A refreshingly good discussion of speciesism and objectification

James McWilliams wrote recently about PETA's "sexiest vegan" campaign. He has a follow-up post questioning his original position, which has spawned a lively and thoughtful comment thread.

It led me to despair (again) of how the atmosphere in the atheist/skeptic/freethought community has been poisoned by a colony of sexists and misogynists.

Victory for cats!

I wrote back in early May about the efforts, led by Bob Barker, to get Washington University in St. Louis to stop using cats in its PALS training. I did a search for updates and...they're stopping!

I hope this victory will lead people to view similar rationales for the exploitation of animals in other research and educational settings with more skepticism.

Funky music

The Book of Woe on Book TV

Gary Greenberg discusses The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry on Book TV. I haven't read it, and don't know if I agree with all of his arguments, but he's an enthusiastic and entertaining speaker.

“I want the girls to have this sense of submissiveness.”

This was Vegas Week on So You Think You Can Dance. Dancers auditioning in cities across the country try to win a ticket to Las Vegas to compete in this round, which determines who makes the final twenty. It follows the same formula as Hollywood Week in American Idol: the dancers do solos before a panel of judges, develop a performance with a small group and an assigned piece of music, and have to learn and perform choreographed routines in various styles (hip hop, contemporary, and so on).

The jazz round this week was choreographed by Sonya Tayeh, whose work I’ve long enjoyed and who always seemed fairly respectful of the young dancers. So I was surprised that in this instance she appeared to treat them like young children (not the way anyone should be treating young children, either, in any event). She seemed hostile and disrespectful towards these dancers, who didn’t seem to be behaving unprofessionally.

I would have been bothered by this alone, but it was the larger context that made her bullying behavior intolerable. As the viewing audience is being shown the dancers learning the choreography, she explains that she wants the guys to be “really strong” and trustworthy partners, and the “girls” to have “this sense of submissiveness” as they rely on their partners in a routine involving intricate partner work. She tells the dancers, “You should not have one doubt in your partner, even if you just met them.”

Keep in mind - these are young dancers coming from a variety of dance backgrounds, many of whom have never done any sort of partner work, let alone at this high level. Further, she instructs them (with an eyerollingly melodramatic rendition of Debbie Allen’s Fame speech) to stay up all night practicing on their own around the hotel – “When you feel that fatigue, pass through the fatigue. Your body can handle more than your mind thinks it can.”

So this is a situation in which women are expected to trust inexperienced, sleep-deprived, nervous men with their safety. If a man fails at the task, he’ll feel guilty and possibly be eliminated from the competition. The potential consequences for women are disproportionately extreme – they risk serious, even life-threatening, injuries that could end their career in dance, let alone the competition. And it’s demanded that they do so submissively – that they don’t question decisions with potentially serious consequences, that they don’t voice their concerns, and that they don’t show any lack of trust during the performance itself.

As anyone could have predicted, during the night at least one dancer was dropped directly on her head by her partner (he’s actually a ballroom dancer, but seemed more focused on his cell phone than on mastering the choreography), sending her to the hospital where they kept her for several hours to monitor her for a concussion. This was all milked for maximum drama.

Here’s what happened the next morning: The droppee, despite her relative lack of practice, having been dropped on her head on a concrete floor, and spending the night in the hospital, had to perform the routine with the dude who’d dropped her on her head on a concrete floor. (“I’m trying to have as much trust as I can,” she says nervously before she goes on.) The dropper was given a stern lecture, but not eliminated from the competition at that point. The droppee was also put through to the next round, and roundly praised for not giving any indication of what had happened – “That’s what dancers do,” a judge informs.

This sends a terrible message to dancers, women dancers, and women generally. Sure, dancers at a top level are expected to take some risks (of their choice) with their bodies, and to dance through pain and not show it. There are also occasions in which choreography requires that a dancer - by no means should it always be women - take on a submissive character for the performance.

But dance itself should not require submissiveness from women or anyone else. Demanding that women set aside the usual and very reasonable rules of trust – that you trust people who’ve given you reason to trust them, and don’t trust them if they haven’t, especially if they’ve given you reason not to – when it comes to their comfort, their bodies, and their dreams is not acceptable. It’s not acceptable to demand that a contestant dance with the dude who hours earlier dropped her on her head on a concrete floor, and to judge her on how well she conceals her fear. Think about the message this sends to women, especially those who want to become dancers.

This was just the most egregious example of what seems to me an undercurrent on the show of late. It portrays the world of dance not as a collaborative artistic effort of professionals, but as an authoritarian structure to which dancers are expected to meekly submit, even at the expense of their personality and judgment. In the auditions in one city, the judges attempted a show of power toward a dancer they’d previously deemed insufficiently deferential by demanding that he go through an extra round of auditions. I think his decision to leave the competition rather than submit to this exercise was supposed to show his arrogance and intransigence, but I agreed that he was right not to put up with it.

It also wasn’t the only problematic message to women on the show, or even in this episode. Towards the end, a pair of dancers is eliminated. Neither of them danced especially well, but in the post-elimination interview the man keeps apologizing for having let the woman down while groping her and telling her how beautiful she is. Already upset about her elimination, she tries to placate him and extricate herself, but as she walks off he’s shown chasing after her, literally licking his lips lasciviously. This seems to be played for laughs, as was a past contestant’s repeated inappropriate behavior towards the Emmy-nominated host Cat Deeley.

This can be fixed. At Vegas Week, they should have a talk with everyone at the very beginning about respect – from everyone, including the judges, for everyone. Of course, people might flirt and hook up, but it should be understood that they’re there as dancers and competitors, and no one should have to put up with unwanted attention in order to participate or pursue their dream. In routines in which people are partnering with others, unnecessary risks should be avoided by avoiding more dangerous moves in the beginning and by proper training over time, and no woman should be expected to entrust her safety or future in dance to anyone who hasn’t shown they warrant that trust. No one should be expected to “submit” other than in very specific senses related to choreography. And the show should not be making light of the disrespecting of women’s boundaries. I suppose it would be too much to hope that dancers have more of a voice in the artistic process…?

They come after your family, too

I’ve been writing about authoritarian regimes and how they make use of the institutions of civil society and people’s love for their family and friends in their efforts to terrorize and dominate the citizenry. I’ve mentioned Corey Robin’s general argument and the specific case of Pussy Riot. Here’s another example of courage in the face of such systems – Honduran journalist Dina Meza:

Far from ending with those bullets [that killed her friend and colleague on his way to a meeting with her], the harassment quickly turned its focus on her and has rarely ceased since.

First it was the most unsubtle of verbal threats. The owner of a security firm she was investigating phoned her saying: “Stop your work or I will destroy your organisation.” She had the call taped and passed it on to the Attorney General, who did nothing.

Then an employee of the security company phoned to tell her what a “lovely looking daughter she had”. It was clearly meant, she claims, in a sexually threatening way towards the 13 year old. The caller made it clear that her children were being followed at school and college.

Instead of keeping quiet, she tracked the man down to confront him. But he was shameless, telling her to her face: “Watch out, or I can’t be held responsible for what might happen to your daughter.”

Since February of last year she received phone calls and text messages with disgustingly graphic sexual threats against her. Her harassers phoned her landline at home repeatedly in the middle of the night. “It would click and go dead, click and go dead. Eventually I stopped picking up,” she says, chuckling again. “So they would call my mobile and play funeral music, or make more horrible threats of a sexual nature against me.”

She has no idea which of the organisations her journalism is exposing is making the threats at any one time: the police, security firms, abusive employers. Although she passes on her suspicions to the police, along with the phone numbers of the abusive callers, nothing is ever done about it, she claims.

She recalls a host of other threats and abuses – too many to document here – always accompanying her tales with a laugh or a joke. But when I ask about the harassment of her children, her exuberant voice quietens markedly and breaks with emotion. Children, spouses, friends, are all seen as fair game by those seeking to silence journalists in her country.

…The lives of her daughter and two sons, 22, 19 and 13 respectively, have been badly affected by the constant danger of having such a high profile campaigning mother. They can never travel alone, never go to public places or live a normal private life. They have to keep in constant mobile phone contact with their mother in case of kidnap.

…I ask her whether, for all that she and her family have been through over the decades, she would ever consider just giving up. Living a quiet life.

That laugh comes again: “Never! The worst thing I could possibly do is nothing. We are going to keep struggling.”

“I could not look into my children´s eyes and tell them I can do nothing about the situation, because to do nothing would be far worse than the threats, beatings or bullets of the police and militaries”.

Adjunct organizing – the “metro strategy”

The casualization of academic labor in the US has reached extreme proportions. Adjuncts now constitute around 3/4 of teachers. The situation for the adjuncts themselves is of course bad: bad obviously for their ability to make a living and plan a life, bad for their health, bad for their psychological well-being and dignity (and that’s leaving aside the stress from the burden of student loans), bad for their work as teachers and mentors to their students, bad for their capacity to engage in scholarship, bad for their relationships in academe,… It’s also bad for students, of course. And bad for academic freedom and the future of scholars in politics.

Fortunately, a new organizing strategy by the SEIU might prove effective. These two articles describe adjuncts’ working conditions and the “metro strategy” of organizing adjuncts – otherwise isolated in temporary positions across various campuses – in entire urban areas:

• “Adjunct Faculty, Now in the Majority, Organize Citywide”

• “Mad Professors”

Promising news at long last.

Existentialism and “figures of alterity”

I’m reading Jonathan Judaken’s Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Anti-Semitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual (2007)



and enjoying it. In addition to its interesting arguments, it makes the political context, especially the anti-Semitic movements of the era, really vivid. I recently read Nancy Bauer’s 2001 Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism



which is an insightful if not a great book.* I like that both address the way that existentialism (and this is true of the secular humanist tradition generally) has been positively constituted, distorted, and challenged to develop by “figures of alterity” – women, Jewish people, colonized people, gay people, etc. My primary interest is in animals as the quintessential figure of alterity, but it all comes together in fascinating ways.

**Its major fault is that, in a work ostensibly about Beauvoir, it spends far too much time talking about Hegel and Sartre. I remember being at least 2/3 of the way through and thinking “She’s running out of time! When’s she going to focus on Beauvoir?!”

Supreme Court rules human genes can't be patented

Good news.

Pussy Riot, patriarchy, and fear

Notwithstanding this embarrassingly dumb and condescending review in the Guardian,*the new documentary showing on HBO, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, is well worth watching.

The most powerful aspects to me were, first, the statements made by the representatives and supporters of the Orthodox Church, who casually discuss how centuries ago these defiant “witches” and “demons” would have been hanged or burned at the stake, while today the men show more forgiveness and “punish them through the law.” You really couldn’t invent such perfect embodiments of patriarchal extremism: they wear t-shirts that read “Orthodoxy or Death,” and one of them explains that the word “pussy” means “deranged vagina.” They’re horrifying to watch, and they have real political power.

Second, the three members of Pussy Riot on trial are articulate and inspiring. Maria Alyokhina’s** statement prior to the reading of the verdict was a rousing work of art, leading those in the courtroom to break out in applause (after which they were scoldingly reminded by the court, in a moment of supreme irony, that the courtroom was “not a theater”).

Alyokhina’s concern for her son and the demands from the representatives of authority that these women accept their role in traditional hierarchical institutions reminded me of a piece I mentioned just yesterday over at Mano Singham’s, in which Corey Robin counters the claim that modern authoritarian terror and control rely on atomized individuals by showing that they really work through these authoritarian institutions and through threats to people’s loved ones. (This is a summary of the major thesis of his book, Fear, which I recommend.) I was appalled that Catherine Shoard at the Guardian would write “Difficult questions – about the young children of two of the three – are skirted around,” as though this were about irresponsible mothers rather than the reality of authoritarian regimes. This sort of presentation works to naturalize and depoliticize authoritarianism. The government threatened to turn her child over to social services after she participated in a political protest. That’s what shouldn’t be skirted around.

With the recent news about the passage of an anti-gay law in Russia, the situation appears even more dire.

* I think I’ve enjoyed comments by “Truculent Sheep” in the past.

** I learned at WP that Alyokhina is also a vegan. The problems vegans face in prison should be a subject of great concern.

Maybe the Daily Show people are reading my blog!

OK, probably not. :) But I was suggesting a little while ago that they wouldn’t feature a statement from Tennessee state representative Andy Holt, comparing the investigation of animal cruelty with human trafficking and rape. When I predicted that, I had in mind not just Holt’s statement specifically, but the entire issue of ag gag laws. I truly didn’t think they’d take it on. So I was thrilled last night when I saw this piece with Al Madrigal, featuring corporate spokesliar Emily Meredith.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

It’s really not bad at all.

Unearthed

Unearthed*

Bury it again.
Not nearly enough time underground:
you can still see the forest in the file -
make out a trunk, a root,
the pattern on a wing,
a vagrant allele,
a sylvan word
(silvery like a stolen Torah bell)…

Who’s served by this premature excavation?
No, bury it again.
Subcontract the job to
the microbes, the heat, the think tanks.
They know how to purify and petrify
an archive, put it to work.
They’ll turn out fuel, steaks, artifacts, samples, metals, myths –
cheap and fit for human consumption.

* The poem was inspired by this story about the Figueiredo report in Brazil.

The language of distress

One of the hurdles critics of biopsychiatry constantly face is the argument that they deny or discount human experience and suffering. People describe their own experiences or those of their relatives and friends in elaborate detail, and demand to know how we could be so cruel as to claim that their “illnesses” aren’t “real.” Not only are the suffering and the experiences tangible, but equally evident is how they seem so clearly to fit with the current diagnostic categories. How can we fail to accept the reality of these illnesses?

I’ve pointed out several times that unless people read more extensively in the critical literature, they won’t understand the perspective of the critics and our repeated assertions that we don’t deny human suffering will sound hollow. Reading this recent article, I was immediately reminded of Ethan Watters’ book Crazy Like Us, which I’d earlier included in my list of readings in psychiatry and social justice.* Scrolling up, I discovered that this is because the article’s written by Watters. In the book (in greater depth, of course) and the article, he draws attention to the cultural-political shaping of psychological “symptoms.” “Viewed over history,” he argues,

mental health symptoms begin to look less like immutable biological facts and more like a kind of language. Someone in need of communicating his or her inchoate psychological pain has a limited vocabulary of symptoms to choose from. From a distance, we can see how the flawed certainties of Victorian-era healers created a sense of inevitability around the symptoms of hysteria. There is no reason to believe that the same isn’t happening today. Healers have theories about how the mind functions and then discover the symptoms that conform to those theories. Because patients usually seek help when they are in need of guidance about the workings of their minds, they are uniquely susceptible to being influenced by the psychiatric certainties of the moment. There is really no getting around this dynamic. Even Insel’s supposedly objective laboratory scientists would, no doubt, inadvertently define which symptoms our troubled minds gravitate toward. The human unconscious is adept at speaking the language of distress that will be understood. [my emphasis]

Since we’re cultural animals, our sociocultural environment affects not only the existence of distress but the particular ways in which it’s experienced and expressed. I’ve been interested to read people’s descriptions of their experiences with psychic distress in which these experiences are characterized in precisely the current “clinical” terms of biopsychiatry. One account I came across recently described a person’s feeling that her brain chemicals were obstructing her ability to be happy. While the chemical imbalance notion is scientifically unsound and there’s no evidence of a brain disorder of depression, I don’t doubt that this was an honest description of her sense of what she’s experiencing. The point is that culture runs very deep, below the level of labeling experience and into the formation of experience itself.

*As I’ve said before, none of these books is perfect, and citing Watters’ book – or his article, for that matter – doesn’t constitute an endorsement of every single argument he makes (or an agreement with the use of the language of “healers” and “patients”).

Vegan food! Women artists! Fish x-rays! More!

Had a delightful visit to Philadelphia recently. I was surprised at how much we were able to pack into a short stay. A few highlights:

Vedge. This is a place I’d read about in magazines and seen included in lists of top vegan restaurants. It had also been highly recommended by a local, and I was trying to keep my expectations in check so as to avoid disappointment. But there was no need, as the food was every bit as delicious as the rave reviews had led me to believe. The spring pea crêpe was one of the best single plates of food I’ve ever eaten (and I don’t even like peas!). An enjoyable experience in every way – I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts. Coincidentally, I saw The Art of the Steal recently



and so wasn’t keen on visiting the Barnes Collection or the big art museum (which would have been crowded and rushed for the amount of time we had anyway). PAFA is less heavily promoted, but it’s a real gem. The building itself is striking, and the collection of American art (including many works by former students and faculty) is a manageable size and well organized. My favorite galleries were the two at the far end, one featuring landscapes – the seascapes were of course the best – and the other dedicated to women artists. Apparently the Academy has been progressive in women’s art education, and I was happy to see such talent on display. I particularly liked the paintings by Susan Macdowell Eakins and Violet Oakley, and especially Eakins’ Girl in a Plaid Shawl (ca. 1880-85), which looks almost like a film still.



I often find the temporary contemporary exhibits at more traditional museums tedious, but I was impressed by Bill Viola’s Ocean Without a Shore.

“X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out.” We also stopped into this exhibit at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. They’re beautiful x-ray photos of ocean animals from the Smithsonian’s Collection of Fishes (a wonderfully and tragically poetic name*). Unfortunately, the exhibit ends today.



I’ll probably post about a few other sites in Philadelphia, including my new favorite fountain – the cat fountain outside Betsy Ross’s house.

* I did worry about the practices of "collection" and x-raying....

US government's seal of approval for biopsychiatry – it’s political

The White House has set up a mental health information and help site, and it’s terrible. It contains all of biopsychiatry’s debunked myths, and determinedly pushes drugs.

• “Depression is a serious medical illness that involves the brain.”

• “Depression is a disorder of the brain.”

• “There are effective treatments for depression, including antidepressants…”

• “Schizophrenia is a severe, lifelong brain disorder.”

• “No one is sure what causes schizophrenia, but your genetic makeup and brain chemistry probably play a role. Medicines can relieve many of the symptoms, but it can take several tries before you find the right drug. You can reduce relapses by staying on your medicine for as long as your doctor recommends. With treatment, many people improve enough to lead satisfying lives.”

• “Bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness.”

• “Researchers think brain circuits may not work properly in people who have OCD.* It tends to run in families.”

• “If not treated, bipolar disorder can lead to damaged relationships, poor job or school performance, and even suicide. However, there are effective treatments to control symptoms: medicine and talk therapy.”

• “Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a real illness.”

• “Medicines can help you feel less afraid and tense. It might take a few weeks for them to work.”

So the White House is interested in serving the needs of the APA and the drug companies rather than helping struggling people through science-based policy.

The timing is interesting. The site looks sort of thrown together, like it was created in response to the crisis occasioned by the launch of the DSM-5 and the NIMH announcement. The site lists the NIMH as a source, but the biopsychiatric claims made are exactly what the NIMH has recently publicly stated lack scientific validity.** It looks suspiciously like the White House is using this site to lend biopsychiatry its authority. That’s all biopsychiatry has at this point: political and media institutions lending their voice of authority to a model that can’t be supported by science.

It’s embarrassing and frustrating. But more important, it’s political. We have the government pushing lies – lies that its own agencies have publicly declared to be such – to convince people that their distress is caused by their malfunctioning brains. This has the effect of depoliticizing suffering and rebellion. It gives a political meaning to suffering, and that meaning is that it has little to do with political experiences or policy. Racism, patriarchy, our alienation from and destruction of other animals and the rest of the natural world, our country’s wars, foreclosures, unemployment, economic insecurity, personal debt, massive and growing inequality, the corporate subversion of democracy, austerity measures, the constant stream of propaganda urging us to consume, a hypercompetitive and status-based culture, authoritarian work environments, authoritarian welfare programs, government agencies spying on us,… - these are of little importance in understanding mental well-being, evidence be damned.

In this presentation, corporations aren’t part of the problem, they’re part of the solution. Like the government, they’re offering help, in the form of medications. In fact, the brain-disease-drug model provides a way for corporations and governments to exercise power and to profit in the name of providing care. To understand the political implications, imagine that the site wasn’t put up by the US government but by the East German government during the Cold War. Various forms of psychic distress and maladjustment are described, against all evidence, as disorders of people’s brains. Drugs from Russia are promoted as useful medications, sometimes to be coercively or forcibly administered, as they are to children on a wide scale.

As I’ve said, this can’t continue for long. People will increasingly come to realize that the model they’ve been sold all these years is false. The “authoritative” propaganda of powerful institutions notwithstanding, the crisis of biopsychiatry is just beginning. But going forward, it’s essential to recognize this as a fundamentally political matter.

* The bit about malfunctioning “brain circuits” being the suspected cause of “OCD” is telling. This brain circuit business has been Insel’s preferred form of biopsychiatric propaganda for a while now, despite the fact that he’s not even able to define a brain circuit and can’t produce any evidence for the claim.

** Just as a reminder: Thomas Insel wrote last month that “The weakness [of the DSM] is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.” In his response, APA head David Kupfer admitted that after several decades they’re “still waiting” for biomarkers.