How Well Does Your Gun Protect You?

The last time there was a discussion on Greg Laden's blog regarding the necessity of firearms, the topic turned to home invasion, which is the classic protect-the-women-and-children fantasy scenario for gun nuts (which are a distinct subset of gun owners). I pulled some statistics to find out what kind of protection guns afforded. Since the subject of relative safety continues to come up, I'm reposting and expanding the information here for handy reference.

In 2006, approximately 447,000 robberies were reported to the FBI. Of these, 14.3% occurred in the home and 42.2% involved a firearm, for about 27,000 home robberies involving a firearm annually. I'm assuming, in the absence of better data, that firearm involvement is evenly distributed between home and non-home robberies, although a higher level of injury encountered in workplace robberies suggests that this may be overstating the involvement of firearms in home robberies.

This translates to an annual, per capita, U.S. rate of firearm-related, home robberies of about 0.0001. Given a risk of injury in all robberies of about 35% (pdf) (with the same caveats about workplace robberies given above), that gives us approximately 9,000 firearm-related home-robbery injuries annually, or an annual per capita risk of 0.00003. Given that the FBI reports only 1,000 deaths during any robberies in all of 2006, the total annual per capita risk of death during robbery during home invasion, using the same assumptions, would be 0.0000002. In other words, tiny.

There are other elements of real crime patterns that don't match the heroic family-saving home-invasion scenario. Random violence is rare compared to our expectations, with only 60% of the robberies in 2006 (pdf) being committed by strangers and with almost no difference in the rate at which victims require medical treatment between stranger and nonstranger interactions (12% versus 10%).

Also, heroics aren't guaranteed to succeed. In less than 30% of all 2006 robberies in which another party tried to intervene did the action have a positive effect on the situation. In about 16%, it had a negative effect. This is definitely a net benefit, but it isn't a certain one, and the statistics on resistance with all weapons accounts for less than 2% of the situations evaluated.

In contrast, the CDC reported 2006 firearm-related deaths at about 31,000 (pdf), roughly the same as the total number of home robberies--not injuries, just death. Approximately 60% of these were accident (1,000) or suicide (17,000). Yes, some of those suicides would have tried another method, but firearm suicides are about three times as likely to succeed as the next most successful method, bringing specifically firearm-related non-homicide deaths in around 13,000.

Homicide deaths from all methods were about 19,000. Gun homicides accounted for 13,000 of these. Given that 12% of homicide victims in that year were known to have been killed by family, that gives us another 1,000 or so people killed by guns kept by them or someone close to them, for a total of 14,000. For death, not injury.

I'll take the risk of injury during robbery.

It's Alive!

Blegh.

I'm laid up with a cold and feeling neither particularly creative nor entertaining. Instead of hanging out here, go check out The Thoughtful Animal, where Jason is talking about social capital and online bullying in the beautifully titled "The Blogosphere Is Alive With The Sounds of Bullying." The discussion in the comments about why something may or may not constitute bullying is also quite interesting.

Or if you're feeling about as energetic as I am and that sort of thing doesn't pick you up, here is the best argument I can find for why Siouxsie Sioux should record the next James Bond movie title song.

Here Comes That Day

You wanted life uncomplicated, only pleasantries
And like a fool, you thought life could be cheated of life's realities

Whither Allies

A repost, a companion to "What Is an Ally?"

I'm back from ScienceOnline09, with an inaccessible laptop hard drive holding all my notes, and I've gotten one mostly full night's sleep in the last four. It would be wiser of me to hold off on blogging contentiously until I'm better rested. In fact, I have a ton of comments I'm dying to respond to. Instead, I'm writing this, and I ask a small amount of indulgence in the reading, because I think it's important enough to write even under less than ideal conditions.

I had a number of very nice chats with people before the sessions they were moderating about the topic of the session. Not surprising. Most of the moderators were a little overprepared and very invested in the topic, as they should be.

One of these discussions was with Zuska in the hotel bar. We were talking about lurkers and who reads her blog, and I made a comment about the risks allies take in opening their mouths and the inevitability of screwing something up. She agreed and said something about the responsibilities of allies when that happens.

Janet is now saying something very similar at Adventures in Ethics and Science.

You can't tell just by looking which purported allies have had a crystalizing experience. When people who say they are allies let you down in the crunch (which happens a lot), it's hard to trust that any ally can be relied upon. Thus, one lesson for allies (beyond the importance of being reliable at crunch-time) is not to be surprised or offended when you're not immediately recognized as an ally. Saying you are doesn't count for nearly as much as showing you are.

Let me say something now: You can't count on me.

Of course, you can't count on your parents to step up when your uncle is being an ass about your college choices. You can't count on your best friend to know what you need to hear about your date. You can't count on your sweetie(s) to know what you want for your birthday. You can't count on you to do what's best for you when you're feeling tired and unmotivated. As comfortable as it would be and as useful as it is sometimes to act as though the opposite were true, you can't count on people, even the people who are supposed to be on your side.

There are a couple of reasons you can't count on me. The first one is implicit in the examples I just gave. I don't know what you need or want at any given moment. The fact that I recognize you as part of a marginalized group tells me that you're marginalized. That's all it tells me, because part of being an ally is recognizing that marginalized and stereotyped groups are just as diverse (if not more so) than the mainstream.

The second reason is one I brought up talking to Zuska. I'm an ally, in part, because I don't deal well with authority. This means that it's easier for me than for some to look at the reasons given for marginalization and say that they don't make sense. However, it also means I take a step back any time someone says allies should behave in a particular way.

On top of that, I'm dealing with my own issues of marginalization. Some are relatively small and many are problems of privilege, but they're still real and part of the reason I understand marginalization. I may not have brought them up because, well, I've been listening. But that doesn't mean that I don't sometimes have to take a step out of your fight to fight my own.

So, no, you can't count on me. What you can do, though, is tell me what you would like me to do in a given situation, know that I'm likely to say an enthusiastic "yes" if I can (as I did a couple times this weekend), and know that I don't make promises lightly. Well, you really can't know those last two, but those are the areas where I want to be called on the carpet if I screw up.

That's a lot of speaking for myself, I know. But in the end, that's all I can do. I'm not your ally because I feel sorry for you and think you need caretaking. I'm your ally because I believe you have things to say I want to hear. I'm your ally because I believe in the intrinsic value of diversity and basic human dignity.

I hope that's enough. It may not be, in which case, you have every right to decide I'm not your ally. That would sadden me, but I understand that trying to change your mind would waste energy we could both put to use better elsewhere, just as trying to change me would be.

We don't achieve diversity by insisting that we all be alike.

***

As an aside that's nothing of the sort, I also want to respond to DrugMonkey's comments to Janet's post. If you follow this blog or DrugMonkey, you'll know that there was a big to do last month involving a commenter on DrugMonkey who I and some other DrugMonkey regulars felt was a trollish poster child.

Now, I had two purposes in mind in pointing out the trolling. One, I've developed an interest (perhaps even an unhealthy fascination) with that kind of thing, and two, I wanted to give people a place away from the fray to react to the manipulation. I thought both worked.

Then I saw this comment from DM:

Some, see Stephanie Z's post, consider you to be nothing more than an unrelenting disruptive troll. and suggest that I should ban your ass.

I was concerned briefly that DM really thought I was suggesting the troll should be banned, but I didn't say anything. For one thing, he was delivering an excellent lesson. I didn't want to interupt. And there are always more chances to talk about trolls and how they should be handled.

[sigh] Always.

But when it keeps coming up, I get more concerned.

Fascinating. And by this may we conclude that those who may have the privilege of ignoring said clueless idiots' obnoxiousness in case they are redeemable are themselves proving to be bad allies? Is it letting down in the crunch to fail to come to the same conclusions as those with said finite time and energy?

For the record, DM, no.

As I said above, I think it's silly to expect or even want monolithic behavior from people supporting diversity. Yes, there are times when a massed voice is helpful, but aside from that, well, it's a lot like my take on science communication. The people we need to reach, in the mainstream or in other marginalized groups, are not monolithic. We need as many ways to reach them as there are people to be reached.

In addition to places for people to sit and rest outside the line of fire, we need both carrots and sticks, and it's really hard for the same person to provide both at the same time. So as far as I'm concerned, as long as you can handle all the mixed metaphors, I'm happy to apply the pressure and allow you to show someone which way they need to move to get out from under it.

That's what allies are for.

What Is an Ally?

We in the blogosphere very rarely seem to understand what an ally is. I'm not really sure how it happened. Allies in the culture wars aren't appreciably different than military or political allies, but somehow, the meaning of the word has changed online. We've gone from "In everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them" to the assumption that the act of alliance comes with specific obligations and that people are "bad allies" or not allies at all if particular things are done or left undone.

Read on at Quiche Moraine.

Objective Values

It is June, which means we're due another installment of Are My Values Based in Objective Reality? Not sure what I'm talking about? Start with this discussion of skepticism:

I deeply and strongly disagree with the separation of ways of thinking (including scientific skepticism) and political perspectives. It is part of the progressive political perspective to be a rational thinker. Explicitly. It is part of the Republican Tea-baggging Yahooistic political perspective to be .... well, something else. Somewhat explicitly. It would be perilous to ignore this. It is explicitly part of the modern Atheist movement to think skeptically. A religious person is not thinking skeptically about that aspect of their lives, and if they were, they'd be some form of atheist or agnostic, and so on.

Don't miss the argument in the comments, which strikingly captures the opposing view, or the comments sections of the linked blog posts. It was a rather debateful April.

May brought us reactions to Sam Harris's claim that science can provide a foundation for morality.

I think Harris is following a provocative and potentially useful track, but I'm not convinced. I think he's right in some of the examples he gives: science can trivially tell you that psychopaths and violent criminals and the pathologies produced by failed states in political and economic collapse are not good models on which to base a successful human society (although I also think that the desire for a successful society is not a scientific premise…it's a kind of Darwinian criterion, because unsuccessful societies don't survive). However, I don't think Harris's criterion — that we can use science to justify maximizing the well-being of individuals — is valid. We can't. We can certainly use science to say how we can maximize well-being, once we define well-being…although even that might be a bit more slippery than he portrays it.

Once again, there is little agreement, except, perhaps, that the concept is intriguing.

And now it is June, and Greta Christina is taking a shot at the argument that some values are intrinsically and objectively more ethical.

Goldstein's argument is this. The basic philosophical underpinning of ethics (as opposed to its psychological and evolutionary underpinnings) are:

(a) the starting axiom that we, ourselves, matter;

and (b) the understanding that, if we step back from ourselves and view life from an outside perspective, we have to acknowledge that we don't, cosmically speaking, matter more than anyone else; that other people matter to themselves as much as we matter to ourselves; and that any rules of ethics ought to apply to other people as much as they do to ourselves. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and all that. (Some version of the Golden Rule seems to exist in every society.)

In other words, the philosophical underpinning of ethics are that they ought to be applicable to everyone. They ought to be universalizable.

And liberal values -- fairness and harm -- are universalizable.

As usual, Greta does an excellent job of laying out her ideas without making overreaching claims. Go read the rest.

Disability Bingo

I'm deeply ambivalent on the subject of social-interaction bingo cards. On the one hand, I see them warp discussions, as people who are arguing with each other shoehorn nuanced statements into dogwhistle boxes in the name of...oh, I don't even pretend to understand why someone would have that kind of discussion in the first place. On the other hand, they really can be quick, accessible, visual introductions to the kinds of things people say over and over again that are far less than helpful, or even thoughtful.

My friend Lynne knows how to use a bingo card, which is only one of the reasons she's awesome.

Caitlin is not "confined" to a wheelchair (a term I saw used recently in another LJ community that drives me absolutely nuts). She uses a wheelchair. It is a tool, that helps her to be mobile. Like a car, but smaller. In a world that, frankly, isn't as well designed for alternative modes of mobility as it should be, given how many of us over time will need to use similar tools.

We are not trying to "overcome" or fix Caitlin's disabilities. We are adapting our life and hers to her current abilities so that she can have the fullest life possible, in a society that is not particularly structured for her to, you know, leave the house on a regular basis, interact with other people, etc.

Don't worry, Lynne doesn't leave people with just a list of don'ts, which tend to make people self-conscious and lead to the kind of avoidance that isolates people with disabilities. She gives things you can do when someone else's disability leaves you feeling helpless. You should read them all, so I'm only going to share one:

Be the person who helps to drive demand from libraries and publishers alike for more stories about people with disabilities. Buy them. Read them. Read them to your kids.

Lynne also links indirectly to a fiction contest at the new Redstone Science Fiction (the first issue of which includes an interview with a payload rack officer on the ISS). The contest is asking for short fiction that doesn't use disability as a shorthand for character traits or group identity or treat it as something to be cured and which is set in a future that sees and accommodates disabilities. If you're a writer, I strongly encourage you to play. Even if you don't win, you'll come away with a story that will do someone some good.

Off to go plot.

Yours Truly, BP

National Resources Defense Council

Why Prayer Is Nonsense

Jason has written a blog epic at Lousy Canuck. After a stray comment about prayer being useless in a particular situation, and the argument that ensued, he's taken a systematic look at the arguments for and against prayer. Go check it out.

• Introduction
• First, define prayer
• Know your deities
• But everyone knows prayer works!
• Even if it IS useless, what’s the harm?
• So why pray?

The Christian Colonies

My favorite dead relatives, however, are the ones who were kicked out of the Colony of Massachusetts for being the wrong kind of Puritan, which means, as long as we're clearing up matters of religious misconception, pure in matters of doctrine, not without sin. They'd come to the colonies, as many had, because they couldn't practice their brand of religion in a land where the state was the head of the church. What they found (or perhaps helped to found, as the records aren't very clear) was a colony where the church was the head of the state, just as many would like the situation to be today.

There's no doubt that some of the colonies were founded as Christian settlements. Does that mean the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation? Find out at Quiche Moraine.

Reconstructing Criticism: Collegiality

"Because I said so" may be four of the most satisfying words in the English language. Unfortunately, they are almost exactly the wrong thing to say, or even imply, when delivering constructive criticism.

It isn't that a person in a position of authority can't deliver constructive criticism. They can and do frequently, since human resources management is the largest group to have embraced its utility. That doesn't there aren't problems that lie in combining the weight of authority with the criticism.

The first problem is that authority is all too often associated with punishment, which makes it much harder for recipients of criticism to hear it correctly. Listening or reading attentively is incompatible with wondering how much trouble is on its way and incompatible with a fight-or-flight response to fear. Setting aside this aspect of authority up front ("No, you're not in trouble") allows the message itself to come across more clearly.

Someone else's authority is also not a good motivator under your average low-stakes situation. In high-stakes, strong-threat situations, yes, but those don't generally involve constructive criticism. Under normal circumstances, people's internal motivations are much stronger than outside authority, particularly in the long term and particularly in the immediate absence of that authority. Invoking internal motivations, showing people why change is needed rather than leaning on authority, is much more likely to effect lasting changes.

Closely related to that is the problem of defiance. Constructive criticism is that which builds the criticized party up, not tears them down. Criticism that relies on authority reinforces the recipient's subordinate position. Who wants to be on the receiving end of that? And we don't have to. Playgrounds have long taught us that the proper response to "Because I said so" is "Make me." That simple retort undermines an adult in an actual position of authority almost as well as it does a bossy kid, setting up a power struggle in which the recipient of the criticism loses by making the desired change.

So you're a person with some authority who wants to deliver constructive criticism. How do you do it? Focus on the reasons for change without being one of them. Yes, that is harder than it sounds. You can point to shared goals, but you're better off pointing to the individual's goals, since supporting your goals supports your authority. You can listen more than you talk, particularly about why the current state of things exists. You can enlist the recipient of the criticism in making a plan for change. You can have the discussion in their space instead of yours. You can do almost anything sincere to level the power dynamic between you and make you peers for the purposes of the criticism.

The one thing you absolutely can't do, of course, is lean on "Because I said so" to do the work for you.

Creating Genius

Skepchick Stacey has taken a look at Richard Lynn's claims, based on IQ testing, that male geniuses outnumber female geniuses 8 to 1. It's a good post, worth reading in its entirety. I'm going to pull out just one piece of it briefly to talk about the simple math behind the test itself.

IQ tests are deliberately designed to eliminate disparities between demographics. Any questions that test with a statistically significant difference are discarded so that the score variation can only be attributed to differences in individual intelligence. The creators of the tests don’t allow questions in which one demographic scores significantly higher or lower than another. If women consistently scored lower than men on a particular test, that test would be unmarketable because its results would be viewed as biased and invalid.

This applies to both individual (or grouped) items and to overall tests. Tests and questions are created to produce the same mean in males and females in the groups used to develop the tests. However, this means we need to take a hard look at those groups.

Of particular concern is the fact that males far outnumber females among people with learning disabilities. (They're kind of fragile that way, among others.) In fact, the people who like to tout the genius figures will happily point to the greater representation of males at the lowest end of IQ distributions as proving that their point is somehow "fair." This is, of course, less impressive when you consider that they don't expect to ever find themselves in this portion of the curve.

It's even less impressive when you consider how unfair this higher representation of males with learning disabilities causes the test to be for females without learning disabilities. I mean that literally. A population with this gender imbalance in learning disabilities requires that the test be biased against females when you compare non-disabled groups. If it isn't, it can't produce the same mean for both sexes.

But don't they exclude the learning disabled when creating IQ tests? Not for Weschler tests, at least. Given that one of the main uses of IQ testing is identifying the learning disabled, there are very good reasons to include them.

So as long as IQ tests are built this way, expect them to include the kind of bias that pushes more men into the genius range. And anyone who says that this means something more than that the test is doing what it's supposed to do? Feel free to tell them just how dumb they're being.

Reconstructing Criticism: Accuracy

I frequently call accuracy its own virtue, and I even generally mean it. Sure, it's possible to overreach semantic agreement or shared perspective and descend into pedantry or get all persnickety. However, short of that point, accuracy conveys inherent advantages.

This is particularly true when it comes to making criticism constructive. Structuring your message with an eye to accuracy helps you meet several goals. It keeps you focused on what you know, rather than what you surmise, which helps restrict the conversation to behavior. It keeps you from generalizing, helping you to focus on specifics. And a solid check of your statements to verify that you're not overstating your case helps you keep your response proportional.

Beyond all that, accuracy helps build your credibility. Remember, when you're giving criticism, you are, baldly speaking, telling another person or group of people that you know better than they do how something should be done. That requires a fair store of credibility. Getting other things right demonstrates your qualifications directly.

Being accurate also demonstrates that you are putting effort into the relationship with the recipient of your criticism. Like most of the aspects of constructive criticism I've described, accuracy takes work, which may well inspire a similar level of effort on the part of the person being criticized. Do not underestimate the power of reciprocity.

So, strictly speaking, accuracy may or may not be a virtue, but it can certainly help you make your criticisms constructive.

Lighter Fare

I have some longer pieces to write, so I'm taking a break from the Reconstructing Criticism series for a couple of days. Besides, it's sunny out, and no one wants to spend their weekend reading about how much work it is to make criticism work.

In the meantime, here are a couple of interesting posts you won't read just anywhere. From my boy, Carrying a Gun Is the Privilege of the Rich:

In order to get a permit, Minnesota State Statute 624.714 requires that you take a class from a certified firearms training instructor. This class can cost anywhere from $75 to $150, depending on where you take the course and what services are offered with it. The class also includes a live-fire qualification test. For that test, you'll need a gun ($15 to rent), ammunition ($8-20), a target ($2), and a place to shoot ($15-30).

And from Causabon's Book, an interesting look at the realities of food production, even on a small scale, Rabbit-fed Pork and Farmers as Teachers:

But the part that set me rolling on my Mothers' couch was not that unappetizing bit, but Perry's meditation on the possibilities of this food source. After all, he observes, in summer he has a nearly unlimited supply of cottontails roaming his property and eating his lettuces. This free food then could be set to supply protein to his pigs, which could then be marketed as fed on truly local, home produced feed.

Perry observes, however, that he anticipates trouble at the farmer's market. While "grass fed beef" offers up an unmistakable visual image of green pastures and bovine contentment, the same does not arise from the image of "rabbit-fed pork." It was his suggestions of possible marketing slogans that sent me into hysterics.

Reconstructing Criticism: Behavior

This post will be a bit of a departure. To date, I've tried to talk about constructive criticism in positive terms, to focus on what to do rather than what to avoid. That gets more difficult the more misunderstood a concept is, and keeping the focus of criticism on behavior is one of the more misunderstood pieces of constructive criticism, at least in practice. I can say that behavior is specific, overt actions taken directly by an individual (including omissions of behavior). This is still likely to result in misunderstandings, so let me tell you what behavior is not.

Behavior is not motivations or intentions. It is not:

• You wanted X.
• You tried to do X.
• You meant X.

Behavior is not effects. It is not:

• You made me feel X.
• You made me think X.
• You made someone else do X.

Behavior is not associations. It is not:

• Your friend did X.
• Someone with whom you have something in common did X.

What do all of the above have in common? These are things that the person receiving criticism can't control. Behavior, at least in the realm of constructive criticism, is something that is under the control of the person being criticized. Note that this is a stricter definition of behavior than is used in the social sciences, and that the actual degree of control a person has over behavior is a matter of some scientific scrutiny (although the belief in our own control over our actions appears to be very useful, illusion or no). However, remember that this series is focused quite narrowly on being effective. Criticism can't result in change unless the person hearing it has the power, the control, to make a change.

Does this mean that goals, effects and associations aren't subject to discussion? Of course not. It simply means that the focus needs to stay on the things that can be changed, the behavior.

Reconstructing Criticism: Specifics

A couple of weeks ago, someone criticized a post of mine, highlighting the problem of women's sexuality being treated differently than men's, for not being specific with regards to who was talking about whose sexuality. Now, there was a little problem in that this person was reacting to a repost with all the links (providing the information he was looking for) stripped out, but aside from that, he had a point. If the criticism leveled at me had been accurate (hold that thought; it will come up later), it would have been quite important for me to take note.

Being specific, like so many of the other elements of constructive criticism, serves multiple purposes. The first, and most obvious, is that someone who can't determine quite what you want them to change isn't likely to try guessing on their own. Specific goals can be met. Trying to meet vague goals is a recipe for getting things wrong again. If they are motivated enough to try, they're unlikely to get it right. If they were thinking about the problem exactly the way you are, there'd be no need for the criticism.

Another advantage is that being specific aids in separating out what someone is doing right. It keeps the recipient of criticism from feeling that the change requested is too big, either to be accomplished or to be worthwhile doing for someone else's sake. And, as previously mentioned, highlighting what someone is doing right has its own rewards.

Being specific applies both to the behavior you find problematic and to the behavior you want to see in its place. Sunny Skeptic commented that she requests that people who bring her problems at work also bring suggestions for solutions. As I noted in response, this helps the person offering criticism look at the problem from a different perspective, to fully think through other possibilities before the criticism is given. This may even result in deciding that the current course of action is correct, or correct enough, but if it doesn't, it can still help the recipient of the criticism to understand that the current behavior isn't the only option. Specific, detailed descriptions of the desired behavior make the new behavior easier to imagine and, thus, make it feel more attainable.

By doing the work to drill down to just the behavior to which you object and to come up with a more detailed plan than "Change that," you make the task of change simpler. And a simpler task is more likely to get done.

Reconstructing Criticism: Praise

Praise might seem like an incongruous topic for a discussion about criticism, but for constructive criticism, praise is hugely useful. One of the big differences between constructive and destructive criticism is the idea that the person being criticized is worth building up instead of tearing down. There isn't a better way to reinforce that idea than to celebrate that person's contributions.

Offering praise performs a couple of other functions as well. The first is that it provides a sense of perspective. When you start by listing the things that someone is doing right, it gets harder to overreact to something that is wrong. The second is that praise, particularly praise you don't much feel like giving, requires an attention to detail that will help focus your criticism. I'll discuss proportionality and specificity in other posts, but trust me for right now that they're important.

Praise should come before criticism. Not only does it establish a friendly atmosphere for the delivery of unhappy news, but it also establishes common ground, important for persuasion. As someone gets into the habit of nodding along with you over the good stuff, they come to trust your judgment, at least to a degree. This makes them more likely to keep listening when you hit a point of disagreement. Ending with praise can also buy you more goodwill.

Praise should be unstinting and unironic, however much snark has hold in your heart. Praise that feels forced is a worse background for criticism than no praise at all. Someone who doesn't appear to want to praise you is unlikely to be someone who genuinely wants to help and may, in fact, be someone with an undisclosed bias against you. They will not be someone you want to listen to.

Praise is one of the fundamentals of constructive criticism that we learn even as schoolchildren. That we don't see it used and used well more often is more of a testament to the work involved than it is to its importance. Don't forget praise.

No More Stormy Weather

And no more Lena Horne.

Reconstructing Criticism: Timing

You may recall from the introduction to this series that constructive criticism offers positive recommendations for the future. This has implications for the timing of offering criticism. Criticizing an event in progress is often futile, both because it's frequently difficult to stop or redirect a process in motion and because ongoing events will distract from your message. If the recipient of your criticism is busy, you're not going to be heard. Wait for a better time.

As with any feedback, the sooner after the behavior criticism is offered, the more effective the criticism is likely to be. One caveat, of course, is that the aftereffects of an ongoing event can be as distracting as the event itself, which has to be balanced against the the preference for delivering your message promptly.

Once the window of effective feedback narrows, additional criticism may be viewed as irrelevant, because the person receiving the criticism has already evaluated the event or behavior and drawn their own conclusions from it or because they have forgotten the details that make your criticism relevant. The greater the delay, the more likely criticism is to be viewed as blame, or even a grudge, since the behavior will appear to be maintaining a disproportionate degree of significance for the person offering criticism when compared the recipient.

Nor is there any good reason to stretch that window. Either the behavior in question will be repeated, offering a better opportunity to offer the criticism, or it won't, meaning constructive criticism--criticism intended to effect a change--isn't necessary.

In short, pick your timing wisely. Too soon or too late can hurt your message, but waiting when your timing isn't ideal rarely loses you anything.

Reconstructing Criticism: Transparency

One of the hallmarks of constructive criticism is that it is presented in such a way that the recipient understands the criticism is about their behavior, that it isn't personal. However, any group of people brought together by mutual concerns are going to develop personal history. Some things will be personal.

If you're delivering criticism to someone with whom you have a history, you can't pretend that history doesn't exist or that it doesn't affect your ongoing interactions. The same is true if you're delivering criticism to someone who disagrees with your friends. And again when you're criticizing someone who disagrees with you on an issue that elicits an emotional reaction in you.

None of us want to think that criticism is actually about our behavior. It's much, much easier to dismiss it as the product of someone else's biased thinking. It's much easier to say, "This isn't about what I do, because no matter what I do, this person is not going to like it or me."

Does this mean you can't criticize someone constructively under these conditions? No, but it does mean you have a bigger task ahead of you. You need to acknowledge your history and your biases before it occurs to someone else to ask why you haven't, and you have to honestly and non-trivially analyze how that history and bias affects your position. With all that out of the way, your point at least stands a chance of being heard for what it is.

This isn't easy, and it isn't comfortable, but transparency is one of the requirements of effective, and thus constructive, criticism.

Reconstructing Criticism

How do you build up a movement with destructive criticism?

Yeah, that's what I thought. But that doesn't stop the makers of sites like You're Not Helping from going flat-out negative, even when they're offering "praise." It doesn't stop people from critiquing on Twitter, despite the sheer genius it would take to be both constructive and critical in 140 characters. (Note, not only are most of us not geniuses, but even those who may be geniuses are generally not the sort of genius required for effective short-form communication of difficult topics.) It doesn't make bloggers reserve the shit-kicking boots for shit and not for imperfect allies.

Why? Oh, I don't know. I'm not psychic. I have some theories, and if I were some pop psychologist trying to sell a book, I'd share them with you. I'm not. I'm just tired of seeing too many people and groups I care about waste their time and energy on hurting each other instead of defeating the common enemy.

Yes, I do mean waste. Destructive criticism breaks working relationships or makes them unlikely to form. It's bad for the recipient, making them less effective and less ambitious. And it's ineffective, leading to rejection of both the criticism and the person who delivered it. Unless your goal is mutually assured destruction, constructive criticism, when you must criticize, is the way to go.

So what does constructive criticism look like in the wild, particularly online? Essentially, it contains three elements: specificity, behavioral (rather than personal) orientation and positive recommendations for change. It sounds awfully simple for something that happens so rarely. Truth is, it is simple if you break it down far enough.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to work at breaking down constructive criticism in an online setting. I will attempt to keep it all in the realm of positive recommendations. Feel free to suggest topics you think I should cover, either up front or as the series goes on. I hope to end up with a fairly comprehensive how to, and I hope you find it useful.

The posts:

• Reconstructing Criticism: Transparency
• Reconstructing Criticism: Timing
• Reconstructing Criticism: Praise
• Reconstructing Criticism: Specifics
• Reconstructing Criticism: Behavior
• Reconstructing Criticism: Accuracy
• Reconstructing Criticism: Collegiality
• Reconstructing Criticism: Goals
• Reconstructing Criticism: Work
  

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.

News from Chile

Tsunami warnings are dominating the news right now, but if you want to find out what's going on in Chile itself, here are a few outlets getting the news out:

• CNN: Chile earthquake update (mini-feed)
• Wall Street Journal: 8.8-Magnitude Quake Hits Chile
• ABC News (Australia): Chile wakes to death and destruction
• BBC News: Massive earthquake strikes Chile
• BBC News: Chile well prepared for quakes
• Washington Post: Earthquake in Chile (photos)
• Washington Post: Huge quake hits Chile; tsunami threatens Pacific
• CBC News: Chilean earthquake kills dozens, sparks tsunami
• The Huffington Post: Chile Earthquake Relief: How You Can Help

Let me know if there are more articles I should include here.

Fury Eyes

This is not the best version of this song, but it's the least offensive to be sharable right now. It's a song that's resonating with me these days, so I want to share.


If that don't suit you, scream and shout. If thine offend thee, pluck it out.

There is a much less dorked-up version available for listening here.

In my unsuccessful searches, I came across something else I need to share. If you like drums at all, even kinda, start at 1:40. This is why I never get bored listening to The Creatures.

Science Online 2010--Trust and Critical Thinking

Our session from Science Online is now available online. I think we ended up talking about trust more than critical thinking, but it means we still stayed on topic, at least. Thanks to Greg, Desiree, PZ, Dr. Kiki (from left to right) and our "audience" (almost all of whom participated) for a great session.

Bought

Tired of Valentine's Day advertising? Or maybe sick of it, with it. I didn't realize how sick of it I'd been until I found a little something I wrote a few years back.

What will I be doing on Valentine's Day? Celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of my first, very noncommercial date with my now-husband in a very noncommercial way. I hope you enjoy yours.

I Bought My Love...

A fine meal of fine meats and fruits and spices picked with care under the cruel, hot sun. She smiled at me.

Scentless flowers raised in otherwise barren ground. She kissed me.

A fur coat pieced together from small mean creatures kept in wire cages. She slept with me.

A diamond ring, clear as refugees' tears and hard as hearts. She married me.

A house furnished with rare woods, tiles glazed with poisonous paints. She sighed at me.

Rugs knotted over many years by tiny hands, paintings sold by nameless men in windowless rooms. She frowned at me.

A white tiger cub, servants with no legal existence. She laughed at me.

She told me she was leaving. She was bored, and I was cruel.

A square of dirt for eternity, marble walls behind lock and key.

For I bought my love, and she is mine.

Podcast Available

The podcast for the Skeptically Speaking on which I was a guest, on the topic of Skepticism and Race, is available here. Desiree, Girl 6 and LaVerne were great, and I've gotten a bit of feedback that I didn't suck either. Check it out.

Also, during the show, a plug was made for a new speakers bureau (contact clearinghouse) for skeptical speakers, run by the Grassroots Skeptics. I highly recommend that if you are willing and able to speak publicly or deal with the media on even one topic of skeptical interest, you sign up. If you know people who apply critical thinking to an underrepresented topic or are members of an underrepresented group, please bug them until they sign up as well. More and different voices reach more and different ears. (If that description applies to you, I'll assume you've already gotten the point and are going to sign up now.)

Skepticism and Race

I will be on the radio this Friday evening to talk about skepticism and race, along with Girl 6 and LaVerne Knight-West.

On the next episode of Skeptically Speaking, a panel discussion on skepticism and race. Is the face of modern skepticism really as monochrome as it appears? How do we make our message appeal to a broader, more diverse audience? And how do racial demographics influence belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal?

Why me? Well, the easy answer is that I'm a fill-in for someone who couldn't be on the show. The slightly longer answer is that lack of diversity isn't just a problem for ethnic minorities. It has an effect on everyone's goals, and it requires effort from everyone to get it right. I'm very much looking forward to the show.

If you're interested in the topic, please submit a question on the show's site. I'll point to the podcast when it's available.

Sure Racism Is So Over

Yup, it's entirely not a factor in politics or social outcomes.


[/choking sarcasm] And let us not forget that those are the numbers who were willing to tell a pollster their socially unacceptable thoughts on the matter.

At the Corner of Race and Class

Every once in a while, a number of discussions in my personal blogosphere converge. In this case, it's the discussion of race and IQ that I restarted and continued, and which has attempted to take over Greg Laden's Blog for the last couple of weeks, the discussion of the racist connotations of "redneck" by bikemonkey being overwhelmed by the discussion of "redneck" as a classist term, Will Shetterly's ongoing critique of the antiracist community's failure to deal with classism as an underpinning of racism, and Eric Michael Johnson's deconstruction of social Darwinism. It's time to say a few words about the intersection of race and class.

I'm taking on the light, uncontentious topic over at Quiche Moraine.

Irish Blasphemy Law, Take Two

It's really hard to miss that the Irish have a new blasphemy law that took effect at the start of the year. However, it's relatively easy to miss that there was a reason, even a moderately good reason, aside from religious prejudice that the law was made. Thers, at Whiskey Fire, isn't going to let us do that.

I am rarely happy with calling laws like this "backwards" or "medieval," because it's rarely a helpful way of understanding exactly why stuff like this gets proposed, or what the stakes are in any specific dispute. And I insist: It is always the specific dispute that matters, not how it fits into preconceived ideological frameworks, even ones I'm sympathetic to.

Go read for an interesting lesson in Irish history and modern sausage making.

I've had this open in a tab for a bit, but I believe the credit for pointing me to it goes to Bora.

Decimals Are a Girl's Best Friend

It's a lovely headline, that. It's also some fun new research.

A new study that looked at math scores for boys and girls in 69 countries corroborates her experience.

"There are no differences in girls' abilities in math," says Nicole Else-Quest, who led the study that analyzed the tests of nearly a half million students aged 14 to 16. "When they have the same resources boys have, nothing holds them back."

Her research linked individual achievement in test scores to the local status of women. In countries where men and women are perceived as equal, girls perform better in math. In Iceland, girls outperform boys; in Korea, boys outperform girls. In Canada, the difference in girls' and boys' scores is too small to be meaningful, Else-Quest said Wednesday.

Of course this means that people will step up to say, "Well, guys just have a greater range of math ability and the top mathematicians are just going to be guys." I strongly recommend they read this first.

Under Their Tenure

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. If you've followed the long slog through the IQ arguments on Quiche Moraine, Greg Laden's Blog and here, you've caught Bryan Pesta saying that intellectual dishonesty would get anyone canned from a tenured university position.

Um, maybe not.

It’s official. Cal State Long Beach psychology professor Kevin MacDonald has made the leap from academia to racist activism, signing on with the American Third Position (ATP), a white supremacist political party established in October “to represent the unique political interests of White Americans.” As excellently reported by the O.C. Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano, MacDonald is partnering with local racist skinheads “to create a new political party” that hopes to “oppose and deport non-whites.” MacDonald is listed as the group’s director.

Until October, when ATP was established, MacDonald was better known for his anti-Semitic “research” purportedly proving that Jews are driven by a genetically programmed group evolutionary strategy to undermine and harm Western civilization. (The idea is that they do so in order to weaken “host societies” that might otherwise oppress or act out against the Jews.) In his academic works, MacDonald has suggested taxing Jews or restricting their access to university as ways of protecting white society.