Woodstock

On Wednesday, just about a year since I last visited, I returned to Woodstock, New York.



Last year, the purpose of our day was a tour of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, which was wonderful and exhilarating but left little time for anything else. Fortunately, we did have time for lunch at the Garden Café, which was just as nice this year.

(The warm chocolate brownie with chocolate sauce and soy vanilla ice cream is the perfect October dessert.)

This time we strolled around the town. Halloween decorations were out:

Some pretty leaf stones:

Hippie clothes:

A country library:

Funky antiques (the sign says Open, but it was closed):

This is an inn at a waterfall, both of which were quiet:

A fat cat on the deck of the inn:

(On the other side is an apartment for rent.)

Some dishflowers in an old bathtub:

My favorite shop was Candlestock, “Home of the World’s Largest Drip Candle Sculpture.” I especially loved the exotic travel-themed votives.

On Wednesdays there’s a farmers’ market:

It was good for the soul.

Capitalist character education, funded by Templeton

The John F. Templeton Foundation has given $850,000 to the Center for Character and Citizenship at the University of Missouri in St. Louis for the creation of “an online, interactive resource for character education.” “One key goal of the project,” the UMSL blog reports, “will be the establishment of a sustainable, trustworthy source of research information that illuminates what positively shapes children’s character, values and virtues.” The Center’s general purpose is “to increase the quality, visibility and commitment of developing and implementing effective character education in the United States.”

“Character” and “citizenship” are the sorts of words – like “excellence,” “civility,” and “leadership” - that are ideal for ideological appropriation. They’re just vague enough to be easily drained of meaning and for politically useful sentiments to be inserted. In this case, the flexibility of “character” very much works in Templeton’s individual and organizational favor as he/they pursue rightwing political goals.

Aligning themselves with “character education” serves as a distraction and a smokescreen. It draws attention away from, for example, questions about the sort of character shown by the fact that Pennsylvanian John Templeton was one of the strongest financial backers of the hateful and rights-denying Proposition 8 in California (as well as a consistent opponent of LGBT rights generally). It also diverts attention from the rightwing ideology of the Foundation itself and the selfish, rapacious, and authoritarian values it promotes:

Although ostensibly nonpartisan, the Templeton Foundation has a special place in its great, bleeding philanthropic heart for “free enterprise,” having given cash awards to historian Gertrude Himmelfarb and economist Milton Friedman, as well as the following conservative organizations: Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Federalist Society and the National Association of Scholars. On its website, the Templeton Foundation announces that it “supports a wide range of programs and research initiatives to study the benefits of competition, specifically how free enterprise and other principles of capitalism can, and do, benefit the poor.”

Nowhere in the account of Templeton’s involvement with character education is there mention of the Foundation’s funding and support of rightwing organizations around the world or their awards for AGW denial, or discussion of how their contribution to this educational effort might be connected to their larger political agenda.

The idea of educating for character usefully serves to reinforce the false notion that systemic problems are really due to individual failings. Melinda C. Bier, the Center’s associate director, suggests for example that the “corruption in financial industries” amongst other so-called scandals shows the need for “renewing character education as a national education priority”: “[I]t is more important than ever that we invest in understanding how to effectively support the development of character strengths in our young people.”

Because of the openness of the concept of character, efforts to promote character education are fundamentally vulnerable to efforts to promote the status quo by defining character in terms that register compliance with the system and emphasizing those values most suited to it. The Center’s scientific agenda is described as follows:

The center’s researchers will conduct systematic reviews – similar to research in the field of medicine that summarizes research to yield “evidence” for what interventions have scientifically demonstrated results – and dig deeply into understanding specific character traits such as diligence, honesty and future-mindedness.

Fundamental questions about how schools can develop good people, not simply good students, include:

• How can schools foster honesty that becomes a lifelong individual value?
• What promotes and sustains the diligence that students will need when they enter the workforce?
• What are the best practices in helping students develop the characteristics of future-mindedness, like goal-setting?
• How can schools most effectively impact the long-term development of good character in students?

(I’m not sure why “evidence” is in quotes, but it’s amusing.) Few would argue with honesty as a worthwhile orientation to promote.* But how do diligence and future-mindedness make this top three? In educating students to be “good people,” traits others might consider to be amongst the most important – compassion and the desire to end suffering, a commitment to justice and equality, a willingness to challenge authorities,… - don’t rise in their view to the same level of importance as diligence?

The importance of diligence and future-mindedness is largely derivative – tied to their actual content. Martin Luther King, Jr., was diligent and future-minded; Stalin was diligent and future-minded. I think everyone would prefer that Stalin had been a little less diligent and future-minded.

From a moral standpoint, then, the choice of diligence and future-mindedness to represent the most important character traits seems unjustified and odd. But the emphasis on traits like these serves two purposes for rightwing organizations like Templeton. First, they’re traits capitalists desire in workers. As the Center’s “fundamental questions” about character education make explicit, the diligence sought is that diligence “that students will need when they enter the workforce.” When diligence is bought and sold, concerns about the moral character of the larger enterprise to which it’s contributing are made irrelevant: workers’ diligence serves a good purpose as defined not by any human standard of morality but by bosses and stock values. People taught to value and offer their diligence and future-mindedness generically are very useful to the powerful.

As with research into gratitude, the emphasis on these traits as constitutive of character is also useful to the Right as an ideological tool. In a context of vast and growing inequality, economic insecurity, and political repression, “educating” young people to believe that their condition is in large part due to their personal character – specifically to their lack of diligence and future-mindedness – serves to quell resistance and foster compliance. It encourages people to see those who are poor and struggling as lacking the traits of “character” necessary to succeed. In this way, the individualizing nature of character education in general is further reinforced, making it even more useful for conservatives.

To be clear: I’m not arguing or even suggesting that the people at the UMSL Center for Character and Citizenship share the rightwing orientation and goals of Templeton – the individual or the foundation – or are involved in a conspiracy to push Templeton’s agenda. It’s just another example of the subtle and inconspicuous ways Templeton funding, in a relatively innocuous guise, can shift research and educational priorities in this direction.

* Though many would argue that capitalism, imperialism, or other oppressive and exploitative social relations impede it and promote dishonesty on a massive scale.

“Murdering animals is not humane”: John Sanbonmatsu’s letter to Farm Forward

John Sanbonmatsu is a philosopher and the editor of Critical Theory and Animal Liberation, which I recently recommended here.* Some highlights from his recent letter to Aaron Gross at Farm Forward:

…“Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch is a unique network of Heritage poultry farmers that includes the nation’s preeminent expert on Heritage poultry, Farm Forward Board Member Frank Reese. In 2009, with the pro bono assistance of Farm Forward Consulting, Good Shepherd was able to expand its production beyond turkeys to include chickens. Good Shepherd is currently the market leader in the sale of chicken and turkey products that come from birds who are raised entirely outside of the factory farm industry using humane and sustainable methods.”

Talk about Orwellian — a direct advertisement for the market in dismembered animal bodies, on a site by animal advocates. “A unique network of Heritage” farmers is a fine touch — an appeal to conservative instincts, and to the hoary myths of virtuous agrarian life. A real “market leader”: banal corporate-speak in the context of mass killing. And so on. The text cannily interpellates the reader into celebrating the putative moral or public good of “expanding production” of murdered creatures. It is this home team we are implicitly urged to root for.

The difference between true Newspeak and mere propaganda, of course, is the way the former unites contradictory or even antithetical concepts so as to evacuate them of substantive meaning, in order thereby to obscure (and secure) the violence at the heart of the enterprise. Hence the special genius of “the Good Shepherd” trope, which brings violence and government together under one roof, and which anchors the whole rhetorically in a Christian metaphysics. But as Thracymachus rightly pointed out in the Republic during his joust with Socrates, the “good shepherd” does not in reality have his flock’s interests at heart, since his job is to ready them for the executioner. To be sure, if given the “choice” between, on the one hand, being shot in the back of the head while overlooking the pleasant Latvian countryside, and a deep trench filled with bodies, and, on the other, being worked to death at Treblinka, then yes, by all means, I’ll take the former. But the moment one claims that the former “option” is “humane,” then I fear you are laboring in Orwell’s totalitarian vineyards, and indeed are repeating, but in a different key, the same arguments made by the Binding and Hoche and other leading ideologues of Hitler’s euthanasia program.

In your note to me, you write, “Emphasizing the crucial ‘more’ in ‘more humane’ is something we could do better. Point taken.” But no, I’m sorry, that is not my point, so you cannot have taken it. Murdering animals (yes, murdering them: I am tired of using euphemisms) is not humane. Period, full-stop. There is no “more humane” way of cutting throats, gassing hundreds of avians in CO2 tanks. There are only relatively “less brutal” ways. Techniques of extermination can be made more or less aesthetic, more or less horrifying. But changing such techniques, swapping out the mechanisms of doom, does nothing to make the violence any less extreme or unconscionable. You can murder me less brutally, but you cannot murder me “more humanely.”

…The reason this is all so very bad is that the global crisis of capitalist agriculture has for the first time in human history created an opportunity for us to challenge human species right and Herrschaft species politics — and you and others in the locavore/sustainability/welfare movements (sorry, but if I paint with a broad brush, it is because they ply the same basic message) are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (or, at least, from the historical possibility of a true awakening to the nature and scale of the problem) by re-legitimating animals as commodities, as having lives that do not deserve to be respected or protected. That is what brings your “disparate” group of killers and advocates together: a fundamental conviction, implicit in everything Farm Forward does, that while the suffering of farmed animals ought to be relieved, the actual lives of animals simply do not matter. They are weightless and insubstantial as air. And that is the root of the problem, ideologically. If we don’t challenge that, then we have challenged nothing.

…Farm Forward lobbies for purely superficial and symbolic improvements to animal “welfare,” without however attacking either the ideological root of the problem, which is speciesism, or the fundamental injustice that we do to other animals, which is to exterminate them in the billions. Far from promoting veganism, your organization promotes animal agriculture. Call it “humane” or “sustainable” or whatever you like, that is what you are doing — promoting one more kind of animal agriculture…. The entire discourse is rotten and shot through with bad faith, because it tacitly affirms the behavior it supposedly disapproves of. In reality, asking people to reduce their meat consumption is like asking men to “reduce” their sexual violence against women, or President Assad to “reduce” his massacres of civilians, or racist whites in the South to “reduce” their lynchings of blacks (while adding, occasionally and timidly, that it would perhaps be “ideal” if they should cease such practices altogether). In other words, it is to give one’s imprimatur morally to the underlying practice, which is domination and extreme violence….

…[S]o long as Farm Forward and others tell them that nonhuman lives are worthless — or rather, worth only as much as the market will bear for their flesh — then middle and upper class consumers can indeed eat with a clear “conscience,” while working people and the poor and other middle class people keep on buying affordable, factory-farmed products. It’s a win-win: everyone gets to continue doing what they’re doing, without challenging the overall system one iota…. I fear then that your “peanut-pushing” approach, as you call it, won’t lead to the closure of a single actual animal enterprise, ever — and by design. Instead, Farm Forward is embarked on an approach which advocates continuing such practices for an eternity.

…In your note, you amiably advise me to expend my scarce energies elsewhere, rather than to attack fellow animal advocates. But the Times [“Defending Your Dinner”] contest demonstrates perfectly what I am talking about, and why all this matters: viz. the strategic animal welfare intelligentsia, who are telling the consuming middle classes the very fantasy they most want to hear, which is that killing and eating animals on a gargantuan scale is morally unproblematic so long as we ameliorate the worst excesses of factory farming. Thus, on the contrary: revealing the fraud being perpetrated on the animal rights movement by groups like Farm Forward still seems to me the best possible use which I and others could be making of our time at this crucial historical conjuncture, given the way knowledge and legitimation practices circulate in our society.

In fine, or so it seems to me, Farm Forward fails on both deontological and utilitarian grounds. It fails on deontological grounds because it treats the lives of billions of our fellow beings as disposable commodities, and therefore reinforces speciesism at the most fundamental level. But it also fails on utilitarian grounds. First, because the new welfarism will not displace or lead to the abolition of factory farming, but will only lead to cosmetic changes in the industry (this much is clear) without producing any qualitative mitigation in either the suffering or final agonies of those being killed — all the while putting a moral “Good-Housekeeping” stamp of approval on the new, lucrative niche markets in animal flesh (the very markets lining the pockets of elite Judas like Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, another Farm Forward board member). Second, because the whole project meanwhile serves the aforementioned ideological function of stabilizing speciesism by re-branding and re-naturalizing “meat” as a virtuous commodity.

Farm Forward, whatever else it is or think it is doing, is therefore not promoting animal liberation. In my view, it is not even a pro-animal organization, but an anti-animal one. Call that “absolutist” or “purist” if you like. But I don’t see it that way. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said that in matters of ethics, we should stand firm as rock, but in matters of taste, swim with the fishes. Farm Forward and other groups seem to me to treat ethics as a kind of aesthetics, rather than as a fragile realm of empathetic and principled commitments that must be fiercely defended–defended at all costs and regardless of whether they happen to grate against the ugly prejudices of the majority.

What you mistake for “pragmatism,” I fear, is merely giving in.

One point I’d like to add concerns Sanbonmatsu’s rewriting of Farm Forward’s literature, substituting the killing of Jewish people by the Nazis for the killing of other animals. “Allow me, briefly,” he offers, “to ‘translate’ some of the language on your website, imagining however that it is addressing the plight of European Jewry in the early 1940s, rather than the butchery of nonhuman animals today.” One example:

- “The Integrity of Humane Practices” shall include shooting Jews in the head, gassing them, and slitting their throats. Our position is that while murdering billions of Jews, for eternity, is not “ideal,” it can nonetheless be made a “humane and sustainable” (and, what is more, highly profitable) enterprise.

This is an effective imaginative exercise, but another comparison is also useful. It’s true that the Nazis and their defenders didn’t generally describe their actions toward Jews in this manner. They didn’t generally have “the chutzpah to advertise products made from Jews, or to speak enthusiastically of their liquidation as ‘humane and sustainable’.”

They did, though (as I’m sure Sanbonmatsu is aware, since I learned of Charles Patterson’s Eternal Treblinka from his introduction to Critical Theory), talk about their eugenics program in these terms. It was described as a humane termination of life, necessary for the good of society. The same ideas were espoused by the promoters and defenders of eugenics in the US. Their arguments are described in several works, including Eternal Treblinka, Edwin Black’s War against the Weak, Robert J. Lifton’s Nazi Doctors, and many others. (This was especially the case with people believed to suffer from hereditary mental illnesses.**) In the case of oppression and extermination in the name of eugenics, the rhetoric of positive interventions and of “painless,” humane methods was prominent. So that’s another valid and useful point of comparison for today’s rhetoric of “humane and sustainable” animal slaughter.

* Sanbonmatsu expresses his disappointment with Jonathan Safran Foer, whose book I also recommended there, for participating in Farm Forward and the New York Times’ “Defending Your Dinner” contest. I share that disappointment.

** These people were often compared to other animals, and their lives were seen as equal in value to those of nonhuman animals. Further, the human eugenics movement was rooted in the ideas and practices of animal agriculture. The connections between the treatment of the so-called mentally ill and the treatment of other animals in this period and beyond have yet to receive adequate attention.

Sirens of the lambs

Magritte and the animals

I spent a weekend in New York recently, and had a swell time. Hung out with friends. Enjoyed lovely weather. Had another delicious lunch at Candle Café. (They have frozen entrees now, available at Whole Foods. I tried the tofu and spinach ravioli, and it was quite nice as frozen food goes. They’re pretty pricey, but I would get some more if they were on sale.) Finally got to Moo Shoes and picked up some desperately needed boots. (I’ve been fortunate the weather in the northeast has been unseasonably warm, but I was beginning to feel chilly, and would be starting to look silly, continuing to wear flip flops.) Stayed in the lap of luxury in a suite in a midtown hotel, which I was pained to have to leave after such a short stay.

A highlight was a visit to the Museum of Modern Art. I’d planned to go for the “American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe” show, which was well worth a visit, but was over the moon to learn that the exhibit “Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938” had opened that weekend. Magritte has been one of my favorite artists for pretty much ever, and I enjoyed the exhibit immensely. It was a reasonable size, and the period featured is when he did what I consider his best work. I just love his style – the clarity of design, the sophistication of color, the blend of seriousness and play. And everything is so neat and crisp and contained. (…But then I’m probably the only one who actually liked Monk’s paintings.)

Of course, I took special notice of animal themes. I hadn’t been familiar with many of Magritte’s animal-related paintings before, but there were several on display and I found more later online.*

One featured in the exhibit was Pleasure (1927):

One I found online (and I’m surprised I hadn’t come across it before) is Collective Invention (1935):

Another example is Homesickness (1940):

But my favorite work in the show by far, to which I kept returning, was Hunters at the Edge of Night (1928):

It’s not that I believe Magritte was trying in these works to say something about other animals or humans’ relationships with them – that seems very unlikely - but that his use of animal and animal-related imagery in these poetic juxtapositions can evoke feelings and ideas about them that transcend his original intent. These ideas remain consistent, though, with his interest in subverting ordinary understandings.

*The colors in these are terribly distorted, which is unfortunate.

The thin veneer

A new post at Butterflies & Wheels features DNLee's story of a recent email exchange with someone named Ofek who's a blog editor at a biology web site.*

I'm sharing it to amplify the signal, and to add my voice to those expressing sympathy for Lee.

As I said at B&W, what was maybe most disturbing aspect of the exchange to me was the suddenness with which this Ofek's attitude transformed. It appears the professional politeness of his first two emails was just a thin veneer, ready to crack at the first sign of rejection or opposition (here in the form of politely declining a request to work for free) to reveal the contempt and hostility just beneath. It makes me think of others who've accepted the offer to write for the site completely unaware of what might have happened had they declined.

*I adore her response, though I could live without the use of "butt-hurt" and the comparisons to nonhuman animals.

The Warrior Zone

“Our bases in Italy are making it easier to pursue new wars and military interventions in conflicts about which we know little, from Africa to the Middle East. Unless we question why we still have bases in Italy and dozens more countries like it worldwide -- as, encouragingly, growing numbers of politicians, journalists, and others are doing -- those bases will help lead us, in the name of American “security,” down a path of perpetual violence, perpetual war, and perpetual insecurity.” – David Vine

Speaking of imperialism, I recently read this interesting piece by David Vine: “The Italian Job: How the Pentagon Is Using Your Tax Dollars to Turn Italy into a Launching Pad for the Wars of Today and Tomorrow”:

The Pentagon has spent the last two decades plowing hundreds of millions of tax dollars into military bases in Italy, turning the country into an increasingly important center for U.S. military power. Especially since the start of the Global War on Terror in 2001, the military has been shifting its European center of gravity south from Germany, where the overwhelming majority of U.S. forces in the region have been stationed since the end of World War II. In the process, the Pentagon has turned the Italian peninsula into a launching pad for future wars in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.

…Base expert Alexander Cooley explains: “U.S. defense officials acknowledge that Italy’s strategic positioning on the Mediterranean and near North Africa, the Italian military’s antiterrorism doctrine, as well as the country’s favorable political disposition toward U.S. forces are important factors in the Pentagon’s decision to retain” a large base and troop presence there. About the only people who have been paying attention to this build-up are the Italians in local opposition movements like those in Vicenza who are concerned that their city will become a platform for future U.S. wars.

[Here’s some more background about the base in Vicenza and the local resistance.]

The organized opposition to the expansion of US military installations in Europe and around the world came to my attention several years ago when mayors and other groups in Poland and the Czech Republic campaigned to block the construction of missile shields in their countries while Italians around Vicenza protested Dal Molin.



Anti-base struggles often concern local issues, but they also involve core struggles against the culture of militarism and imperialism. The global movement resisting an expanding US military presence includes women, indigenous and displaced people, migrants, former soldiers, and others who bear the brunt of militarization. It includes peace, democracy, and human rights activists. It includes those in the US and Latin America who oppose US interference in the politics of the other countries in the hemisphere - the US military’s support of authoritarianism and repression, its partnership with US corporations, and its role in ecological destruction. (The 2008 Hemispheric Conference against Militarization was held, interestingly enough, in Honduras, just months before the coup. It concluded with a protest at Soto Cano airbase, which president Zelaya was planning to convert to a civilian airport.)

Vine’s description of Dal Molin is striking:

Last month, I had a chance to visit the newest U.S. base in Italy, a three-month-old garrison in Vicenza, near Venice. Home to a rapid reaction intervention force, the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), and the Army’s component of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the base extends for a mile, north to south, dwarfing everything else in the small city. In fact, at over 145 acres, the base is almost exactly the size of Washington’s National Mall or the equivalent of around 110 American football fields. The price tag for the base and related construction in a city that already hosted at least six installations: upwards of $600 million since fiscal year 2007.

…Publicly, U.S. officials say there are no U.S. military bases in Italy. They insist that our garrisons, with all their infrastructure, equipment, and weaponry, are simply guests on what officially remain “Italian” bases designated for NATO use. Of course, everyone knows that this is largely a legal nicety.

No one visiting the new base in Vicenza could doubt that it's a U.S. installation all the way. The garrison occupies a former Italian air force base called Dal Molin. (In late 2011, Italian officials rebranded it “Caserma Del Din,” evidently to try to shed memories of the massive opposition the base has generated.) From the outside, it might be mistaken for a giant hospital complex or a university campus. Thirty one box-like peach-and-cream-colored buildings with light red rooftops dominate the horizon with only the foothills of the Southern Alps as a backdrop. A chain link fence topped by razor wire surrounds the perimeter, with green mesh screens obscuring views into the base.

If you manage to get inside, however, you find two barracks for up to 600 soldiers each. (Off base, the Army is contracting to lease up to 240 newly built homes in surrounding communities.) Two six-floor parking garages that can hold 850 vehicles, and a series of large office complexes, some small training areas, including an indoor shooting range still under construction, as well as a gym with a heated swimming pool, a “Warrior Zone” entertainment center, a small PX, an Italian-style café, and a large dining facility. These amenities are actually rather modest for a large U.S. base. Most of the newly built or upgraded housing, schools, medical facilities, shopping, and other amenities for soldiers and their families are across town on Viale della Pace (Peace Boulevard) at the Caserma Ederle base and at the nearby Villaggio della Pace (Peace Village).

I was especially intrigued by the “Warrior Zone” entertainment center (and the idea of people heading there for evening entertainment after a day in Peace Village). It’s described on the base’s web site:

The Warrior Zone is a modern multipurpose entertainment center designed specifically for Single Soldiers as a home away from home. It is a place where Soldiers and their guests can come to socialize, relax, and grab a bite to eat and enjoy a beverage from our full service bar. Unwind in the comfortable lounge areas and outdoor patio or enjoy a movie in the cinema room.

On the menu? Hamburger, cheeseburger, bacon cheeseburger, grilled chicken sandwich, Philly cheese steak sandwich, and BLT. The first two (of four) sides are a hot dog and - I’m not making this up - two hot dogs. I’m surprised they don’t serve lamb shakes.

Get out of ALEC, Google.

Norman Solomon at ZNet:

ALEC’s reactionary efforts -- thoroughly documented by the Center for Media and Democracy -- are shameful assaults on democratic principles. And Google is now among the hundreds of companies in ALEC. Many people who’ve admired Google are now wondering: how could this be?

Well, in his recent book “Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy,” Robert W. McChesney provides vital context. “It is true that with the advent of the Internet many of the successful giants -- Apple and Google come to mind -- were begun by idealists who may have been uncertain whether they really wanted to be old-fashioned capitalists,” he writes. “The system in short order has whipped them into shape.”

McChesney adds: “Any qualms about privacy, commercialism, avoiding taxes, or paying low wages to Third World factory workers were quickly forgotten. It is not that the managers are particularly bad and greedy people -- indeed their individual moral makeup is mostly irrelevant -- but rather that the system sharply rewards some types of behavior and penalizes other types of behavior so that people either get with the program and internalize the necessary values or they fail.”

There's a petition.

Argo see a Costa-Gavras film

So I had a chance to see the Oscar-winning [!] Argo recently. After hearing such good things about it, I was unpleasantly surprised and a bit angry. Assuming I couldn’t be the only person with that response, I googled. I had to do searches specifically related to racism and imperialism, but I found a few posts from the time it was in the theaters and the Oscar lead-up by people who had a similar reaction:

“Argo, F—k Yourself: This year’s worst Best Picture nominee,” Kevin B. Lee, Slate:

…Perhaps my disgust wouldn’t be as intense if it weren’t for the potentially great film suggested by Argo’s opening sequence: a history of pre-revolutionary Iran told through eye-catching storyboards. The sequence gives a compelling (if sensationalized) account of how the CIA’s meddling with Iran's government over three decades led to a corrupt and oppressive regime, eventually inciting the 1979 revolution. The sequence even humanizes the Iranian people as victims of these abuses. This opening may very well be the reason why critics have given the film credit for being insightful and progressive—because nothing that follows comes close, and the rest of the movie actually undoes what this opening achieves.

Instead of keeping its eye on the big picture of revolutionary Iran, the film settles into a retrograde “white Americans in peril” storyline. It recasts those oppressed Iranians as a raging, zombie-like horde, the same dark-faced demons from countless other movies— still a surefire dramatic device for instilling fear in an American audience. After the opening makes a big fuss about how Iranians were victimized for decades, the film marginalizes them from their own story, shunting them into the role of villains. Yet this irony is overshadowed by a larger one: The heroes of the film, the CIA, helped create this mess in the first place. And their triumph is executed through one more ruse at the expense of the ever-dupable Iranians to cap off three decades of deception and manipulation….

“Argo: film review,” Andrew Schenker, Slant:

…[T]he film becomes an increasingly blinkered tale of the heroic C.I.A. versus the Muslim menace, exactly the narrative that today's hawkish politicians love to propagate. It's astonishing how easily the film is content to give into what critic Jack Shaheen might call Reel Bad Arab syndrome, in which every Iranian face is either filled with hatred or suspicion. Granted, in post-revolutionary Iran, people were indeed filled with anger and hostility toward Americans, but Affleck's decision to portray this sense of fury—quite vividly evoked despite the director's distracting penchant for whip pans and arcing shots—not only seems increasingly misguided in a moment when mainstream outlets like Newsweek run headline stories unhelpfully declaring the phenomenon of "Muslim Rage," but seems to play exactly into the simplified us-versus-them narrative of the war on terror….

“‘Argo’ as Orientalism and why it Upsets Iranians,” Juan Cole, Informed Comment:

…“Argo” could have been a moment when Americans come to terms with their Cold War role as villains in places like Iran. It could have been a film about what intelligence analysts call “blowback,” when a covert operation goes awry. Instead it plays into a ‘war on terror’ narrative of innocent Americans victimized by essentially deranged foreign mobs.

…The film tells but doesn’t show some of the US atrocities in Iran. It shows the plight of the hapless US diplomats. In making that key dramatic decision, and then in Orientalizing the Iranian protagonists as angry and irrational, the film betrays its subject matter and becomes propaganda, lacking true moral or emotional ambiguity….

Lacking true moral or emotional ambiguity is putting it mildly. It takes the ax for the frozen sea within us, breaks the handle over its knee, and shapes the head into figure skates. A disappointing imperial thriller from Affleck.

Not to try to draw too stark a contrast, but Amy Goodman just interviewed director Costa-Gavras about his history of filmmaking and his new work, Capital:

A long reply to David Marjanović

[This post is about a very specific situation at Pharyngula which involves particularly this post and the ensuing comments there and here. The Pharyngula post was one of many about this letter presumably sent by a man to his daughter after she kicked her son out of her house when he told her he was gay:

Dear Christine: I’m disappointed in you as a daughter. You’re correct that we have a “shame in the family,” but mistaken about what it is.

Kicking Chad out of your home simply because he told you he was gay is the real “abomination” here. A parent disowning her child is what goes “against nature.”

The only intelligent thing I heard you saying in all this was that “you didn’t raise your son to be gay”. Of course you didn’t. He was born this way and didn’t chase it any more than he being left-handed. You however, have made a choice of being hurtful, narrow-minded and backward. So, while we are in the business of disowning our children, I think I’ll take this moment to say goodbye to you. I now have a fabulous (as the gays put it) grandson to raise, and I don’t have time for heart-less B-word of a daughter.

If you find your heart, give us a call

Those who haven’t followed the exchange or general situation will likely find this post boring and impossible to follow, so just ignore it.]

I’ll summarize my thoughts on the letter itself and its reception, though I’m finding the two impossible to detangle:

I’m of course very happy and impressed that the grandfather is taking in his grandson and providing him with acceptance and support. I also endorse his informing his daughter of his support for his grandson and telling her in no uncertain terms how wrong and harmful her actions have been. (This should go without saying, but I did say it several times, it was quoted several times, and some people still persist in ignoring it.)

I’m bothered by the misogynistic slur at the end. First, because bigoted slurs are a problem. Also, because it detracts from the letter’s message of love and compassion. Finally, because using a bigoted slur in a letter to someone denouncing their bigotry is hypocritical and counterproductive.

His disowning also seems to me somewhat rash and counterproductive. If, say, Chad were showing me this letter as a draft and asked me what I thought, I would (after recommending the grandfather remove the line with the slur) ask him some questions about the situation to determine if breaking off contact was precipitous and angry or whether it was warranted but other aspects of the situation. (Well, I’d give him my opinion and then try to help him find people more knowledgeable than I.)

The fact, though, is that we don’t know more details about the situation. (And even if we were to learn more details now, we didn’t have them when presented with the letter and commenting on it.) The only information we have is what’s in the letter: Chad’s mother threw him out when she found out he was gay, apparently because she has standard homophobic (religious) beliefs: being gay is shameful, an abomination, and against nature. We don’t have any indication that she was abusive prior to learning of her son’s sexual orientation or a “toxic” person or that the grandfather doesn’t have the emotional wherewithal to deal with her. Any of those – and many other factors besides – might be true, but we don’t know. Like everyone else, I can only evaluate based on the limited information available, and on that basis I think his disowning of his daughter seems like a rash decision made in the heat of anger, unlikely to be productive, and likely to contribute to further deterioration of familial relationships.

I think the disowning also comes across as rather hypocritical (as I’ll discuss below), which works against the letter’s positive intent. If part of your message is how terrible it is for a parent to disown her child, disowning your child in this angry way undercuts that message, even if it’s being done for an entirely different reason.

So, with the limited information available, that’s my reading: Taking in and supporting his grandson? Wonderful. Telling his daughter how awful her actions have been and how angry, disappointed, and ashamed he is? Great. Informing her that he doesn’t “have time for heart-less B-word of a daughter”? Unacceptable and wrong. Coldly disowning her? Seems rash and ill-advised. Hypocrisy? Not great, and counterproductive. None of the aspects of which I’m critical is the Crime of the Century. None is something we all haven’t done something similar to or that I would remotely see as erasing the great thing he’s doing for his grandson.

But it’s especially important to discuss the potential problems with the letter because of its spread and reception. I’ve seen it on at least three sites now. It’s been presented as an exemplar – a great example of how to go about things for grandparents in this situation - and the comments generally have been of the type “You go, grandpa!,” with little critical discussion. The fact that this letter has entered the internet and is being viewed as exemplary makes thoughtful criticism not only acceptable but necessary. (And yes, assuming the letter is genuine, the grandfather is a real person, but it’s not like commenting on 5-year-old Juan’s first piano recital.)

In that light, calling negative attention to the bigoted slur in the letter is extremely important (and this should not be left to women to do or defend doing). If the slur is ignored – especially by gay rights organizations promoting the letter - or people attempt to minimize, justify, or defend it, that sends the message to everyone that the community is fine with bigoted slurs against women or that misogyny should be overlooked or excused if it’s in the context or service of combating homophobia or another oppression. (As I asked previously: “If this were a grandfather disowning his gay son for misogynistic treatment of his granddaughter and the letter ended ‘…and I don’t have time for heart-less f****t of a son’, would that be ignored? Not factor into people’s evaluations? OK for feminist organizations to promote and celebrate without comment on the homophobic slur? Or is it only to be misogyny that gets minimized in this way?”) When it’s posted without comment, it sends the message to women that they should remain quiet in the interest of supporting victims of homophobia. When people do point to it and are criticized or silenced for doing so, the message is even worse.

Sexism and misogyny are far from the only forms of bigotry that people often see as justified as long as you’re fighting a good fight, but people do seem especially comfortable with excusing them. It’s even worse if we consider that for some people it might form part of the appeal of the letter, providing an opportunity to revel in someone’s telling off a “heartless B-word.” It sends the message to misogynists that, at least sometimes, the community accepts their anti-woman views.

With regard to the disowning aspect being accepted as exemplary, I’m concerned that the uncritical celebration of this act is getting in the way of considering all of the alternative responses relatives can take in this situation. Surely the ideal outcome generally is for bigoted parents to come to understand how wrong they’ve been, make amends, and work to rebuild the relationships with both their children and the family members they’ve alienated. Angrily cutting off contact, as I’ve argued, blocks off the avenues of influence and education most likely to lead to this outcome. Of course in many cases this ideal is all but impossible, or for various reasons the path to achieving it isn’t realistic or is too emotionally destructive to the people involved. (The immediate outcome here might be the best relative outcome in the field of real possibilities, but it’s far from ideal.)

But, as I’ve suggested, if people are developing a general guide with advice for relatives in this situation, I can’t imagine that – in the absence of any specific information, people would recommend angrily cutting off contact with your child until they “find a heart” as the best first option. And I don’t think “We’re not developing such a guide. We’re simply commenting on this one case” is a valid rejoinder, because this one case is being celebrated as exemplary in a general way (and necessarily in a general way, given that we don’t have any specific information about it). I suspect that if the letter about taking in the grandson had contained, instead of the disowning, a section about how he was sending his daughter some educational materials and information about organizations that could help her to understand, or that some of the other relatives would be coming to talk to her about it, or that he would be sending her updates on her son and what he’s doing, that people would consider it exemplary. Because people are focusing on the exemplary act of taking in the grandson and that makes us more likely to accept as exemplary all of the acts that accompany it.

That of course doesn’t mean people shouldn't point out that those or other options or others aren’t always possible or suitable. It’s the thoughtful discussion that’s desirable. This isn’t so much about criticizing or second-guessing people doing something good as about having a conversation about the various options available to people in the situation and the resources that might be available or be made available to them. Given that we’re effectively constructing a general guide with our comments, we should just recognize that and take a careful, thoughtful approach to the process.

And now I’m going to respond specifically to David Marjanović, because I think he’s honestly misunderstood me rather than actively tried to misrepresent me. I hate being honestly misunderstood far more than being mischaracterized or misrepresented, because being misunderstood is quite likely partially my fault, and means that I haven’t expressed myself clearly enough.

David had alleged that I had “mentioned the use of ‘her’ to refer to ‘parent’ as possible, if not likely, evidence of a misogynistic character,” which I had called “just absurd.” I made clear:

It had zero to do with anything like that. I had said his actions were hypocritical, and added parenthetically that if he was referring only to mothers when he described a parent’s disowning their child as “against nature”/bad – which is a reasonable possibility (and I provided reasons why I think that) – then he wasn’t being hypocritical. Because in that case he wouldn’t understand doing the same as a father to be equally “against nature”/bad. (And that might be a view held by many people, which could warrant some discussion.)

So, to David: To my statement “It had nothing to do with trying to paint him as a misogynist,” you replied:

*blink*

I have not tried to accuse you of somehow deciding in advance he’s a misogynist and then looking for evidence to fit your hypothesis.

No, I didn’t think that.

The other way around. I thought you were concluding from this evidence that he’s likely (though not definitely) a misogynist.

I tried to disagree with the “likely” part of that conclusion: a more parsimonious assumption, as far as I can tell, is that he used “her” to refer to “parent” just because he was talking to and about his daughter. Wondering why you had gone with a less parsimonious but scarier option, I presented a possible reason…

Yes, I understood what you were saying, but it’s confused and wrong. I’m going to make one last, this time fairly exhaustive, effort to explain. (I’m not thrilled that you didn’t seem to pay attention to the rest of the post you’re quoting in which I point to the context – a discussion of possible hypocrisy – and how my remarks formed a part of it.)

The context of those remarks is extremely important to recognize. That context was a discussion of the hypocrisy or nonhypocrisy of the grandfather’s words/act. This is the exchange:

Jacob Schmidt @ 120:

SC

It might surprise you to learn that someone can have compassion for the grandson and share the father/grandfather’s anger at his daughter, while being not particularly impressed that he would so readily and hypocritically disown his daughter and dismiss her with a misogynistic slur.

While I won’t defend his use of slurs, there’s no hypocrisy. The anger seems to be at disowning a dependent child for their sexual orientation, not disownment in general.

Me @ #121:

A parent disowning her child is what goes “against nature.”

[Of course, this ("her child") could be read - and not unreasonably in this context - as only referring to mothers, with fathers excused....]

Jacob Schmidt @ #122:

Assuming that’s a response to me… so are cars, plains, and the ink he wrote that letter with. It reads to me like he’s pointing out the hypocrisy of his daughter, not saying that anything unnatural is bad, or that disownment is bad because it’s unnatural (since that’s not why it’s bad).

Me @ #125:

It’s pretty obviously a response to a claim by her that being gay is “unnatural” and therefore bad. He’s suggesting that her disowning her child is what’s really unnatural and bad.

I assumed “her” was used because he was addressing his daughter.

Of course you did.

Me at #131:

Of course you did.

I’ll elaborate, in case anyone’s confused:

There are a few factors that would lead me to suspect that there might be sexism behind this remark (and there might not – I just wouldn’t assume that there isn’t). First, he later calls her a bitch. Second, he cuts her off as she cut off her son without viewing his own act as at all problematic in a parallel way. Third, there’s an established patriarchal cultural trope that mothers are naturally, and have a duty to be, unconditionally loving, whereas fathers have the complementary duty to offer conditional, judgmental love to improve a child’s character. According to Erich Fromm (who held this view), it’s the reason that in some cultures (like some Muslim cultures) fathers legally “take over” when a child reaches the age of 7 or 8. It’s not a bizarre belief in sexist cultures by any means. Again, his phrasing there might have nothing to do with sexism, but it’s not entirely reasonable to assume it doesn’t.

Jacob Schmidt @ #139:

I’ll elaborate, in case anyone’s confused:

No need here. I understand why, and I don’t disagree. I also know that using pronouns when addressing people is the point of pronouns, so that looked like the more valid interpretation.

He’s suggesting that her disowning her child is what’s really unnatural and bad.

But why is it bad? The mothers reasons are why; it’s not a contradiction to be against the disownment of gay teens while disowning toxic family members.

Me @ #144:

I also know that using pronouns when addressing people is the point of pronouns, so that looked like the more valid interpretation.

If you ignore context, sure, it’s the obvious interpretation that this was the sole meaning.

But why is it bad?

You’re still ignoring that it’s a parallel construction.

So the question under discussion was: In disowning his daughter after telling her that a parent disowning her child is “against nature,” is the grandfather being hypocritical?

A few notes about hypocrisy. I would define hypocrisy as: when your actions don’t match your words – specifically, here, when you condemn an act engaged in by others while doing it yourself without condemning that.

It doesn’t matter, in the context of evaluating hypocrisy, whether the behavior the person in question condemns is legitimately condemnable. We need to separate the evaluation of hypocrisy from the specific content of what someone’s being hypocritical about. So, for example, we can say Ayn Rand was acting hypocritically when she accepted government support during her illness despite inveighing against social welfare programs and their use, without agreeing with her condemnation of these programs. We can say religious people are being hypocritical if they preach against drinking alcohol while drinking themselves in private, without agreeing that drinking is sinful or that sin exists. “Condemning X while engaging in X” is hypocritical regardless of the content of X.

But evaluating hypocrisy does require trying to understanding how someone is characterizing their acts and those of others. Because it’s possible that someone might not be making the same distinctions and equivalencies we are. First, they might regard what appears to be the same act as two fundamentally different acts if, for example, done with different motives or for different purposes. Or, they might recognize acts as equivalent but have different standards for different groups based on beliefs about their different roles and duties. (This isn’t about “me vs. everyone else,” which is classic hypocrisy, but about consistently different expectations for people in different categories.) For example, there are Islamic beliefs about men and women that mean many Muslims regard the same sexual behavior engaged in by men and women very differently.

It can be difficult because sometimes hypocrisy runs very deep, and affects people’s fundamental understandings, or they’re simply unable due to their beliefs to view their actions as equivalent to those they’re condemning despite the obvious parallels. These cases maybe aren’t best discussed in terms of hypocrisy, but rather bad faith or deep-rooted prejudice. So it’s complicated, but I suppose we can say that they’re hypocrisy but at a deeper or…more collective level, but that’s different from the sort of basic hypocrisy I think we’re talking about in this case.

So in evaluating hypocrisy, I think, intent does matter: how the grandfather sees disowning children and whether or how closely he regards his own action as equivalent to his daughter’s is important here. He’s being hypocritical to the extent that he sees disowning as generally bad and the two acts as equivalent and less so to the extent that he differentiates amongst acts of disownment due to the motives or purposes behind them or holds himself and his daughter to different expectations based on their sex.

I was responding to someone arguing (in part) that the grandfather wasn’t being hypocritical because he saw the two disownings as fundamentally different due to their different reasons. Jacob Schmidt was arguing that he was specifically condemning disowning a gay child and not disowning in general, I assume focusing on the sentence: “Kicking Chad out of your home simply because he told you he was gay is the real ‘abomination’ here.”

Of course I recognize that their reasons are different, but I was suggesting, in response, that it was significant that the grandfather appeared to be making a general statement about the badness of a parent disowning a child, rather than specifying a particular type of disowning – for reason X – that he condemns and from which his act is excluded. His statement “A parent disowning her child is what goes ‘against nature’” - is a general one. (It seemed general, in addition to the content, because I recognized it as a parallel response to a presumed statement from his daughter that being gay is “against nature”/bad.)

I didn’t mention it in that post, but he also draws an explicit parallel a few sentences later – “So, while we are in the business of disowning our children, I think I’ll take this moment to say goodbye to you,” which suggests that he saw the acts themselves as the same. So my argument was that in the grandfather’s view the two disownings are in essence the same act and that therefore both should be seen as problematic by him despite their different motives. If the grandfather is saying X behavior is bad, and engaging in behavior X while recognizing that he’s doing so, that’s hypocritical.

The ONLY significance of “her” here, and the reason I italicized it, is that it brought to mind a possible alternative reading of the “against nature” sentence that would counter the argument that he was acting hypocritically. (This reading would still be entirely possible if he had said “his or her” or “their” or “a” or phrased the whole thing differently – “Disowning your child…” or whatever - but specifying “her” here led me to think about alternative, nonhypocritical readings of the paragraph.)

That alternative reading is: What looks like a general statement (“A parent disowning her child is what goes ‘against nature’”) might not really have been a general statement because he was, consciously or unconsciously, making a distinction between the roles and duties of mothers and fathers. Thus he wouldn’t be acting hypocritically because, even if the acts are the same, the people doing them are in different categories.

That’s it. I didn’t see the pronoun as evidence of sexist or misogynistic attitudes, and wasn’t trying to “explain” it with reference to them. The use of “her” simply wasn’t part of any argument I was making, and you can see that I made no argument about it or using it. I simply italicized it because it sparked the idea in my head that there might be an alternative, nonhypocritical reading in which he recognized the behavior as equivalent but saw it, consciously or unconsciously, as differently/less condemnable for a father than a mother.

No alternative nonhypocritical reading rests on the use of the feminine pronoun in that sentence, and I wasn’t trying to explain that use in terms of sexism. In #131, I offered three reasons to think he might hold (unconsciously) that sexist attitude:

• He calls his daughter a bitch at the end of the letter, and so he’s clearly not immune to his culture’s attitudes towards women.

• Just after he calls a parent’s disowning a child “against nature” and therefore bad, he makes the parallel between her disowning and his explicit: “So, while we are in the business of disowning our children, I think I’ll take this moment to say goodbye to you.” Despite this, he doesn’t appear to recognize that by his standards his act could be seen as wrong. He doesn’t appear to see any hypocrisy.

• The idea that it’s more “against nature” and worse for a mother to cut off her child is very common in his culture.*

This – not his use of the feminine pronoun - was my reasoning behind thinking it was possible that there was a possible reading of the “against nature” statement that wouldn’t contribute to the conclusion that he was hypocritical.

So, in sum, and based not just on that exchange, here are what I consider reasons to consider his action hypocritical and reasons not to:

Reasons to see it as hypocritical:

• The sentence “A parent disowning her child is what goes ‘against nature’” is a general condemnation of disowning, presumably in response to his daughter’s having said something to the effect of “Being gay is against nature,” which is also a general statement.

• He makes the equivalence explicit when he says “[W]hile we are in the business of disowning our children, I think I’ll take this moment to say goodbye to you.”

Reasons to see it as not hypocritical:

• The general “against nature” statement is preceded by a more specific one (also I assume a parallel construction) referring to reasons: "Kicking Chad out of your home simply because he told you he was gay is the real 'abomination' here.” [my emphasis] This statement is both itself specific and could possibly affect the interpretation of the more general one that follows.

• It’s plausible, for the reasons I’ve discussed, that there were sexist ideas behind what appears like a general statement about a parent’s disowning a child, meaning that his condemnation is stronger for mothers than for fathers. (It’s also plausible that there weren’t, or that, as Jadehawk suggested, he was too busy playing word games [with the parallel constructions] to notice what he was saying.)

• He says at the end “If you find your heart, give us a call,” so it’s not a “real” disowning. (I don’t see statements like this as necessarily inconsistent with disowning, but more importantly, it’s contradicted by the explicit equivalence he makes between the two acts of disownment.)

So on the weight of the evidence, on the hypocrisy scale I would give it a 7 or 7.5. My mind could be changed, and this isn’t the most important issue here, but those are my views and I certainly wanted to counteract the strange notion that this was about the pronoun.

Now, I realize that I did contribute to confusion here. It was a tense situation for me, and that can make me flippant in a way that can be hard to follow. I probably started the confusion when I highlighted only the words “her child,” which could be read, by someone assuming I’m a dolt, as suggesting that the parenthetical speculation was about what’s “behind” the use of the feminine pronoun. And despite my clarification, I didn’t do enough to make clear that this wasn’t about the pronoun when it should have been apparent that this was how Jacob Schmidt was reading me. I should have made it absolutely clear then that I was not referring to the pronoun but to the remark “A parent disowning her child is what goes ‘against nature’.” The question I was addressing was: Is this a general statement of the form X is bad, or might it be meant to apply (more) to one category of people?

In my defense, it simply didn’t occur to me, and wouldn’t occur to me, that anyone not actively trying to misconstrue my statements would think I was arguing that his use of “her” in referring to his daughter was itself evidence of anything or what I was attempting to explain the pronoun. I did recognize pretty quickly that my point might be missed – especially given the propensity of several people participating on that thread to mischaracterize my statements and arguments – and that’s why I quickly clarified, which didn’t turn out to be sufficient and might have contributed to the problem. I’m dismayed that the impression could persist for anyone that I was suggesting that the pronoun was part of any argument that I was making.

The problem in this case, though, is that there were several people on that thread who were more interested in willfully misinterpreting my statements than in engaging fairly with or honestly trying to understand what I was saying. So in the midst of this exchange, there was a post by Daz addressed to me:

So far you’ve managed to impugn the grandfather for breaking up the family, when it’s quite obvious that the mother did that quite handily when she threw her child out into the street. You’ve implied that he might well be acting misogynistically by referring to his daughter as “her” and you’ve spent gawd knows how many words pointing out that he (probably?) used a gendered slur.

I probably skipped over it at the time as it was one in a series of blatant misrepresentations (which have now been refuted more than once, including the first and third listed accusations here). I probably missed the phrase “You’ve implied that he might well be acting misogynistically by referring to his daughter as ‘her',” but even if I’d seen it I don’t know that I would have thought it worth responding to. Whatever the confusion occasioned by my remarks, how could anyone seriously believe I was suggesting any such thing? And if someone did, don’t you think it would have been a good idea to ask for further clarification rather than assume I was making that argument?

I think I also contributed to some confusion by referring too much to my views of the letter when I should have been more focused on the reception of the letter and its presentation as exemplary. I think I did make this clear eventually, and it became more so when other people helped me to clarify at Tdome, but I acknowledge that in focusing on individual acts I probably contributed to the mess about my alleged motives.

I don’t think everyone should be expected to express themselves with perfect clarity and comprehension in every blog comment. The nature of a discussion is that people’s views can change and develop or be refined in the course of the discussion. In the course of the conversation, I would have focused my arguments more clearly on the questions related to the reception of this letter and its use as an exemplar. (And I want to express my deep appreciation for strange gods, Jadehawk, consciousness razor, carlie, and others who worked to clarify rather than obscure and confuse the arguments.)

The problem is that it’s become, in my view, and for me at least, impossible to have a reasoned discussion at Pharyngula, and not only on topics like animal rights and psychiatry/psych rights that I expect to be controversial. An exchange of views, even an angry one, is impossible when some people are determined to make an environment actively hostile to you and your views. On the threads in question, I’ve been repeatedly misrepresented, often without those misrepresenting me bothering to quote my words; those misrepresentations haven’t been retracted, apologized for, or even acknowledged even after they’ve been repeatedly refuted with evidence; people have jumped to the silliest and most uncharitable readings of my words, latching onto any ambiguity, nuance, or lack of clarity to paint them in a negative light; people have attributed nefarious motives to me for which there’s no evidence; people have tried to make the discussion about me rather than the actual topic; people trying to set the record straight about what I and others have said by pointing to the actual record of comments have been attacked, sent to other threads, or threatened with banning; people have tossed in snipes at me for no purpose other than maliciousness and browbeating; strange gods has been treated cruelly and unfairly and threatened with banning for responding to these attacks;…

This pattern of intellectual dishonesty, bullying, and partiality isn’t only unkind to me and others and contrary to any decent standard of argumentation. (It might be a useful exercise for people who think I’m wrong to imagine how the response would have differed had my comments on that thread been posted instead by Caine.) It’s generally toxic to reasoned discussion and debate. I never thought I’d reach the point that I wouldn’t be particularly upset about being banned at Pharyngula.** I’ve been returning, less and less frequently to be sure, over the past couple of years probably because I remember a time when things were different. I’m sure I’m idealizing the past, but the environment in the past was in my recollection much more conducive to intellectual exchange. It wasn’t more polite or less angry; it was just that there was a greater commitment to intellectual honesty and fairness than there is now.

The creation of an elite circle of privileged commenters is also a (related) problem, as I see it. (I offered some suggestions for structural solutions, but they were ignored.) Another trend, toward the personalization of discussions - in the sense of making them largely about people’s personal experiences - is neither good nor bad, but it is a change. Since I don’t generally talk about my personal life in that context and am uncomfortable attempting to have a general or more abstract argument if other people are perceiving that as reflecting an indifference to their personal experiences or suffering or an attempt to hurt them, this change of atmosphere is less suitable for someone like me.

This isn’t about hate or even anger (which isn’t to say that I’m not angry with some people). I’m very glad I found Pharyngula and think it’s been a fantastic blog, not only for the content of the posts but for the quality of the comments and the community PZ’s helped to create. I thank PZ for that. I also think many of the people whose recent actions in some contexts I reject have done some great things there. But it’s become a hostile and unwelcoming place to me personally and a difficult one in which to have the sort of intellectual exchanges I enjoyed and learned from in the past.

As Jadehawk said, you are an activist. Similarly, I am a scientist – and that has caused trouble for me before, with other people.

First, I’m not “an activist.” I’m a sociologist, and analyzing writing is what I do.

Second, I have no idea what the relevance of this claim is supposed to be to this particular discussion, unless you’re implying that as a nonscientist – ignoring that I am in fact a social scientist, which is arguably more relevant expertise in this matter – I’m not as capable as you of analyzing discussions or that I’m coming at them from an irrational place or something. I sure hope that isn’t what you were implying, because it comes across as a fallacious and arrogant argument from authority.

Third, you made some bizarre speculation about me as a TV Trope (which, to be frank, you overuse in general; the concepts are fun and useful if applied correctly, but they’re not sociology and are no substitute for concrete knowledge and evidence) and then followed that with a statement about how this somehow reminded you of something I had said months or years ago. You provided no citation to back up your characterization of past events, which contributed to the false impression of me that others were already constructing. When I responded filling in relevant details of the story and pointing out that referring to it in the way you did was wrong, you responded

…That link seems to be the part I missed. I can’t remember anything about B&W in this context.

…Can’t remember that either. Perhaps I had left the thread by then; due to timezones, many threads go on after I visit them the last time.

…As for “links or anything”, I’m sorry to say that’s an unreasonable expectation from me – I don’t have the kind of memory or Google-fu necessary for that. I knew yours are better, so I expected you to remember the incidents in question at least as well as I do – and indeed you do. I never thought you wouldn’t weigh in!

It’s scientifically irresponsible to characterize someone’s actions or mental state without searching for and providing an evidentiary citation. No sources, no trust.

* The reasons I later mentioned that this might warrant discussion were two: first, as I said, the fact that the belief in some form is so widespread in the culture makes it more likely that it might form part of his attitude, like that of any member of the culture; second, due to the fact that the belief in some form is so widespread in the culture, it might be playing some small role in the reception of the letter. It’s possible that people reading are, without realizing it perhaps, more angry with the woman for disowning her son because she’s a mother, and in turn perhaps less critical of the grandfather’s attitude and actions towards his daughter because a) she’s a mother and therefore deserves to be punished more and b) he’s a father and so doesn’t face the same expectations of unconditional love. I don’t know whether that’s the case at all, but, as I said, discussion wouldn’t hurt.

** And no, PZ, I’m not saying I think it would be fine for you to ban me or asking to be banned, so you can’t do it and justify it as obliging my request. That decision is your responsibility, and you should do what you think is right and just and act in such a way that you’re least likely to regret and that’s most likely to earn you the respect of people whose respect you think is worth having. Since doing what’s just and right would require a thoughtful (re)reading of this and past episodes and the comments leading up to them, and it doesn’t appear you have time to take that on,…

My heart has sunk to my feet

Via Free From Harm: “Saddest Slaughterhouse Footage Ever Shows No Blood or Slaughter”

Amazon UK stops selling foie gras

In great news, Amazon UK has decided to stop selling foie gras through its web site. Now it’s time for the US Amazon to follow suit. I found it interesting that the Amazon campaign framed the issue in terms of national identity, with the cruelty involved characterized as “very un-British.” As things progress, I think we’ll see more such campaigns linking local, regional, or national identities to the rejection of exploitation and cruelty. This is a positive development insofar as it doesn’t shade into racism and xenophobia, which is always a danger. I’ll probably have more to say about it in the future.

When I was posting last year about California’s foie gras ban, I was astonished to learn that some chefs and restaurants were going out of their way to oppose and get around the law. Is this really the battle they want to take on, I wondered? Promoting the torture of ducks and geese so rich people can eat their livers? The extent of callousness toward the animals’ suffering was made plain in one recent quotation. Marcus Henley, operations manager of Hudson Valley farm in New York, responded to a federal appeals court’s ruling upholding the California ban last month: “This isn't like fireworks; nobody is being harmed by foie gras.”

I was also…I’ll call it amused at the time to read of a French politician calling for a boycott of Californian wines in response to the foie gras ban. It’s not generally a great idea to try to strike a blow by boycotting products for which the import-export balance weighs heavily in your favor. What are they going to boycott next – couture? arrogance? sexism? (I kid, I kid.)

Now the French government is objecting to Amazon UK’s decision. Guillaume Garot, the French agribusiness minister, remarked, “I defend this sector because of jobs but also because of a certain idea of gastronomic heritage.” Yes, well, some traditions need to die. How French is cruelty?

“Never Be Silent: On Trayvon Martin, PETA, and the Packaging of Neoliberal Whiteness”

Here’s video of a recent talk by A. Breeze Harper, founder of the Sistah Vegan Project, part of the “Re-visioning Food Sovereignty” symposium at the Scripps College Humanities Institute. The first several minutes, in which she’s explaining her terminology, are somewhat confusing and this should probably be translated into less academic language even in this context. But after about ten minutes, when she starts focusing concretely on PETA’s Vegan Shopping Guide, their use of Trayvon Martin’s killing, and their response to an accusation of racism from the NAACP, it really gets going.





It sensitized me to some issues that are important to recognize for those of us talking about interlocking oppressions.

If you watch, you should watch all the way through, including the 10 minutes of Q&A that make up the second part. If you don’t, you might get the impression that she opposes animal rights or veganism, when in reality she’s an animal rights vegan. She follows her criticism with some suggestions for what she sees as better approaches – for example, she recommends the Food Empowerment Project and their food guides (they have a blog, Appetite for Justice, which I think I’ve cited in the past).

The post she wrote the day before the event is also worth reading.

And by “favorite,” she means…

Recently, I read a fairly informative article about the successful pushback against ag gag:

...According to Matthew Dominguez, a policy expert at the Humane Society of the United States, six states have passed some variety of ag-gag law since Kansas became the first in 1990. If supporters of the movement had their way, that total would have more than doubled in 2013.

Instead, opponents of the restrictive law have had their most accomplished year to date. All of the year’s ag-gag proposals were withdrawn, vetoed or stalled.

Meanwhile, the ag-gag movement was soaked with a wave of negative publicity, including editorials in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as well as a biting segment on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and countless blog posts....

Noting that it quotes Emily Meredith, spokesperson for the Animal Agriculture Alliance, I thought I’d take another look at their Twitter feed.

Meredith was on a visit with the Ringling Brothers circus, spending a little time with some captive animals used for entertainment. (Because if the representative of an organization responsible for the oppression, exploitation, and killing of billions of other animals is going to see elephants, she’s not going to experience them on film or in the wild or in a sanctuary or in some other nonexploitative, respectful setting. She’s going to the circus. Where else?)

So here she is posing with an elephant:

But it’s what came next that took my breath away:

“Who knows what a baby Elephant is called?...HINT: It’s the same as 1 of the Alliance’s favorite barnyard animals.”

One of their favorite animals. Let’s review.

Sin vergüenza.