this article by posting one final photograph taken in Paris:

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This post, An American Douchebag in Paris, originally appeared on She Thought on November 25, 2010.
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