In which I dream of a world where justice is both swift and severe.

I'm sure I've covered this before, but apparently it's a phenomenally difficult idea to grasp, so I'll try to take it in easy steps.

1. I feel safe in asserting, doing no research whatsoever, but rather relying on what I already know about human reproduction, psychology and constitutionally "protected" medical procedures, that the primary reason a woman would have an abortion is because she does not want to be pregnant, or to give birth, or to have a baby.
1.a. Therefore abortions happen because there are unwanted pregnancies.

2. If you are genuine in your concern about abortion and not jut a fucking woman-hating fucking asshole, then if you want to prevent abortions you would do everything in you power to . . . prevent unwanted pregnancies.  Focusing on slut-shaming, restricting access to abortion, contraception and reproductive health measures is not at all in anyway whatsoever no matter how much you try to fucking lie doing a single fucking thing to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
2.a. Therefore unless you work to ensure women have true sexual and reproductive freedom, you actually just hate women.
2.b. Therefore Oklahoma is close to being the worst state ever.

Common Sense Radicalism, Gay Marriage and the Weirdness of Marriage in General

Gay marriage: How the census will count gay marriages and couples in 2010

Before I talk about the 2010 census count and why it's kind of awesome, but also kind of fraught, a little political defining is necessary.

The more I think about it, the more I am willing to actually code myself in a non-tongue-in-cheek manner as a common sense radical.  The unfortunate thing about this willingness, is that in that serious coding, I should probably come up with some sort of definition.  Because, really, what could make a philosopher happier than creating new definitions, preferably using words people use anyway.

Video killed the Prop 8 arguments

Apparently we won't know if that's true.

I'm really confused about the rhetoric here.  For some background - California had gay marriage for about 30 seconds, during which the Apocalypse happened, dogs and cats lived together, fire and brimstone rained from the skies and children grew up without having repressive gender identities drilled into them from birth.

How I became a protest organizer in two days, and why you should too!

It started simply enough.
I have kind of a reputation as being . . . opinionated?  A staunch, social justice oriented feminist?  Consistently livid about something or other?  Hypatia's Girl is angry after all.
And so it started simply.  A facebook chat message pointing me toward a link on someone's page with the request that I keep it on the radar.  The link was to an announcement that Rep. Bart Stupak was coming to my university to talk about the Great Lakes.  Stupak! In my university!
See, I'm angry about the Stupak-Pitts Amendment.  Deeply, deeply angry.  Much of that stems from coming to the realization that the anti-abortion forces aren't necessarily synonymous with "pro-life."  That is, if their sincere desire were to curb the incidence of abortion they would be doing things other than limiting access to abortion, and other reproductive services.  A sincere, honest and moral goal of reducing the incidence of abortion would be informed by knowledge about why women choose abortion, largely unplanned pregnancy, and what can be done to reduce the numbers of unplanned pregnancies.  See, reducing the numbers of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies would, almost by definition, reduce the number of abortions.  So genuine, sincere, honest, moral pro-lifers do not spend their time trying to limit women's access to reproductive health options, they instead work to increase people's access to contraception, sexuality education, rape prevention and they try to better the situation of women and ease the burden that motherhood very really represents for a woman.  The latter approach shows a genuine concern and empathy for women as actual human beings.  The Stupak-Pitts Amendment is a petulant example of the overt misogyny that has characterized (Sen. John Kyl, I'm looking at you) the entirety of the health care reform conversation.  It is an insincere and uninformed platitude toward the minority of the country who do not believe that women are people.  But more on that later.  In short, I was angry.
And so I thought, you know what, Stupak has a lot to answer for, and I bet I'm not the only one who has questions about this amendment he and his little friends in the House have attached to my health care reform (!).  So I reposted the link.
And then I thought some more.  Facebook is a fantastically flexible medium.  You can do all sorts of things on Facebook.  Like create events.  And so I started an event page, initially just dispersing it to my local friends, a little community action is always a good time.
Initially the invites were limited, no more than 20 of my nearest and dearest (although primarily nearest geographically) friends.  However, there are all sorts of groups and organizations on the Facebook, populated by people who are empathetic and concerned, sincere, ethical, good people.  And they took the event and reposted it, and invited their friends, and so on and so forth.
We, combined, invited something like 140 people.  That felt good.  Clearly, they were not all going to come, however perhaps 30 people were people I knew.
And since there are these lovely organizations and groups on the Facebook, when I realized that it could potentially be larger than just the Phil Dept and some Ann Arbor friends hanging out with some crudely drawn signs, awkwardly in the College of Law, but instead real live strangers could be there, I decided to ask for help, a little guidance.
I really needed the help when I realized that I could get media coverage.  Some nice concise talking points.  So I asked for help from the local Planned Parenthood (please give them lots and lots of money), and got the help I needed.  Did you know that anyone can just write up a press release and email it to a news organization?  Or just call up a local news organization and say - "hey, um, I just wanted to let you know that there is going to be a protest at the College of Law tomorrow at 8am, opposing Stupak."  There are people sitting at news organizations right now just waiting for you to call them.  This is amazing.
And then I just posted the event everywhere on the Facebook I could think of.  And harassed like-thinking friends into doing the same.  And made signs.
And then I went to soccer and was up far later than I intended.  And tried to sleep.

There is something thrilling about walking into a building, seeing people you don't know, standing there with signs.  All because you all agree that something needs to be done, and someone needs to have some answers ready.  It's really, really cool.

And I wander into the building and am greeted by lovely women and men with signs and stickers and flyers and t-shirts.  And we organize ourselves near the entrance to the conference, where Stupak will shortly be speaking.  The director of conference very nicely approaches us to find out what our plans are, and I do my best to reassure him that, seriously dude, I'm from MI, I want the nice conference on Great Lakes water issues to go well.  However, Stupak needs to be confronted by the terrible things he's done.  We just want to hold our nice signs, hand out some information, and ask a question or two, if that's cool.  And it was.  And then the TV cameras showed up.  And I found myself giving a couple of interviews, trying to stay clear and coherent, hit the hightlights, speak in soundbites.  You know, behave well.

The middle bit of the protest I missed, because just as Stupak started talking and some of us went into the room, I had to duck out and run off to teach a quick class on feminism, then it was right back to stand in for the Q&A (we got one question off, and about a half an answer back).

What I really want to stress in this post is a: people are wonderful, wonderful beings.  Very helpful and caring.  People out there do care.  And we can use our social media, the vast amount of technology that we (privileged ones) can take for granted, to bring us together.  And b: you can organize a protest very quickly.  Mostly because of (a).  And if you can, and it's a cause you care about, do it.

Why a lack of school funding will bring down the American Empire

Hawaii schools to move to four-day week in state cost-cutting measure | World news | guardian.co.uk

So there are a few problems with this strategy, long term and short term. And several implications in terms of race, class and gender. But basically, we're shooting ourselves in the collective foot. I mean, I can foresee nothing but the END OF THE DAMN UNIVERSE if we continue down this path. Seriously, there'll be horsemen and zombies and WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE.

Teaching Woes

So I'm teaching two sections of medical ethics this semester. And it's pretty interesting, a lively debate where lives are actually potentially on the line makes for more rigorous thinking. And it's much more interesting now that we're done doing things like confidentiality, truth-telling and the like.

See, I thought, sweet, I'll do medical ethics while there's this health care debate raging around us and we'll make the class interesting and topical! And, because I cannot help but be a political philosopher we'll look at issues like race and gender and poverty and medicine. Awesome pants!

So we're starting in on that section, with a general topic of "is health a right?," and I did anticipate there being some disagreement, some healthy and full engagement with the topic. And in one section, I have that.

The other, however.

There is something wrong with these people.

Talk:Essay:Quantifying Openmindedness - Conservapedia

I've been meaning to write about Conservapedia for a while. There is something truly amazing about this site, what with the Conservative Bible Project and their list of the best conservative terms (going back to pre-restoration England if I recall correctly) as well as their concerns about the Homosexual Agenda corrupting pure terms for sexually deviant uses (oh the horrors of the closet!). Now, I'm not as must as a linguistic prescriptivist as I claim, but I do think that words mean something (damn it!) and this sort of helter skelter willingness to play fast and loose with facts and fairness astounds me, but that's my filthy liberal leanings showing through.

But in the link, on the talk page, Andrew Schlafly is vehemently and aggressively arguing against Newtonian geometry. That Newtonian gravity is not grounded in inverse squares. His comments are amazing. People try to explain what is happening and he returns to claiming that science is close-minded, and only anti-science is open-minded.

That is, claiming that you have a scientific (observable) model for the world that does not require an infinite amount of miracles makes you close-minded.

These people are literally opposed to facts. In a way that the corrupted vision of postmodernism everyone's always throwing at the left can't ever even hope to touch.

They hate facts.

Dear Al Franken - I <3 you!

This is just a quick hit, as I'm furiously finishing my thesis this week, AND, ZOMG, Elizabeth Minnich is coming in for the Philosophy Department Conference and busy, busy, busy . . .

At any rate - every once in a while there is a news story that on the one hand seems to talk about the progress society is making toward not being horrifically misogynistic, which is nice what with all the talk about domestic violence being a pre-existing condition, women losing access to reproductive health care under the health care reform, pretty much everything attached to the health care debate really just emphasizes how much this society hates women, like a lot! However, I habitually over-think things and wind up instead feeling a little sad that this is even under debate.

(Trigger warning)

The problem of language

I have a lot of interesting conversations. It's kind of a hobby of mine. As in, it kind of replaces breathing for me most days.

The conversation I had on Friday (just before seeing Capitalism: A love story) and the spirited debate I'm in right now seem related to me. And seem related to another item that's been in the news recently, that is actually the reason why I really for really wanted to start a blog, and did!, this time.

This is why we can't have nice things

Being in a philosophy graduate program is interesting, especially if you do political philosophy, and particularly if you are a political philosopher trying to teach medical ethics while there is a health care reform debate raging around in the background. You wind up having a lot of arguments in the offices. Which is nice, it distracts you from the fact that you are inhaling new forms of mold with every breath.

This current health care debate is a fascinating peek into what has happened to politics and political thinking in America. I wasn't able to put a finger on what the difference was until discussing nationalized health care with a fellow grad student on Wednesday.

What struck me in the conversation is the different understandings of the role, in fact of the ontology, of the government in the lives of the people. We have a peculiar sense, it seems, that the government is against the people, rather than the government being part of the people. Now, this is not necessarily a mistaken sense. One need only look at the difference between the desire of the people to have a public option (however that is understood) and the willingness of the politicians to utterly ignore that desire and instead vote it down to further the interests of their corporate sponsors.