Blogging Belatedly for Choice

Allright. So I missed Blog For Choice Day. Fine. It's not like missing deadlines is any news at all around here.

And I haven't been reading the news much lately, I'm not up to speed on whatever egregious assault on reproductive choice has been mounted lately--the type of thing I've blogged about before, here. And here. And here, too. And even here.

So today, in honor of the recently-passed-without-me-writing-a-goddamn-thing Blog For Choice Day, I thought I'd go into some of my basic thoughts about abortion.

Given that I first really gave abortion any thought about the time that I had my first (and unprotected) sexual encounter, my first thoughts were of abortion as an emergency exit, so to speak, should the need arise. Not a very noble, to be sure, but hell, I was eighteen--I also thought homosexuality was gross and weird and that 1969 Camaros were the finest cars on the face of the planet.

Ok, so '69 Camaros are the finest cars on the face of the planet. So sue me.

At any rate, my thoughts on the matter at hand matured. And today, it boils down to one main issue:

it's her body.

At first, I wanted at first to go off on all the reasons anti-choice laws are fucked up:

Like if it weren't for religion, 90% of the anti-choice activism wouldn't exist, which clues me that we're looking at somebody trying to get legal privilege for their particular religious viewpoint.

Like a lot of the activism is fueled by a real mean-spirited morality: women who have sex should be forced to suffer the "consequences of their actions." Serious--as if they were five-year-olds who'd tracked mud into the house and had to deal with the "consequences of their actions" and mop the fucking floor. I mean, my grandfather used to smoke cigars all day and eat the fat that other people had trimmed off their steaks (Ewww). But when he went in for a quadruple fucking coronary bypass , did anyone say that he should "suffer the consequences of his actions" and be denied the surgical procedure? No.

[These, after all, are the anti-HPV people. The "I'd rather risk you dying a slow and excrutiating death via cervical cancer than give you the idea that sex before marriage is even a physical possibility, my sweet virginal daughter" people. Mean-spirited fucks].

Like there's no end of patriarchal bullshit tied up in this. The denial of a woman's control over her own body, the shaming of women because of their sexuality and reproductive biology (Leviticus 15:30, anyone?), men's claims of ownership of children--these are all venerable institutions that are essential to the propagation of any patriarchy, and they are all part of the anti-choice movement.

But in the end, none of those reasons really speak to the heart of the matter to me. Which is, again,

it's her body.

I have to admit that once I came across an Ann Coulter piece where she quipped that Rove involved the Supremes having somehow found "a constitutional right to stick a fork in a baby's head" and I had to admit that sounded pretty bad. So-called "Partial Birth Abortion" is the Willie Horton of anti-choice activism, and as such, it's pretty effective.

But it's also largely bogus. Not just that the term is a gross (and deliberate) misnomer, but that it is an extremely rare procedure performed virtually exclusively in cases where it is the most medically appropriate option to ensure the mother's health.* This is not something that women and doctors agree to do because there's nothing good on TiVo. As I understand it, elective D&X (the procedure that folks usually are trying to describe when they say "partial-birth") is not even permitted by most, if not all, state medical associations.

That being said, even the medically accurate descriptions of a D&X are unsettling to me. The nasty photos that anti-choice activists show are unsettling to me. Never mind that the majority of abortions are carried out when the fetus is the size of a peanut shell or smaller, I have to admit that deep inside, there is some lingering doubt, some hesitation, some apprehension. But guess what?

That's my problem.

Why? Because of one simple fact:

it's her goddamn body

That's one of the absolute bedrocks in our house. We tell the kids over and over, "it's your body." They make a lot of decisions that I don't like, but I suck it up, because it's not my body--it's theirs. Go outside in freezing drizzle and sleet--barefoot? Bad idea, HowlerMonkeyBoy, but it's your body. Skip lunch and turn into a grouchy, irritable wretch by dinnertime because you're pissed that I won't make your ramen noodles for you? I don't like it, and I don't like putting up with a grouchy, irritable EvilGeniusGirl, but hey, it's your body.

Case in point--the aforesaid EvilGeniusGirl is around the age at which the CDC recommends she get the HPV vaccine. I'm the one appointed to sit down with her and discuss this. While I am 100% in favor of her getting the vaccine, at the end of the day, I'm going to leave it up to her. It's her decision, because...well, you know why.

Now, without getting all "I went to grad school in an esoteric discipline" goofy on you, let me just say that The Body is inherent to identity. There are reams and reams of literature on this--most of it feminist, a lot of it from Routledge--but one of the recurring themes is that our relationships to our bodies are profound, fragile, and essential. That's why the "my body has turned on me" aspect of cancer is so horrifying to so many patients. That's why torture is so horrific--it's a deliberate, malicious, and excruciating invasion of the body--the seat of identity, the physical manifestation of the self.

And this is actually what moved The Lovely Wife from mildly anti-choice to solidly pro-choice. The experience of carrying EvilGeniusGirl for nine months, the realization that it was a total usurpation of the body, a profound loss of control of her physical being, caused her to decide that this was simply not something that should ever be forced on someone against their will.

So: Would I like to see abortion safe, legal, and rare?** Sure. How about safe, legal and virtually non-existent because people are thoroughly--and accurately--educated, birth control is safe, legal, and omnipresent, women are unashamed about their bodies, men take equal responsibility for contraception, etc., etc.. But until and unless it is, and yes, I’m squeamish, it’s her body. Yes, I may even have moral qualms, but it’s her body. As much as I have to admit I’m not 100% impervious to anti-choice arguments, that’s just too fucking bad. That’s just something I have to walk away from. It's not my choice.

it’s her body.

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*At this point I really, really wanted to insert a link to a story of a woman who needed a D&X--or she would die--and went through a two or three-day ordeal trying to get to a doctor--in another state--to perform the best procedure that could save her life. If you know the link I'm talking about, I'd love to see it.

**There are those who take issue with the "rare" part of safe, legal, and rare. I think this is because "rare" implies that there is and/or should be some kind of stigma attached to abortion. And I can see this. If abortion is the non-stigmatized, non-morally offensive, non-crime that we make it out to be, then why should it be rare? Well, there's the answer that anything that involves doctors sticking pointy things up your plumbing should be avoided unless absolutely necessary, but even that's limited.

Look at it this way. EvilGeniusGirl can expect to be visited by Aunt Flo one of these months. When she does start having her period, I sure as hell want her to feel absolutely no shame, squeamishness, or--Yahweh forbid--"pollution." So, menstruation is nothing that--even were it possible--we would wish were "rare," right?

Well, some 60 to 80% of fertilized eggs fail to implant. That means they are expelled during the menstrual cycle. We have no grief over these, and as seen above, most of us would like our daughters to feel no shame, and many pride in the monthly reminder that they are part of the eternal cycle of the Goddess yadda yadda.

So, I'm not sure there's a huge difference between celebrating the life-affirming Goddess-power of a run-of-the-mill menstrual flow (which may well contain a fertilized egg) and celebrating the same in a flow brought on by a cup of pennyroyal tea.*** Hmmm.

***Ok, how geeky is this--I'm appending footnotes to my footnotes. Anyway, I just wanna say "don't try this at home" with regard to using pennyroyal as an abortificant. Bad idea. I just wanted to convey the neo-pagan/herbalist type mindset.

Are they really that Stupid?

OK--how stupid can Liberals get:

“I put this question to some highly influential evangelical leaders -- James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family), for one. I said, "People are suspicious of your motives. They wonder what you're trying to do, what happens if evangelicals get their way." He said, "Do we aim to turn this country into a theocracy? Absolutely not."

Ok, for starters, asking James Dobson if he would like to turn America into a theocracy is kinda like asking a coyote if she plans to wipe out your entire flock of sheep. “Absolutely not,” she would say, and it’d be true--there’s no way she’d even consider trying to devour the whole flock. But does she plan to pick off a lamb or two every few nights? Hell, yeah.

It’s a matter of asking the wrong question. I think there are very, very few people in this country today who would like to see an Iranian-style theocracy. Even the most ambitious “Let's-win-America-for-Christ” types are generally more about our traditonal form of democracy, individual rights, etc--with the exception that their brand of Christianity is the dominant force in all aspects of culture. Kinda like a constitutional democracy where everyone who’s not a Good Christian finds their rights severely curtailed.*

So it’s pretty stupid (hence the title of this post) to ask people “Do you want a Theocracy where all matters--cultural and legal--were decided by elements of a centralized church and in which you could loose your RTKBA if the head pastor so decided?” I think the number of people who could answer "yes" to that question could fit in the LGBT student services center at Bob Jones University.

On the other (fairly scary) hand, on the very same day that the above-cited “Well, if James Dobson says he doesn’t want theocracy, then I guess there’s nothing to worry about” article came out, so did this one, which reports conservative radio host Dennis Prager opinion that getting sworn in to Congress on the Koran would be “the first break of the tradition of having a Bible present at a ceremony of installation of a public official” (demonstrably untrue, including Founding Father rockstar John Quincy Adams***), and argued that “If you are incapable of taking an oath on [the Bible], don't serve in Congress” (unconstitutional. Really, really unconstitutional).****

This, boys and girls, is some scary shit.

Why so scary, Uncle Bobby? I hear you saying. Isn’t it just another conservative blowhard mouthing off?

No, it is not. If this bona fide scary-ass freak had come out and said “The wrong religion disqualifies you from Congress!” and had then been buried under a deluge of attacks from not only the progressive Left but also the Rational Right,** and had been forced off the air, or at least forced to issue a clenched-teeth "I don’t want to say this but they’ll fire me if I don’t” apology, I could have dismissed it as, well, just another conservative blowhard mouthing off.

But, nooooo.***** No, this guy is getting support. And I’m not talking about Stormfront and Aryan Nations either. I mean that wacky “Fuck court decisions, I’ll put my 2.6 ton Granite monument to the Ten Commandments wherever I fucking well want to” former Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore, who thinks Muslims should be categorically banned from Congress and has said too many wacky things to count, which include:

“The Islamic faith rejects our God and believes that the state must mandate the worship of its own god, Allah"

Unlike, I suppose, Yahweh, who must have been only kidding when he said “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Did you happen to forget that your religion categorically rejects all other Gods? It’s only the first motherfucking commandment, you “I’m gonna tote my 2.6 ton granite monument across the country until the GOP bows down and worships Yahweh” hypocritical son of a bitch.

Yeah, Roy’s kinda a fringe figure, but he (ahem) carries a lot of weight in some circles. Like the circle of 3.4 motherfucking million people who got the American Family Association's “Action Alert” warning them about Keith Ellison’s Plot to Destroy America by bothering to take his freedom of religion seriously, and giving them a copy of Prager’s screed (said screed failing to mention that the Bible-based swearing-in ceremonies are not the official ceremonies. The Bible ones are done in private. The official one is done in congress and, guess what? Is done with no fucking book at all).

But have I even gotten to the reaaal scary shit? If you said, “Betcha haven’t, Uncle Bobby,” go git yerself a cookie. Because now, now, boys and girls, we have a motherfucking member of the House of Goddamn Representatives opining that Ellison was the thin edge of an American-values-destroying wedge.

We are talking about a man with the power to make Federal Fucking Law here, boys and girls. Including genuinely, 100% Uncle Bobby Approved, scarier-n-shit laws like H.R. 1070, which basically tells the Supreme Court to go fuck itself and let government officials promote their religious agenda any fucking way they want to..

So, yeah, boys and girls, I think it’s scary. When 59% of Americans believe the whole rapture/blood in the streets/whore of Babylon is on its way, and 55% think evolution is a crock, high-profile figures running around saying who is and is not fit to participate in democracy based on their religion, yeah--I think the coyote’s got her eyes on at least a few of the lambs.

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*I want to stress I don’t think this is true of Christians in general, or even Evangelicals in general. For fuck’s sake, 25% of Americans consider themselves Born Again and/or Evangelical. If even a significant minority of them were like that, we’d be fucked.

**Hey, I just coined that. I think it’s pretty cool. It also communicates very important fact that there’s a whole big branch of conservative thought (which used to be dominant, but is now a distant second to the Religious Right) that is absolutely grounded (almost obsessively so) in rational, intelligent discourse. Like the time I saw William F. Buckley speak. I didn’t agree with more than 10% of what he had to say, but (ital)goddamn (/ital) could that man think. Maybe the smartest motherfucker I have ever heard live. I think that’s just a whole hell of a lot better than anyone who can even pretend to believe that the Bible never, ever, ever contradicts itself. (http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/contradictions.html)

***Mr. JQA, in fact, got sworn in on a law book. That’s right, you Founding-Father Fetishists: one of your very favorites believed that law was more important to a freedom-loving democracy than religion. Imagine that. I’ll bet he sipped latte.

**** I dunno. I would have thought that “...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” would have been really damn clear.

*****If you’re old enough to remember, that last phrase there should be delivered the way John Belushi did it.

"War on Christmas" Redux

Hi, folks. Just a little Xmas blogging to let you know I'm out there and still alive.

Well, sort of alive, because I'm recycling old material here. But it's damn good old material (IMNSHO).

And, it's relevant because we're hearing the "War on Christmas" whining again. Jesus Christ in a Government Building, people--give it a rest. The below gives my opinion of the dire straights of religious freedom in which you find yourselves.

Merry Yuletide!

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[NOTE: I originally started writing this before Bill O'Reilly invented the "War on Christmas" which has to be one of the great ratings-boosting stunts of the past 10 years. But the same thought applies. I work in a state-run facility, a branch of the state government. We have a 12-foot Christmas tree on prominent display. War on Christmas? Gimme a break.]

Seriously. If this is War On Christianity, then we have a serious John Paul Jones problem on our hands: we have not yet begun to fight. Last time I checked, the vast majority of people in this country were still Christian, they still prayed freely in their homes and in their churches, their major holidays were recognized by the mainstream culture (and in many cases by employers and governments), and they were generally free to run around thinking, talking, and acting as if everybody in this country was Christian.

Which a lot of them do. They act as if their prayers ought to be led by principles and teachers, but would probably shit their pants if someone wanted to start the day with a chant to the Goddess or the Muslim call to prayer.* They are able to marshal the legislative clout to get their religion's definition of marriage written into the constitution of state after state. Hell, the Mormons had to (officially) drop their definition of marriage a hundred years ago just to get statehood. Why doesn't anyone complain about their freedom of religion? Christians can install monuments to their religious law in public buildings, and count on widespread sympathy if anyone gives them flack about it. How much flack would I get if I installed a 5,300-pound granite phallus in the Texas Department of Agriculture building? How much sympathy would I get if I were forced to remove it?

Most Christians have the same privilege-blindness that afflicts straights, white, and males (among others). They have the proverbial invisible backpack full of unearned privilege, but they aren't able to see it, much less admit that it exists. Take a look at some of these statements and see how many of them apply to you. I'll bet you a "Happy Holidays" card that I can tell from your answers whether you're a mainstream Christian or not:

I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my religion most of the time.

The vast majority of jobs would not require me to work on my religion's sabbath or holidays. Government agencies are closed on my sabbath and holidays.

Public displays and decorations routinely celebrate my religion's holidays.

I never find items that violate my religious practices on restaurant menus.

I am never asked to speak for all the people of my religion.

I can remain oblivious of the customs, holidays, and practices of other people's religions without negative results.

I can walk into any Hallmark store and expect to find a wide variety of greeting cards appropriate to my religion's holidays.

My religion will help me feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life.

Now, if there are any War on Christianity believers reading this (as if), stop a minute before you start telling me how you get ridiculed, marginalized, or discriminated against all the time for Witnessing to your co-workers or using interjections like "Praise Jesus" in everyday speech. This is not discrimination based on your religion. This is discrimination based on the fervor and intensity of your religion. I'm sure that even Saudis say things like:

Y'know, Achmed's a really great guy, but he's all, "Thanks be to Allah" and "There is no god but Allah and Mohammed (pbuh) is his Prophet ." I just wish he'd give it a rest sometime. Let's not invite him over to watch the soccer game.

We're not talking about ridicule, marginalization, or discrimination based on your religion. You want to alienate all your neighbors by telling them they're going to hell, that's your cross to bear. We're talking about ridicule, marginalization or discrimination based on which religion you have. And I think it's really, really hard to find that kind of discrimination against Christians.

[Note that we're also not talking about ridicule, marginalization, or discrimination based on having any religion at all. Atheists can be pretty biting, but it's not like they say "Hey, you big dumb praying Christian! You're having a pretend conversation with an invisible superhero!" and then turn around and say "of course, holding cows sacred, abstaining from pork, and chanting to the moon while naked are cultural practices that we respect and honor, even if we don't fully endorse the religious beliefs that underpin them." No, they tend to be equal-opportunity snarks. Wacky atheists.]

So, if you're a mainstream Christian, and you were honest, I'm going to bet that you couldn't say "No," to more than one or two of those statements, if any. Most Christians don't notice what a Christian-friendly culture we have because they live in it every day. I doubt there's a person in the country who doesn't know what Christmas is, or some of the basics of how it's celebrated. But how many can tell the difference between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? How many even know what the fuck Eid is?

And just to put the icing on the "your ignorance and self-centeredness is really beginning to piss me off" cake, I love, just love the fact that a lot of the controversy is swirling around city officials re-naming Christmas trees "Holiday Trees." First of all, as I'm fond of telling Evil Genius Girl when she's upset because Howler Monkey Boy said the family car belonged to him or some stupid shit like that, "just because you call it a leg doesn't make it one." **

In other words, it doesn't matter what the fuck they call the big-ass blue spruce slowly dying of dehydration in town square--it's still a fucking Christmas Tree, and all the official proclamations in the world can't change that.

Second of all, and this is the part that I really love, it's not a fucking "Christmas" tree in the first place. Christmas trees are about as Christian as Santa Claus and gingerbread. There ain't no goddamn connection. No, that big-assed blue spruce that's slowly dying of dehydration in Town Square is a goddamn Solstice Tree, and you know it. Decorating the house with evergreen and/or decorating evergreen trees at the Solstice goes back, waaay back before Baby Jebus. I can just hear the conversation circa 380 AD (pardon me, 380 CE).

MacCluddagh: Did you hear that the Chieftain is calling the Yule Tree a "Christmas Tree" this year?
MacDugglah: Thor's bones! Enough with this "War on Yule." Let's disembowel him.

So, what's really happening here is not "War on Christmas." It's not even "War on Christianity." You wanna know what war on religion looks like? Open a fucking history book--one not written by the staff at Bob Jones University. Think Bosnia, Saint Bartholomew's Day, Third Reich. That's what war on a particular religion looks like.

No, what we're seeing is the furious yowling that you always hear when those blessed with unearned privilege find some of that lovely privilege slipping away. We hear it every time racial justice gets a little closer, we hear it every time the gender equity gap closes a little more. Mainstream Christians are used to bopping along in a very Christian-flavored culture, apparently oblivious to the fact that a) huge numbers of Americans are not Christian, and b) that Christianity doesn't necessarily deserve any more special treatment than Asatru and Vodoun.

What's got the Theocrats so up in arms is just the latest part of the process by which the forces of secular fucking democracy (which we so vigorously support in the Middle East and other, um, well...non-Christian regions) have been slowly peeling the fingers of Christianity off of the throat of this country. Today Christianity reigns as the unofficial state religion. In the 1970s, Jews were still officially banned from a lot of Country Clubs. The Klan was actively persecuting Catholics in the 1920s. Hell, Quakers were hung for religious non-conformity in the 1600s.*** This has been a long, slow process of creating the world's first country in which worshiping a certain deity doesn't get you a single bit of extra privilege.

Bit by bit, we are waking up as a society to the fact that Mainstream Christianity has been coasting along on a cushion of unearned privilege for centuries. Well, the cushion is getting yanked, and yes, it's going to be a little bumpy. But no one's going to close or burn your churches. No one's going to stop you from wearing a cross or putting a nativity scene on your own lawn. Just don't expect such a free ride when you want the entire fucking nation to act as if your holiday is the only one that counts.

Merry Christmas!


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*When I was in high school in the 80s, our coach finished each pre-game speech with a prayer that started, "Heavenly Father..." I wish I had had the guts to ask him if I could add a little invocation beseeching Tyr for victory on the field of struggle. Wonder how well that would've gone over. Wonder if it would have helped us win a game or two...

**Q: How many legs does a sheep have if you call the tail a leg?
A: Four. Just because you call it a leg doesn't make it one.

***Yes, I realize that both Catholics and Quakers are Christian. But back then, just being Christian wasn't enough. You had to be the right kind of Christian. See how far we've come?

You Might Be a Feminist If...

It happened again. For some reason, the comments are coming out of nowhere, on ancient posts, and I'm feeling compelled to respond. So, comment received, answer went long, might as well post it--you know the drill.

The Post.

The comment:

I can't believe people accuse you of being feminist because of this!! I personally can't stand feminists because they ask for rights above men they don't deserve, but this isn't feminist, it's reality.*

Nat--thanks for the kind words. One thing though--I am a feminist. Or at least, I consider myself one--others might beg to differ. But I try really hard.

The word seems to have gotten a very bad name in some circles. As far as I can tell, the rights that feminists ask for (or maybe the rights, asking for which, make one a feminist) are things like equal pay for equal work, control over their own bodies, and the right to carry on with their lives without the oppression (being considered biologically inferior, for example. Rape, for another) of a society and culture that often treats them as second-class (or to get jargony, sex-class) citizens.

I taught a class once, where many of the women kept saying "I'm not a feminist, but..." and following up with a good, solid, feminist thought. I'm put in the mind of the famous quote (Rebecca West, apparently):

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."

That about sums it up. If you think women suffer unfairly in our society,** are equal to men in every way except for some teensy biological differences (the teensyness illustrated, I hope, in the above post), and you think that they should be free to live their lives as such, then you are, pretty much by definition, a feminist.

That doesn't mean that you have to subscribe to all views ever voiced by anyone who ever called themselves a feminist. Even if you believe that the majority of people who call themselves feminists ask for rights above men, that still doesn't make the term one to hurl as an epithet. Feminism is responsible for tremendous gains in areas like fair pay, domestic violence, legal rights,*** and rape (not to mention the bedrock democratic right to vote). If you have a mother, sister, daughter, aunt, or female friends who you care about--or just happen to care about the welfare of women as part of a basic concern for the just and decent treatment of all human beings, then you may be a feminist.

*I will be personally pissed if anyone says a single nasty word to Nate about this. Yes, it's ripe for some cheap shots, but I try very hard to limit my invective to the posts, and speak civilly and decently, without insults or deliberately insulting tone, in the comments. Please comment, if you wish to, in a similar manner.

**Being represented, for example, by 20% of the doctors, 14% of the Senate, 9% of the clergy, and less than 1% of the Fortune 500 top earners.

***When my mom came to Texas in 1963 and tried to sell the car she'd bought and owned outright in Massachusetts, she found that she could not legally do so without my dad's permission. Needless to say, he was under no such obligation.

Of guns and seatbelts

OK--just in case anybody ever reads this anymore.

I compulsively respond to comments, no matter how old the post, so when I got one from August of last year, I just had to dash off 700 words in response. And I figured since I have all but orphaned this poor blog since the Spring, I might as well publish anything that even vaguely resembles a post.

The context is a post of mine that compared fear of stranger rape (high) to fear of acquaintance rape (low), even though the latter is far more likely to happen. It veered off into my favorite coinage, which is "intolerable threat." People spend a lot more time and energy thinking about--and preparing for--threats that are intolerable. Thus, stranger rape is considered intolerable, and is the subject of most self-defense advice for women. Acquaintance rape is rarely mentioned in the context of self defense.

So, I compared this to self-defense firearms enthusiasts (who you probably call "gun nuts," you condescending Liberals) who don't take simple safety measures like seatbelts. The recent comment disagreed, and I responded:

=========================================

" I disagree with your point about gun nuts not wearing seat belts. I think most true gun nuts are kinda anal about safety and stuff like wearing seat belts."

That would be a great study for someone to run. There are a few studies out there that measure safety-consciousness vs. firearms ownership, but they aren't limited to firearms enthusiasts, so they're not so relevant. A lot of people own guns pretty casually (i.e., not enthusiastically), and they're not the type of folk I was talking about.

OTOH, although firearms enthusiasts may be more safety conscious that the average person, I still don't think their treatment of likely threats is anywhere near their treatment of intolerable threats. Gun shows are common (at least here in the South), but I've never seen a fire extinguisher show, and I'll bet you the percent of houses that have a professional-grade self-defense setup which *also* have a professional-grade fire suppression setup is right about zero.

"Be glad you live in a state where conceal carry is allowed. It does deter crime, especially violent crime. Look up the FBI stats for before and after crime rate and state that do not have conceal carry."

As for the "More Guns Less Crime" theory, it's hotly debated in the Criminology, Sociology, and Public Health literature. Simple correlations like the above are invalidated by all sorts of fundamental statistical truths (i.e., "correlation does not equal causation"). The more complex correlations, which control for all sorts of other variables, are what the academics argue about, and there's nothing close to consensus in the scientific community.

My favorite story about firearms and safety is about a street near my house. It's named after a police officer who died in the course of duty. It's ironic because he died in a car wreck on his very last day of car patrol--he was being transferred to foot patrol the very next day (I'm assuming here that a man who spends his work hours exposed to violent, armed criminals has at least as much legitimate interest in using firearms to protect his life as the average firearms enthusiast).

Dig a little more, however, and you find that he died in that wreck because he wasn't wearing his seat belt. Dig even more and guess why he was being transferred to foot patrol? Go get a cookie if you said "he'd been repeatedly cited for refusing to wear his seatbelt."

Which makes it a classic illustration. A significant portion of cops refuse to wear a seatbelt because they're afraid their gun will get snagged while leaving the car. Could a cop--or a civilian--die because a seatbelt snagged a gun? Sure. How much do you want to bet that the number of times that has happened is about .001 of the number of times cops have died because they weren't wearing their seatbelts?

Or take "smart guns." Simple idea--cop wears a ring or bracelet on his/her hand, and their service weapon won't fire unless close enough to that ring or bracelet. Bad guys/gals can't fire the service weapon. Pretty slick.

Why are so many cops opposed? Because what if their partner loses their gun, and the cop retrieves it, and can't fire it? Potential life lost.

Again, could that happen? Sure. There's a non-zero chance. But do you know what percent of cops who are killed by a bad guy/gal are killed because a bag guy/gal (although I think they may prefer "persons of badness") was able to fire the cop's weapon? Go get another cookie if you said eight percent--nearly one out of ten.

And finally, my search for that number (which is not authoritive, so take it with a grain of salt), turned up the following gem, which is a perfect example of the deliberate (or at least conscious) obfuscation that makes the-more-guns-less-crime issue so hard to muddle through.

John Lott, author of the very book, "More Guns Less Crime," has a piece called "let our pilots be armed" that says the following:

"Statistics from 1996 to 2000 show that only eight thousandths of one percent of assaults on police resulted in them being killed with their own weapon."

Wow. Pretty convincing. Except he said *assaults.* Do you know how fucking unlikely it is that an officer will get killed--by anything, let alone their own weapon--in an assault? Well, considering that "assault" includes kicking, biting, and head-butting, and that cops are highly trained in the art of not getting killed, and that they wear body armor etc., etc., the ratio of assaulted to killed is really, really--I mean really--low. If Lott had said what percentage of officer *deaths* were caused by the officer's weapon, he would have undermined his own argument. And Lott is a big-time statistics nut, so don't tell me for an instant that he didn't know exactly what he was doing.

Gang-Rape of the Caribbean

I wrote this for an email list I' m on. Since I've been almost completely derilict in my duties this Summer, I thought I 'd at least slightly redeem myself by posting it here. The topic was the effects on children of seeing violence. Yes, I know, hotly debated topic, but these thought are from more of a philosophical and experiential standpoint than an empirical one.

So, without further ado:

I actually wrote my dissertation partially on film violence, and one of the things that absolutely drove me banannas was the "it's just a movie" argument. I actually read an otherwise-intelligent film critic make the "Well, I saw it and it didn't make me into an axe murderer" argument.

Which is what comes to mind when I think of kids watching John Wayne mow down Apaches in the barbershop or seeing trailers that seem to involve mostly men pointing guns and explosions when we go to see Toy Story XVII at the cineplex. No, a single movie isn't going to make anyone into an axe murderer. But the combined effect of hundreds, or in many cases, thousands of acts of violence per year? I think that's a different story. I think of it like coral--teeny tiny little animals that you can barely see, but if you allow enough of them to accrete over the years, they can have quite an impressive effect.

Two examples of this particularly stick with me. When I was 10 or so--back when cable TV was new and exciting--we stayed at a ski condo that had cable. My brother and I watched the uncut version of Dirty Harry's Magnum Force. Almost three decades later, I can remember a few particular images that were absolutely branded into my consciousness. Prior to that movie, I'd never even thought of, much less seen, images of a topless woman shot to death, floating in a bloody swimming pool. I'm pretty certain that left to my own devices, that particular juxtaposition of sexuality and violence would not have occured to me at age 10. But because of Dirty Harry, that image became something I carried around in my head throughout my adolescence, and obviously still do.

The other was talking with a friend when Pirates of the Caribbean came out. I saw it, I loved it, I fell in love with Johnny Depp. But would I recommend it for my friend's eight year-old son?

For a lot of people, this is a no-brainer. The violence is all against ghosts who are already dead, it's cartoony, it's comic, what could be wrong with it?

My biggest problem with the movie really comes down to just two scenes. They're both ordinary action-movie interaction between the heroine and the villian, but they both also revolve around a powerful man threatening a beautiful (and helpless) woman with gang-rape is she doesn't do what he wants.

Yikes. And one of them is quite graphic--Barbossa's crew of skanky pirates are swarming all over Elizabeth, clutching her in ways that are just on the PG-13 side of groping, and he chuckles and tells her that he'll turn her over to them unless she agrees to his demands.*

So, this is what I told my friend. I think we all have mental Rollodexes where we keep all the most powerful images we've ever seen. Any child who sees Pirates of the Caribbean is guaranteed to walk out of there with an image that they may never have had before, and it's going to be filed under "one of the ways that men and women can relate to one another." Yes, Captain Barbossa is a skanky villian who is damned for his preternatural evil, but that doesn't change that fact that the film introduces millions of eight year-old boys and girls to the idea that men can get what they want out of women by threatening them with gang rape.

And again, that's not to say that one image from one movie is going to lead anyone down a life of crime (or sexual victimization, or even just basic disrespect for women). But then, one cigarette won't cause cancer. In fact, a lifetime of cigarettes doesn't cause cancer--it only increases your odds. But I don't want my kids to consume a lifetime of violent images any more than I want them puffing Pall Malls for 50 years. Those images get in your system, and they stay there. The scene I remember from "Magnum Force" has been with me for three decades, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of others like it that are filed away in my mental Rollodex. Frankly, I wish the vast majority of them weren't there.

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*Which brings up the topic of all the ways in which sexual violence against women is perfectly acceptable--even in "family" films--as long as it's not explicit. Imagine if Captain Barbossa had said, "Well, Elizabeth--either you accede to my demands, or I'm going to let my crew gang rape you, over and over, all night long, and quite possibly kill you, unless they decide to keep you alive and continue raping you." Exactly the same threat, just worded differently. Why is one acceptable and the other not?

Talk, Talk, Talk...

So, I was talking with a young and impressionable co-worker the other night, and he asked me what I thought about North Korea, and Bush's saber-rattling theretowards.

That set me off (surprise) on a long rant, but to my credit, I think I touched on at least a few relevant points. So, I thought I'd try to encapsulate them here.

My first instinct is as a parent, to say "No, you may not start any more wars until you've finished the two perfectly good ones you've already started and cleaned up after yourself." Jeez. I'd think that would be basic.

But on a more serious note, we can't ignore two salient points about North Korea: 1) the are in hot pursuit of nuclear capability, and 2) they are led by a raving Stalinist nutjob.

Well, okay, maybe that's a little harsh. But Kim Jong-Il is definitely something of a wild card at best, a loose cannon at worst. And his high regard for human life is probably evidenced by the fact that a whole bunch of his people are eating grass and boiling shoe leather to survive.

On top of all that, one of the things that's probably giving King George pause is the 13,000 pieces of artillery that are massed near the border with South Korea. It's estimated they could hit Seoul--a metro area of some 23 million people--with an initial firing rate of 300,000 to 500,000 shells per hour. That's mind boggling. Somehow, I doubt they'd get much beyond that first hour before the city was a smoking ruin.

So, what's to be done? I don't know what harebrained scheme Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz are cooking up in the lab, but if it's as poorly thought-out and wildly unrealistic as their most recent fiasco, the people of Seoul are in a world of shit.

It's kinda like David Koresh* with 23 million people holed up in his compound. If W goes in with guns blazing, he's going to make the BATF look like tactical fucking geniuses.

Which leads me to my analysis. What went wrong at Waco is that the FBI (who were in charge after the BATF proved their total incompetence) proved their total incompetence by deciding to treat the situation as an armed standoff rather than what it effectively was--a hostage situation.

Yes, I know that all of those folks with Koresh were there of their own (more or less) free will, but it's not like you had eighty-odd hardened criminals all out for FBI blood. You had a lot of kids, and a lot of adults who probably would have preferred to be any of a number of places, but stayed for reasons that ranged from being brainwashed to genuine loyalty to fearing a bullet in the back if they tried to sneak out.

So, what do cops normally do with a hostage situation? They wait. They wait, and they talk, and they use the fact that they have virtually unlimited resources and huge amounts of training and experience, while the hostage-takers have very limited resources and usually no experience at all in this kind of thing.

But there's a fundamental problem there--waiting isn't macho. Waiting, and talking, and being patient, and establishing relationships with people so that you can work out mutually satisfactory solution--hell, that's chick stuff. Guys use guns. Guys wear "tactical vests" and shout "Go, Go, Go!" as they storm buildings.**

If you think I'm oversimplifying, dig this: one of the first things I read about when I started studying violence and conflict was the Waco siege. And my absolutely favorite little-known tidbit is that at least once, after a long day talking, negotiating, and being really patient, the FBI negotiators got to their cars to find them festooned with bras and panties. This was a little message from their buddies in the tactical unit. Real men shout "Go, Go, Go!" Negotiation and patience are for pussies.***

So, what we have here is the equivalent of a 23-million hostage crisis. Kim Jong-Il has the power to kill millions of people any time he wants to. We would be powerless to stop him. Yes, we would then proceed to roll right over his 50 year-old tanks and his fuel-challenged MiGs, but that wouldn't be much consolation to the millions of dead in Seoul.

So Kim Jong-Il isn't likely to do that anytime soon, unless he decides that getting blown into hamburger by a 500-lb bomb is his next career move. It's a stand-off. And as much as you may dislike it, as vile and batshit-crazy as you may think the hostage-taker is, in a hostage situation, you have to talk. You have to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. You make concessions. You bargain. You stonewall. You drop hints and veiled threats. You, like it or not, build a relationship.

This in no way means that I think Kim Jong-Il or anyone else in the upper government of The People's Republic of Well-Oiled Artillery and Starving Children is a decent guy who just needs some love and understanding. It's just that we're not in a position to act like an angry parent and declare the conversation over until our demands are met.

It's been said that "Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst looking for a rock." That's crap. That's a gung-ho SWAT commander's version of diplomacy: "Keep him talking long enough for me to get my men in position..." That's called negotiating in bad faith, and in the long run, it doesn't work very well.

I much prefer the idea that diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst simultaneously finding out who owns the damn dog, how it got out of the fence, why it thinks you're on it's territory, how likely it is to actually bite, what's the best way to defuse the situation, and how to make sure that the damn dog doesn't get out again.

So, now that Bush is looking at 300,000 artillery shells per hour, all of a sudden he's Mister "the diplomatic processes can be slow and cumbersome." Is it just me, or back about February of 2003, wasn't he Mister "Fuck Diplomacy, We know we're right!"

Anyway, there is a point to all this, and this is what I told my impressionable young co-worker. We've all been raised--especially us guys--in a culture that valorizes violence, toughness, and taking no crap. A culture that declares that talk, negotiations and patience are for "pussies." A culture that puts the reins of state-sanctioned violence in the hands of men who act like it's the fucking Superbowl. When someone like Kim Jong-Il--or Osama bin Laden, or Saddam Hussein--does something stupid and dangerous and scary, it's not surprising that our first national reaction is "Kick their ass!!"

But in the same way that my generation grew up in the shadow of a failed ass-kicking expedition in Viet Nam, the coming generation will hopefully grow up in the shadow of Iraq, understanding that as odious as it may seem, the best course of action with heavily-armed assholes is to deal with them. In the same way that the local sheriff could have talked Randy Weaver down from his mountain, in the same way that the BATF could have inspected the Branch Davidian's arsenal (at Koresh's invitation), in the real world sometimes you just have to deal with odious people. No, they're not nice. Yes, they're breaking the law. Yes, they're bullies. No, they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. That doesn't change the fact that going in with guns blazing, making scary threats, or refusing to talk unless it's 100% on our terms is a recipe for disaster.

But of course, others have said this better than I, so I'll leave you with a perfect encapsulation of the Gung-ho attitude:

[Bush] still refuses to engage North Korea in direct, one-on-one negotiations, though everyone involved has urged him to do so because, they all realize, that's the only way progress can be made. He refuses because he doesn't want progress to be made, or at least not that way. He still believes that it's better to defeat evil than to negotiate with it—and so it is, but he hasn't yet accepted that he has no alternative to negotiating with this particular evil [emphasis in orginal].

Got that George? "No alternative."

So get talking.
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*given the secrecy of the North Korean government, we don't have enough information to determine if that comparison is more insulting to Koresh or Kim Jong-Il.

**Lest you think that this is a blanket criticism (and a snarky one, at that) of all SWAT-types, let me assure you that it is not. For example, just down the road from Waco, the Austin SWAT team has a fairly different attitude. They brag about not having used deadly force in quite a while. They brag about the fact that they haven't actually killed anyone in even longer. They regard their job as trying really fucking hard to make sure that no one gets hurt when some nutjob holes up with a small arsenal. And they are very, very patient.

***I just found out that it appears that the man in charge at Waco was Richard Rogers--the same guy who was in charge of the Ruby Ridge fiasco (the one where the feds settled with the survivors for 3 million in damages). And one of his snipers in Waco was Lon Horiuchi--the Fed's Ruby Ridge sniper who shot and killed an unarmed woman while she was holding her baby. Do these people not learn?