Assange and Sex by Surprise

This post continues my examination of the general wrongness that is some of the arguments being made by Assange supporters wishing to dismiss the rape allegations against him. Before commenting here, you should read the rest of these:

Assange and Real Rape
Assange and the Victim Conspiracy
Assange and the Presumption of Innocence
How Must She Behave to Have Been Raped?

Part 4: Swedes have some unheard of "sex by surprise" law they're using against Assange!
I wasn't expecting to have to write this post. I thought this issue was done when the charges for which the Swedes were requesting Assange be arrested were read out in a British court. I should have known that no bad information dies in a situations like this. But no, just two days ago:

The original Swedish charges were for Sexual Surprise- a term that doesn't have an equivalent here in the US and that carried a $750 fine. There is nothing in the original post that supports a charge of rape or assault--if you define rape as an act of sexual violence and assault as an act of physical violence.

The myth has merely morphed from "Assange is being charged with this ludicrous crime" to "Assange was charged with this ludicrous crime before...something happened." However, despite the attempts to continue to fit it into the evolving reality of the legal process, it simply isn't true. Assange is wanted for questioning on charges of molestation and rape, just as he was before the chief prosecutor had the original charges dismissed.

Complaint number 1 K246314-10
The information from interrogation with the complaintant, is as already reported, of such, that there is no longer a suspicion of rape. This does not mean that I do not trust her information. I have studied the content of the interrogation, to decide whether there is a suspicion of another crime, in first hand molestation or sexual molestation, but I find in my analysis that this is not the case. Therefore the preliminary investigation is closed concerning this complaint as there is not suspicion of crime.

Complaint number 2 K246336-10
Suspicion about molestation remains. I will instruct the investigator to interrogate the suspect.

That matches what was read out in the British courts. No "sex by surprise" in either case.

The only surprise available in the description of the alleged crimes comes from allegations that Assange started having sex with one of the women while she was asleep. However, the section of Swedish law that covers that is not remotely like the description we're given in the myth. From a translation:

Chapter 6

Section 1

A person who by assault or otherwise by violence or by threat of a criminal act forces another person to have sexual intercourse or to undertake or endure another sexual act that, having regard to the nature of the violation and the circumstances in general, is comparable to sexual intercourse, shall be sentenced for rape to imprisonment for at least two and at most six years.

This shall also apply if a person engages with another person in sexual intercourse or in a sexual act which under the first paragraph is comparable to sexual intercourse by improperly exploiting that the person, due to unconsciousness, sleep,intoxication or other drug influence, illness, physical injury or mental disturbance, or otherwise in view of the circumstances in general, is in a helpless state. If, in view of the circumstances associated with the crime, a crime provided for in the first or second paragraph is considered less aggravated, a sentence to imprisonment for at most four years shall be imposed for rape. If a crime provided for in the first or second paragraph is considered gross, a sentence to imprisonment for at least four and at most ten years shall be imposed for gross rape.

In assessing whether the crime is gross, special consideration shall be given to whether the violence or threat was of a particularly serious nature or whether more than one person assaulted the victim or in any other way took part in the assault or whether the perpetrator having regard to the method used or otherwise exhibited particular ruthlessness or brutality.

That's just plain old rape, with a prison term. And there's nothing revolutionary about the wording of that law. So where does the term "sex by surprise" come from? Simple:

"Sex by surprise" or överraskningssex as it would be translated in Swedish is slang for rape. It is a term that is used when speaking about rape, but jokingly, or keeping it light, a word that brings with it positive connotations, which makes the word inappropriate in itself, but it is nevertheless synonymous with rape.

So the people who are spreading this around are presenting slang as legal charges. If you're one of them, knock it off. When even Urban Dictionary knows what's going on here, you're only embarrassing yourself if you keep repeating this.

Assange and Real Rape

This post continues my examination of the general wrongness that is some of the arguments being made by Assange supporters wishing to dismiss the rape allegations against him. Before commenting here, you should read the rest of these:

Assange and the Victim Conspiracy
Assange and the Presumption of Innocence
How Must She Behave to Have Been Raped?

Onward.

Part 3: These charges are an insult to real rape victims!!!1!
Naomi Wolf may have been one of the first people to make a version of this argument.

I increasingly believe that only those of us who have spent years working with rape and sexual assault survivors worldwide, and know the standard legal response to sex crime accusations, fully understand what a travesty this situation is against those who have to live through how sex crime charges are ordinarily handled -- and what a deep, even nauseating insult this situation is to survivors of rape and sexual assault worldwide.

Here is what I mean: men are pretty much never treated the way Assange is being treated in the face of sex crime charges.

She is right and she is wrong. Very wrong. Rape charges are rarely handled well by authorities, yes. However, that is the travesty in and of itself. Handling one situation well, whether for political reasons or just because everyone's watching, is not a travesty. It's an aspirational model for dealing with other rape charges.

Wolf's argument is just another version of "Your attempts to help this minority group are invalid because you're not helping that minority group at the same time." It's a classic anti-activism wedge, and I'm saddened to see it being used by activists here.

However, there's a different argument that needs addressing. Sometimes it comes from men. Sometimes from women. It has slightly different shapes, but in its quintessential form, it goes like this:

I’ve seen a few feminists up in arms about the general lack of sympathy for Assange’s accusers among opponents of Big Brother. Well to those women all I have to say is this: Don’t try to play the 'rape card' on me, honey, cause I’ll trump you five times over. I have been raped, several times, and I can assure you I wasn’t laughing and socializing with my rapists the next day, nor did it take me several days to 'realize' I had been violated.

Before I get into more substantive matters, I do have to take a moment to note that I personally can't conceive of a better way to trivialize rape and its victims than to turn the whole thing into some kind of contest. Right. Onward.

This version of the "real" rape argument requires two things. (1) There is no confusion about what rape is. (2) All rape is the one thing or it isn't rape.

I'd like to think this whole discussion would be evidence for the widespread confusion over rape and leave it at that, but I believe it's important to understand the ongoing change in legal and societal definitions of rape that has happened within the lifetime of many people discussing this situation.

Not so very long ago, rape was generally considered a property crime in the West, with a long, biblical history. The punishment recommended for rape in Deuteronomy (22:25–29) depends on whether an unmarried woman is betrothed or not; i.e., whether she is the property of her future husband or of her birth family. This translated into a legal landscape in which those deemed to have some claim on a woman were broadly exempt from rape charges. It codified stranger rape as the gold standard for rapes.

Then the women's movement hit the topic of rape hard in the 1960s and 1970s, and things started to change in this respect. (Read Mary E. Odem's Delinquent Daughters for a glimpse at how laws had changed earlier in regard to statutory rape and the concept of sexual agency in women.) Women demanded recognition of the fact that they own their own bodies and are the people principally injured by rape. With that, legal definitions of rape started to change.

I do mean started. It took until 1993 for the last U.S. state to make marital rape an illegal act, and at the turn of the last century, spousal rape was still not classified as rape in 33 states, but as some lesser offense. Germany had just criminalized spousal rape two years earlier. And none of that means that individual police officers or even judges were taking the legal changes seriously.

Over the same period of time, the question of force has evolved as well. We have moved from legal and societal norms that required a woman to fight or attempt to fight a potential rapist in order to have her rape recognized as a crime to one in which we acknowledge that assuming consent is not an excuse. While some people, mostly men, shake their heads in confusion over what this all means (one question, and my exasperated answer), this simply brings the treatment of a woman's sexual autonomy in line with the treatment of any other property, no matter how it's looked after. Short form: it's still hers. But it's a new concept, and one that involves surrendering privileges and talking about sex like grown-ups, so there is resistance.

As an aside, some of this resistance appears, in the current situation, to be taking the form of a blind spot to the ideas of contingent consent and withdrawing consent. I can't tell you whether those who ignore the claims that consent was contingent on use of condoms and that one woman was unconscious and thus incapable of giving consent are being deliberately obtuse or honestly don't get the distinction, so let's take this back to property crime again.

When you lend Uncle Joe your lawnmower to mow his lawn, you expect him to mow his lawn. If you drive by and see him using your lawnmower to try to take down the small trees at the back of his property, and you ask him to stop that and stick to his lawn, you expect him to do it. If he doesn't, you are well within your legal rights to get your lawnmower back. And if he comes by and takes your lawnmower while you're sleeping, without any prior arrangement that he do so, you are within your legal rights to have him charged with theft.

See? Simple. But despite the fact that people don't have a problem with these things when they involve anything else, the rapid changes of the last couple of generations cause confusion when discussing rape. As does the fact that as of 2004, only seven states recognized withdrawal of consent via court decision and only one recognized it via state law. To bring it back to the argument that women should all be immediately, absolutely certain when the treatment they've received constitutes rape, that just isn't so.

Now, on to the idea that "real" rape is just one thing. Actually, I think the history that I've provided of various definitions shows that legally, there are plenty of varieties of rape. However, I'd also like to address the idea that rape that falls outside classic definitions is somehow less valid or less damaging.

I'll do this by looking at victim outcomes. Why? Rape is a crime because it comes with consequences to a victim. If you want to argue that different classes of rape are less validly called crimes, then they should differ in how they affect victims, yes?

From what we know of different types of rape, that isn't the case. Stranger rape and acquaintance rape don't differ in the severity of the rape trauma experienced by the victims. Neither does the dating relationship affect the severity. The degree to which a victim blames herself, however, is a predictor of poor victim outcomes following rape and may be mediated by the social support provided to the victim.

(Pointless disclosure: I haven't met Dr. Frazier, but I did replicate one of her experiments in college, just before a major legal decision made the original study more or less moot.)

That means that the ambiguous nature of the law and the tendency to level rape myths like RPGs at victims create an atmosphere in which situations like the alleged one here--rapes in which the victim is not grossly in danger--may be even more traumatic than some rapes achieved by threat of violence. Where trust is involved, where consent is even provisionally given, a very high potential for self-blame exists. Where a legal strategy must be built on competing narratives, there is very little support for the victim, particularly if that victim is in any way fallible or human.

In short, situations like these are, in fact, very dangerous for rape victims. And those who go around suggesting these rapes are trivial are only adding to the problem. It's time for that to stop.

Assange and the Victim Conspiracy

This is the second in a series of posts about the misleading, uninformed, and downright silly things some Assange supporters are saying about the rape charges over which he is facing extradition to Sweden.

Part 2: The women didn't cry rape until they found out Assange wasn't exclusive!!!
The basis of this argument is that neither of Assange's accusers went to the police until they'd met and compared notes. It's somehow presumed to follow from this that their "real" motive was jealousy. This is, at best, a nonsequitur. It's also not entirely compatible with the idea that they went to the police to have Assange coerced into an HIV test or the argument that one of the women is working on behalf of the CIA, but let's take it on its own merits for now.

What's not in dispute (note that this doesn't mean this information is accurate)? Neither woman immediately went to police after the events about which Assange is wanted for questioning. The women spoke to each other and were aware that Assange had had sex with both of them at the time they went to the police together.

What is in dispute? Whether this information has any value in determining whether the women experienced what the charges say they experienced. A reminder:

She said the first complainant, Miss A, said she was victim of "unlawful
coercion" on the night of 14 August in Stockholm.

The court heard Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner.

The second charge alleged Assange "sexually molested" Miss A by having sex with her without a condom when it was her "express wish" one should be used.

The third charge claimed Assange "deliberately molested" Miss A on 18 August "in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity".

The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on 17 August without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.

In order for the women's behavior to tell us anything, it should be something that is common in women who are not rape victims but uncommon among women who have been raped. (Information about male rape survivors is thin and complicated by a much stronger reluctance to report, even in surveys.) By that standard, nonreporting of rape is a worthless indicator.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports that the majority of rapes and sexual assaults perpetrated against women and girls in the United States between 1992 and 2000 were not reported to the police. Only 36 percent of rapes, 34 percent of attempted rapes, and 26 percent of sexual assaults were reported. [3]

Reasons for not reporting assault vary among individuals, but one study identified the following as common: [4]

• Self-blame or guilt.
• Shame, embarrassment, or desire to keep the assault a private matter.
• Humiliation or fear of the perpetrator or other individual's perceptions.
• Fear of not being believed or of being accused of playing a role in the crime.
• Lack of trust in the criminal justice system.

Let us note that reasons three and four for not reporting, if they played any part in the decisions of Assange's accusers, would seem to have been fully justified in this case.

From the same source, it's also not uncommon for people who don't report their sexual assaults to discuss what happened with others.

In the NIJ funded Sexual Assault Among Latinas Study (SALAS), it was found that victims did not commonly seek help from the criminal justice system, but did seek informal sources of help such as family and friends. However, one third of the women included in the study did not report their victimization to anyone.

The question of how common it is for victims to press charges when they discover they are not alone in their victimhood is trickier. Despite rape being as common as it is, it often leaves its victims feeling alone, separated by shame and denial from the rest of the world. These feelings are strong enough to keep some women from seeking any kind of formal support after their trauma (and with reason). On the other hand, we know that people with social support (friends, family, and acquaintances who believe them and don't blame them for the assault) are more likely to report and prosecute rapes.

Preventing other rapes is one reason presented to rape victims for reporting, and given some similarities between rape victims and domestic assault victims in reasons for not reporting their assaults, we can make some arguments why it might be an effective one. Anyone with more than a passing familiarity with domestic violence is familiar with the explanations offered by the offender: "I'm so sorry, honey. I can't believe I did that. I just got carried away. It will never happen again."

There are similar statements made in the case of rape. "You were so sexy. I just got carried away. It will never happen again." "I'm sorry. I didn't think you meant it. It will never happen again" In every case, either stated or implicit is the idea that this was a one-time offense, that it will not reoccur. We know that believing that the offender will change makes a difference in the behavior of victims of domestic assault. It isn't a stretch to posit that it will do the same in rape victims. Knowing that your assailant has raped someone else makes it much easier to understand that none of the fault for the rape was yours, and preventing someone else from being raped can provide the motivation to deal with your fear of the process of reporting a rape when you don't feel a prosecution can otherwise help you.

To bring this back to the Assange case and summarize briefly, the behavior of his accusers in speaking to each other before going to the police is hardly something that can only be accounted for by a conspiracy of sexual jealousy and revenge. Their behavior isn't unusual within the context of rape victims, and it's consistent with what we know about rape, assault, and reporting.

Does that mean that Assange is guilty? Oh, go read. Don't bother to comment here until you have.

What it does mean is that nothing about the validity of the charges Assange is facing can be determined from the behavior of the women involved. As an argument, this needs to be dropped.

Assange and the Presumption of Innocence

The misinformation campaign started by Julian Assange's Australian lawyer regarding the rape charges behind Sweden's extradition request continues, aided and abetted by a mess of hyperventilating fanbois (some of whom are female). In the next few days, I'll collect and address a mess of misrepresentations, conspiracy theories, rape myths, and logical fallacies here, mostly so I don't have to argue with them one at a time, over and over again. And again. And again.

Part 1: If you don't say Assange is innocent, you're saying he's guilty! Presumption of innocence!!!
This is the argument of a fanatic, frankly, and it's disturbing to keep finding it posted about here and there. It's also a perfectly false dichotomy, generally accompanied by a whopping dose of double-standard.

The presumption of innocence is a standard that's incorporated in many, if not most, Western, industrialized legal systems. It is, in fact, a good thing, allowing people to retain most of their rights while allegations are being examined. I say most, because people are generally required to cooperate to a certain extent in determining the truth behind an accusation--to participate in trials either directly or through a representative, to be subject to certain questions, whether they answer them or not.

Even here, however, there are procedures in place that require a generally independent judiciary to make some preliminary evaluation of the credibility of the accusation before cooperation can be compelled. Whether you agree with the decisions of judges in Assange's case, those procedures are being followed in Sweden and in the UK.

However, the presumption of innocence has also been adopted, to varying degrees, as a social standard for protecting the reputation of those accused of a crime. It's in the conflation of the legal and social standards that the problem arises here. Fanbois want this standard to be applied to Assange in the court of public opinion the same way it is in the legal system. However, at the same time, they are willing to convict Assange's accusers of lies, hysteria, and complicity with a global governmental conspiracy.

I've seen two defenses of this practice. The first is to note that the accusers are not charged with anything in Sweden. In addition to this argument coming from the same group who insist it's meaningful that Assange has not had charges formally filed, making all parties equal in this respect, this is part of that conflation of legal and social systems. A social double-standard is still a social double-standard (rising to the level of hypocrisy in this case) even if the legal status of the two parties were different, which they aren't.

The second defense of this practice isn't something I've seen baldly stated, but it's implicit in the idea that anyone not raining down on the heads of the alleged victims is saying Assange is guilty. That's the assertion that in order to maintain Assange's innocence, the women must be considered to be lying.

This is the false dichotomy. It relies on a misunderstanding of what a presumption actually is. If it's not clear to you what I'm talking about, go back to the part where I explain why the presumption of innocence is a good thing. In short, a presumption of innocence doesn't mean that we say we know anything about the truth behind an accusation. It means just the opposite.

In the social realm, it means we don't impose sanctions because it isn't our place to decide what the truth is, that this being a legal matter, we allow the legal system to move before rushing to judgment and acting on those judgments. It means we say we don't know.

In short, it means growing up and dealing with the uncertainty that is inherent in our not having been a party to anything that happened or being privy to anything but the most superficial and ambiguous indications of what's going on in the heads of either Assange or his accusers. It means waiting. That this is difficult for fanbois doesn't change what the presumption of innocence actually is.

Notes from the Front

Your Atheist Correspondent Reports Back from the War on Christmas
I'm not quite ready to do 2010 retrospective posts at the moment, although there are some I'd like to do. The end of 2010 has presented me with too much unfinished business. Some of it is things I need to do and say. Some of it is simply events hanging in the balance. Either way, it doesn't feel as though the year comes to a close tomorrow.

The Christmas rush is over, however, so I'll take a quick peek back at that through the lens of this mythical War on Christmas. There is little enough religion in my personal life that the bits that do crop up tend to get noticed, and since part of Christmas is spent with the most religious of the connections, I got to do lots of noticing last weekend.

The Lord Giveth
The "kids" in the connection are, for the first time this year, all in college or beyond. As everyone gathered around the pool table, there were jokes made about the appropriate use of college time being learning to drink and play pool. They had to be jokes, given the way the kids were playing pool and their reaction to the one among them who was exceptionally good.

He came in for a certain amount of teasing about how he was spending his study time. The teasing ended, though, when his brother playfully suggested maybe it was a "God-given gift" instead. I haven't been able to figure out why that statement killed the conversation. Too irreverent? Too silly? Nowhere to go from there? I don't know. All I can say is that it was a conversational lemming.

I Shall Not Want
I was disturbed later, however, when one of the adults made his own reference to God's gifts. He said something along the lines of "God is good to good people." The context made it clear he was talking about this world, not any hypothetical next one.

I...was creeped out, actually. Prosperity gospel. Fatalistic mumbo jumbo. Supernaturalistic fallacy. Magical antisocial self-justification. Giving it names can't come anywhere near describing how perfectly this goes against everything I do and am. The next time someone tells you an atheist has no reason to be "good"…yeah. This.

And I said nothing. Why? Because once I opened the gates to respond, I wouldn't have been able to stop. I wouldn't have been coherent enough to get a message through to anyone listening. And it would have made no difference to the person I was talking to, since anyone capable of believing that tortuous formula is quite capable of claiming persecution at the least disagreement, much less the relentless volley he'd have received.

Christ Is Risen
I'm happy to say that our tradition of giving a donation plus a small homemade gift is catching on, albeit in a small way. We get some similar gifts, even if we do still end up sitting in the midst of everyone else's wrapping paper and boxes. Eh, college kids need stuff far more than we do. We're also lucky that the charities supported are ones we would chose for ourselves. Good gifts.

The interesting thing about one of these gifts was the explanation that came with it. To paraphrase: "Giving is good. We chose this charity that does this. We hope you like that." Then: "The Lord Christ is risen." It is interesting, in part, because it was the only religious sentiment passed out with the gifts. Everyone who received one of the donations received the religion with it, but no one else did.

I find myself wondering what that means about how the givers feel about different types of gifts. Are charitable gifts not "real" gifts, so that they need to be justified with religion? Are they gifts more true to the spirit of the givers' religion, thus earning the phrase? If so, the contrast between that and other gifts points up the contradictions of the holiday in ways that I, an unbeliever, could never hope to accomplish.

I don't know what the answer is, or even whether it's something as trivial as these gifts being the only ones with any kind of written sentiment attached (I don't know whether they were), but the phrase felt enough out of place there to make me think.

The Lord Is Good to Me
For large occasions, this family gathers into a circle and holds hands to sing the Johnny Appleseed song as grace. This is amusing for a number of reasons. Appleseed got most of his seeds from cider companies, and his trees produced cider apples, so what he spread was a convenient source of fermentable sugar. He was a Swedenborgian, which is still tiny and generally considered heretical by more mainstream religious factions. Also, it was hugely fun getting the kids to hold hands with me when they were still young enough to believe in girl cooties.

This year, however, I smiled for a different reason. I happened to be standing in exactly the right place in the circle to notice that one of the kids wasn't singing, at least to start with. He chimed in once he was clearly the only person not singing (the atheists in the room like singing and just skip the "amen"), but he had the guts to start out alone and against tradition. It gives me a bit more hope for this next generation, who are off to be educated at secular institutions far away from their parents.

It's always so nice to get even a small victory in this war I'm not bothering to fight.

Discriminating Against the Discriminating

It isn't terribly hard to find Christians who claim to be persecuted for their beliefs. It's particularly easy this time of year, when people are told that the inclusive wishing of "Happy Holidays" is somehow an affront. Forget that one's religious beliefs aren't and shouldn't be assumed to be somehow visible in a casual encounter or that "Merry Christmas" is grossly inappropriate to many, where "Happy Holidays" welcomes essentially everyone. They're told they've been insulted, and they believe it.

Now, however, via Skepchick, we find a group of Christians who have lost substantially more than their holiday cheer over their religious beliefs. Or at least, they've lost over some kind of belief. Let's see what they lost and why.

But in 2006, after he qualified as a psychosexual therapist, he told his employers that he did not feel able to give sex therapy advice to homosexuals.

A Christian bed and breakfast owner was threatened with legal action for turning away a homosexual couple in March 2010.

Dr Sheila Matthews, a Christian doctor, was told she would be removed from a council's adoption panel because she refuses to recommend cases involving homosexual couples.

Shirley Chaplin, a 54-year-old grandmother, was taken off wards and moved to a desk job after refusing to remove the crucifix that hangs around her neck. In April 2010 she was told by an employment tribunal that wearing the cross raised health and safety concerns and was not a "mandatory requirement" of the Christian faith.

Right. We have one person who thinks her display of public piety is more important than patient health despite anything written in Matthew and three people who think an injunction from the Old Testament is more vitally Christian than the New Testament's pervasive call to service for the most vulnerable among us.

That, right there, is the problem with allowing "religious" belief some kind of ascendency over the standards of our public life. As Voltaire said, "If God has made us in his image, we have returned the favor." These beliefs may be closely held, but they are not religious in nature.

I live in a city with a relatively long history of acceptance of homosexuality. Churches here--of most denominations--largely reflect that acceptance. Those that don't belong to communities that are not traditionally as accepting. The churches simply codify existing prejudices and values, with the "religious beliefs" of each denomination being shaped by the community rather than the other way around.

Of course, individual's beliefs are supported and reinforced by their membership in these religious communities. However, when they are not, people generally do one of two things. They convert to a sect that supports their personal beliefs, or they ignore the teachings of their sect in favor of their own preferences (as with the quarter of Catholics who do not believe in transubstantiation or the majority of Protestants who do). This suggests again that labeling beliefs as "religious" and privileging them as such is a problematic practice. Is a belief religious if your religion doesn't support that belief?

Then we have the fact that there are any number of religious beliefs we collectively refuse to recognize. Banks do not recognize the loan forgiveness of Shmita. We do not kill people for adultery (or consensual extramarital sex). Parents whose children suffer or die because of reliance on faith healing are prosecuted. We allow manufacturers to produce wool-linen blends.

In other words, we legally recognize interests that override an individual's ability to impose their religious beliefs on others. Going back to our sample discriminatees, the interests of hospital patients in maintaining a sterile treatment environment are obvious. I would hope that the interests of sexual minorities in equal treatment would be equally obvious, but I know that there are those who suggest that it hurts nothing for those minorities to receive their services from someone else.

There are two problems with this reasoning. The first is that requiring sexual minorities to shop around to find someone who will serve them is not equal treatment. It places additional burdens on them that others are not required to shoulder. The second is that while the religious do have the right not to serve in a way that contradicts their religious beliefs, they do not have a right to a service job if they cannot or will not serve.

This isn't merely in the interest of those who are protected from discrimination. It's in the interest of our society as a whole that we all have a recognized right to equal treatment, equal rights and responsibilities, that can't be taken from us at the whim of anyone who finds a community or sect that reinforces their prejudices. After all, there isn't a form of discrimination or brutality that hasn't found (or had made) some religious reasoning that makes it all acceptable.

That those in this article can't see that they're being held to the same standards as everyone else and being offered the same protections is far more a testament to the fact that their rights haven't been in question than it is any indication of persecution.

Not So Very Little

The worst version of "The Little Drummer Boy" I've heard was playing in a pizza parlor on Christian radio. It was a duet, male and female, with mismatched vibrato in their voices. The arrangement was basically New Age, country, soft jazz, and I think they'd reworked the lyrics to make them more Christian.

Yes, it really was that bad. I also heard it this year, which makes me extra happy that this version came along now. This is highly nontraditional and definitely not safe for many workplaces, so it's tucked below the fold.

Enjoy.

Little Taiko Boy

Continue reading...

Grandma Cookies

It's the time of year when almost everything else takes a backseat to cookie making. As I've mentioned before, most of the gifts we give are charitable donations, with cookies to sweeten the deal for the recipients. That's a lot of baking in a short period of time, particularly if I've compressed my holidays by taking a week-long trip in the middle of them, as I did this year.

What am I making this year? Nothing too fancy; I go for variety of flavor over shapes, making at most one "presentation" cookie in a year. There are a couple of trusted standbys: almond sugar cookies and pecan sandies that Ben makes. There are the tweaked classics: Kiss cookies with a coffee cookie and dark-chocolate Kisses, crispy rice bars with chopped pistachios and dried cherries mixed in ('Cause they're green and red. Get it? Oh, never mind.). There's the untried recipe: "Pumpkin cookies with orange icing? Huh. Sure."

Always, however, are the grandma cookies. I'm sure they had a name at one point, but when I copied down my father's mother's recipe, I didn't keep it. I've never seen anyone else make them, so they've stayed named after her. They're a cake-like cookie, with a smooth texture and a mild but rich flavor due to the Dutch-process cocoa.

A few things to know if you're thinking about making the cookies. This produces a stiff, sticky dough that has to be refrigerated overnight before baking. It's too much for me to stir together by hand, and it makes my Kitchen Aid whiny. Admittedly, it's an older stand mixer, but I wouldn't want to try this with beaters either. Nor can I use my dishers to portion the dough for baking. The sweep comes off the track.

Natural cocoa will not give you the same flavor. If you can't get Droste at your local market, consider ordering from someplace like Penzey's (gotta love cocoa powder that is labeled "high fat"). Also, this uses a lot of dishes. Be prepared to take up counter space.

Wet ingredients:
12 oz. cottage cheese
1 c. butter (2 sticks, 1/2 lb.)
2-1/2 c. sugar
3 eggs

Dry ingredients:
4-1/8 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. Dutch-process cocoa
1-1/2 t. baking powder
3/4 t. salt

1-1/2 c. chunks (good chocolate chips, toasted nuts, chopped dried fruits that play well with chocolate)

Powdered sugar for coating cookies (about 1 cup).

Pull the butter and eggs out of the refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature. In the meantime, whisk together the dry ingredients in a bowl and set it aside.

Dump the cottage cheese into a sifter and work it through the holes into the mixer bowl using the back and edge of a table spoon. Add the butter. When that is roughly mixed, add sugar and mix until the texture is smooth (sugar will still be visibly granulated). Incorporate eggs one at a time.

Slowly add the dry ingredients. Expect to clean cocoa off all the nearby surfaces when you're done, but working in small amounts will help. When the dough is a consistent texture, add the chunks at once. Stop mixing as soon as they're incorporated.

Refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 350F with racks just above and below center.

Roll dough into 1-inch balls. I use nitrile gloves, as the dough really is that sticky. Roll the balls in powdered sugar to coat. Space about 1-1/2 inches apart on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper. Bake for 15 minutes. May be moved to a cooling rack right away or cool on the pan briefly.

Makes about 7-1/2 dozen cookies.

Enjoy.

Who's the Hero?

So you've seen that some guy with a grudge and a gun shot up a school board meeting before killing himself. If you haven't seen the video (and the standard macho posturing about how the guy had to be a horrid shot because he missed all the people and some dumbass blog commenters can hit a paper target while under no stress whatsoever), check out Greg's post on the event.

Checking out the news coverage, I was struck a bit oddly by all the articles referring to school security chief Mike Jones as a hero.

Don't get me wrong. The guy did his job and did it well from what's being reported. He held off firing his gun until the board members were in more danger from the hostage taker than they would be from his bullets flying around the room. He kept his head and his aim and managed to fire at another human being, which is (and should be) much harder than gun nuts generally give credit for. He lived up to his training and his responsibilities.

However, there is also Ginger Littleton:

Ginger Littleton took about 30 seconds to decide she was going to use her hand-me-down purse to try to knock a gun out of the hands of the man threatening her colleagues on Tuesday.

In the hours afterward, she'd concede it probably wasn't the best idea. But at the time, she worried she was the only person in position to stop a slaughter at the Bay District School Board meeting in Panama City, Florida.

So Littleton -- the one board member the gunman had released, because she was a woman -- re-entered the room, sneaked up from behind and swung.

This. This is heroism. Stopping and turning around to go back, totally unprepared, because you're the only person in a position to make a difference. Taking action despite the risks. Doing what you can because you must.

Yet Littleton is only rarely being touted as a hero, while Jones is everywhere. Sure, Jones is what we've been told a hero is. He is male and armed and was generally successful. One of those is a good thing generally, but it does not a hero make.

So why isn't Littleton being hailed as the hero she is?

Every Anime Opening Ever Made

Via my friend Jodyth. I don't watch a ton of anime, but I was impressed at how quickly other examples sprang to mind from what I do watch.



And one more from the same creator on a different topic.



I love these music choices.

Do These Social Skills Make My Ass Look Creepy?

A while ago, over at Skepchick, Elyse asked for suggestions for dealing with the "creepy dude factor" as a barrier to women's participation in skeptic and atheist events. A (thankfully small) number of guys asked whether their geeky lack of social skills or someone else's would be classed as part of that problem. I would love to be able to say that if you think to ask, then no, you're not part of the problem. But...

Yes, guys, sometimes your social skills are part of the problem. However, it isn't in the way that you think it is. It isn't because you're awkward or not sure how to manage your body language. It isn't because you don't say the same things everyone else is saying.

It's because you can't set aside being self-conscious long enough to notice that someone just asked for your help with something really damned important.

Still don't know what behavior I'm talking about, or Elyse was talking about? All you have to do is wait.

yeah… people I’ve never met before falling all over me trying to lay the charm and flattery on thick is CREEPY as hell. Far more creepy than some WoW geek. HOWEVER, if that WoW geek is making a lot of rape jokes, or describes his character’s latest exploits as “raping the shit out of other character” whatever, that is ALSO creepy as hell (apparently this may be common in many games?? I don’t play, I don’t know, but it’s not appropriate in a social meeting). Being condescending is also a super turn off and mostly just annoying, not necessarily creepy, but still likely to make me want to stay home next time.

Not that hard to understand. Neither is this.

The last time I played D&D, two male players spent the whole game having their characters attempt to rape my character, saying it was “in character” for them to do so.

And if the women explaining it isn't enough for you to understand creepy, just wait for the guys to show up and demonstrate.

i have no interest in learning about your likes and dislikes, i’d rather talk about the last speaker or an issue brought about by that weirdo woman who talked about female porn at TAM london, romanticizing sex at a public venue is sorta lame.

i mean honestly, what percentage of your sexual encounters, are filled with bouquet of flowers, rose pedals leading to the bedroom, champagne and caviar, cheesy music, constant wind to blow back each persons’ hair, and it going on for an hour?

this creepy guy comment brought to you by the committee for more relaxed attitude toward strangers and sponsored by the get over yourself foundation.

Once you stop looking at yourself for a few minutes, it becomes kinda obvious. But to get back to you, since that's your main concern, what's so creepy about the way you're behaving?

How do I put this? Well, think of it this way. When was the last time you had to tell the world that you didn't feel safe, that you were dealing with people who thought it was funny that you were scared, that you were dealing with people who thought they had a right to whatever they wanted from you?

Okay, there's a good chance you've never been in that position, but try to imagine it. Imagine that kind of insecurity, that kind of fear. Now imagine the risk involved in telling someone else how vulnerable you know you are.

Now imagine that person's response is "Huh. You don't think I'll have trouble making friends or getting a date because I don't know how to make small talk, do you?"

That's where you get creepy.

Look, guys. You don't need to know how to make small talk. You don't need to know how to make someone laugh. You do need to figure out how to listen to what someone says and understand that sometimes it's time to put aside your own concerns. It's really that simple.

Veganism and Virtue

I posted a link to this article a while ago on my Facebook profile, and it sparked an interesting discussion. Let's see whether that happens again here.

Many of you know that I have recently been struggling for the first time in my life with health problems. When I discovered that my problems were a direct result of my vegan diet I was devastated. 2 months ago, after learning the hard way that not everyone is capable of maintaining their health as a vegan, I made one of the most difficult decisions of my life and gave up veganism and returned to eating an omnivorous diet. My health immediately returned. This experience has been humbling, eye-opening, and profoundly transformative. To hear the whole story just keep reading…

I've been known to get into arguments with proselytizing vegans online for reasons that are made all too clear in this post. The typical scenario is that a vegan diet is sold as a great moral good because it contains no animals (read "no death") that is healthful because it is good. It isn't hard to find the absurdity in this position. After all, the diet that causes the least death in the world is a starvation diet, containing no food at all. However, despite the existence of those who claim to live on breath alone, we can all generally understand that, well, that diet would kill us.

Yet somewhere in between, proselytizing vegans don't recognize that morally good does not equal healthful. A vegan diet works for some people but not all. It's a less efficient diet, and not all of us absorb nutrients equally well, for a number of reasons.

The problem is that because veganism is viewed as a moral good, the inability to absorb all necessary nutrients from the diet, even with supplementation, is viewed as a moral failing. Read the post to see what the writer was subjected to when she discovered she couldn't live as a vegan.

Then keep reading to see her deconstruct the idea of the vegan diet as a moral good.

Twelve Months of Almost Diamonds

DrugMonkey is perpetuating a meme again. He does it so rarely, it stays fun to participate. This meme is simple: Post a link to your first(ish) blog post in each month along with the first sentence of the post. So here's a quick year in review.

January: I'm feeling like crap for a number of reasons, including complications of the surgery and a plain old cold, so I haven't been posting regularly, but this did catch my attention today.

February: Tired of Valentine's Day advertising?

March: Two blog anthologies made recent announcements I'd like to share.

April: We have a corner lot in the city, with plantings where a lot of people would have lawn, so lots of trash gets blown into our yard and stays for a while.

May: How do you build up a movement with destructive criticism?

June: "Because I said so" may be four of the most satisfying words in the English language.

July: Still in the middle of a couple of insanely busy weeks, but I'm enjoying them immensely, due in no small part to my honeymooning Canuckistanian friends.

August: Something interesting happened just the other day.

September: I'm delivering a guest lecture at a local community college this evening on religious skepticism.

October: Yesterday and today are the Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN.

November: There's a certain irony in the conservatives saying that they're "taking back their country," because that's exactly what I intend to do tomorrow.

December: Let's just go through a few of the highlights since my last blog post, shall we?

The Edge and Beyond

Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint came out while I was in high school. I didn't read it then, although I rather wish I had. Although I loved it on reading it, it didn't immediately become my favorite book. It has, however, stayed in that place through to the present.

Why? Well, there are a few things. It is a plot-driven novel, by which I mean, not the usual, but that there are schemes and politics propelling the events of the books. It's all about the intersection of identity and social roles, with a subtle helping of what it means to be family. And it is a fantasy book that relies not one tiny bit on magic to tell its story.

If you haven't read, go find a copy. If you have read it (and The Privilege of the Sword), you can now find out the ending to Richard and Alec's story in "The Man with the Knives." Be warned. It is an ending. It is other things as well, but it is decidedly an ending.

And if someone hasn't already, you may still be able to get me a copy for Christmas.

Nothing to Hide

Do you know how many people were killed on the four hijacked flights on September 11, 2001? The answer is 266, including the 19 hijackers. Two months later, 260 people died when a single plane broke apart in the air due to pilot error. None of them were hijackers.

Yes, there were thousands on the ground who died. I am not forgetting them. I am very happy to report that the U.S. government and airlines quickly took measures to securely separate passengers from flight controls.

I'm also happy to say that the U.S. quickly took some measures to tighten up what was some of the industrialized world's sloppiest airport security. Before the hijackings, I was on a trip to Scotland that involved the transportation of large amounts of camera equipment and a lead-lined bag containing film. I thanked the security scanners in the Glasgow airport for being the only people who bothered to look in the bag to make sure it was film. Things were incredibly lax before the hijackings. They did not stay that way.

In the nine years that have followed the hijackings, how many people have died in terrorist attacks on planes with passengers screened by the TSA? Of the attacks that happened and failed, how many were not carried out by fanatics who were willing to die? Or to put the same question in terms of relevance today: How many of them were less motivated than your average drug mule, who won't be discovered by anything less than a cavity search?

The answer to that last question is important. That is the number of attacks that will be prevented by the new, highly invasive screening measures the TSA has recently implemented.

I don't know the answer to that question. Neither do you, but we can both make pretty good estimates. I'm going with zero. Your answer may be different, but it won't be wildly different. We have taken effective measures to increase our security since the hijackings. I don't see any way that this new measure can even incrementally increase our current level of airline security. This is pure security theater.

Anil Dash wrote a couple of weeks ago about the value of security theater. I recommend reading his post. If nothing else, he lays out the maximum value we obtain from measures like these. It is the value of an illusion, but it is a value. And given that we won't obtain any safety increases from allowing subjecting ourselves to this sort of search, it is the total value we will receive. Please keep that value fixed firmly in your mind as you keep reading.

I also have Fibromyalgia. There are points on my body that fire up an amazing amount of pain in response to the slightest pressure. I educate new lovers with brightly-colored disc bandages or stickers. Somehow I doubt the airport authorities will comply with the sticker game.

So… okay. I’ll just dodge the freak-out and the pain by sucking in my lumpy bits and walking through the scanner. I’m generally not shy with my body, I don’t travel often, and I’m not on a first-name basis with the x-ray/MRI tech at the local clinic, so there shouldn’t be an issue.

But wait! There’s more!

I have a genital piercing (a vertical clitoral-hood bar to be specific), and the horror stories have already begun circulating among the metallically-infused about pat-downs, hassles, and fucking strip-searches following these scans. Is it possible these stories are just stories? Urban legends for the new era? Sure. Does it matter to the lizard-brain nested in my head? Absofuckinglutely not.

I am a transexual man. Being “caught” by TSA as a person of transexual past could literally mean my death. Transgender people have the highest rate of hate-crime and the highest rate as murder victims in the USA.

I don’t fly. And I won’t at any point in the foreseeable future. I haven’t for several years due to the invasive screening I had in 2004 that left me with nightmares.

I am a rape survivor. And I know that if I am forced to have the kind of circle jerk that I’ve seen on video–where a bunch of TSA screeners surround me and one of them touches me in very private places–there is a real chance I’m going to freak out. Traveling is always very stressful, in part because I have visual processing issues and epilepsy (see above; i.e, fractured head). Add onto that reliving a painful part of my past–someone touching me and I have no ability to say “I don’t consent“–I am not a happy traveler.

I’m getting ready for a business trip right now. I’m on the job hunt too, since I’ll be laid off next May. I’m hoping to make some important connections with these meetings.

Am I worried that I won’t make a good impression on the bigwigs that I’m going to meet? Am I spending time crunching data to make a good impression when I present my TPS reports?

Nope.
I’m freaking out about just getting on the fucking plane. That’s what I’m spending all my energy on. And that’s not right.

For my friend with a colostomy bag. For my sister with a partial breast reconstruction. For the oh-so-many other women who have been raped or molested.

There has to be a better way.

I'm completely with Bug Girl. There has to be a better, less-invasive way to make people feel a little better. More importantly, there has to be a way to do this that doesn't step all over--by design--those who have something real to worry about.

Yes, by design. We don't know where the next attack will come from. We don't know what it will look like. What we do know is that it will almost certainly look different than any previous attack. And what that means is that screeners have to look for the different. At least, they need to do that if they're going to do a proper job of things instead of assuming a terrorist has no creativity.

That means that anything a standard-issue government employee doesn't recognize or understand is cause for suspicion. Really, that's always been the case, but now there's a new twist. Instead of looking at our luggage, the TSA is looking at us. They're turning their attention from what we're carrying to what we are.

That is the unconscionable problem with this new scheme. Being different, under this scheme, is exactly what will get you treated with suspicion, with disdain, with aggression--treated like a terrorist. Being different. Having nothing you need to hide is an amazing privilege, and it is a very different thing than not being a threat.

Want to see who has that privilege? Take a look at Jay Rosen's list of people in the media who have decided that the appropriate response to everyone's concerns is to tell us to "grow up." The funny thing about that list is that these are the people who have so much privilege they've never needed to grow up. They've never had to figure out how to deal with the stigma and loss of opportunity that comes with being a sexual minority, surviving sexual assault, or presenting a visible disability. They live in a society where they've never needed to figure out how to love and desire despite being heaped with shame for the very shapes of their bodies. Their happy childhoods, at least in this respect, continue to this day, but they tell us to grow up.

They tell us that the costs are small (although they fail to note the lack of benefits from this new program), and they are--to them. They're being borne by others (who include, of course, the traditionally visible ethnic minorities). The quotes I listed above are from those describing their fears, but those fears are proving prescient.

“I went through the body scan first," she said. "And after I went through the body scan, a bunch of officers came over, took my bags and basically put me in a private room and I had no idea what was going on.”

Alyssa is diabetic and wears a small wireless insulin pump, which was noticed in the body scan.

“I had a sweat suit on and had to lift parts of my sweat suit up and parts of my sweat suit down for them to check,” she said. “They basically patted me down in my private parts from head to toe."

“I was so upset. I tried to remain as calm as I could through this process. I was treated like a criminal and I was afraid anything I would have said or done maybe would not have allowed me to get back to Austin.”

She continued, "And after I was finally cleared to go to the gate, I just started crying. In my whole life I’ve never felt like such a victim before.”

The 3-year-breast cancer survivor agreed, but was then asked by two female Charlotte TSA agents to go to a private room for further screening, and they began what Ms Bossi described as an aggressive pat down.

She said they stopped when they got around to feeling her right breast - the one she had lost through her illness.

Ms Bossi said: 'She put her full hand on my breast and said, 'What is this?'. And I said, 'It's my prosthesis because I've had breast cancer.' And she said, 'Well, you'll need to show me that'.'

She was then apparently asked to remove the prosthetic breast from her bra and show it to the TSA agents.

I stood there, an American citizen, a mom traveling with a baby with special needs formula, sexually assaulted by a government official. I began shaking and felt completely violated, abused and assaulted by the TSA agent. I shook for several hours, and woke up the next day shaking.

Here is why I was sexually assaulted. She never told me the new body search policy. She never told me that she was going to touch my private parts. She never told me when or where she was going to touch me. She did not inform me that a private screening was available. She did not inform me of my rights that were a part of these new enhanced patdown procedures.

When I booked my ticket, I was given no information that the TSA had changed their wand and unintrusive patdown procedures to “enhanced” patdown procedures that involved the touching of all parts of your body, including breasts and vagina on women and testicles and penis on men. I was not informed by any signs on the front side of security about the new procedures. I had not seen any media coverage about the issue, so I had no idea that this was a new government sanctioned policy.

Another important piece in this story, the Dayton airport does not have the new body scanners. I was not given any other search options. It was enhanced patdown, or nothing. (And I would have opted for the body scanner, if I were going to be subject to a sexual assault.)

Read all too much more at ACLU's site.

This is why, as I go through airport security this morning (right about the time this posts), I won't be going through any scanner. It isn't because I have anything to hide. It's because I don't. It's because the invasive search can't really hurt me. I know what will happen. I don't have any medical equipment that can be dislodged or touch triggers or body shame.

What I do have is time and the right to demand that if someone wants to get that personal with me, they look me in the eyes. What I have is the willingness to talk to the TSA agent about what kind of job satisfaction they're feeling these days.