Saturday, April 22, 2017

Women's Studies 101 with Tom Perez: Reproductive Rights Math



Morning, ladies! Oh, and gentleman. Welcome to Women’s Studies 101. We’re going to be talking today about reproductive rights and how we can combat legislative attempts to curb them. I am sure that you already have some ideas on this topic but I’m going to take a new approach here that I'm certain that you haven’t been exposed to before: math! I’ve prepared this lesson to take your special needs into consideration and I have faith that you’ll grasp the concepts, but if anyone has any questions, just raise your hand. There are no stupid questions, just stupid answers! I’m sure I’ll have many because I'm a man! Hahahaha haha!

Before I begin though, how about a round of introductions? I’m Tom Perez, new leader of the DNC and I’ll be your professor even though I have never studied this topic before. Perhaps our (hopefully white knight) gentleman would like to introduce himself?


Um, hi! My name is Bernie and my phone number is 555-486-9365 in case any of you ladies would like to hear about my plans to solve classism for you. Just make sure to hit mute after I start talking because I hate when women interrupt me. The call costs 27 cents per minute and should be made once per week to show your ongoing fealty. You can also subscribe by email.


Lovely! Now ladies, just yell your names out all at once. I want to hear the collective roar of your fierceness!


*mumble*


Hmm. We’ll have to keep working on that every day, I guess. To restore your self-esteem! You are smart and valuable and I am going to make sure that each and every one of you learn enough to ace my class!

Now, as I said, this topic is going to be covered using math! Isn’t that exciting?


While many people disagree on whether reproductive rights actually exist or should be accessible or even matter at all, I’m going to put that aside so that we can focus on the facts. This is where math comes in! I know that some of you might be new to math, so I’ll be hosting a social tonight in the student union for anyone who needs tutoring or anyone who just wants to hang out with our other excellent ladies. And man. Mustn't forget our very special man!

The math tutoring agenda is secret so you don’t have to be anxious about people identifying your need for help by your attendance. I’d like everyone to copy the event information down from the board so no one can tell who needs help and who doesn’t. Great! Thanks!

Math. The thing that’s really great about math is that it’s completely objective. By using an objective, scientific approach, we can show how best to protect existing reproductive rights. We’ll just assume for the sake of argument that everyone here agrees that reproductive rights are good.


Well, of course we do but in terms of the overall struggle, we can’t pay attention to “identity politics” issues like that. We need to be focusing on economic issues at all times. I learned all about them in Econ 101 this morning and I think that's what we should really be talking about.


Thank you for that valuable input, Bernie. It was Bernie, right? Ok great. Unfortunately, women’s economic issues are Women’s Studies 102, so we won’t be covering them this semester. I hope that’s ok. Moving on!

We’ve already agreed to a premise that reproductive rights need to be protected, by which I mean, we’ve decided that this is the point upon which we will be basing our argument.


I didn’t.


You don’t have the option to disagree with a given premise. That’s not how a premise works. You give a premise and you argue based on the assumption that it’s true. Arguments about the premise aren’t part of the exercise. We can argue the validity of the premise some other time.


Grumble. Fine. I’ll agree that that is a promise. For now.


Perfect! Well, premise, not promise, but otherwise, perfect. You are exceptional, Bernie!


Yeah, I know. A little birdie told me that before.


How lovely for you! So the real question is, how do we protect reproductive rights and the answer, as I keep saying, is math! The important thing about protecting reproductive rights is ensuring that Democrats are in as many seats as possible, even if those Democrats are expected to vote against reproductive rights. Makes sense, right? I’ll give you an example, in case that was too confusing. I hope word problems are ok.

If there is a legislative body that is 52.9% Democratic, and 76.6% (repeating of course) of those Dems are pro-reproductive rights, that offsets the 47.1% of the body that will be voting against them. It’s just basic, simple math. By having that 52.9% Dem count, the vote will be won by 2.9%. Now if the Dem count is 47.1% instead, we have a problem, because now the vote will be lost by 2.9%. This is why it’s so important to support Dems even if they disagree on reproductive rights.


Hi! My name’s Hilla…


For the safety and security of the women in the class, I’m going to ask the women all to avoid using your real names. I totally forgot to say that earlier, sorry. This is a good policy for other classes as well, so if you don’t mind, could you pick a name to go by that can’t be used to identify you? Thanks. Oh, you should use different names in different classes too. That way creepers can’t follow you around just because they have you in a class and know your name. Your safety is important!


Um, ok, uh, I guess I’ll go by Hildegard? I’m not following this logic very well. Could you show us that math on the board please?


Certainly! And thanks for being brave enough to ask that first question! After all, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers! And stupid men, amirite? Hahahaahahaha oh. Ha. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Hopefully the men in your lives aren’t terrible, but if they are, our student health center and our Women’s Department have resources to help you, all free of charge and anonymous! Just come talk to me after class and I’ll pass your name and number to them.

So let me write these numbers out again, since that’s literally my job, and… here we go!


So here’s what I’m confused about. If we have 52.9% Dems and 76.6% of them would vote to protect reproductive rights, that would only be about 40% of the vote being for reproductive rights.


Ahh yes, a common misconception! Remember that we premised that we all agree on reproductive rights, so that 76.6% figure is just a distraction. Just forget that that number was even mentioned. In fact, let me just erase…


But…


Now then, as everyone can see, if we have 52.9% of the body as Dem, then the vote goes 52.9% for protecting reproductive rights! This is why it’s important to vote for Dems even if they stand against reproductive rights. It’s the only way to counter the GOP’s anti-reproductive rights votes.


If I may come to the board for a moment?


Well, I guess that’s ok. I mean, if you feel safe coming up here. I mean, I have no objection if you don’t.


Why does she think she’s entitled to have a turn at the board?


I need to explain this to the women so that they will understand as well as you do. Since you already understand, you don’t need a turn. Hopefully, my working side by side with a woman on this problem will make it easier for them to do the math in the future all on their own, which is the real goal here.


This class is rigged.


Since only 76.6% of the Dems would vote for…


Remember the premise.


This isn’t how math works!


No, I promise you that the math works. We’ve had teenage boys looking at this for months over at Reddit and they all confirm the validity of the math.


I’m a geometry professor. I teach logical proofs in math.


Well then, I’m certain that you can see how well the math works out.


This isn't even how to use a premise! Your conclusion was a subjective non sequitur!


Ladies? Let’s give a hand to “Hildegard” here, I mean "Professor Hildegard" here for helping you with this very difficult math problem! Kudos to you, smarty skirt!


But we’re talking about people’s rights to own their body-- a huge safety and human rights issue-- which by the way, allows women to work, making it an important economic issue.


Wo ho ho let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Economic issues are next semester, remember? That's the advanced math.


But this is important.


That's it for today! Next class we'll start looking at abortion data to statistically determine which demographics are most in need of this crucial service!

Attributions:
Tom Perez speaking at Duke, original image, photoshopped
All other images blatantly snagged from the internet for this piece of obvious political satire, falling under fair use.

Friday, March 10, 2017

I Made You A Thing: Spicer's Government Conundrum

This week, in response to questions about the contents of the GOP healthcare bill, Sean Spicer demonstrated why we should like the GOP version, a smaller page count. That might have ben whan he meant but what he said is that the new bill is "not government." I guess even Sean Spencer can be right occasionally.

Does he know that he works for the government? Someone ask his agent.


Thursday, March 2, 2017

Normalizing Abuse Can Make Us Do Terrible Things: Milo Yuckopolous


Milo Yianno... Yuckopolous: A Troll and His Priest

[Citation needed] Even if that were statistically true,
treating it as an insidious conspiracy is still racist.
Hello, internalized anti-semitism!
Recently, an interview came to light in which Milo* implied that it is fine for adults to have sexual relations with minors who have reached puberty*2. Despite his previous hateful stances against women, feminists, transgender people, people of color, Jewish people, liberals, and men who simply aren't assholes, people were just fine with him and freeze peach and just give him a chance

Then suddenly: outrage! Fox News turned on him and even Breitbart. You see, asshole white men aren't women, feminists, transgender, brownish, Jewish, or liberal but they can be survivors of molestation. It's like abortion; one reason that people care is that the fetus could be a white male.

Now Milo's lost his book deal, his biggest speaking gig, and his "credibility" because he thinks that statutory rape is ok. I think that what he specifically said he supports is gross because of the power imbalance; difference in judgment capability and experience; and the teen prestige of catching an adult.*3

Then he explained his rationale.


"In the homosexual world, particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men — the sort of ‘coming of age’ relationships — the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable rock where they can't speak to their parents."  
His molestation was beneficial and would be to others if he did the same. Well, hi, normalization

Suddenly, his claims that transgender women commit sex crimes against women and girls in bathrooms make a lot more sense, don't they? After all, people who do bad things or want to do bad things usually think that that group that they hate does those things in inexcusable cases, which are unlike their "right and just" cases. (See right wing claims of voter fraud conspiracies.)

And then there's the fact that Milo calls Trump "Daddy." That just went from weird in a bad way to super creepy. And his comment that the idea of consent is "arbitrary and oppressive?" Well, that's one way to defend his online army's rape threats. They're not really a problem if the real problem is requiring consent in the first place.
Yiannopoulos protests that, this time, he really didn’t mean it, that his words have been taken out of context, that child sex abuse is real, and that he understands that words have consequences for victims.
(But only for victims of crimes that affected him, that affect white men, that affect his followers and his income.) Now Milo is bending over backwards to deny that this is what he meant, including changing his story from him being 12 to him being 17, which would still be illegal where he lived. He changed his story so he doesn't have to admit to his followers that he was a victim.

At least he seems to have done some soul searching now and has discovered his normalization of abuse:

My relationship with my abusers is complicated by the fact that, at the time, I did not perceive what was happening to me as abusive. I can look back now and see that it was. I still don’t view myself as a victim. But I am one.

His career is victimizing people, which he justifies by saying that being victimized is wrongly seen as "special currency," and now he says that what he said should be excused because his victimhood gives him special currency. ("My experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted to on this subject, no matter how outrageous.") This is a man who has repeatedly launched online mob attacks against women and feminists, mobs who obtained personal information on their targets to go to their homes and stalk them. His followers frame the targets for racism or "pimping their child to pedophiles" on Breitbart in forum pieces that they spread as "reliable facts from a reliable source." They try to coerce the target's employers to fire them (in the case of Gamergate, successfully), and leave notes in mailboxes that the targets need to watch out or their children will be harmed, complete with he child's school information or photo.

Anyone who complains is called an exaggerating whiner and a snowflake with a victimhood complex who is trying to ban free speech that they dislike. Threats of harm are not actually free speech. There are laws against it. These things are rarely prosecuted because there are too many suspects, most of whom are anonymous. You can't prosecute people who can't be identified. The online mobs also use lack of prosecution as proof that none of this happened or that the target was trying to frame them.

But he couldn't admit to himself that he was a victim, by his own admission; that would make him just like his targets. It's also possible that he victimizes people to prove to himself that he's not a victim, lashing out to further his denial, dehumanizing to make his dehumanization feel normal.

For that, I feel sad for him. That's the only sadness that I have for him, because even if his actions are based in a traumatic past that he hasn't dealt with, he is still responsible for his behavior towards other people, which is indescribably reprehensible.

Coming soon: The Rape Denialists and The Religious Right!


* I refuse to use Milo's whole name because his name is his brand and I don't want to contribute to that brand even through search engine results.
*2 This is technically hebephilia. Pedophilia is attraction to pre-pubescents. However, to be consistent with media reports and with how most people actually use the term pedophilia, I'll be using pedophilia instead of hebephilia. While he and many others are saying that it's not really pedophilia because it's hebephilia are trying to distract from the point and excuse what he said, even though hebephilia is also gross and acting on it is also illegal.
*3 I know I wanted an adult boyfriend when I was a teenager, just for the coolness factor, and I had a few close calls.

Normalizing Abuse Can Make Us Do Terrible Things

Normalization in psychology is the process of making something "normal," more acceptable*. Within psychology, the term is used in two different ways, depending on context, and both are important here so to distinguish between them, I'll separate them into "externalized normalization" and "internalized normalization."

Externalized Normalization

What I'll refer to as "externalized normalization" is the normalization of something in society, the treatment by society that something is normal, tolerable, and expected.

The Good


Normal, every one of them.
In the US we have a white model of beauty, a white middle-class model of family life, vastly different male and female models of strength, a physical model of ableness as "normal." But these things ignore that there is no person who fits all of the models in an ideal way. People are inherently different from each other and that's what makes the world interesting.

Shoot, if everyone were just like me, I wouldn't have anyone to blog to on the Internet. These differences are normal and treating them as the normal things that they are leads to people feeling accepted despite whichever "normal" criteria they fail to meet. This is the good side of normalization in society.

One of the things that I love about Idris Elba's work is that some of the characters that he plays are Black because he's acting in the role, not because the role calls for a Black person. For instance, as Luther, neither his ethnicity nor his numerous interracial relationships (romantic and otherwise) are plot points. Why? Because Black people are normal, for fuck's sake. There are Black cops and they do cop things and they get divorces and have hard times dealing with that just like "normal" people (where normal is defined as "white," as it is in most US media). They have white friends and beige exes and enemies of all colors. Elba's acting in the any-ethnicity role of Stacker Pentacost in Pacific Rim was exceptional and I believe he was cast in that role because he was right for that role. I think he should have won an award.

Sometimes, a role calls for a Black man or a Little Person or even a woman but many times a role simply calls for a person. Able-bodied, straight white men are the default people, but in reality, they are a minority. The movements to get characters like Doctor Who to be played by a Black man or a woman exist because Doctor Who is a "person" whose looks are irrelevant because their looks change. This is exactly the kind of role where normalization of a non-male, non-white lead would be seamless. Selecting an actor for a role based solely on skill is the kind of normalization that I can get behind, as is selecting an actor in order to normalize marginalized people.

The Bad & the Ugly


Unfortunately, our society normalizes some things that are harmful, especially things that are harmful to people deemed "lesser" due to their gender, ethnicity, LGBT status, economic class, disability, etc. While we fight to eliminate discrimination, to many, discrimination is simply normal and natural and the way things should be-- according to people who discriminate, of course.

Trying to ban Muslims and Hispanics from the country, for instance, is a normalized form of discrimination. It's so normal that people win elections on platforms that they will ban Muslims and Hispanics. The politician doesn't even have to have a plan for it; simply intending to discriminate garners votes. Even an intention to discriminate against the poor gets votes from poor white people because obviously, "poor" is code for "Black."

Richard Sherman-- penguin, thug, or penguin thug?
On the atrocious end, we also normalize violence against women and minorities. Rape culture teaches us that "boys will be boys," "those girls were asking for it," "those women just regretted it in the morning and cried rape," and "what do you expect is going to happen when men and women are working together?"

White supremacy tells us that a Black kid shot by a white man at a gas station undoubtedly had a gun that the police covered up; that Trayvon was a "thug" because he wore a hoodie in the rain; that the routine burning of Southern Black churches are individual, isolated incidents.

Male supremacy is why a woman can fire a warning shot near her abuser and go to prison because instead of believing her or the witnesses, the judge sided with the man under restraining order who admitted to breaking into her home and threatening her. Classism teaches us that violence against homeless people could be avoided if they just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and stopped "choosing to live that lifestyle." And gender-normative heterosexism makes the news skip over the two transgender women murdered in New Orleans in the last week.

Internalized Normalization


What I'll refer to as "internalized normalization" is when an individual thinks that something is normal and expected when done to them, even things that others think are appalling and should never be allowed, like violence. It's normalization turned in on a person who wants to feel "normal" despite things around them that others might consider abnormal. In some cases, people raised in abusive households simply don't realize that family interaction doesn't inherently include violence. In other cases, people are subjected to abuse from enough people that they begin to think that all relationships are abusive, that their parents merely hid that from them.

Internalized Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, etc.


A person who is raised in a society that is misogynist becomes misogynist, even if they are female. A person who is raised in a racist society becomes racist, even if they are a racial minority. A person who is raised in a homophobic society becomes homophobic, even if they are homosexual. A person raised in a society fearful of disabilities becomes fearful of disability, even if they are disabled.

I am a woman raised in a misogynist society, who spent years being "one of the guys" in personality and behavior, and smart "unlike other women." I abhorred skirts. I wore jeans and nerdy t-shirts. I am still unlearning misogyny. I will likely never unlearn it. Likewise, there are parts of my brain that will always be racist and every so often, something is going to sneak out of me that I deserve a smack-down for but simply don't realize it because it seems so normal. Susan Sarandon claiming that women who didn't vote for Sanders were "voting with their vaginas?" Hello, internalized misogyny!

Then you have people like Bill Cosby asserting that "the Black community" is to blame for giving people reasons to treat them poorly, reasons that are the effects of educational deficits in parents and schools, reasons that are the results of poverty. Grab your bootstraps, Black people, because you have to climb 20 feet of manure to reach the educational advantage of white guys and Cosby's standing at the top of it telling you how stupid you are for starting at the bottom of the hill.

But the most insidious form of normalization (in my opinion) is the normalization of abuse by the targets of abuse.

Abuse Normalization


Normalization is the abuse target's*2 Trickster. The natural desire to make order out of chaos can mitigate some of the pain and fear. This process can help the target retain self-esteem and avoid the stigma that society places on targets of abuse. But it can also perpetuate the abuse and in turn, perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

If what's happening is normal and expected, if it would happen regardless of who was in the position held by the abuser, if it happens to everyone because everyone does it, then one simply gets used to it. What stigma is there in normality? What is there to fear in the expected? If they got through yesterday, they'll get through today. In some cases, it is realizing that they are better off alone that allows targets to escape. And in normalization cases, it takes work to become appalled by abuse. After all, it's not "abuse;" it's just Tuesday.

This is obviously an oversimplification; normalization doesn't eliminate the effects of abuse, just diminish them. But when one thinks that everyone does it, that it happens to everyone, why venture into the unknown and risk worse when you already got through yesterday and you know what to expect? If you ever hear a physical abuse target say something like "well, he hits me but he doesn't break anything" as a reason to stay, what's happened is that this normalization process has taught them that everyone hits and in comparison to others, their abuser is probably not so bad. Their abuser is a known evil. Some other guy would probably kill them.

Some will even go so far as to believe that their abuser is doing what's right for them and some of those decide that if that's what's right, they should continue down that righteous path. They should not just tolerate but celebrate the abuse and proudly inflict it on others. This is self-blame, something that many abusers instill in their targets. In some cases, targets believe that they were "corrected" by those actions and other uncorrected people must be corrected as well. (See conversion therapy "success" stories.)

Normalization of abuse and self-blame are parts of a disorder called Complex PTSD, which isn't officially recognized because it mostly affects women and the guys in charge don't think something is real if it mostly affects women. (Except for Borderline Personality Disorder cause ladies be crazy emotional, amirite?) The disorder also features learned helplessness: "it can't be fixed, so why try?" Complex PTSD affects people who have been subjected to repeated abuse, typically both as a child and as a teen or adult, for instance, a abusive father and a similarly abusive boyfriend.

So you have people targeted for violence who believe that all people are violent, that they drive people to violence, and that nothing can be done about it anyway. When you believe all of that, is there really a point to trying to leave?

Why Am I Talking About This?


I have Complex PTSD and I have for at least 30 years. I broke free of the cycle, which was easier for me because I normalized but didn't self-blame. I still have some learned helplessness issues but feeling helpless causes me anxiety, so yay. (Me? Learned helplessness? Yes. Me. And stubbornness is my superpower.)

I can't fault someone for failing to break free. It's a much harder road than people realize and I had it easy compared to most. I got out with my privilege. Not everyone has the resources that I used to escape. Not everyone had someone in their childhood who saw the abuse for what it was and told them not to buy into it. I am lucky in those ways, those very rare ways. I empathize with those who don't escape. I have compassion for them, right up until the point where they harm others.

Coming up, the actual terrible things that normalizing abuse can make us do, starting with Milo.


* This might seem elementary but the term means very different things in different contexts. Normalizing a database has nothing to do with making the database normal or acceptable.
*2 Some people prefer the term "victim" of abuse, others "survivor." I believe that both are wrought with negative judgement about someone and when discussing abuse, negative judgment of the abusee can be internalized and harm their ability to escape. Thus, I prefer the more neutral "target."