More on Dawkins. Morekins.

A further thought upon my blog post about Dawkins last week.

I made a suggestion that Richard Dawkins should stick to spouting wise about evolutionary biology instead of burping out whatever thought comes into his head about feminism, Islam and all the rest. I also, maybe as a lemma, suggested he wasn’t worth listening to unless he was speaking about evolutionary biology. But this isn’t strictly true and kind of poisons the well somewhat.

See, Dawkins is actually good at writing and research. Even when he writes outside of biology, his back-of-the-book bibliography is still ten miles long. His writing in The God Delusion was forceful, but generally considered. This comes with the benefits of writing a book. With a book you spend time scouring resources, references and witnesses; you can do rewrites and edits; you get peers and editors to check your work. By the time you’ve actually published your book, you’ve produced a (hopefully) finely honed piece of work.

Tweets are often none of the above. Dawkins’s tweets in particular tend to be whatever idea has rolled over inside his brain at any particular moment. Due to Dawkins’s quite substantial credentials and following, he tends to think every thought he has it worth sharing. It is not.

I guess we’re just not used to seeing raw Dawkins (Rawkins?) and perhaps this is a good opportunity to learn a valuable lesson in:

a)      Research

b)      Editing

c)       Peer Review

d)      Arrogance

e)      The old classic, ‘Engage Brain Before Opening Mouth’

The Power of Technical Language

Deputy Editor of the New Statesman, Helen Lewis said something interesting on the Pod Delusion this week. Speaking to James O’Malley about feminism she said that ‘intersectionality’ was a great idea, but that she hated the word.

Let’s quickly step back a moment. Intersectionality studies the overlap (or ‘intersections’, I guess) between all the minority groups; the idea of bringing intersectionality into feminism is to prevent it becoming a white, middle-class action. By understanding that discrimination and the fight for equality blends across racial, sexual and social classifications, people can become better and more informed about how to narrow the equality gap. I think it was Beth Presswood (GodlessBitches) who described the revelation as a rhetorical question (paraphrased): ‘if you were to stack up the different types of people: who has a more privileged position – a black man or a white woman?’

So, back to Helen Lewis (and I’m not actually responding to or rebutting Lewis, rather rebounding from a singular point she made). The point Lewis was making was that she believed words like ‘intersectionality’ are useful in that they describe a concept as yet uncollected, but the word itself remains in the domain of more rigorous debate. It’s useful to actual egalitarian thinkers when engaging in discussion but isolating to the layperson to whom you may be trying to open an understanding.

What’s this boils down to in a more general sense is – is technical language a barrier to discussion and introducing ideas?

I have an urge to answer ‘no’. This might be because I tend to approach things (if I’m interested) in an academic way and make the effort to explore and understand if I’m going to engage with a topic. So there may be some personal bias here, I’ll admit. But language and words are powerful gateway tools to understanding. The concept of intersectionality may take a little bit of introduction, but once I understood it, it was an incredible useful term. It describes quite a lot in seven syllables. If I was exploring  why there aren’t a lot of women in (say) architecture and someone told me to think more intersectionally, I would understand more immediately that whatever the issue was, it ran across several minorities. It’s made understanding other new words like ‘kierarchy’ much simpler, because kierarchy is just the intersectional form of patriarchy.

Introducing technical or academic language takes a little more time, but over the long term (even the length of a conversation) it allows you to make larger leaps forward, making secondary and tertiary concepts much more accessible. For example, I could spend ten minutes clearing up nuclear fusion and nuclear fission and then we could have a much more involved discussion about the ramifications of the difference fuel and reactor types. Without including people in your language you may never be able to allow them the deeper understanding that gives them the power to make decisions and form opinions in the future.

Granted, if you’ve got seven minutes on LBC to convey an idea in an interview (as Lewis described) then you don’t have the power to do that. I understand that. But I wouldn’t go as far as called the word ‘intersectionality’ and other academic language ‘terrible’. Oh, no.

Penises: Not my Cup of Tea for Some Reason

So, I was talking to this bisexual guy the other day and we happened to get chatting about sexuality in general. I can't remember how we got to that, but I'm sure it was an awesome segue.

He said, 'I don't know how you monosexuals do it; you're cutting your sexual opportunities in half,' or something to that effect. This dissolved into a mindfarty dialogue in which I started to wonder what the hell it was that made me attracted to women and not men. I mean, I do like a bosom. Anyone who knows me will tell you that, even if you don't ask. But is a bosom the only thing that pulls me towards women? Yes No.

I'm going to binerise gender a little bit here as my experience and exposure to the spectrum is limited to the point of negligable. I haven't forgotten those outside of that binary, I just have nothing meaningful to say at this point.

I had a long think about people I had been attracted to, whether or not that led to anything requited. These people are pretty much all women. But these women are scattered across a range of qualities, both physical and personal, and I was struggling to nail a predictable pattern to them. Other than the obvious quality of being able to sustain an interesting or entertaining conversation for more than two minutes is a good start - having common ground tends to make for better coupling - there really wasn't too much to go on. There certainly wasn't anything particularly 'feminine' about their common qualities other than their bodies in any sense that dragged their circle out of the overlap with my male friends. Sure, they'd wear make up and do womenly things, but their interests and expressions thereof were no different to my close male friends.

So is it just a bodily thing? If I took someone I totally fancied the pants off and body swapped them with a man, would I suddenly stop fancying them? I probably would. And that's weird, isn't it? I guess it's not weird in the evolutionary sense in which a heteronormative urge to procreate ends up being pretty useful at the species level. But we humans tend to think ourselves above our biology, smarter than our instincts and gutteral drives, don't we? I don't like the fact that something that simple can change everything for me; it puts me in the position of marionette, with biology working the strings. Am I not allowed to master my own order of attraction?

The further question is: how much of my sexuality is shaped by genetics and how much by societal structuring of sexuality (and heteronormativity)? Kenneth Miller's research with twins has shown that sexuality is influenced by genetics, but how much is left by our early exposure to what one should deem attractive or not? This is all unresearched waffling, of course, but you can see among all ages how people who follow contemporary trends and fashions tend to be viewed as more attractive than those out of step. Look at heartthrobs and sexy peoples as they were in the 80s - they look hilarious and would be near-undateable if they presented today as they did in that fashionably confused decade. Make-up, clothing, body size and hair all undulate from cool to laughable over the decades and centuries and our sense of what's attractive moves with it. So my question is - how much does sexuality tie in with this sense of 'expected attraction'?

I don't have any answers to this by the way, I just want to know why I don't want to touch a penis. I mean, another penis.

On Dystopian Power

This is a quickie: more of a tweet that exploded into a larger thought.

Last night during Black Mirror, I tweeted that post-apocalyptic dystopian future worlds (of which Black Mirror's was in the sense that all the people in it had lost their minds and were unable to function as a society) always bothered me in that most of them seemed to still have electricity.

I worked for a time in the energy industry, though Lord knows I was not particularly good at it. Now electricity is produced on-demand, which means that when you turn your TV on, you need generation happening somewhere to provide you that power. Power stations don't (for the most part) store any of their energy - it goes straight into the electricity grid and pops out at your plug socket. This is simplified* but essentially true. You can think of the National Grid as a system of pipes with water being pumped in one end (electricity generation from power stations) and being siphoned off at the household end (electricity demand for your TV). You have to keep 'pumping' energy in at one end for it to be available for all the millions of siphons in homes around the country. On top of that, you have to keep the frequency at a steady 50Hz - i.e. you have to generate at almost exactly the rate that it's being used - or everything goes bananas (technical term).

My overreaching point is this: if you don't have a massive, populated infrastructure of people running your power stations and grid, electricity simply won't work. So, when I see Will Smith watching a DVD in I am Legend, I wonder where his energy comes from? How does he pump petrol into his car? It makes me think there is a secret twist that actually the rest of the country is fine and Will was the last to know.

As a further point, it should remind us of how much we rely on one another. There really isn't much 'going it alone' as we rely on everyone else to do almost everything for us, without realising it. Be it generating energy, dealing with waste, preparing food, building all our stuff, we need each other.

This is handled very well in Gone - a book series in which every adult disappears and the kids left behind realise they not only don't know how to do anything - they can't do anything.




*Actualy, energy companies and the grid predict how much energy the country will need at any time in the day and attempt to match that demand GW for GW.

A Little on Tone Policing.

Tone policing is the term used for when an argument is rebutted by attacking its delivery style instead of its content. "Calm down, dear" is a form of tone policing. The reason that tone policing itself is so consistently flagged and criticised is because it is often used to derail an argument away from the points being made and towards the (technically irrelevant) tone of the critic. It's a frustrating tactic and often a cowardly method used by people who are happy to stoke the fire with pointed opinions but who cannot handle the inevitable flames. Most of the time tone policing is just a bad defence and, to the initiated, draws a spotlight of weakness upon those who use it.

Having said all that, tone is not always an entirely irrelevant part of an argument and whipping out the "tone police" objection at the first sniff of a tone-based argument may sometimes be hasty. When making or observing an argument, you need to consider what the objectives of the argument are and the environment of the argument.

(By the way, I'm using 'argument' in it broadest sense, be it a fierce disagreement or a more friendly debate or discussion.)

The environment of the argument is often where the fuzzy edges of the internet (where most arguing appears to take place these days) can make things confusing. In the real world (or the wonderful term 'meatspace'. I love how we've started to describe the real world with secondary terminology, like 'snail mail'), it's much easier to pitch your tone accordingly. If you're sitting across a table from someone to whom you strongly object it is unlikely you would put yourself with in inches of their face and start screaming at them. At least, I hope you wouldn't - this is pretty abusive behaviour. You are far more likely to scream and shout if you're arguing passionately to an audience, raising a rabble or leading a march. It's not uncommon for things to get enflamed even in a one-on-one debate, because you are performing for an audience and not scaring the shit out of just one person.

This is where consideration of the objectives come in: what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to change the mind of the one person to whom you disagree, or do you just want them to know how angry you are? Are you trying to convince an audience (be it a readership or physical spectatorship)? As sound and valid as your argument may be, it is naive to think you can be as effective in all situations with the same tone. It just isn't the case. While it is perfectly valid to shoot down tone policing from an opponent who wants to derail your argument, I don't believe it is as valid to shoot down an ally who wishes to strengthen the effectiveness of your argument.

I think we're too quick to do that.

This thought vomit sprang out from a discussion about Caitlin Moran over twitter. In Moran's case, she has shown that she is unresponsive to any form of criticism, aggressive or measured. In this case, what do you do? I think we have to accept she's not going to listen to those who think her dangerously narrow form of feminist philosophy is all kinds of wrong, so there are two contructive things we can do. The first is to deconstruct her bullshit for everyone else who may have read her work, or heard of it. This will expand the knowledge and understanding of your common audience and hopefully prevent or innoculate people from her bad rhetoric. The second is to let her know you disagree with her, and why (even if she'll ignore you). This will remind her that she keeps saying disagreeable things which may (optimistically) make her think a little harder in future. Firing abuse at her is not particularly useful or productive and does little more than ease the burning anger a little. There's being aggressive, and there's being a dick.

Mum

Today is my mum's birthday. Happy Birthday, Mum.

It's curious with people like your parents, who you spend so much time with over the years, how many things float around unsaid. Sure, your parents say a lot of things to you - that's their job; they teach you about the world, show you when you've gone wrong, answer you're increasingly difficult to answer questions. But, at least in my case (I'm quite a quiet and reserved individual, despite what my online persona might betray), there hasn't really been a lot said in return. I don't tend to say what's on my mind, mostly because I assume that it's obvious already and saying obvious things like, 'gosh, it's hot', are reserved for people you don't know well enough to enjoy comfortable silences with.

My mum is awesome.

Most people who have met my mum know this. Certainly people I know that have been lucky enough to meet her have told me how awesome she is, as if I didn't know. I wonder if she knows.

My mum's youth is packed with enough stories to make a boxset of indie movies. I won't embarrass her by retelling them here, but you might not even believe some of them if I told you. I've still got my work cut out for me to catch up with all the adventuring she undertook by her mid twenties. Even the story of how my parents got together reads like a script for Only Fools and Horses. If you run into her you should buy her a (non-alcoholic) drink and ask her about it. She's quite the storyteller.

I said you might not believe some of the her stories, but that's not because she's lost any of that sparkle in her middle-age. Sure, my parents are at the end of their mortgage with a grown up son and have lived in the same house for 30 years. But have you seen my mum's jacket that's made entirely out of sequins? Have you seen her ever-growing collection of animated, musical teddies? Have you seen her cry with laughter at novelty pens? Have you been with her to see ever Harry Potter film on opening day? Have you seen her Christmas earrings that flash? You really should. Just don't ask her to tell her favourite joke. It's... it's terrible. She told it to my friends about 12 years ago and they still bring it up, shrug their shoulders and say, 'I don't get it,' and burst out laughing.

As a mother to me, she balanced being an adult and 'fun' with what seemed like very little effort at all, teaching me and guiding me but also just going out for frivolity's sake. In a way, our relationship has the same kind of structure as it always has - she's a mother and a friend. We still go out to the cinema together, cause it's nice to. But she's still and always has stupidly supportive of me, endlessly patient, kind, and genorous while standing firm when she thinks I need a kick up the arse, which I often do.

It's weird: I've known this about Mum forever, but haven't really said it, because it just seems obvious. But maybe it isn't. And even if it is, it probably still needs saying every so often.

By the way, my mum is alive. I know this reads a bit like a eulogy, now that I think about it, but then again, Mum always wanted to have her funeral before she died because she didn't want to miss it. You should totally come to my mum's funeral, by the way. She's got it all planned out, it's going to be amazing.

Anyway. Happy Birthday, Mum, was what I was trying to say.

The Hardest Thing About Being a White Man...

...is learning to shut the fuck up.

As a white guy from a rich nation, there's a lot of things I don't have to think about on a daily basis. I don't have to worry about getting catcalled on the street, bring groped or leered at, having my sex life judged or being profiled by my skin colour in job interviews or at security gates. I tend to get listened to quite a lot. Hopefully, people keep listening because I have something vaguely worth listening to, but I have no problem getting people to listen to me, because everyone wants to hear what the white guy has to say.

I've spoken before about recognising the weird subconscious part of me that tries to tell me that women don't know what they're talking about as much as men and there's a lot of societal brainwashing that goes along with that.

When shit happens, in politics, the internet or whatever, I often feel like I have something to say about it. I have thoughts. I has feelingses. You must listen to my thoughts because they are important and I'm totally adding to the discussion, you guys. And, as I said, being a white dude means that people tend to pay attention. But then, we all have thoughts and feelings on these hot button issues, so what makes me so important? Why should people listen to what I have to say?

When it comes to issues of sex, politics, race, religion, gender and a whole bunch of other important crap, I'm probably not the one to be listening to. There are a heckload of qualified, relevant people who can give a much more valuable insight than I ever can. Folk of colour, female folk, transfolk, disabled folk - a lot of people from a variety of marginalised groups. These guys don't get heard because everyone is listening to the white dude, who are so used to having an audience that they never shut up.

It's nice to be listened to. It's really nice. It's validating, affirming, confidence-boosting and generally gives you the fuzzy feelings. So it's hard to stay quiet. It's hard to sit back and let other people talk. But do you want the discussion to be as valuable as it can be, or do you just want to be listened to?

What We Can Learn from the Feminism/Skepticism Debacle

Oh boy, oh boy. I'm not sure I've ever wanted to beat my head against my desk as much as I have in the utter shambles that is the 'debate' in the skeptical circles over women's right to feel safe. It all kind of took off (as far as I could see) with Rebecca Watson's elevator report and has re-exploded after Jen McCreight said a few words that led to people asking for better harassment policies at conferences. Now, I don't have much to say in the actual 'debate', though for the benefit of doubt, I believe: everyone should feel safe at conferences, that reported threats and harassment should be taken seriously, that the safety of attendees is far more important than the promotion of the events and that marginalised groups should be paid attention to. (And check your privilege!) So I'm generally in agreement with Watson, Zvan, Benson et al, and in disagreement with Groethe, Thunderf00t, Blackford etc.

No, what I want to talk about is what we can learn from the back-and-forths that have been going on regarding the issues brought up by the skeptical folk. Let's not make any bones about this: it's been a mess.

I think the first thing to take from this is the failure for people to check their privilege. I've said this many times and I'll say it again here: understanding the concept of 'privilege' has completely changed my approach to life, for the better. It's an important part of skepticism, too, as it's essentially an observer bias. We've each developed our own understanding of how the world operates based on our experiences and privileges and it's hard to shift that understanding to someone who has a different experience of life. As I said in my last post - we just don't notice a lot of things if they don't apply to us. I've never felt particularly unsafe in bars, on the street at night or at conferences. But that doesn't mean that other people feel the same. So, when Ophelia Benson - a woman who no doubts gets her share of aggressive misogynistic hate mail - gets an email that essentially boils down to, "watch your back", I'm not surprised that she plays it safe and takes it as a threat. Sure, from the point of view of someone who feels safe and comfortable, who never receives worrying violent messages, it might read as "No, really, watch your back - I'm really worried about you." But they don't have the same experiences as Benson, so maybe they should just shut up and listen to why she acted as she did.

Which brings me to my second point: shut up and listen. Everyone's so eager to shoot their mouth off about everything - even if it's things they know very little about. I was recently massively disappointed by Thunderf00t. His YouTube videos on evolution and creationism are very, very good. Sure, he's a bit arrogant, but he knows what he's talking about, so he's earned the right to speak confidently and with a bit of swagger. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to know very much about harassment against women and the movement to improve things, but he still carries he arrogant swagger into the argument. What he should have done is be quiet and listen to what women have to say about the matter, because these are the people who have to deal with this shit all the time.

It's a strange phenomenon that any kind of sociological issue is viewed as a free-for-all for anyone to air their opinion, even if they have very little knowledge or experience of the subject matter. I'm trained in maths and physics so I can have a decent discussion about physics in the news or whatever, but I don't go wading into Jen McCreight's evolutionary biology posts and start giving her my opinion on genomics, because I haven't got a clue what I'm talking about. Instead, I read with interest (and a little confusion) and feel happy that I've learned something. Similarly, when Stephanie Zvan gives the low-down on what it's like to be a woman at conferences and what's needed to keep things safe and happy, I read what she has to say instead of blabbering all over her blog. Similarly - I just don't know what it's like to be a woman all day, every day. So I have to learn.

This is basic skepticism. Understand the limits of your knowledge and do your research if you want to form a solid opinion. Listen to those in the know. Be aware of your biases. Be aware of the Argument from Authority fallacy. Just cause a big shot like Russell Blackford has something to say, it doesn't mean he's right. The surprising wrongness of Groethe, Thunderf00t, Blackford and Dawkins should hammer the Argument from Authority into your head: Do not just absorb high-standing people's word as gospel. They can be wrong. None of these people are experts in feminism and harassment. Be skeptical and check other sources of information.

Just because people are part of the skeptical, critical thinking community - it doesn't mean they will always be thinking critically and skeptically. This includes me and you. Check yourself. If you find you've got a very strong opinion about something, be sure you've got a good reason to be so sure.

We need to be better than this.

Fighting my own Prejudices

I've been meaning to get these thoughts down for a while, but have hesitated because it's a personal thing that I feel quite guilty about. My problem is that there are certain things to which my brain seems pre-programmed to take the opposite stance to my own beliefs and ideals.

I'm just going to say this straight. I tend to take men more seriously than I take women. And I mean that in an 'initial mental processing' sort of way. It's a terrible thing and I hate it and I have to be aware of this at all times to make sure I consciously check my own thought processes to balance out this bias. And I do. I work hard to make sure I evaluate what everyone says on their own merits, and I work extra hard because I know I can't trust my unconscious mental processing.

Here's another thing I'm struggling with: non-binary gender language and constructs. I have a friend who considers and presently emself* neither as male or female. Those reading this who are unfamiliar with transgender issues might not know that to treat a transgender person with the all the wrong gender language can be very hurtful, to say the least. Check out Trans Media Watch if you want to know more about this. Anyway, this particular person has a biologically female-sexed body (I'm not even sure if I'm wording this right, tell me if I'm not) and my mind struggles massively not to categorise em as such. I know one day, I'm going to refer to em as 'she' by accident and accidentally cause offense, but I can't seem to get it into the unconscious part of my brain. Hopefully, one day.

A further thing, that I think is common among most people is what I'll call an Argument from Idolatry. If you like someone or an organisation, are a fan or fervent supporter, it's so easy to bias your opinions towards them when there is an argument or discussion about something. I guess it's a case of love-tinted glasses. When I'm trying to form an opinion or weight in on a topic of discussion in which my 'idol' has taken a side, I find it so easy to and along to their opinion before stopping myself and studying both sides. I've managed to get to a stage now where I try not to form an opinion immediately if there's a conflict on the internet; instead I'll just wait a little while and see what's being discussed. In doing so, I've found that - on certain topics - I've disagreed with people who I think are generally awesome and mostly right: Phil Plait, Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers to name a few.

Anyway, the point of this blog post (I think), is the importance of being aware of our biases, our privileges and our perspectives. I'm not proud of the fact that the hardwiring of my brain is a bit sexist and harbours a few prejudices, but that's kind of how brains work: they make connections and shortcuts to allow you to think fast and draw up conclusions easily. Knowing this gives me the power to think a little harder, more consciously, and to overcome this in-built deficiency. And hopefully, it makes me less of a douche.

*gender neutral pronoun. construct by using the 3rd person plural and removing the 'th'. Conjugate verbs as you would for he/she/it.

Amanda Knox: Supplementary Questions

So Amanda Knox had been found not-guilty of the murder of another woman. We know her nickname was Foxy Knoxy and that she enjoyed her sexual freedom. But, before you fancy yourself worthy to comment on any of this, see if you can answer these questions (without cheating):

1) What is the name of the murder victim?
2) Give me one more fact about the murder victim, not related to her appearance.
3) Who else was found guilty of a part in the murder?
4) What was the name of the other person found not guilty of the murder in the same hearing as Knox?
5) Where did the name "Foxy Knoxy" come from?
6) What are the details of the murder, other than "sex"?

And, if you feel happy you've passed that particular set of questions, try these:

1) If you were a murder suspect, how would you like to be treated by public commentary?
2) If a member of your family was a murder suspect, what would you consider to be an indecent and inappropriate manner for people who don't know them to talk about them?
3) If a member of your family was murdered, how would you like the case to be discussed in public?

Just have a little think about that.

A Matter of Importance

Whenever I get struck by something - dazzled, intrigued, memorised or entranced - I often find myself juxtaposing it against its utter universal insignificance .
I write this on a train, where a few minutes ago,a woman walked past. I thought she was awesome, because she has a shock of purple hair across her fringe, glowing from the black, like magic. I watched her from the side of my eye as she walked down the aisle past me. I felt compelled to watch, as if she'd disappear if I looked away.
But at the same, I get a floods of thoughts about the massiveness of the universe and the nothing of time that the girl with the purple shock of hair spent in my vision compared to the magnificent age of the universe, measured in the life and death of stars and galaxies. I think about how the woman is one of billions of life forms come and gone and the quintillion chance interactions that caused her and I to cross paths.
This woman with purple hair is a nothing, an insignificance. But I loved it. She had awesome hair.