A Pair of Doubles

It's been a busy weekend, much of it in support of Boobquake. First off, I've been listening to the calls to do more about Iran than mock the credulity of a cleric. That's a taller order than you might think.

But what is to be done? What are the actual conditions in Iran, and what kind of leverage do we in the Western world, and particularly in the U.S. have to effect change?

Last summer, Stephanie Zvan was privileged to chat with Dr. William Beeman, professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota and a leading Western scholar of Iran. They discussed the intersection of religion and politics in Iran, U.S.-Iranian relations, and the culture of Iran, including conditions for women. Some of what she learned surprised her. It may surprise you too.

It's been a while since a new edition of Atheists Talk, but I think this one was worth waiting for. Go check it out.

I am also very proud to announce that I was invited to blog at Sex In The Public Square. I don't know how often I'll have anything to say that's worth putting there, but I couldn't resist a post after watching the backlash against Boobquake.

There was no sex in skepticism before the women showed up.

Forget Houdini's brooding eyes and dark curls. Forget his personal magnetism. Those were strictly incidental. Forget the amount of skin--well-muscled skin--that he showed in his escapes. That was only to demonstrate he wasn't hiding a key anywhere. Strictly utilitarian. Houdini's appeal to his audience was based entirely on the complexity of his tricks and the calm reasoning he showed when dealing with mediums and spiritualists, and it's a mere coincidence that many of the male faces of the skeptical movement since then have had similar stage experience and heaps of charisma.

I warn you, it gets sillier...and more serious. Please read it and check out more of Sex In The Public Square while you're there.

And finally, I've been getting ready for the immodesty portion of Boobquake. I think I'm doing pretty well so far. Don't you?

An Immodest Proposal

Or, Why I'm Attending Boobquake

When I read about Boobquake, my first thought was, "Heh. Cute."

Sedighi claims that not dressing modestly causes earthquakes. If so, we should be able to test this claim scientifically. You all remember the homeopathy overdose?

Time for a Boobquake.

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I'm sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn't rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it'll be one involving plate tectonics.

I didn't really think much more of it. The original proposition, that dressing immodestly leads to a chain of actions that includes adultery and the wrath of god in the form of earthquakes, was too silly to really get too worked up over. Then the reactions started.

Boobquake to me is a minefield of contradictions; women are choosing to get their breasts out in order to make a statement against sexism. For me, because we live in a society where women are treated like sexual objects, the statement falls a little flat. Sexism manifests itself in the UK through enforcing women to self objectify, tits out, will be assumed to be ‘tits out for the lads’, even if that’s not the case. Women in the UK are also pressured to cover up and told that if you show too much flesh you deserve rape. As I said, it’s a minefield. Maybe a statement of solidarity would be to challenge the ways we are forced into modesty/objectification in our own country whilst perhaps, supporting women’s organisations in Iran, and maybe fighting imperialism. I don’t really know enough to propose an answer to how to end sexism in Iran.

I guess my point can be summarized in the following sentence ‘Boobquake ignores the socio-cultural context of the country in which it is being performed, the relationships between Islam/atheism/imperialism, and as such is potentially an ineffective statement’

No. Just no.

These? These are my breasts. They are mine to dress as I please, when I please. Or not. Beyond that, they are no one's political statement. They are plenty big and heavy enough on their own. They don't need to carry the weight of women in Iran, in the U.K. or next door. They don't need to bear the burden of a successful or unsuccessful atheist or skeptic or feminist event. There is no bra supportive enough for that.

So on Monday, after work (because work pays me for the privilege of dictating how I dress while I'm there), I'll be putting on that bra. Then I'll pull that shirt out of the closet and make sure the front isn't laced too tightly. Then I'll get together a group of friends and go out. We will not be seen and not heard. We will not keep our voices low or our eyes turned down. We will not be deferential in expressing our opinions or our preferences. There may even be some extramarital flirting. We'll see.

And then, when we're done being our most immodest of selves (but still ourselves), we'll laugh. We'll point at the man who was silly enough to connect our modesty to plate tectonics and desperate enough to need the ground to shake to get someone to listen to how he thinks we should dress, and we'll giggle. We'll laugh a little, too, at the people who thought that maybe we should be concerned about what the world would think--while we were telling the world we didn't care what it thought. But that last will be gentle laughter.

Then we'll get back to the serious work of beating our heads on the intractable problems that we care about, seriously, but over which we have very little control. We'll confront sexism and religion-based oppression directly, to the extent that we want to and can. And we'll do it all a little better for having had the release of ignoring everyone's opinion on what we should wear, and a little laughter.

Caring About Abuse

To those implying* that your friendly local atheist is taking some new-found interest in fighting child sexual abuse because it involves the Catholic church or because Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are supporting the effort to explore legal options:

Oh, there are plenty of things I could say here. Short, pithy, pointed. Angry. Satisfying…but unhelpful. So I'll settle for this: Are you listening to yourselves?

I'm serious. Did you think for one brief minute before sharing your first half-formed thoughts on this?

Even among child abusers, people who think they're doing something okay are not the rule. People fight pedophilia, even when they find it within themselves. Many who do act on it come up with elaborate stories to explain away what they're doing. The monster who says, "Mine to do with as I please," is not common. Why would you think we're apathetic about it?

No, I don't sit around saying, "Child sexual abuse is bad. It should stop." I also don't generally say, "Gravity pulls that way. It should stick around." The reaction to child sexual abuse is so universal that I've been cautioned as a writer against using it as a cheap emotional device in stories. Some things are simply so self-evident that it is an insult to say them to anyone who's been introduced to the concept. Some statements require an explanation justifying their utterance. This is one of them.

What is it that you think of us? Do we condone child abuse normally--until it's done in the shadow of the cross or the crescent? Are we merely callous and insensitive? Frivolous? Self-absorbed? Blind to the problem?

While you're thinking about the audience for your condescension, think about that last option a little harder. If you are so much more personally concerned with the problem of child sexual abuse than we are, you probably know that somewhere between 10% and 25% of children are estimated to be affected. Even given lower survival rates among those children, they still grow up to be a large percentage of the population.

How many of those people you're accusing of jumping onto a trendy and politically expedient problem are survivors of child sexual abuse themselves?

No, I can't tell you either. I can tell you that you've hit at least one. Me. I don't spend a lot of time talking about it, but who does?

I participate in certain activities instead, activities directed at helping kids survive when they're abused, activities directed at calming people down enough that pedophiles feel free to seek treatment and that fruitful research on the problem can take place. I could tell you what they are, but I won't, because I decide when and where I talk about this, not you.

I didn't go through what I did, mild as it is by some standards, to be put on trial by you to prove that I care about this issue enough to have an opinion on whether it's a good thing to put pressure on the world's largest central religious organization to change policies that perpetuate child sexual abuse. I didn't survive to watch that piece of me be dismissed because you don't like how I--or someone else--talks about religion, when we're talking about systemic, organizational enabling of abuse.

Do you want to talk about other actions you think will be more effective than prosecution, to engage people who have always wanted to help but not known how to tackle problem this pervasive and diffuse? Great. If nothing else, I'm always up for a chat on changing clerical exemptions to mandatory reporting laws. Now seems like a great time to fix those. We'll talk.

But if you come at this questioning my motivation, I have nothing to say to you, except to ask what kind of monster you think I am. There is no grounds for discussion. We're done.

* Not a strawman and not limited to those who dislike atheists or, sadly, even to those who appear to be angry at one or two atheists in particular. I could point, but there are some discussions that should be staked through the heart and buried at a crossroads.

All That and a Skeptic

I am a skeptic.

I'm also an atheist, feminist, progressive, absurdist artist. I have prejudices and blind spots and unquestioned notions. And I have friends whom I love dearly who are arguing (in a way I find incredibly painful to watch) over the purity of the mission of the skeptical movement--again. Unsurprisingly, I agree with most of them, even though they don't agree with each other. Only, I don't think I'm doing it just because they're friends.

I agree quite strongly with Barbara Drescher, and others who have chimed in before, including Daniel Loxton, on the definition of scientific skepticism.

Notice that all of these definitions describe a process, not a conclusion. They describe a search for truth, not a search for values. In fact, there is a clear and very scientific statement that values are irrelevant: “A skeptic is someone who applies vigorous and systematic research to any claim, regardless of its political, religious, or social implications.”

At the same time, I have to agree with Rebecca Watson that any movement that can be damaged by those who are associated with it following their values, even if values are not specifically what the movement is about, is not a movement I need to be associated with. I don't give up all those other things I am to be a skeptic, and I won't.

That doesn't mean I don't value the people who do largely set those things aside to focus on skepticism. We need people who can do that. I may not say often enough how much I appreciate them (some of whom may be you), but I do. It just means I can't operate that way myself. And I think they need me too.

They need me in part because for all we like to talk about the objectivity of science, perspectives and values matter. If we don't have enough of them, we're not even asking all the right questions, much less figuring out all the angles from which we need to approach them.

But they also need me because I don't fit tidily into their movement, because I travel to strange places and meet people they wouldn't, because I don't entirely compartmentalize. They ground the movement, keep its core from wandering too far and communicate to the pilgrims who come to them. I carry their message--and their values--to those who wouldn't seek it out on their own.

When I travel, labeled as a skeptic, among those with whom I share other values, I have an opportunity to spread skepticism to a sympathetic audience. People who already agree with me are much more likely to also agree when I say it is important that we don't fool ourselves, that we lean on something more reliable than the faulty cognition that can allow both our ideas and our opponents' to exist simultaneously. They are more likely to trust a scientific method that tells them what they already think they know.

No, this is not an ideal state for anyone to end in, and yes, some of these people will now think they are skeptics without truly understand what skepticism is. Some of these people will fail utterly at skepticism, and if this is where we leave things, the skeptical movement has, as Barbara said, failed.

But what if we don't leave things there? I don't. I don't know anyone involved in any part of this monstrous argument who does. If we continue to nudge these people toward a greater reliance on strong evidence instead of their kind feelings about us, if we continue to slowly sow seeds of doubt and encourage them to sprout, if we push them in the direction of that core of skepticism, have we failed just because that first step was insufficient? I don't think we have. I think we've made progress.

There are (at least) two ways to look at the question of whether some of us should wear our skeptical hats and our values at the same time. We can insist that any values but those of skepticism itself taint the process and must be left outside. That may well be a reasonable approach for skeptical organizations with limited resources. Focus is a pragmatic value in activism, and these sorts of fights have been known to tear plenty of organizations apart.

On the other hand, we can look at this as carrying our skeptical values and processes with us into the wider world. Then it becomes a question of us tainting them, rather than the other way around. And frankly, that's a plan I can get behind. One of those non-skeptical bits of me is an unholy love of subversion, and to be a movement, we need to move.

But honestly, I don't understand why this is being presented as a choice. We need people to do both these things. We need a core full of idealists (and yes, I understand the irony of skeptical idealism, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist), and we need those who carry the methods and the message far and wide.

The more I look around at the conversations going on, the more I think we're all reacting to the things we hear, colored by our preconceptions, filtered through our biases, than to what we're each saying. I'm terribly afraid that if we keep doing that, then skepticism really has failed. And so have all of us.

To the Kids of Fulton, Mississippi

First, since you're used to being first, to the kids who went to the big dance:

Congratulations. You, with your parents' help, have just fucked things up for life. Well, maybe not all of you. Some of you were probably planning to start local, dead-end jobs straight out of high school. The rest of you, though...whew.

When it was just school administrators being asses to Constance, you were fine. People looked at that and assumed some of the kids were okay with it, but others were modern humans who were being overly sheltered by idiotic adults. You had a chance to be one of those kids, the ones who have a role to play in the 21st Century. Then you had to go to that dance and ruin everything.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's the one your parents wanted you to go to. It's the one the cool kids were going to. It's the one your friends were going to.

Fuck. That. Shit.

What you did was wrong. It was cruel, and pointlessly cruel. It was stupidly easy and easily the stupidest thing I've seen in a long time. You gained nothing by it. Hell, you didn't even have as much fun as you thought prom should be. And you lost everything.

Remember how you thought about getting out of there and doing something with your life? Forget it. You're one of "those kids from Fulton" now, and everybody knows what you did. Sure, you can find a school to go to, even one away from home, but it's going to be one of those schools that's no good for anything but sending you back where you came from.

You can find a job, kid from Fulton, but it will be a job that requires someone just like you. Prepare to spend the next fifty-some years of your life taking the same kind of orders you've been taking from your parents and your teachers and your friends. You've just waved goodbye to your chance to grow up and determine how you want to live your own life.

You can find people to laugh with, be friends with, marry, but they'll be the same kind of stupid, cruel people you've shown yourself to be. Chances are good they'll be from Fulton too. Who else would want to hang out with you? But whatever you do, don't you dare to be any different than they are. You've already seen what they do, what you do, to people like that.

Not the life you were looking for? Well, it could still all go differently, I suppose, but it won't be easy anymore. Your one chance at this point is to figure out why what just happened is all wrong--and to fix it. Your chance is to be one of the kids who left Fulton behind them, one way or another.

Good luck with that. I mean it.

Now, to the kids who went to the official prom:

I love you guys. You're awesome in a way that nobody's who's never had to fight to make their own path can ever understand, much less achieve. That may not seem like a lot right now, but it's everything. Just wait and see.

Beautiful Red Dress

Zuska has a good post up today about the choice for adult females to identify as girls rather than women. It's decidedly worth a read.

She ends with Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman," which was part of the soundtrack to my formative years. It was interesting hearing it again. My musical tastes have changed with the years, and they seem to have done so before I'd internalized all of the messages of the song. I appreciate it better on a fresh listen.

I am inspired, however, to post the song that replaced Reddy's in my musical lexicon.

Beautiful Red Dress

Well, push my button, baby. Here I come.

Yes, "girls" is used with distinct irony. And one more, a very short story.


She said, "Listen. Honey."

Garbage Statistics

Literally. 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. One of the rites of spring is my own personal neighborhood cleanup. I started right after work, and here's a little rundown of what I found.

Well, I think it was interesting. Read on at Quiche Moraine to see whether you agree.

On Ailing

I have too many friends who aren't healthy at the moment: injuries, cancer, infection, and a couple of cases of severe pain with unknown causes. I'm still having fun with that last category myself, as well as coming to grips with how extended illness can change people and perspectives. So I'm seeing more articles on the topic than usual and paying attention even when I may not have the time and energy for everything I want to do. I need to share two of these.

She was arrested because she refused to follow the unspoken rules: as a woman, it is your job to make the people around you comfortable with who you are. And her scars made someone uncomfortable.

We are conditioned to believe that our beauty lies in our ability to bring aesthetic pleasure to others. We’re taught never to leave the house without makeup, just in case we run in to Mr. Right. We spend childhood daydreams imagining our wedding dresses. Come middle age, we spend our hard-earned money on wrinkle creams and Botox. We’re taught to look beautiful. And we’re taught that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

But what if that’s not true? What if the things that make me beautiful are things with which you’re uncomfortable? What if the beholder doesn’t matter, because the things that make me beautiful are an intrinsic part of who I am?

of Scars has a short and sweet post on the intersection of expectations, appearances, and being an ill woman in public.

As I tried to gain my composure, I glanced around the table for help or guidance, or at least stall for time to think. I was trying to find the right words. How do I answer a question I never was able to answer for myself? How do I explain every detail of every day being effected, and give the emotions a sick person goes through with clarity. I could have given up, cracked a joke like I usually do, and changed the subject, but I remember thinking if I don’t try to explain this, how could I ever expect her to understand. If I can’t explain this to my best friend, how could I explain my world to anyone else? I had to at least try.

At that moment, the spoon theory was born. I quickly grabbed every spoon on the table; hell I grabbed spoons off of the other tables. I looked at her in the eyes and said “Here you go, you have Lupus”.

Christine Miserandino explains what it means to be, not so much sick, as not healthy. It is a must-read.

Be well, everyone.

Repost: To My Conservative Friends and Colleagues

Reposted for topicality and to enhance my reputation as a seer.

Who needs to die before you speak?

We've already had one death arguably attributable to this insanity of refusing to recognize the authority of a duly elected president and Congress. How many more will it take?

Sure, the guy was a raving loon, but there are a lot of people out there right now who are being told insane things and believing them. They believe a man could be elected president without anyone verifying his citizenship. They believe Congress could and would pass a bill that mandates euthanasia. They believe they're about to be rounded up and shipped to gulags or concentration camps for disagreeing with the administration's policies. It doesn't matter that those things are insane. These people have been whipped into a fine state of paranoia.

It's easy to tell yourself you're not like them, that you merely disagree with the changes that are happening. After all, you're not insane, just conservative.

Will that matter when the next person dies over this? Representative David Scott has had a swastika painted on his office sign. Another representative was hung in effigy. Representative Brad Miller received a death threat. Senator Arlen Specter invited people to tell him what they thought about health care reform--held back the police who were concerned about violence and disruption--and still people screamed in his face and called him a tyrant. A man showed up to protest the president's town hall meeting today wearing a gun and carrying a sign that said, "It is time to water the tree of liberty" (referencing Jefferson's "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.").

Those are just some of the politicians who are on the receiving end of violent anger. Fights are breaking out outside these meetings on health care. My husband was accused earlier this week, by someone who should know better, of planning to turn an old friend in for an "incorrect" political position. I can't buy ammunition right now to go target shooting because it's all sold out and has been for months. This whole thing is teetering on the edge. Someone else is going to die soon. Maybe lots of someone elses.

It will be your fault.

"Why?" you ask, "I'm not the one feeding their paranoia." No, you're not, but you're the only people who can stop it.


They're not going to listen to us. We liberals are already traitors and, somehow, simultaneously Nazis and communists. They believe we're going to round them up and put them to sleep. They believe that if they listen to us, they die.

Some of them will listen to you because they know you're on the same side. Some won't listen, exactly, but will find their first reasons to doubt the lies because you speak against them. Some won't listen to anyone but Rush and the rest of talk radio and their friends at Fox.

That's where you need to do your most talking. Talk to the stations and tell them you won't watch or listen while they refuse to speak against the violence. Tell them you can see how they're dividing the country and they have a responsibility to do better. Tell them the same thing I've told you: Unless they speak against it, they who have so much influence, they are complicit in the violence. They condone with their silence.

Then tell their advertisers the same thing. Then the conservative politicians.

Unless you want the violence, you have to tell those in a leadership position to lead their people in a different direction. They represent you, and you haven't argued up to this point that they don't. If they lead us into more violence and death, they are doing it in your name.

If you don't speak now, the next death will be your fault.

The Abortion Post

Last night, health care reform passed the House. I should have been happy. Not ecstatic--the plan doesn't contain enough of what I wanted (strong public option) for that. But happy. This is progress. It has been a long time coming, and the forces arrayed against it, from vested interests to an administration unwilling to spend too much political capital to a media more interested in talking about the fight than about the huge political will among the public to see it passed, have been formidable.

Instead, I found myself angry. I Tweeted this:

HCR = yay, but once again, women bear the largest burden of getting everyone to the table and acting like adults.

An old friend on Facebook wanted to know what I meant, so here's my answer. The anger here isn't directed at him.

I'm tired of this. I'm tired of my reproductive system being held hostage by people who are, you know, generally okay with treating people decently as long as they can still have a peep into my uterus whenever they feel like it. I'm tired of my autonomy being the price of getting anybody to do anything helpful politically. I'm tired of being the sacrifice for the common good.

This pregnancy thing; you know it kills people, don't you? It doesn't kill as many people as it used to, but women still die over this. Those who don't die are changed, sometimes drastically, sometimes permanently. There isn't a system of the body that isn't affected by pregnancy. If it didn't result in the continuation of the species, we'd be devoting unprecedented resources to finding a cure--despite our poor history addressing conditions that only affect women.

I have a great deal of respect for women who know what pregnancy entails and choose to go through it willingly. Forcing the unwilling, however, is barbaric. That includes the lies and coercion that make it impossible for a woman to make the choice for herself. It also includes the ignorance that is imposed on so many women by insufficient or misleading education on the subject.

Life doesn't begin at conception. Sperm and eggs are not dead things. They can't survive without a host, but neither can the products of their fusion. And a large percentage of those don't survive even with a host.

Neither the Bible nor any other holy book I'm aware of condemns abortion. Most of them do praise life, as do most people in general, whoever they think should get to make reproductive decisions. But aside from the Jains, most religions don't maintain a core belief that every bit of life must be preserved at all costs. Those messages come from those who don't have to bear the costs--neither of your pregnancy nor mine--and without them, women who have had abortions don't experience crushing regrets in this life either.

Of course, this isn't just about the women. It's also about the children. It's about what it's like to be unwanted, or to be "imperfect" in a world that still doesn't tolerate difference well. It's about going hungry amid too many grumbling bellies and starting out in the world too far behind to ever catch up and running wild because someone can work or spend time with you but not both. This too is barbaric.

And this is what we may not fix. This is what we're not allowed to change, the problem we must set aside every time we want to achieve any tiny step forward in the world. This is the currency with which we buy progress, and last night's progress is just one more example. The cost of human decency must apparently be human decency.

And it's pissing me off.

On "Crap"

A friend of mine is currently experience an increased demand for entertainment. After noting a couple of Facebook updates related to television shows that are constantly in syndication, I recommended Hulu. I noted that it offers a lot of crap, but that it allows you to choose the crap you want to watch on your own schedule.

I got some pushback on that as being a negative statement, "passive-aggressive" to be exact. It shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. I think most people don't have the same relationship to the word "crap" that I do.

A lot of that has to do with the general version of Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. Theodore Sturgeon actually said, "Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud," but nobody else says it that way. It's always "crap."

The fun part is that nobody really agrees on which 90% we're going to label "crap." Lost is and has been a major television phenomenon. It's near and dear to the hearts of millions, but I can't watch it, and I'm not alone. On the other hand, I'm a big fan of Stargate SG-1, at one time the number one television show on the planet. However, it makes large portions of science fiction fandom yawn.

I don't watch movies to get embroiled in other people's emotional drama, and (physical and emotional) slapstick makes me cringe, so I've seen almost no Oscar-winning movies and have no idea what most of the taglines being used around me mean. I can guess that they've got something to do with Will Ferrell, but that's about it.

On the other hand, it would never occur to me to suggest that my views on movies were anything like objective. The statement that so-and-so "is crap" confuses the hell out of me, even when it's applied to something like Twilight. After all, if that many kids are driven to read, the books are offering them something. It may not be the same thing I want, but it doesn't become less compelling to them just because I don't value it.

I know too many people who sneer at cozy mysteries or find "literature" impenetrable to think there's anything that can be comfortably categorized as "crap." Yet we still all do it. Officially, I think that makes 100% of everything crap. So if I refer to your favorite movie, book or show as "crap," don't take it personally.

After all, my opinion on the subject is probably crap too.

Questions About Genre

Those of you who read genre fiction know that there are two general approaches for a writer interacting with the genre: hewing closely to the tropes and messing with them, doing the unexpected. Of course, in practice, most writers do some of both.

If you read genre fiction, I'd love your input on two questions. First, are you more likely to pick up a genre book or story if you can tell from the cover and description that it's more true to the genre or less? Second, which kind of story are you more likely to interact with, to discuss, to recommend friends read or avoid, etc.?

Paying for Free

A couple of days ago, I asked a few questions on Twitter:

• What is the point of entertaining you if you only tell me when I'm doing it wrong?
• What is the point of writing anything if I'm brilliant only until I challenge you, when I become insane/dishonest/evil?
• The best free entertainment/enlightenment comes from people who can do many things. Do you pay enough to keep them doing what you like?

Don't have any idea what I'm talking about? There's more at Quiche Moraine.

Anthology News

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

If you don't already know that The Open Lab is available, you've either been hanging out under a rock or you don't spend much time in the science blogosphere. I got to read several of the posts in blog form as one of the judges, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest very soon. A big congratulations to Scicurious on editing an excellent volume.

The Young Australian Skeptics Blog Anthology isn't out yet, but they just announced the list of posts. I'm honored, not only to have been included, but to be among the company I get to keep. I get to be in an anthology with some of my favorite bloggers. I'll let you know when it's available.

Post-Traumatic Debate Disorder

You may have PTDD if:

• Nobody really disagrees with you.
  
• People who claim they disagree with you are being dishonest.
• People who claim they disagree with you are out to get you.
• You argue that someone (else) getting mobbed online "deserved it."
• You find yourself not understanding a lot of things but don't ask any questions.
• You consider accounting for differing situations to be hypocrisy.
  
• You don't know what your goal is in an argument, but that doesn't stop you.
• You view all discussions that consist of more than, "Yeah, me too," as arguments.
• All disagreements have a right and a wrong.
• All disagreements must have a winner and loser.
  
• Wrong = evil, unforgivable, delusional.
  
• You alone understand what everyone "intends" by what they say. Better than the speaker.
  
• You consider sympathy for both sides in a disagreement to be the same thing as no sympathy for either.
• You crave real-world consequences for things said online, but not for you.

These are but a small sampling of the symptoms of PTDD. If you find yourself experiencing any of these symptoms, it is highly recommended that you log off the internet immediately. Further treatment may consist of quarantine to avoid denialists of all stripes, lots of face-to-face and eye-to-eye conversation, and outdoor exercise.