Originally a comment by Marcus Ranum on Don’t change a god damn thing.

Nobody is immune to critique.

Ultimately, if they don’t respond to critique, the “invisible hand of the market” may correct them, anyway. Don’t anyone break it to the gamer geeks but half the gamers in the world are women, now. Sure, there is a smaller market for ‘hard core’ (i.e.: guy) gamers but it risks being marginalized out of the mainstream, which will mean that those games won’t be very well-funded or good. Sort of like how cis porn split off from the Hollywood mainstream and maintained its ‘independence’ in return for acquiring an unenviable cachet.

I thought these guys liked the “invisible hand of the market” since so many of them are libertarians!? Candy Crush has 93 million people playing it every day – a bit more than half of which are women. 8 million people play Farmville. Those are big numbers. They’re right up there with big ‘hard core gamer’ franchises like Call of Duty (100 million) and then there are the mega-game franchises like World of Warcraft that held 12-20 million gamers for 12 years paying $15/month. The point is that it doesn’t matter at all what the gamergaters think: the market is going to change in spite of them; they are nothing but the sound of defeat.

Interestingly, Vox Day appears to have decided to savor defeat on two fronts: feminism in gaming and feminism in science fiction — both markets that are undergoing inexorable change at the hand of the libertarians’ own god. It’s the invisible hand of the market slapping them; the same hand they kiss so fervently.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Arthur Chu has a brilliant piece at Salon about why the Internet is so susceptible to throngs of obsessive bullies who won’t ever ever ever go away.

The “vote” doesn’t end up being among everyone but among the tiny subset of people who really care about that question, which isn’t necessarily correlated with being right about that question–often, in fact, it’s the opposite.

The people who pay the most attention to these questions are the people who have some deep emotional investment in the issue at hand combined with a great deal of time and emotional energy to burn making their “voices heard” about it. That can happen on any end of the political spectrum, but in practice? It tends to be a space dominated by privileged reactionary jerks.

Why is that? Why don’t we have people who have some deep emotional investment in the issue at hand combined with a great deal of time and emotional energy to burn making their “voices heard” about it on our side of the question?

Well, having asked, I can think of one reason, but it requires changing Chu’s terms a little. I know I’m not willing to be one of those people (and I know neither are a lot of people I know), but it’s not because I don’t have time and energy for it. It’s because I don’t want to squander my time and energy on the kind of people who do that on the other side of the question – on privileged reactionary jerks, in short. It’s because I don’t want to squander my time interacting with horrible people. It’s that simple.

[W]hat’s somewhat true of real elections is overwhelmingly true of Internet elections. No public forum for comment can exist long without being taken over by “the trolls”–and while the trolls sometimes do things just for the lulz, like trying torig a Taylor Swift fan contest to force her on a date with a creepy 4chan dude, this kind of free-form anarchic subversion of online elections is becoming a thing of the past.

Today’s longest-lasting, most determined trolls have a real ideology behind their trolling, and it usually takes the form of a feeling of betrayal and resentment of the world around them and a knee-jerk rage against the idea of progress.

The worst trolls are almost universally hard-right conservatives, in other words, and they generally care about their pet causes with a breathtaking fervor that their enemies can’t possibly hope to match.

Or, again, their enemies may have the fervor, but they don’t have the stomach for horrible people. People consumed with knee-jerk rage against the idea of progress are not fun or interesting to talk to, and they tend to be abusive. It’s that simple.

Right-wing trolls can shout down everyone else because everyone else gets nauseated by the shouting while right-wing trolls don’t. Consider

the $800,000 raised on a GoFundMe for Memories Pizza in Indiana as an apparent no-strings-attached reward for being publicly homophobic from the nation’s homophobes.

Why? There are plenty of homophobic business owners in the country, and if you gave $800,000 to each of them even Mitt Romney would quickly run dry. Surely even in terms of objectively helping out their cause they’d do better giving that money to a political candidate or to a nonprofit pushing their goals.

But that wouldn’t give them the same level of attention as participating in the media-manufactured “controversy” over Memories Pizza–and it wouldn’t piss off liberals nearly as much. And those are the two major goals of the right-wing troll. Hence the fact that nearly every time anyone gets criticized by the “liberal media” they also get a huge wave of donations from trolls, even if they’re guilty not just of public homophobia but of gunning down an unarmed kid.

It’s like freeping. I’d forgotten about freeping.

I say that this kind of thing is “new” but really it’s just the right-wing Internet returning to form. Back in the mid-2000s we had the slang term “freep this poll.” It was a phrase used to rally posters on the Free Republic to mass-flood a poll or comments section hosted by some random website or local newspaper in order to create the impression of an overwhelming majority supporting their fringe-right views.

It’s what that Irish blogger’s new best friends do on his blog: they mob it to create the impression of an overwhelming majority supporting their reactionary views.

But people don’t realize how easy it is to distort the dialogue that way.

People still claim that the toxicity on comments sections or the skewed results of freeped polls and contests reflect reality, and use those claims to try to intimidate critics into silence.

Recently we’ve seen the results of freeping in an area particularly vulnerable to it, the Hugo Awards. For the less-geeky among my readers, the Hugos are the most prestigious awards in the field of science fiction writing, generally encountered as an approving blurb “From Hugo-award-winning author…” on the back cover of a book.

The Hugos are awarded by a popular vote. But.

but to vote you have to pay $40 for a “supporting membership” to Worldcon, the organization that sponsors the Hugos. Tons of people read science fiction; relatively few of them know how to vote for the Hugos; and out of those, not everyone’s going to drop $40 just to express their opinion about what they’ve read.

To vote on the Hugos you have to either know and care a ton about science fiction–or you have to be convinced that science fiction is part of the vast liberal conspiracy arrayed against you and make a disingenuous post calling you and your friends “Sad Puppies” over said liberal conspiracy. $40 is a lot of money to pay to express your opinions, even strongly held ones, about fiction you love–but it’s a cheap price to stick it to liberal pro-diversity elitists you hate.

And they did.

We should have learned a long, long time ago that “Just let the public give their input” is a lazy, useless and above all dangerous way to make decisions. If you want democracy you have to put effort into designing a process that actually makes sure your voting population matches the relevant population and to keep the process from being captured by bad actors. If that’s too hard for you, then accept that democracy is too hard for you and find some other way to claim legitimacy for the decision you end up making.

But don’t just leave your process open to the public and unguarded, unless you want The Comments making your decisions for you. Best case scenario, you end up with egg on your face that can be easily wiped off, like a bridge named after Stephen Colbert.

Worst case scenario, your public platform becomes a mouthpiece for the worst people in the world, who won’t give it back until they’ve run it into the ground.

This is exactly correct. Comments sections can go to hell if you don’t curate them. You have to curate them. The angry reactionaries pretend that’s a cowardly offense against free speech, but it’s not at all. It’s no more an offense against free speech than is the fact that magazine and newspaper editors select who writes for them, as opposed to just publishing whatever they’re offered.

You have to curate comments sections, and you have to keep in mind that hands-off comments sections don’t represent anything but whatever mob has seized them.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Armenian genocide. A century ago. At least humans have outgrown genocide since then.

Oh wait…

Widely accepted historical accounts say that between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives at the hands of Ottoman forces in what was then eastern Turkey.

Between 1915 and 1922 the Teskilat e-Mahsus (special organisation) carried out a campaign of mass murder, deportation, pillage and rape against the minority Christian Armenians.

What does that sound like? Oh…Yazidi, Ahmadiyya, Uyghur, Jews, Christians, Muslims, immigrants, foreigners, natives, aboriginals…

The Guardian received more than 500 responses to a callout for first-hand experiences of persecution. Some are based on transcripts and audio recordings, others are stories recited through the generations.

While it is impossible to independently verify every detail, the stories contribute to an overwhelming narrative of death, loss and destruction.

It was night-time in Dalvor when 12-year-old Beso Gasparian’s family were warned of the proximity of Ottoman soldiers. She fled with her mother and her eight-year-old brother, Manuk, to a hill above the village to hide their valuables and wait for the rest of their family to join them.

But as dawn came a massacre erupted. They watched as the soldiers beheaded her father and stabbed her two-year-old nephew before turning on the boy’s mother, Kveh. She was seven months’ pregnant.

The three of them returned to the village the following night to bury the dead. “The scene was hellish. We put the killed baby on my sister’s chest and covered them with stones. But we couldn’t find my father’s corpse,” wrote Lusya Araqelyan, recounting the story told to her by her grandmother.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is very disturbed about this. Not the genocide, of course, but people calling it genocide.

Turkey’s president has lashed out at country leaders who have recognized the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide on the centenary of the massacres.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday accused France, Germany, Russia and Austria — whose leaders or parliaments recently described the killings as genocide — of supporting “claims constructed on Armenian lies.” He accused the United States of siding with Armenia although President Barack Obama stopped short of using the term in his annual message.

It was all just a misunderstanding, I guess.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

David Futrelle pays attention to Vox Day so that the rest of us don’t have to. That’s a service. He finds him admitting something about GamerGate.

[T]he interview also featured a few striking moments of candor. One of these came when Day — a sometime gave developer as well as the biggest asshole in Sci Fi — offered his answer to the question: “What is Gamergate really about?”

Suggesting that the issue of “corruption in game journalism” was little more than “the spark that set the whole thing off,” Day declared that

what Gamergate is fundamentally about is the right of people to design, develop and play games that they want to design, develop and play without being criticized for it.

Which is an. er, interesting perspective, as there is in fact no “right” to be immune from criticism.

Ok maybe not a right to be immune from criticism in general, but criticism from feminists who think women shouldn’t be omitted from huge swathes of the culture? That’s a whole different story. Or to put it another way, artistic criticism, fine, knock yourselves out, but political criticism?? KILL IT WITH FIRE.

But Vox is right in one sense: the elimination of criticism is in fact is what #Gamergate has been about all along — or at least the elimination of criticism aimed in their direction. Indeed, that’s what most #Gamergaters mean when they talk about fighting “corruption in game journalism” — shutting down those writers and publications that have dared to critique the prejudices of a backward portion of the gaming universe that is hostile to any challenges to the status quo ante — particularly from women with opinions different from theirs. That’s what drove the outrage over the “death of gamer” articles last Fall. And that’s what has driven “critics” of Anita Sarkeesian from the start.

Yup. How dare anyone try to expand our private fiefdom? It’s corruption to try to do that? Our private fiefdom should remain tiny and ours forever!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Rosie DiManno at the Star is repulsed by the rejoicing over the “clarification” by Justice Edward. She is rude enough to point out that it’s a good outcome for JJ but not for her predecessor.

It is nothing less than a tragedy that a second family lost their own similarly afflicted 11-year-old daughter, Makayla Sault, after chemotherapy was spurned.

The two cases are linked because, in both instances, Brant Children and Family Services refused to intervene and compel chemo by taking the girls into agency care.

In the J.J. matter, Justice Gethin Edward ruled last November that the child was not in need of removal from the bosom of her loving family and, further — shockingly — that the aboriginal right to practise traditional medicine is protected under Section 35 of the Constitution, even when ineffective. Essentially, the cultural rights of a historically maltreated minority trumped society’s obligations to ensure a child’s optimal chance of life.

Yesterday, Edward revisited his decision, although he didn’t call it that. He called it a “clarification,” as sought by all parties concerned, and an amendment or an adjustment.

In truth, it was a retreat.

A retreat that came too late for Makayla, whose case never went to court.

But the lawyers didn’t want to talk about that. They brushed off questions about it, saying this isn’t the time to “exhume that case.”

This is precisely the place to exhume that case — which is now being examined by a committee that reports to the Chief Coroner of Ontario.

The lawyer continued: “Let’s just leave things as, this is resolved for J.J.’s benefit and we’ll proceed without the need for further litigation, which isn’t in anybody’s best interest, and be glad for a collegial result.”

Oh yes, they were all in a self-congratulatory mood, the legion of lawyers representing J.J.’s family, Six Nations, Brant Children’s Aid, the Children’s Office of Ontario, McMaster Hospital — which had sought “clarification’’ on the original ruling — the Attorney General’s office, and (no lawyer needed) the judge, who, when the procedure was over, stepped down from his bench to speak personally with the child and her parents.

No acknowledgment, from Edward, that he’d got it alarmingly, even fatally, wrong back in November’s precedent-setting ruling that declared, solely in J.J.’s case, that the “mother’s decision to pursue traditional medicine for her daughter is her aboriginal right’’— even when it’s worthless and futile.

What if the parents had a “tradition” of torturing their children, or depriving them of water and food as punishment, or selling them into slavery? Would that too be ruled an aboriginal right? We’re all aboriginals of somewhere, we all descend from people with traditions we no longer want anything to do with.

Edward told court yesterday: “Implicit in those seven words was that, regardless of what this court said or did, or anyone else for that matter, what was paramount for the mother was what was in her daughter’s best interest.”

Yet there was no clarification, then, on what constituted the child’s best interest. And for four months, those best-interest provisos were not followed by the family as they pursued shaman remedies.

Precious months wasted, they were, for J.J. At least she got a second chance. Makayla didn’t.

Because there has been no appeal of Edward’s original ruling — the parties involved arrived at a mediated consensus for treatment, with J.J.’s care team now including a senior pediatric oncologist and a practitioner of traditional medicine — the legal heft of the judge’s decision will not be weighed by a higher court.

Until the next case comes along.

The next aboriginal child in need of protection — which was not given to Makayla and not compelled for J.J.

What in the world are these people applauding themselves for?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Remember? The ruling by Justice Gethin Edward of the Ontario Court of Justice that it was ok for parents to take their child off chemotherapy for leukemia because they’re First Nations people  and

Maybe First Nations culture doesn’t require every child to be treated with chemotherapy and to survive for that culture to have value.

Well now he’s “clarified” that ruling.

The clarification of a controversial court ruling that allowed the mother of an 11-year-old First Nations girl to pull her out of chemotherapy says the best interests of the child are “paramount,” but traditional medicine must be respected.

It is a “significant qualification” of Ontario court Judge Gethin Edward’s November 2014 ruling, according to one legal expert, which means the child’s well-being has to be balanced against rights to traditional medicine.

That’s still contemptible. There shouldn’t be any “right” for parents to withhold effective medical treatment from children, even if they’re doing it for reasons of “tradition” or any other kind of humbug.

Nick Bala, a law professor at Queen’s University, says the clarification “walks back” the original ruling that put First Nations constitutional rights as the major factor to be considered in the care of the child.

The clarification, read in a Brantford, Ont. court Friday afternoon, comes with news the child restarted chemotherapy in March when the cancer returned after a period of remission.

Let’s hope it didn’t start too late to work.

The controversial case began last September when J.J.’s mother pulled her daughter out of chemotherapy, taking her to the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida.

Up to that point, McMaster Children’s Hospital had been treating her in conjunction with the family’s use of traditional medicine. At the time, the mother told CBC News she believed chemotherapy was “poison.”

The hospital tried to get J.J. declared as a child in need of protection after Brant Family and Child Services made it clear they would not step in.

Last year, the court ruled in favour of allowing the Six Nations mother, dismissing the hospital’s case, and said in its decision it was her constitutional right to pursue indigenous medicine.

“It is this court’s conclusion therefore, that [the mother’s] decision to pursue traditional medicine for her daughter J.J. is her aboriginal right,” reads the original ruling from November. “Further, such a right cannot be qualified as a right only if it is proven to work by employing the Western medical paradigm. To do so would be to leave open the opportunity to perpetually erode aboriginal rights.”

“The Western medical paradigm” – meaning the one that is known to have a good rate of success with this particular leukemia. And it’s not “Western” – the word to contrast it with “traditional” should be “technological” or “evidence-based” or “effective” or similar. The issue is not geography and it’s not even politics. It’s not even an opposition: evidence-based medicine is happy to use “traditional” treatments that have been demonstrated to be effective. There’s no valid reason to reject effective medical treatment for children on the basis that it’s not “traditional” enough. (There’s no valid reason for adults to do that either, but at least it’s their own lives they’re playing with.)

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Guest post by Leo Igwe.

The photos of UK Prime Minister David Cameron shaking hands with the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Rev Enoch Adeboye at the Festival of Life program holding in London must disgust anyone who knows about the teachings and positions of Adeboye and his church, particularly on issues of homosexuality and witchcraft. Rev Adeboye was one of the pastors who openly canvassed support for the anti gay marriage bill stating that homosexuality would wipe out humanity.

He said:

Same-sex marriage is an anathema to the will of God for human beings to be fruitful, replenish and multiply on earth. Anything contrary to that is evil.

How can a man who marries a fellow man produce a child and how can a woman who marries a fellow woman produce a child?

If this evil is allowed to stay, there will not be newborns again in the world. As the older generation dies, will there be a new generations to succeed it? Even plants and animals have new generations to succeed them.

President Goodluck Jonathan later signed the bill into law. Since the anti gay marriage bill came into force many homosexual Nigerians have been turned into criminals in their own countries and refugees abroad.

Adeboye’s Redeemed Christian Church of God is among the pentecostal ministries that are propagating witchcraft narratives in the region. The preachings and sermons of these churches are a major driving force for witch-hunting ravaging many parts of Africa and African migrant communities including those in the UK. Participation by the British Prime Minister in a meeting organised by such a church gives it credibility. A handshake with its pastor is an endorsement of his teachings and positions. As the UK general election approaches, it is obvious that Cameron went to this event in search of votes from minority communities. But is congregating and praying with a homophobic and witch hunting pastor the way to achieve this?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

An interesting comment at PZ’s by Keith Monaghan.

Irish Atheist here. I used to be a supporter and paying member of Atheist Ireland until all this went down and Nugent went off the rails. He has poisoned the entire organisation with his willingness to defend abusers and provide a forum to known harassers. Not to mention his embarrassing brown nosing of our great “thought leaders” Dawkins, et al. It’s a real shame because many in Atheist Ireland have been doing great work regarding raising awareness about our ridiculous blasphemy law and the overwhelming control of our schools by the Catholic Church among a great many other abuses committed in the name of religion.

But just as the charitable acts of the Catholic Church do not outweigh the many abuses it allowed and in many ways fostered under its watch, AI does not get off the hook either. With the organisation choosing to side with Nugent in all this I had to question their commitment towards fighting against sexism and abuse within our community and for the well-being of atheists in general.

Do they only care about sexism and harassment when it comes to achieving their goals against religion only to turn a blind eye when it happens within our own community? I suspect that they do care but are unaware (and possibly unwilling to see) how their recent actions call that into question. The blind hypocrisy from an organisation, and from Nugent in particular, that has criticised the church for its culture of silence and abuse is rather appalling.

So when it came time for my membership to be renewed I emailed them asking that I be taken off their membership lists and I cited Michael Nugent’s behaviour and how it reflects on AI as my reason for leaving. Given Nugent’s insistence on professionalism and maintaining the right tone you will be shocked by the nature of the response I got from their head of Membership, Kevin Sheehan… Or more likely you won’t be shocked at all.

Basically all I got was this quote from the Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva:

Then there remain the many social issues that have been raised by colleagues. The Magdalene laundries, the Mother and Baby homes, the child abuse, the symphysiotomy. It is quite a collection, and it is a collection that has carried on beyond any period that it is hard to imagine any State Party tolerating.
And I can’t prevent myself from observing that all of them are not disconnected from the institutional belief system that has predominated in the State Party, and which occasionally has sought to dominate the State Party.

… and a link to a related article on the AI website.

And that’s it.

There was no attempt to address my concerns or even acknowledge that I had any in the first place. No confirmation that my membership had been ended at my request. No “We’re sorry to see you go”. Just the quote and link that, to my mind, clearly implies (whether through simple foolishness or malicious design) that, by discontinuing my support, I no longer care about those horrendous injustices. As though AI is the only organisation fighting for justice in those cases.

I find it very difficult to believe the message was a good faith attempt to change my mind (how could anyone think think something as dismissive and insulting as that would bring me back into the fold?). Rather I suspect that it was a pathetically childish (not to mention wholly unprofessional) attempt to have the last word. It only served to confirm my initial conclusions about the organisation and my decision to leave.

It would be great if they could clean up their act. That we need coordinated efforts to root out religious privilege and abuses in this country is without question but I am not prepared to sacrifice my fellow atheists’ well being as well as my own integrity in the pursuit of such and it saddens me that AI has seemingly chosen to do so.

It is sad.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Nick Cohen looks at the way Lutfur Rahman exploited leftwing ideas to protect his own personal power.

[H]e rigged the vote by using “undue spiritual influence”, an accusation unheard of in a British court since the 19th century. Rahman persuaded clerics to go far beyond saying they thought he was the best candidate. Islam is under threat, they said in so many words. It was the duty of all Muslims to vote for Rahman. If Bangladeshi voters did not, they would be siding with their Islamophobic enemies, perhaps even defying god’s will.

We are used to thinking of racism as Nigel Farage or the Tory tabloids egging on their readers to see the Aids-afflicted foreigner as the enemy. Indeed, it often appears that this is the only way we can think about it. The mirror image is just as foul and its foulness reached a nadir in London. The worst of Rahman’s corruption was not the purloined money, but the way he corrupted leftwing values.

Anyone who criticised the mayor was a racist. When councillors said the mayor must answer questions, his supporters accused them of “racism”. When an opponent appeared at a meeting in a black cardigan – the poor woman was in mourning for her dead husband, incidentally – Rahman’s fixer roared that where once the East End had been terrorised by Blackshirts, it was now terrorised by Blackcardigans.

Nick won a big award last weekend. He’ll never let us forget it, either. It was the European Press Prize, Commentator division. Chiz chiz Nick.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Well so much for Labour.

From the Indy:

Labour leader Ed Miliband has said his party will make Islamophobia an aggravated crime, toughing existing hate crime legislation.

Mr Miliband also said that his party intended to ensure that instances of Islamophobia were marked on peoples’ records, in an interview with The Muslim Times.

Although Islamophobia already falls under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006, whereby it is punishable by up to seven years imprisonment, Mr Miliband’s proposal would allow authorities to hand down tougher sentences for similar crimes.

“We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime,” he said.

Labour wants to make it an aggravated crime to dislike Islam.

Since we know that Islamists like to pin the label of “Islamophobia” on every kind of criticism of and disagreement with Islam, the prisons of Britain will be overflowing if Miliband is elected.

I saw this via Maajid Nawaz, who commented

Ed Miliband favours a ‘ban’ on “Islamophobia”.
My take: No idea is above scrutiny. No people are beneath dignity.

Quite. Discourage anti-Muslim bigotry by all means, but do not forbid us to dispute or criticize Islam.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Guest post by Simon Trepel, MD. He has more essays at Simon’s Creative Behavioural Therapy.

Truthfully, I probably would not have cared so much, about the shitty thing that Lubitz did, but I was literally stranded on a desert island, thousands of miles across the ocean from home, when he crashed the plane. Now, stranded is a relative term, the island was Hawaii, and I could only be less stranded while being on a desert island, if I was in Australia. But that is where I received the parcel of hate that he chose to deliver to my meme mailbox, that elephant part of your brain that never forgets, yet we call it the hippocampus. That would be a crowded university.And knowing that I needed to fly home, with my 2 daughters, ages 3 and 5, in less than a week, meant I was going to binge watch the entire miniseries, ping ponging between a fox, an spf, and a cnn.

And while it was a mystery on TV, for me, I knew early, why he splattered a plane, and 150 living, breathing, loving people, into a Jackson Pollock original, against the wall, of a new gallery of death. He loved to fly, and he hated to be sad. And, he loved what he loved, in his mind, more than you love what you love. He made the calculation that, since he could not complete his bucket list, neither could 150 people that contributed to his sadness in no way. So he exchanged a b for an f, and practiced relaxation exercises, so no one would think he was scared, for about 8 minutes.

There is no such thing as clinical depression. There is the depression your doctor diagnoses you with, and then there are the diagnoses we give ourselves. And it is different from sadness. Depression sucks, its worst feature is not the rewallpapering of your mind into a room you never want to be in, yet you are afraid to leave, because it’s even worse out there. The worst feature is, after a while, you want to die, but your body still thinks it’s its actual age. So then, you get suicidal. And here is where your personality finally gets a say. How do you want to kill yourself?

My first experience with suicide happened about 20 years ago, when my friend told me he came home to find his pilot father hanging in the bathroom, and my mind went blank after that. There are some sentences you hear in your life, cnacer is one of them, if you have read my only other essay since 1990, that act like instantaneous rohypnol is coursing through your brain. Once back online, I processed the story, learning that if you have depression, and you are a pilot, you are likely to lose your career. And if you have depression but it is well controlled on an antidepressant medication, you are likely to lose your career.

That, passengers, is the secret that they struggled with.

You may argue, that there are selfish sides to suicide, like there are selfish sides to suffering. There certainly are more and less selfish ways, in how you go about actually ending your life. I realize to him, the pressurized cockpit of the mask of happiness was becoming overwhelming. I see him that morning, sitting in his kitchen, drinking coffee on self appointed death row, shredding the doctor’s note excusing him from school that day. He has finished his homework, but he is still not good enough.

And, as he’s tearing the plane into little fragments, he’s thinking about the slaughter in its carriage, the meat luggage of strangers he does not care about. He is not enough of a man to be a pilot, as if gender matters, so saddling his daily resolve, he gives himself permission to be weak. The next domino is cowardice, and then tragedy.

It’s not Lubitz, but the mask, that we really have to worry about. The costume that helps us hide from the haunting stigma. We wear it so we are not judged, or perhaps have our very childhood dreams, that began gliding freely as a teenager, marvelling at more powerful engines, end up dashed like salt and pepper going 500km/h, on the side of a hill.

I want Marty McFly to appear, so we can go back, and I can talk to Lubitz, so we can all avoid this feeling of hate that he has projected into us, his last tantrum in a world where he did not get all the toys that he wanted, so he took his plane away. I want to know the shape of the face of the hero woodsman, more than I want to know Lubitz’s, even though the goods were never delivered. I want to meet all the people that he killed, and tell them not to fly that weekend, or to live their life like they are going to die at 35, or soon after 35000ft.

I want to plead with him not to usher down the aisle of his mind this villain, who is to take the final curtain call of his polymorphous perverse existence.

Not him, not now.

But what I really want to tell him, is that I know he was suffering alone. And that I know there are narcissistic aspects to depression, and even suicide. And that he does not have to lock himself in the cockpit of his life, but rather, stand up and say, I am a Pilot, and I have depression. And I don’t like how it steals my very ability to find joy and meaning in my life, so I have chosen to have it treated.

And if my doctor tells me that I need time off, to heal from an episode? Then, just like every other illness, I have that right, without the fear that my job, career or dream is up in the air.

Because I don’t want to be a suicidal Pilot.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Another “uh oh no you can’t make jokes about erm you know that one guy” episode, this time at the University of Bath.

[“]According to CWIPS” was the title of the performance that had the cramped, upstairs-corner of the Bath Brew House roaring with laughter. The show combined pop culture, Richard Dawkins, and the bestseller of all time – the Bible – to construct an amusingly witty performance. However, prior to the opening night, the society was met with some rather strong requests to edit the show.

…

[D]uring the opening week one of the SU officials quietly attended one of the rehearsals. Just four hours prior to opening night the committee of CWIPS was told that a sketch involving the depiction of the Prophet Mohammed titled ‘Cooking with Christ’ should be cut. “The SU couldn’t give more of an explanation,” recalls one of the members of the committee regarding the lack of justification given for the changes being made the show, especially on such short notice.

It became known that the Chaplaincy of the University had become involved in the decision making process of the SU. “We were told that the chaplaincy had read it and pronounced that sketch too graphic”, the committee member said, “we come under the authority of the SU, so whilst we don’t necessarily agree with what they asked us to cut we have to respect them as they are elected to their position, however the chaplaincy is not part of the SU.”

Why would a chaplain be vetting a student show?

Also, I frankly don’t understand the role of the SU in these things. I don’t think US universities have an equivalent – a student body that has the authority to censor student plays and sketches, authority that the students have to obey. I don’t see why being elected to their positions gives them authority to say “you can’t perform that sketch.”

The Chaplaincy claimed that the show would have caused “great offence” as the scenes that were cut were “extreme”, it was also added that “the concept of freedom of speech is important and should be respected”.

Spoken like a true chaplaincy.

During a conversation with the SU official, it was made clear that the decisions communicated to the CWIPS committee had been made so as to avoid complaints. Since the show was taking place in a public domain, the inclusivity of the Students’ Union had to be “maintained”.

“We worked very hard in order to make sure our material was enjoyable and pleasant for people of all faiths and backgrounds,” both members of CWIPS highlighted.

The freedom of expression is an important principle to maintain intact at university, especially regarding the arts. Even though the SU has had little experience with censorship of the arts at the University of Bath, the recognition that artistic expression is essential for students to feel free and creative needs to be maintained.

In other news…Kate Smurthwaite has just remarked on Facebook that she’s at QED to talk on a panel about free speech…

I was invited because of the issues raised by my show being cancelled at Goldsmiths because of my views on the sex trade. And – guess what – someone has complained I shouldn’t have been on the panel because of – wait for it – my views on the sex trade. You could not make this shit up!!

We live in interesting times.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

More from Siobhan Heanue, because she’s a journalist (for ABC, the Oz one) and she was looking at temples when the earthquake hit, so she’s tweeting these heartrending photos.

12 hours ago there was this

LIVE on #Periscope: Patan Durbar Square Kathmandu Nepal https://www.periscope.tv/w/Vxxh_zkyNDU5fDcwMDA0MjN-CfrLnC9NHLD72y5BqYsxHoOM8DxADi3oiGWyFeAi9w== …

Then an hour later

Huge earthquake in Kathmandu. I’m terrified.

Locals dragged her into a cafe, she said, but she was still afraid; aftershocks.

Then the first photo

Devastation in patan. Kathmandu earthquake.

Then more photos

Kathmandu patan district. Old royal square devastated.

Looking for survivors:

Kathmandu quake aftermath. Clearing rubble to search for survivors.

She has lots more. Good luck to her.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Meanwhile in Nepal…

(I must say I was disgusted to go to Google News for earthquake news and find at the top of the page headlines about ten dead on Everest rather than the hundreds dead in Nepal. A little too katiehopkinsesque, that.)

CNN has accounts from people in Kathmandu.

Kashish Das Shrestha in Kathmandu

“Some of the historical sites are completely devastated.

“Most of the people — a lot of the people — are walking through the city. They’re confused and scared. A lot of people are crying.

“They’re out with their pets and their families and a lot of locals are volunteering in rescue operations.

“In several parts of Kathmandu, a lot of people seem trapped under the rubble. Locals are trying to rescue these people because they can still hear them.”

Journalist Kanak Mani Dixit, Kathmandu

“I see many cracked buildings and people are panicked and all running down to the streets.

“The main landmark in Kathmandu is a spire, Dharahara, and it has fallen down, it is about 140 feet high in the center city.

“Another aftershock is hitting now, it is really strong.

“Airplanes are circling now overhead and helicopters are flying and not clear if the airport is open. We hear it is damaged.”

And a pair of startling, tragic before and after photos via Siobhan Heanue on Twitter:

Siobhan Heanue ‏@siobhanheanue
I took these photos an hour apart. Was wandering when quake demolished temples before my eyes. Heartbreaking.

She reports there are crumbled temples all over the central area of Kathmandu.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I’ve seen the name Eboo Patel often in discussions of “interfaith” activities, but I haven’t (that I recall) read anything of his until now. He has a long piece at Religion Dispatches arguing that we should be more accommodating toward haredi men who refuse to sit next to women on airplanes. That’s where “interfaith” takes you, I guess. It’s where privileging “faith” over more reasonable and careful ways of thinking takes you.

He starts by pointing out that people often do change their seats to be helpful to others – parents traveling with children for instance.

The obvious question: why is exchanging seats on an airplane with a senior citizen, a mother with children or a uniformed veteran considered a noble gesture while doing the same for an Orthodox Jewish man viewed as acquiescing to patriarchal oppression?

Actually no, the question is not obvious at all. It’s obvious in this context only because Patel carefully set it up that way. The two kinds of situation are not comparable. Parents’ wanting to sit with their children is entirely reasonable, and understandable, and universalizable. Parents’ wanting to sit with their children is in no way prejudicial to anyone else – it’s not an expression of hostility or contempt or disgust toward people who are not their children. (There’s also the fact that parents don’t generally demand that other passengers accommodate them.)

Patel’s next move is to try to frame this conflict as identity politics.

I have found it interesting to look at this situation in light of the influential identity politics formulation that ‘the personal is political’. First advanced by women in the feminist movement, it now serves as a pretty good one-line definition of cultural progressivism more broadly. I have heard it referenced in arguments for everything from Ethnic Studies departments to LGBT safe spaces.

That the personal is political centers on two chief ideas: 1) that identities matter (the personal); and 2) that those identities express themselves in public forms (the political).

No. That’s a misunderstanding of the phrase – which I’m not convinced really is still all that influential. It’s more a second wave catchphrase, as far as I know. What it meant was that issues that affected women were not trivial merely because they were domestic or “personal” – that who washes the dishes is in fact political. I don’t recognize Patel’s version at all.

It was certainly the way many of those who commented on the Times story framed their views. As a woman (the personal), I interpret your request as patriarchal and will not move to accommodate it (the political). 

No. That’s just all wrong. Being a woman isn’t “personal” in that sense. Nobody ever talked about the Montgomery bus boycott or the sit-downs at lunch counters as “the personal is political.” He’s confused.

Women have long been marginalized by men. A man asking a woman to move on a flight may reasonably be interpreted as another chapter in a seemingly never-ending story.

I am sympathetic to such a view. But haven’t Orthodox Jews experienced a long history of oppression? As far as who feels marginalized in the specific context of a typical commercial flight, consider that separation of sexes is far more common in traditional religious environments. Does the Orthodox Jewish man have a case that secular modernity is marginalizing his identity, and that all those comfortable with the current system are complicit in his marginalization?

No, and neither do racists who “feel marginalized” in the specific context of a typical bus or plane trip in which they do not get to demand segregated seating. We’ve been over this. Plessy v Ferguson. Brown v Board of Education. Separate but equal turns out to be not equal. We’ve been over this, decades ago. Try to keep up. We don’t need to re-litigate this every time a haredi man gets on an airplane. We need to not do that.

Perhaps the central difference is that religion is a choice. One cannot help being a woman but one can choose not to be the kind of Jew who refuses to sit next to women. But cultural progressivism has long defined identity based not on straightforward physical features such as skin color or genitalia but on assigned meaning. A core value of the cultural progressive worldview is that people get to select the identities that matter to them and assign the meaning they choose.

Oh no it isn’t. Oh hell no. Not in the sense that people get to do that and then deploy those “identities” as the foundations for rights to push other people around. Nope nope nope.

For example, cultural progressives frequently advocate for minority ethnic groups to speak their native languages or dialects if they wish, and dress and wear their hair in ways that are meaningful and comfortable for them. It seems to me the Orthodox Jewish man on the plane can make the same argument. Just like the African American who chooses to wear an afro and the woman who does not shave her legs—both common expressions of the personal as political—he is assigning a particular meaning to his identity as a Jew. It just so happens that the expression of the meaning he assigns to his religious identity is in conflict with the meaning that the woman sitting in the airline seat assigns to her gender.

Give me strength. No it doesn’t “just so happen” – the difference is crucial. The haredi man’s demand for segregated seating is not comparable to choices about hair (what bizarre examples!), because it’s a demand for other people to do something for him. The haredi man gets to wear whatever he wants to (within reason – clothes with sharp spikes won’t do on sardine-can airplanes), just as Afro guy and hairy-legs woman do. None of them gets to control who sits where.

Then he goes on to an extended and annoying bleat about the putative marginalization of religion from all this identity-mongering, and how unfair it is. It’s not persuasive.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Originally a comment by latsot on Actual dehumanization.

As awful as Hopkins is, the UK media are at least equally to blame (I’d argue they more to blame than Hopkins herself) for all her hateful nonsense. I don’t just mean outlets like The Sun. If anything, the more liberal outlets are even more complicit.

Hopkins has set herself up as a professional troll: professional with a capital P. According to an article I now can’t find, she has a team of people scouring news stories and (it’s presumed) coming up with the objectionable responses they can think of, which are then announced by Hopkins. Media outlets call her office for a rent-a-bigot quote. I wouldn’t be surprised if they called several times a day, regardless of whether they’re working on an article then building an article about whatever fresh horrible opinion she has on something.

One article about her is by a reporter who followed her about for a day. She was due to appear on the wishy-washy mid-morning show This Morning to say blithering things about some issue of the day. She and her staff met with the producers and presenters (and presumably lawyers) of that show and they discussed what she’d be saying. The presenters then feigned outrage on screen at what they’d earlier agreed she would say.

This is the very archetype of manufactured outrage. Her statements are cheap and guaranteed to sell so Hopkins caters to lazy journalists. They get to say awful things that they know will hurt people and blame someone else. It’s a great deal for them.

I don’t know (or much care) whether Hopkins really holds the views she announces. It doesn’t make her any less horrible if she doesn’t. But the press ought to be even more ashamed than she.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)