A-baby-ist.

Niall Ferguson

So, just as I'm finishing reading comedian Jen Kirkman's book I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids, historian Niall Ferguson goes and claims that people who don't have children don't care about society or the future. Or at least, he claims that about economist John Maynard Keynes, while suggesting that Keynes was gay:

Speaking at the Tenth Annual Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., in front of a group of more than 500 financial advisors and investors, Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes' famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, as well as the dead. Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive. 

It gets worse. 

Ferguson, who is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, says it's only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an "effete" member of society. Apparently, in Ferguson's world, if you are gay or childless, you cannot care about future generations nor society.

That was on May 2nd. For two days the blogosphere discussed whether Ferguson is a homophobe, and on May 4th he apologized-- kind of. He went to great lengths to disavow any possible homophobia, including suggesting that it would be impossible for him to be homophobic since he'd asked Andrew Sullivan to be godfather to one of his sons. The reader is treated to a lecture on how absurd and idiotic it would be to think that Ferguson of all people might harbor any bigotry toward homosexuals, as well as the fact that Keynes himself was not immune to such, being somewhat xenophobic toward Poles and Americans. Which is relevant because...I've no clue. The apology ends with a flourish of snark so abrupt it threatens rhetorical whiplash:

Shock, horror: Even the mighty Keynes occasionally said stupid things. Most professors do. And—let's face it—so do most students. 

What the self-appointed speech police of the blogosphere forget is that to err occasionally is an integral part of the learning process. And one of the things I learnt from my stupidity last week is that those who seek to demonize error, rather than forgive it, are among the most insidious enemies of academic freedom.

Be warned! All who took offense to Ferguson's remarks and fail to accept his apology given here are forthwith declared members of the self-appointed speech police of the blogosphere and enemies of academic freedom! Criticism is censorship! Free speech! The ability to speak one's mind openly is in peril when people object too stridently to illogical and offensive smearing of widely respected economists! Geez, you'd think he was a comedian who made a rape joke.

And one common theme that exists in both Ferguson's "apology" and the reactions of people who took exception to his remarks is this: the emphasis on homophobia. Being anti-gay is wrong. Nobody should suggest that gay people are selfish, impetuous, nihilistic, or otherwise deficient in character in any way because they are gay, say the detractors. I didn't mean to suggest that, don't believe it, and don't attack me too much for accidentally claiming it or else you're the speech police, says Ferguson.

Okay...but how about what he suggested about the childless?

Ferguson remarked on the added stupidity to his comments arising from the fact that Keynes' wife did actually get pregnant but suffered a miscarriage, implying that it's underhanded to criticize that particular couple for not having children because at least they apparently tried, and it would amount to pouring salt on the wounds of someone who has lost the baby they hoped for to claim that no such hope ever existed. Which, indeed, it would be...although considering that Keynes died in 1946 and his wife Lydia Lopokova in 1981, it's safe to say that those wounds have long since scabbed over. More fundamental to the point, however, is the fact that Ferguson's characterization of Keynes as selfish and shortsighted due to not being a parent is equally a catastrophic failure of logic and fairness whether he and his wife had attempted to procreate or not. This is because not only does not having children count as character flaw; neither does not wanting them.

Childless by choice, otherwise known as childfree, is not a bad thing to be. Really.

Jen Kirkman

I frequently make the same joke as Jen Kirkman makes in her book's title-- how could I be a parent, when I can barely take care of myself? But let's be clear...it's a joke. Mostly. In addition to being a quasi-memoir and thoroughly enjoyable read, Kirkman's book tears to shreds a lot of popular misconceptions of what it's like to not want children, as well as countering arguments-- yes, arguments-- people make for why you should have children, even though you don't want to. Especially if you're, you know, female. People without children don't understand how precious life is. They won't have anyone to take care of them when they're old and infirm. They have no legacy to succeed them. They are doing a disservice to their parents and partners (who, presumably, not only want children/grandchildren themselves, but require them). They are not truly fulfilled and actualized women (not applicable to men, seemingly-- they don't tend to get this one, even from Niall Ferguson).

Along with revealing the extent and nature of homophobia in the United States, the culture war over gay marriage has revealed a lot of other kinds of prejudice and narrow-mindedness that tend to overlap with it. They're like a Darwinian tree of bigotry, the root of which is basic sexism. From that root sprout a seemingly infinite array of stringent and ingrained beliefs about what men and women should do, say, and in general be, and one of the things they should be is parents. With a person of the opposite sex. Naturally. That is, by a combination of the man's sperm and the woman's egg achieved via sexual intercouse within the context of marriage, probably in the missionary position with the lights off. Not artificially, whether by adoption or in vitro, not outside of marriage, not with a partner who has the same type of genitals you do, and absolutely, positively, not not at all!

It's sort of like atheism, in that a religious person would prefer that you be of the exact same religion that they are (after all, their belief is the Truth with a capital T)...but they can deal if you're, say, of another denomination. Methodists can get along with Presbyterians when they need to get things done. And hey, when it comes right down to it, if you at least agree on a lot of traditions and have a similar basic history underlying your respective belief systems...okay, Protestants can get along with Catholics. And then, well, you know, in the spirit of ecumenicalism, they can also manage to get along with Jews and maybe even Muslims. And then, hey, I guess if we're going to try and all be on the same page, in the end what matters is that we all worship God, right? In our own ways, but everyone has a different path up the mountain and what matters is that you get there.

But wait....you don't even believe in God?
You don't even want children? 

The brain seems to short-circuit here, as in a conversation Kirkman recounts having had at a wedding with someone she'd just met:

"I know you're not even married yet," Lucy lectured, "but at your age, you have to think about making a family while you're planning the wedding." Five minutes ago I was too young to know that I was going to change my mind and suddenly I'm too old to waste any time after my wedding to plan on making a family? Which age bracket am I in? Young and stupid or old and barren? And "making a family" is another expression that grosses me out. I pictured Matt standing over me in a lab coat with a turkey baster. 

Lucy took a big sip of her red win, wiped her lip, and leaned into me. She may have been a little drunk or a little dehydrated or a little both, because she had that dry "wine lip" that looks like someone poured purple paint into the cracks of a sidewalk. She leaned in close and whispered, "What would you do if you accidentally got pregnant?" I didn't even understand the question. "Oh, I would never cheat on Matt," I answered. "No, Jen, I mean what if you got pregnant, by accident, with Matt's baby?" 

"Are you asking me, someone you barely know, at our friends' wedding, if I would have an abortion?" 

"Well," she said, "it's something you have to think about if you don't want kids. I mean, I personally think that abortion is something for teenagers who couldn't possibly raise a child. But ever since I decided that I wanted to try to become a mother and I see how difficult it can be to get pregnant, I realize that it's a gift to be pregnant and if a married couple who are both employed accidentally get pregnant, I don't see how you can give that up."  

A total stranger tried to small-talk me about abortion. I have never had an abortion. I never want to have an abortion. I also don't want to have a baby. 

And trust me...we've thought about it. We've heard all about how Jesus wants to be our lord and savior how great parenting can be, how fulfilling, how important, how necessary. And by "necessary," I mean we've heard about how it's necessary for everyone who is capable of procreating, especially the rational and intelligent ones, to partner up and make some babies already, for the sake of the human race!

But really...we don't. We have our reasons. And it's okay.

The stupidest cartoon

When I saw this cartoon, my head about exploded:

I'll let Hemant Mehta explain what's so wrong with it:

The idea, of course, is that the media is celebrating Collins for telling the world he’s gay, while they were mostly annoyed by Tim Tebow for telling the world he’s Christian. 

If that sentence seems weird to you, that’s because the cartoon makes no sense. 

Collins did something no male in the NBA (or several other popular leagues) had done: He came out as gay while still playing professionally. 

Believe it or not, there’s no shortage of Christians in any sporting league. Need evidence? Just listen to someone on the winning team during a post-game interview. 

When Tebow told the world he was Christian — more Christian than other Christians, really, with his eye black messages and on-field prayers — it was annoying. It doesn’t take “courage” to proudly proclaim, “I’m in the majority!”

All I can do is create my own versions which attempt to be closer to reality. Like

Or even just

Why do we laugh at sexist jokes?

Post about stereotyping, cliche
thinking gets stereotyped,
cliched image

Let's say you view love as a battlefield. Okay, more like a football field. Dating, sex, relationships, marriage-- they're all a series of skirmishes against the other team, aka the opposite sex. You compete with others on your own team as well, fellow Men players and Women players, but when push comes to shove it's really your team against their team. When you get together with fellow teammates, you make fun of the other team with abandon. Sometimes you even do it in their presence. It's expected; it's normal-- why wouldn't both sides of a rivalry do that? And hey, it's all in good fun. More or less. Because after all, you're going to be playing on this field for your entire life. You will never stop playing, and neither will they. As a straight person, that's what you're expected to do-- it's all you can do. Right?

That's what you'd call an adversarial model of sex and relationships-- a zero-sum game, in which men and women are two sides in a conflict, each trying to get what they want from the other. Generally speaking, according to this model what men are trying to get is sex with the hottest women possible (and eventually marriage with the most virginal) while women are trying to get married to the wealthiest, most high-status men, and the behavior of both sexes can be read as performed in pursuit of this goal. Both the "is" and the "ought" here are taken as a given, and since the goals of men and women generally differ, they are eternally at odds with each other and can be expected to engage in various forms of manipulation in order to get what they want. Sure, at times this will result in love-- but never complete trust, because the goals remain different even though they overlap. You're in competition amongst (straight) people of your own sex because you all want the same thing, and also with people of the opposite sex because they also all want the same thing, and they want it from you. Hopefully.

If you don't view relationships this way yourself, you probably know people who do. When there aren't members of the opposite sex around they'll talk about how crazy women are, or how stupid men are, secure in the belief that you not only won't mind but will actually appreciate these comments, because after all you're on the same team. You're just one of the guys/gals, and we've got to stick together. Bros before hos, and whatever the female equivalent is. I'm pretty sure there isn't one, or at least there isn't an actual slogan that women employ for this mentality. We are not, however, exempt from that kind of thing.

I was thinking about this while reading Miri at Brute Reason's excellent post discussing research on sexist humor. Her post covers studies which found a correlation between appreciation of sexist jokes and permissive attitudes toward sexual assault and rape, and it's a must-read. The most interesting portion of it to me, however, was this:

Men who found the jokes funny also tended to score higher on a measure of adversarial sexual beliefs, which is basically the idea that men and women are “adversaries” in the game of love and that women will deceive and manipulate men to get what they want (therefore it’s also a measure of good ol’ sexism). The study had female participants, too, and for them, the degree to which they enjoyed the sexist jokes was also correlated with their endorsement of adversarial sexual beliefs, but not with their self-reported likelihood to rape or any measure of aggression.

It actually hadn't occurred to me that if you're one of these people-- male or female-- who views sex and love in adversarial terms, you're not only likely to likely to appreciate sexist jokes, but likely to appreciate (or at least not be offended by) sexist jokes against your own gender. That is, if you go through life assuming that people of the opposite sex are in some sense the enemy, trying to manipulate members of your sex into getting what they want, you're not likely to be surprised when they make jokes at your gender's expense. In fact you'd expect this, because it's not like you can have a battle with only one side fighting, can you? It's all in good fun to trash people of the opposite sex because a) it's so true (that's why we're laughing), and b) hey, they do it too.

Now, the studies Miri discusses weren't conducted to examine adversarial thinking in relationship to sexist jokes specifically, so I'm extrapolating from this. But I would hazard to guess that if the jokes told had been sexist toward men rather than toward women, the men wouldn't have been terribly bothered and might well have laughed, again in correlation with the extent to which they think in adversarial terms. And this makes quite a bit of sense when you consider that a lot of the jokes which poke fun at people based on their sex do so in both directions. It's staggering to think about how many comedians have built their entire careers trading on such stereotypes, male and female, and they're usually at least implying some not-so-flattering things about their own gender while appearing to attack the other. Often unintentionally, but still they are.

So if this is all true, it gives you something to think about when, for example, discussing why a woman would laugh at Seth McFarlane's "We Saw Your Boobs" song at the Oscars. That song celebrated adversarial thinking, without a doubt. And when a public figure makes a joke, song, commercial, speech....really any sort of performance that transmits a message which turns out to offend people, the first thing those who enjoyed/agree with it do is find examples of people the performance supposedly mocked, hold them up, and say "Look at this-- we found a woman/person of color/homosexual/citizen of that country/member of that religion who thinks it's funny/true! Therefore it's not offensive!" Every. Single. Time.

In the case of sexism, maybe this is the explanation for why. Not because the joke isn't sexist, but because they share a mindset with the person making the joke which permits them to enjoy it along with them, even though it's sexist in their direction. Because hey-- it's so true. And they do it too.

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In related news, it's a travesty that this Kickstarter will almost certainly not be funded. If you're interested in the general topic of offensive jokes, consider supporting it even if you don't like this post from me. Even if you think I'm absolutely wrong-- especially if you think so. Because if so, that documentary might bolster your case. :-)

America: lousiest host ever

Okay, here's the deal. How it should be.

If you're in the United States for reasons beyond your control-- that is, you didn't decide to come here on your own, pay for it on your own, and physically get yourself here on your own-- you're entitled to the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship. Additionally, if you're in custody of the U.S. in some way or another, the same goes. If it's a bunch of Americans who are patrolling outside the cell where you're spending day after day, year after year, even decade after decade, you deserve the kind of rights that every native-born American, living out his or her entire life on American soil, enjoys or should enjoy (and can sue if he/she doesn't receive). Like, you know, the right to due process.

All right? Because that's how a civilized country behaves.

A civilized country does not act as if people from other places are inhuman because they weren't lucky enough to burst into existence in a hospital room on American soil or haven't yet gotten the chance to complete the lengthy, tortuous, and utterly capricious experience of becoming a naturalized citizen.

A civilized country does not capture people and lock them up for years without charge or trial, regardless of where it found them or under what circumstances. It finds the time to actually figure out what they supposedly did to merit being locked away from anyone they know or even anyone who speaks their language, officially tells them what it is, and determines whether they're guilty of it. Then releases or punishes them accordingly.

A civilized country remembers that the tired and huddled masses yearning to breathe free are going to want to breathe its free air so long as such a thing exists. It does not respond by vacuuming all of it out and providing oxygen tanks to a selected few favored people, so that the undesirables can properly suffocate. It does not whine "They hate us for our freedoms" and proceed to eliminate those freedoms so that there's nothing left to hate.

And a civilized country would never be so cruel, so inhuman, so devoid of any shred of empathy, that it would fight to deny the ability of people who were brought here without any intention of their own, as children, to remain in that country instead of sending them packing to go live in a location and culture that's alien to anything they've ever known.

You got that, Kris Kobach?

A bit of mulling over

Following up on Sunday's post, I can't help but keep returning mentally to Dr. Darrel Ray's talk at Skeptics of Oz last month, which you can see and hear (both are important in this case) here.

In a nutshell, the thesis of Ray's talk (and, I assume, of his book Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality, although I haven't read it) is that the essence of religion-- in particular American Christianity-- is sexual control via shaming. Shame and guilt, actually-- Ray doesn't differentiate between the two, although I find the distinction between them very important. He says that religion causes people to be filled with sexual shame to the extent that even as they grow up and live out their lives as mature, sexually active adults, they are compelled to lie about that sexuality to themselves, their friends and family, and especially their children. They lie about the fact that they masturbate. They lie about the fact that they have sex outside of marriage, whether before, during, or after. They lie about sexual attraction being a part of them that exists quite independently of the desire to create and raise children, and as such isn't something which sprang into existence on their wedding day and exists only for the person they married.

In support of this position, Ray points to higher than average levels of divorce, pornography consumption, and teenage pregnancy in the more fundamentalist parts of the U.S. Sexual shame is the source of all this lying, he asserts, because we can't escape from being sexual beings, and yet religious people-- again, mainly American Christians-- yearn to escape this aspect of our nature so badly that they are driven to simply deny it. This shame manifests itself even people who have deconverted, as a vestigial part of our moral thinking as adults, which can be observed when the more secular amongst us nevertheless engage in activities such as slut-shaming against others as well as when they turn it inward and deny their own impulses. In order to properly reject this, Ray says, we must be "secular sexuals," embracing our own sexuality as well as that of other people-- to admit publicly that we masturbate and have since we were kids, to refrain from slut-shaming and condemn those who do, and recognize that other people have their own preferences and these are their own business. In this way, we can subvert the popular assumption that sex sullies a person-- particularly if she is female-- and encourage education while discouraging ignorance and bigotry.

Okay, that wasn't exactly a nutshell. Sorry.

Now, this was both a safe and audacious talk for Ray to give at a meeting like Skeptics of Oz. Audacious because those are some very strong claims-- the original claim was that religion is a "sexually transmitted disease," that religion is all about sexual control, religion is fundamentally about making people feel ashamed of their sexuality and deny it their entire lives even while dating, marrying, producing children, and in general living a typical adult sexual life. And religious people hearing this would think "No, that doesn't remotely describe my experience." Which, in America, for most religious people, is probably true. It's possible that religion in America is as much about sexual control as veterinary medicine is about euthanizing peoples' pets-- a phenomenon which is a near-monopoly, but far from an all-consuming purpose. Which leads to why it was a safe talk for Ray to give at a conference for skeptics-- because when it comes to conferences, "skeptic" generally entails, if not translates to, "atheist." (See this excellent talk by Matt Dillahunty at this year's American Atheists conference for what the distinction is, and why it's important.)

He wasn't likely to hear a lot of argument from the audience about religion's role in sexual shaming and deceit-- and in fact, there was none. And that is because, I feel comfortable in saying, we-- not just secular, but anyone other than socially conservative Americans-- are sick to death of social conservatism. And social conservatism, especially that relating to anything sexual, invariably comes with an appeal to religious sensibilities. Because this is America, Christian religious sensibilities. Abortion? God's against it. Birth control covered by health insurance? Same. Pornography? Same. Gay rights? Same (but please don't look at how many politicians and clergy have been caught having gay affairs). Sex outside of marriage? Same (but please don't examine how many of us have stuck to that). Adultery? Same (but please don't look at our divorce rates). We're used to this, if anything but happy about it. It's called the religious right, and it shows no sign of going away. So of course a group of secularists-- sworn enemies of the religious right-- are not going to speak up about a talk saying that religion (American Christianity) is, fundamentally, about sexual control.

I just think it's overstating things. Just a tad.

To be continued.

Useful reading:
God as the Sex Police: Using Sexual Purity to Divide Insiders from Outsiders by Austin Cline

The miseducation of Katelyn Campbell

Katelyn Campbell

Recently in West Virginia, a teenager objected to a particularly obviously problematic form of abstinence-only education. Wait, let me rephrase that-- "Lying, slut-shaming diatribe" would be a better name for it. And the teenager in question, Katelyn Campbell, knew that's what it was. She even used the word "slut-shaming," which is just excellent. It's like a teenager being taught to "consider the controversy" in her biology class when learning about evolution immediately saying "Intelligent Design, right? That's really what you're getting at. Right?" Only in this case, it's as if Intelligent Design was the only thing being taught. And evolution was presented as a pack of lies. And students who believe in it were chastised, shamed, and told that their mothers probably hate them.

Yes, one of the things Pam Stenzel, Christian sex educator, said during her presentation was "If you take birth control, your mother probably hates you." Other common statements in her "educational" talks include gems such as:

• “I could look at any one of you in the eyes right now and tell if you’re going to be promiscuous.” 
• “Ladies, you contract Chlamydia one time in your life, cure it or not, and there is about a 25 percent chance that you will be sterile for the rest of your life.” 
• ”That drug, that hormone, that pill, that shot that this girl is taking has just made her 10 times more likely to contract a disease than if she was not taking that drug.”
• ”Students, condoms aren’t safe. Never have been, never will be.”

And my personal favorite,

• "if you have sex outside of one permanent monogamous - and monogamy does not mean one at a time, that means one partner who has only been with you - if you have sex outside of that context, you will pay. No one has ever had more than one partner and not paid."

Campbell apparently knew about Stenzel and chose not to attend the assembly that she (Stenzel) would be speaking for at George Washington High School, where Campbell is a senior and student body vice president. Instead, she started speaking out about the issue and filed a complaint with the ACLU. This attracted the attention of the school's principal, George Aulenbacher, who called Campbell into his office and proceeded to lecture and, according to Campbell, threaten her. 

Aulenbacher called Campbell to the principal's office after she contacted media outlets about the assembly and said, "I am disappointed in you" and "How could you go to the press without telling me?" according to the complaint. 

He then allegedly threatened to call Wellesley College, where Campbell has been accepted, and tell them about her actions. "How would you feel if I called your college and told them what bad character you have and what a backstabber you are?" he said, according to the complaint.

In case you're wondering, it's all cool with Welleseley.

And it's probably all cool with Katelyn Campbell as well. In addition to Wellesley issuing a public statement saying it is "delighted to welcome" her as a member of the class of 2017, people are clamoring to congratulate Campbell for her bravery and maturity in this matter. And she deserves every bit of it-- she's one of those rare high school students to whom it would even occur to consider that something like the tirade by Pam Stenzel at her school might not just be hard to sit through, not just unpleasant, not just wrong, but possibly illegal...and then actually do something about it. Become a student activist.

Jessica Ahlquist did the same thing, and endured endless harassment and threats for it. It doesn't look Campbell is going to have the same experience, though there has been some backlash in the form of a Facebook group originating in support of her principal. Aulenbacher's threat itself proved to hold no water, and from what I've read if he had been more familiar with Wellesley he should have known this himself, but the fact is...he didn't. He thought he could intimidate a student into shutting up about her objections to an assembly, and that it would be a good idea to do so. If this is all true, he appears to be one of those public school administrators who clearly views his position as one of domination rather than education, and therefore should not be in that role. But it remains to be seen what happens there.

In the meantime, there's so much discussion about Pam Stenzel and her message. In this instance, her visit to George Washington High School was funded by a local Christian organization called Believe in West Virginia, and probably cost between $3,500-5,000. She has a DVD called "Sex Still Has a Price Tag" which she sells to public schools for $30 a pop. She claims to speak to over 500,000 young people a year, at both public and private schools. She attended Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, is supposedly a product of rape and then adopted (as described in her talks), and previously worked at crisis pregnancy centers (pseudo-clinics which are frequently run by pro-life groups and are known for providing pregnant women with false or misleading medical information to encourage them not to abort). The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States' (SIECUS) says of Stenzel:

Pam Stenzel

Pam Stenzel was one of the first individuals that SIECUS became aware of who made a career of traveling from school to school providing abstinence-only-until-marriage assemblies and presentations. The influx of federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funding has meant that more schools are able to pay for these kinds of services (or receive them for free as part of a grant to a local community-based organization, crisis pregnancy center, or church), and Stenzel and her peers have been very popular in recent years. There is much to suggest that there is now a network of abstinence-only-until-marriage speakers that help promote each other’s work and materials.

This comes from a lengthy and comprehensive review of her "Sex Still Has a Price Tag" video, which includes several fact-checks of statements she makes concerning birth control and sexually transmitted diseases, and notes that

Pam Stenzel does not attempt to hide the fact that her performance is designed to scare young people. She begins by telling her teen audience, “If you forget everything else I told you today, and you can only remember one thing, this is what I want you to hear. If you have sex outside of one permanent monogamous—and monogamy does not mean one at a time—that means one partner who has only been with you— if you have sex outside of that context, you will pay.” The rest of the presentation hammers home this concept by telling young people exactly what form this payment may take from unintended pregnancy, to STDs, to emotional heartbreak, to death. 

Ms. Stenzel’s tone throughout her presentation can best be described as punitive, as though she knows that some of the teens in this world (and some members of her audience) have had or will have sex outside of her parameters, and she wants them to know that they will be punished. Moreover, by suggesting that these teens deserve punishment, Ms. Stenzel presents a world view in which virginity is the only measure of a person’s character and moral judgment, and sets up a dichotomy between those who are “good” and those who are “bad.”

The review is worth a full read, though if you're anything like me, it will make you angry.

I can't help but mentally compare it to the DARE program, in which I recall being told outright that consumption of any illegal drug will cause you to become immediately addicted to it, which means that all people who use illicit drugs recreationally are addicts. That's an easily disconfirmable claim, even without consuming any such drug yourself-- all one need do is observe some users of illicit drugs who are not, in fact, addicts. However, Stenzel's "If you have more than one sexual partner, you will pay" lie is better and worse at the same time, because it's so much more easily disconfirmable. This statement can be shown as nonsense by simply observing that practically all Americans have sex before marriage, and multiple sexual partners in their lifetimes, and yet they don't appear to be "paying." At least, not in any way that is causally distinct from the way in which those precious few one-partner-forever people (or, of course, the lifelong celibate) are not "paying." As I've written before, waiting to have sex until you're married doesn't protect you from anything. And having a single sexual partner who has also had no other sex partner but yourself may protect you from STDs, but a) this describes practically no one, and b) Stenzel denies this, but condoms do work. Quite well, actually. These two facts together ruin her entire thesis. Further, the most common STD which most people get actually isn't that bad. Most people who contract it won't even know they have it. As SIECUS says,

In truth, the majority of HPV infections cause neither genital warts nor cervical cancer but, instead, resolve themselves spontaneously without medical intervention. Even HPV infections that cause warts can resolve without treatment. And, if young women do contract one of the strains of HPV that can cause cervical cancer, it typically takes 10–15 years once cervical cells begin to change before invasive cervical cancer develops.

So interestingly, in the process of de-stigmatizing premarital sex in response to people like Stenzel, we end up de-stigmatizing STDs as well. It's not that STDs aren't bad, of course, but they're not as bad as people like Stenzel like to portray, and worst of all of course is the fact that she continually emphasizes (erroneously) how bad STDs are while also denigrating effective means of protecting against them. This is moralizing standpoint, not a fact-based standpoint. Clearly, facts are not the important thing here. You don't tell people how to prevent house fires by telling them never to buy a house, or denying the efficacy of fire extinguishers.

In a few different places while reading about this story, I've seen people say that if you object to what Stenzel does, you must be fine with telling kids to have sex. You're endorsing an "anything goes" mentality. I'm not doing anything of the sort-- I know what I want teenagers to know about sex, and it isn't "Go forth and screw without regard for the consequences." At bare minimum, I want them to know the truth...yet I'm starting to wonder if that's asking too much.

Not only is Stenzel hiding facts from the kids she supposedly teaches; she's indoctrinating them with falsehoods. Harmful, counter-productive falsehoods. We really need to stop this practice of just inventing catastrophes and pretending that they're inevitable for kids who do whatever we don't want kids to do. Kids will see through this, because a) they're not stupid, and b) they grow up. And when they do, they will come to question everything they've been taught because this particular thing has been shown to be so absurdly false. And while I'm all in favor of thinking critically and questioning authority, it would be nice for public school students not to be taught complete nonsense which forces them to eventually learn the value of such things for themselves, gradually and painfully. That isn't education. Let's not stand for it.

Repost: cultural relativism

Cultural relativism: a moral standard that which maintains that cultural norms are good simply because they are cultural norms, and a person cannot judge the norms of one culture by the standards of another.

 A standard that is, in my view, complete bullshit. And if you thought a little more about what its logical implications are, I suspect you'd agree with me. That is because in order to maintain it consistently you would have to agree that you have no grounds to judge the morality of things like female genital mutilation, child rape, foot binding, and slavery, because these have all been cultural norms. A cultural norm is simply what has become the norm within a culture. And norms are sometimes really, really messed up. But a cultural relativist may not say this, because projecting your cultural values and norms on another culture is wrong! 

Really? What about the people who are suffering because of those norms? Are you doing them any favors by refusing to judge the people harming them? What if they didn't sign up to be subjected to this crap, and would just as soon not be treated as property, not be raped, not be mutilated, and so on? What if they would be better off living by your cultural norms, which lean more toward treating people as equals? Maybe your cultural norms are not just norms for the sake of it, but because some very compassionate and insightful people thought and then fought for a very long time to ensure that the weaker members of society are not subjected to the things that pass as norms in other cultures. Maybe cultural norms are not all created equal. 

Regarding the rural Ecuadorians-- maybe encouraging them to spend their time, energy, and resources on developing and practicing medicine which actually isn't medicine at all is not doing them any favors. Maybe, if they knew what real medicine was and had access to it, they would not be flattered by the fact that you considered their previous cultural practices so charming that you didn't deem it necessary to help them understand what actually works as medicine and what doesn't. After all, they're long-lived and generally happy! Why not just let them keep slaughtering small animals if it makes them feel good? That's just as good as modern medicine! I'm sure when one of them gets cancer he/she is perfectly fine bathing in bat blood and listening to incantations instead of having the tumor removed.

Of course most people are not, in fact, consistent cultural relativists-- they pick and choose the ways in which it is okay to impose their cultural norms on other societies. Even if they wouldn't support invading another country to stop women from being put to death for having pre-marital sex, they won't hesitate to condemn the practice. That's what a moral person does...condemn barbarism, wherever it takes place. The only people who are done a favor by the refusal to condemn are, of course, the barbarians.

I apologize for my vehemence here....I really do. And to be clear, I am not saying that members of any culture should go around trying to force other cultures to be like theirs. I'm saying that the idea that a person should not come to moral conclusions about behavior that goes on in a culture other than his/her own is not only gravely mistaken but dangerous, and immoral in itself. Human rights are called human rights because they belong to all humans, not some of them depending on what culture they happened to be born in. The people who define cultural norms are the ones with the power, and the ones with the power are very often wrong. We should feel no compunction about saying so, whether they're powerful in our own culture or another. -- Source: http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/40129-witchcraft-occult-devil-worship-andor-black-magic/page-3#entry645415