a "wizard of oz" themed abstinence conference and more..

Feministing has been on a roll over the last few days, providing me with Wizard of Oz-themed abstinence conferences, a piece on how the earth revolves around the penis and feminist porn awards. Damn, that's good blogging.

While I'm link-dumping, there's this great piece over at the Blue Voice on the relationship between racism and homophobia when it comes to playing to the base:

It's all about appealing to the dark side of people in order to get elected. They're not really against gays or gay marriage. They just understand that if they get "out queered" they won't get elected.

Wallace himself when asked why his rhetoric was so mean spirited toward blacks stated, "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor."

To round this off in an entirely unrelated fashion, there's a schematic for building your own laser.

What are you reading?

"assumed consent" and the NHS programme for IT

The Telegraph's coverage of the much delayed and wildly over budget NHS programme for IT (" Two years late and three times the cost") contains a telling detail:

The British Medical Association's family doctors committee has said patients must be asked for their consent before their records are computerised. Rather than such an "informed consent" approach, the Government's current preferred option is "assumed consent" under which people will be assumed to be happy to have their details stored electronically unless they specifically opt out.

A spokesman for Connecting for Health, the government agency in charge of the NPfIT, said: "We note the position of the BMA GP committee but the medical profession is not united on the issue. We've adopted the opt-out model."

The fact that the representatives of the medical profession are united is easily ignored as once more government discovers that it knows better than those pesky experts, who insist on things like patient confidentiality and appropriate safeguards. It's really very easy: once you ignore the doctors, you don't have to worry about medical ethics.

The detail, though, is in the civil service's assumption of consent on our part - much in the same way Home Office planning has assumed our participation in the national identity database for the next ten years of legislation and administration. Our wishes - and even the wishes of those best placed to advise on how our interests might be protected - are ignored in favour of a long-term plan that no-one voted for, much less has heard discussed openly.

A common defence of this electric boondoggle is that doctors want it: a minimal attempt to read the surveys supposedly proving demand shows support for the principle of a unified, secure and accurate information system - which is rather different from support for the IT "solution" at hand. The desire of doctors for the system on offer is markedly less enthusiastic - in fact, surverys of doctor's opinions of working with the system tend to produce the concerns ignored so readily above.

The argument that presumed consent is harmless and an essential part of a working system ignores the implied social contract: I consent for my medical information to be stored without my explicit permission if that information is accurate, stored securely and used appropriately. The managers of the NHS programme for IT have yet to show they can uphold any part of the bargain, instead choosing to ignore valid concerns and plow ahead with the great Ten Year Plan - a plan which persists regardless of who is Minister for health and possibly even of who holds the majority of seats in Parliament.

It's easy to think of the NHS programme for IT as the "lite" version of the national identity database; in truth, it demonstrates the same disregard for individual consent which forms the basis of individual liberty, a pretence that government intervention into our private lives is without cost, or that the benefits always outweigh what we might stand to lose. With this government, we have every reason to mistrust that calculation.

more fun with blame

A rather odd line creeps into The Times' coverage of X-Men: The Last Stand's opening weekend takings:

However, X-Men was not an out-and-out critical success either, winning an average B- score among American critics, according to Yahoo! Movies. The box office takings, however, proved that Hollywood has not yet been made obsolete by DVDs and home theatre systems, as some have claimed.

"This is what the summer is all about," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, the box office tracking company, adding that Hollywood was starting to recover from its slump last year.

Many Americans simply refused to go to the movies in 2005, because of fare that included the homosexual cowboy love story Brokeback Mountain. As a result, Hollywood suffered its biggest decline in attendance since the mid-1980s.

Presumably this refers to a different Brokeback Mountain than this one:

The film saw limited release in the United States on December 9, 2005 (in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco), taking $547,425 in five theaters its first weekend. This was the highest per-showing average for any drama in film history.

Over the Christmas weekend, it posted the highest per theater gross of any movie and was considered a box office success not only in urban centers such as New York City and Los Angeles, but also in suburban theaters near Portland, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, and Atlanta.

It is the top-grossing release of Focus Features. It ranks fifth among the highest-grossing westerns and eighth among the highest-grossing romantic dramas (1980-Present).

But apart from financial and critical success (Baftas, Oscars, Golden Globes) those queer cowboys are a prime example of the downward spiral of Hollywood's fortunes.

Or maybe not.

hornet's nest, stirred

Sometimes you have to pick a fight:

One of the country's most senior bishops has reignited the Church of England row over homosexuality by claiming that same-sex partnerships are supported by the Bible. The Rt Rev Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford, said that traditionalists in the Church needed to be "converted" to see that homosexual unions are confirmed by the scriptures. He reaffirmed his controversial belief that an openly gay man should be allowed to be appointed a bishop

I can't find a copy of these remarks, or the argument for scriptural support - though I'll keep looking. I think this will turn out to be one of those 'spirit, not letter' of the scripture argument that points that certain sections are too historically and culturally specific to be taken literally (cloth made of more than one thread, uncleanliness of women passing running water etc.) and that we should instead concentrate on loving everyone, even the perfidious queers.

Most excitingly, the response of the conservative wing of the church reveals why their moral code remains a minority belief. It isn't just all about teh queer - they don't want anyone having sex without their permission:

Reform, an influential evangelical group that represents more than 1,000 parishes, has written to bishops urging them to reconsider the guidelines. Its chairman, the Rev David Banting, expressed dismay at Bishop Harries's comments, arguing that the bishop was wrong to want them to be "converted" to his position. "He thinks that he has the weight of culture and the weight of the majority of the Church in the West behind him, which convinces him that he's right," said Mr Banting.

"Same-sex partnerships are not congruous with the Bible," he said, adding: "Sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage are not blessed by God. "We need to be pastorally supportive of those who struggle in this area, but we shouldn't be trying to change the teaching of the Church. No amount of calling black white will make black white."

Unfortunately for Reform, the Anglican Church can, has and will continue to change its teaching over time. In fact, to name your pressure group "reform" suggests that even fundamentalists believe that Church doctrine is open to influence.

jane's adventures in the patriarchy

Today's very stupid story blames Hermione Granger (of the Harry Potter books) for encouraging violence amongst young girls. Yes, with the Daily Mail it's the silly season all year round:

According to leading American psychologist Professor James Garbarino, the sight of Miss Granger punching baddies in the blockbuster film encourages copycat behaviour by impressionable young girls. Speaking at a parenting conference in Australia, he said girls have traditionally learned to suppress violent impulses but are now getting mixed messages about how they should behave.

Prof Garbarino, author of the book, See Jane Hit: Why Girls Are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About it, said Miss Granger was seen as the 'perfect daughter.' But in the third Potter film she punches Harry's enemy Malfoy.

"Afterwards she says 'Boy, that felt good' and she is cheered on by her friends," Prof Garbarino told the Parenting Imperatives II conference. "To tell a girl after seeing that movie that girls don't hit is preposterous. Girls hit, it feels good and people appreciate it - that's the message."

If there's one thing that we all know it's that a fantasy film about wizards who live in a castle and use magic to fight evil can't be challenged through reason.

Any parent with a brain and a spine would point out that both boys and girls can hit, but that they perhaps shouldn't. Unless, of course, they're being confronted with an evil wizard whose father wishes to lead a pogrom against you and all other non-wizards - because we all know about the appropriate use of violence against evil regimes.

Still, full credit for a great book title: "See Jane Hit," part of the "Jane's Adventures in the Patriarchy" series.

Notice how it's a special problem that girls have lost the ability to "suppress violent impulses" - the violence of boys is presumably one of those perfectly natural things of no concern, like puppies and syphyllis. Can we also expect an article on the dangers of Hermione as a role-model for literacy and academic study, which we know emperils the lady brain-pan through over-heating?

Entertainingly, the comment section on the Mail's site is filled with this kind of thing:

Ridiculous. Violence in girls is down to bad parenting and lack of discipline, Hermione is portrayed as academic, loyal and brave, with strong morals. Have people got nothing better to do?

What a load of old cobblers! I was brought up on 'violent' Tom & Jerry cartoons, have played 'violent' video games and watched 'violent' videos/dvds - it has not made me want to go out and injure, or kill, someone.

What coblers. [sic] Did "The Sound of Music" cause an increase in nuns? Did "Superman" lead to people jumping off buildings? While not a great fan of Harry Potter, I would consider Hermionie a positive role model. She works hard accademicaly, she is loyal to her friends. Yes, she uses violence, but it is in the fight against evil and in defence of her friends.

I pity the Mail - sometimes it must be very hard to walk the editorial tightrope between self-reliance and declaring "something must be done."

"please excuse my bollocks but.." (updated with rage)

Rebecca Front in The Guardian mounts a stellar defence of alternative remedies with an article sub-titled "Several doctors have criticised alternative therapies, but sometimes maybe they do work". Sometimes maybe? Wow. Possibly perhaps this article is vague and unpersuasive: the homeopathic equivalent of science journalism that says things like this:

The weight of scientific research is behind them [scientists], but that doesn't rule out human error.

Would anyone like to explain to Rebecca Front how double-blind tests work? Or how it is that scientific research gets to be quite so weighty? Or that human error can't be responsible for concealing any brave new rules of physics that would make homeopathy's claims real? Why must journalists keep pretending there's some kind of "balance" to be struck? - that any crackpot theory can be given due respect if you conclude:

On the other hand, for all the anecdotal stuff in its favour, there is very little scientific proof in support of most complementary treatments.

Very little proof despite persistent investigation - yet it's still worth another 500 speculative words in a broadsheet newspaper. When she's not weakly pawing at the validity of scientific research (awkwardly based in observation and peer review) Front plays the other card - even if it is a load of bollocks, it's still worth spending money on:

But that so many people feel better after trying alternative medicine seems a compelling reason for the NHS to go on providing it in a limited way, and with caveats attached. Placebo effect or not, people who believe their symptoms have diminished will go to the doctor less often and demand fewer drugs.

It also diverts funding from the supply of drugs and treatment to people who need help with something that a placebo can't touch - like lung cancer, breaking your leg or developing glaucoma. It will also help make people more stupid. Provisos will be ignored and instead, the progress of actual knowledge is sidelined into a culdesac of wishful thinking and jars filled with brightly coloured sand.

Please, Rebecca, stop writing these articles: you are holding back the advance of the species.



Oh, I forgot to add - "Placebo effect, or not"? WTF? Because even though there's absolutely no evidence for "or not" journalists can still pick up a cheque by writing "science" articles about it? Is there anything else without any explanation beyond existing science that The Guardian would like to respectfully offer column space to? How's the man in the moon these days?

in bed with the religious right: the daily mail and abortion

The Daily Mail is just crammed pack full of stories about abortion today that distort, mislead and outright deceive, so let's get right into it.

The cover story on babies aborted for 'being perfect' tries to suggests that foetuses are commonly destroyed in the pursuit of designer perfection. Not so. By the Mail's own account we see that:

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that between 1996 and 2004, 20 babies were aborted after 20 weeks because they had a club foot. [...]

It is one of the most common birth defects in Britain, affecting one in 1,000 babies each year. That means around 600 to 700 babies are born annually in the UK with the problem, which causes the feet to point downwards and in severe cases can cause a limp. [...]

Figures also show that four babies were aborted since 1996 because they were found to have webbed fingers or extra digits, which can be sorted out with simply surgery.

Now, while the issue of children aborted for apparently aesthetic reasons may indeed be troubling (accepting we have absolutely no knowledge of the circumstances in which individual decisions were made) let's get a sense of proportion. We're talking about 24 abortions over an eight year period, during which - according to the Mail - there were "almost 200,000" abortions carried out each year.

So - to keep with the Mail's quality of estimates - that's 24 out of a total of "almost" 1,600,000 abortions. Yet somehow this tiny, tiny number of abortions signals "a society that can no longer tolerate imperfection" despite the fact that club foot is - to use the Mail's own words:

one of the most common birth defects in Britain, affecting one in 1,000 babies each year. That means around 600 to 700 babies are born annually in the UK with the problem, which causes the feet to point downwards and in severe cases can cause a limp.

These particular 24 cases are a smokescreen for a far broader attack on abortion, putting these extremely rare, late term abortions (after twenty weeks) in the context of  "an alarming rise in the use of an abortion pill that has been linked to 10 deaths."

I've written about this spurious figure before - reported without any reference to the period during which these deaths took place, or in which total group of people using the drug. Without any sense of prevalence or incidence, the figure is absolutely meaningless but is repeated all the same. It's actually a very easy game to play. First the Mail:

Earlier this year it emerged that three British women have died after taking the abortion pill and a further 79 had adverse reactions to the pill since 1991.

Hmm.. 79 adverse reactions over 15 years. Did you know that in a single six month period Viagra was linked to five deaths and 41 adverse reactions in the UK alone? Where's the outrage?

Yet RU-486 - shown overwhelmingly to be safe and producing a tiny proportion of adverse reactions - is labelled "suspect". The fact that this allegation comes in the midst of an article agonising its increase of usage tells you the real story, which involves the repetition of the most traditional and unsupported "concerns":

There are also concerns that easier access to the abortion pill encourages promiscuity especially among young girls.

Concerns which are unsupported by any reputable study of sexual health or teenage sexual activity that the Mail or the usual suspects of Life and CREW can name. I'd add that the Daily Mail has never knowingly printed a story on abortion, contraception or sex education without seeking comment from Life or CREW - groups which are fundamentally opposed to access to abortion, contraception and comprehensive sex education.

Even though every health authority in the UK agrees that unwanted pregnancies are reduced by access to contraception and sex education, the Daily Mail thinks it knows best. Even though abortion rates are lower in countries where abortion is legal and accessible, the religious right is determined to push back the law by repeating the same lies and distortions - a minority group who isn't interested in a measure to reduce abortion that doesn't pave the way to a total ban.

If the Daily Mail was seriously interested in reducing the number of abortions in this country, it would have to kick CREW and Life to the curb and start listening to the doctors, nurses, teachers and health workers who are on the front lines. It would have to start educating its readers, the parents of the very children who end up as teen mothers (and teen fathers); it would have to stop moralising and condemning 200,000 odd women for exercising choice and decide instead to do something that might actually help rather than hinder.

It doesn' seem very likely, does it?

(posted via email, so apologies if the formatting screws up)

observer: sexual assault on the increase

First, there's a more guarded version of my post from Friday up at Nightcap Syndication, complete with all-new spelling errors. :)

Secondly, there's this report on violent crime from The Observer today which supports that analysis:

Sex crime presents a still more dismal picture. The recorded figures for rapes against females in 1980, 1997 and 2004-5 were respectively 1,200, 6,281 and 12,867 - an almost elevenfold increase in 25 years. The corresponding conviction totals and percentage rates were 457, or 38 per cent; 576, or 9.2 per cent, and 704, just 5.5 per cent: the chance that the perpetrator of a recorded rape would ever be convicted was one seventh as great in 2005 as it was in 1980.

For other sexual assaults on women, recorded offences rose from 13,340 in 1987 (the 1980 figure is not comparable), to 18,674 in 1997, and to 26,709 in 2004. Here the total of convictions plus cautions actually fell - from 3,529 to 3,401 to 2,951, a decline in the conviction rate over just 18 years from 26.5 per cent to 11 per cent. [...]

'My feeling is that people go further than they used to, and this is true of both sex and violence,' said a member of the Court of Appeal whose earlier career was spent at the criminal bar. 'Rapes used generally to involve simple vaginal penetration. Now, at least in stranger rape cases, usually there are aggravating factors - forced oral sex, buggery, manual penetration of the anus. I have a feeling that more humiliating and degrading experiences are being visited on the women.'

Heavy writing day for me today so might not be on again until tonight. What else should I be reading?

proof is not for "other people"

Given that Google ads is currently promoting home-doesn't work-opathy in the column to your right, I'd like to direct you to some fine reality-based bloggers. Following on from the response to some doctors' demand to recognise medical science (shock, horror) there's Skepchick:

Nobody is so stupid that they would admit in a newspaper that you don’t need proof to prove something works. But, you’re wrong! Somebody is that stupid, and that somebody is Terry Cullen, chairman of the British Complementary Medicine Association. Sadly, Terry is only runner up in the Skepchick Blog “Stupid Jerk of the Day” award, since that honor clearly belongs to Dr. Peter Fisher, the “Pol Pot” of intelligent inquiry.

Please click through for the added value of commenters taking a defender of the woo-woo magic hour to task:

I don’t think medicine is afraid of using any so-called alternative therapies. The history of the use of products like quinine, aspirin, and others are good examples. They worked and could be tested. The problem is that when most so-called alternative therapies are tested they don’t work. Homeopathy does not work.

Then there's Skeptico, who reminds me I need a pseudonym which will also double for a super-villain:

First off, for some alternative therapies there is actually pretty definitive scientific proof they don’t work. I’m thinking especially of homeopathy, but acupuncture also springs to mind.

Second, if you don’t reject something based on (a lack of) scientific evidence then on what basis would you reject anything?

Both links courtesy of Muton, who was nice enough to link to all three of us.

british crime survey shows increase in sexual assault

Thanks to a tip in The Guardian (flagged by Tim Worstall) and some determined searching, here's the Home Office's new report on Domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking.

Amongst the findings which I presume were supposed to be buried - and which I describe in more detail below - is that sexual assault against women has substantially increased since the last crime survey.

[EDITED to add: However, this detail of a more recent negative trend - an apparent increase in sexual assault within the last five years - is presented within the context of an overall decline in domestic and acquaintance violence since 1995. I'm hunting around for the right figures to provide some more accurate context. The way in which the Home Office releases its data is spine-tingling awful.]

Here are some things from the executive summary:

"Long term trends in violent crime as measured by the British Crime survey have shown a significant decline since their peak in 1995, in particular there have been large falls in both domestic and acquaintance violence. Between 1995 and 2004/05, domestic violence has fallen by 59 per cent and acquaintance violence has fallen by 54 per cent."

"Women were more likely than men to report having had experienced intimate violence across all four forms since the age of 16."

"A half of women (50%) and a third of men (35%) who had experienced intimate violence since the age of 16 had experienced more than one type of intimate violence"

This includes non-sexual partner or family abuse (including threats, financial and physical abuse), sexual assault and stalking (two or more incidents).

"Among intimate violence victims, two in five women (40%) and almost a third of men (31%) had experienced some form of intimate abuse by offenders of more than one relationship type."

In other words they'd been abused by more by than one person, not just a partner or family member.

"Among victims of less serious sexual assault, almost two thirds of women (62%) reported that the offender was a stranger. Men were more likely to report the offender as someone known to them in some way, rather than a stranger.

Offenders of serious sexual assault against both men and women were more likely to have been reported as being known to the victim than as being a stranger."

Less serious sexual assault involves "indecent exposure, sexual threats and unwanted touching"; serious sexual assault involves rape or assualt by penetration, including attempts.

"Marital status (especially being unmarried), being young and having a limiting disability or illness were found to be independently assocated with intimate violence across the forms for men and women (it should be noted that association does not howevr prove causation.)"

In other words, abusers target those they perceive to be vulnerable.

Now, some things not in the executive summary but mined out of the tables and the main body of the report.

Women are still far more likely to experience sexual assault than men. (23.5% of women versus 3.8% of men experiencing one or more incident since age 16, see table A.1) The prevalence of sexual assault against women is accounted for mostly by "less serious" assault with serious assault much less prevalent. Similarly, 23% of women reported having experienced stalking.

Women victims of serious sexual assault (rape or assualt by penetration, including attempts) are mostly likely to know the offender: 51% were identified as a partner and 41% were identified as other known subjects (friends, neighbours, dates etc.).

Women were as likely assaulted by friends and dates (11% and 10%) as by strangers (11%).

Prevalence of partner abuse (non-sexual) is increased among households where there are children in the household, but not among men. This may "indicate reluctance of women experiencing abuse by a partner to break up the family."

Now, there are some problems with the fact that methodology has changed slightly between the 2001 and 2005-06 British Crime Surveys, leading to a little internal inconsistency. However, the report does provide working comparative rates (see section 6 of the report for more detail).

Perhaps most significantly, the percentage of females experiencing sexual assault (one or more incidents) since the age of 16 has risen from 16.6% (2001) to 22.7% (2004/05). The majority of that increase is accounted for by an increase in less serious sexual assault (i.e. assault that does not include rape or assault by penetration).

Less serious sexual assault climbed from 15.3% to 21.8%; serious sexual assault (including attempts) rose from 4.5% to 5.1%. Male sexual assault also rose, from 2.1% to 3.3% overall - see table A.5. for all these figures.

Okay - I've been at a monitor all day and my eyes are swimming. Please let me know if I've made any mistakes.

tonne of date rape drug GHB seized

A metric tonne of the drug GHB has been seized by the police. While it was most likely intended for recreational use on the club scene (it's also known as liquid ecstasy), it draws further attention to the rise in the number of drug rape victims:

The Roofie Foundation, which runs a helpline for victims of drug rape, said it was "gobsmacked" by the amount of GHB that had been seized.

Graham Rhodes, a spokesman, said: "It must have been a vat of the stuff. This stuff sells in bottles at around £10 a time.

"I am very relieved this has been recovered as in the wrong hands it is very dangerous. Not only is it used to spike the drinks of people to rape them but it's also used to assault and rob people. This is not an urban myth, we get 800 to 900 new victims calling us every year."

The amount found is worrying because it suggests the kind of volume that might be in circulation. While measures like drug-proof bottles or test kits are a good idea, they have a limited use. They don't address the behaviour of those who spike drinks to "loosen up" their date, an underlying culture that sees the use of GHB as unremarkable - and not for what it is: the next step in a technology of rape.

GHB is particularly alarming because it can cause memory loss - fitting the unpleasant and persistent tabloid image of drunken girls giving consent they don't remember and then crying rape. GHB can incapicate someone who has had very little alcohol to drink.

As before, I have little time for the argument that women (and men) shouldn't leave their drinks "unguarded;" do we criticise stabbing victims for not wearing body armour and leaving their lungs exposed? The argument that "reasonable precautions" should be taken exists only when we've started to internalise our acceptance of a given crime: we can't stop it or meaningfully reduce it, so we'd better learn to tolerate it. Of course, those who have to do most of the "learning" are those most likely to be victims - women.

more fuckwittage from our moral guardians

Wanker of the day, via Gnus of the World - a man who films his neighbour sunbathing naked in her own garden and then takes the video to the police, leading to a charge of indecent exposure. She has, fortunately, been cleared of all charges.

Why are we so terrified of the human body in this country? The idea that this man's children were going to be irretrievably damaged by a glimpse of a naked woman next door is laughable, as is the idea that nudity is grossly offensive to "decent" people. Children only find nudity shameful, dirty or offensive if they are taught that: our culture gives children enough body anxiety without parents having to add another layer in the name of moral hygiene.

And when did we reach the point where judicial strong-arming was a replacement for actually talking to our neighbours?

EDITED to add this from The Telegraph's coverage of the case which adds colour to the bizarre policing of the body:

Maggie Hughes, prosecuting, said: "A woman exposing her lower region could be grossly offensive to normal decent persons in society."

You see, boobs are for everyone but a vagina could topple civilisation as we know it. Okay?

fresh bollocks

Lovely Neel sent a link to list of lesser known alternative therapies. I'm just not sure - I mean, rolfing? That sounds like a fake therapy to me - it doesn't even go back to the "time of Atlantis" like Shamballa multidimensional healing does.

*sigh*

more lies about sex education

An increase in teenage abortions in Scotland has produced the usual round of lies about sex education:

Mario Conti, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, said policy-makers must publicly discourage early sexual activity. "Today's figures reveal yet again that the approach of ever greater availability of contraception, ever more explicit sex education, and ever easier access to abortion, is a recipe for disaster."

John Sweeney, of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, said: "The current programme of providing contraceptive services with its value-free safe-sex message encourages young people to be sexually active. The consequence is more abortions."

Today's figures do reveal a failure in sex education, but not the ones described above. The big lie repeated by the Catholic Church and its surrogate is that explicit sex education, availability of contraception and access to abortion causes more people to have sex and then have abortions. The thing to remember - and cling to with both hands - is despite the folk-wisdom of this position that the absolute opposite has been shown to be true.

Now, not all sex education is the same and not all sex education is equally effective - not least because some schools and education authorities choose to do the minimum to fulfil the letter of the law. However, here are the things that effective, comprehensive sex education has been shown to do:

1. Delay the first time a person had sex, reduce the frequency of sex, the number of new partners and the incidence of unprotected sex.
2. Increase the use of condoms and contraception amongst sexually active participants.

Crucially, "evaluations of comprehensive sex education and HIV/ STI prevention programs show that they do not increase rates of sexual initiation, do not lower the age at which youth initiate sex, and do not increase the frequency of sex or the number of sex partners among sexually active youth."

Please visit the linked page for details of the individual studies.

Furthermore - and contrary to both the Catholic Church and the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child - more effective contraception and greater access to contraception leads to a reduction in the rate of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. On that point, I want to recommend this study, which goes into some detail to question a link between a rise in contraception use and a rise in abortion rates. I would point out, though, that abortion rates are substantially higher in countries where abortion is illegal.

From the conclusion of that study:

Contraception, even under the best of circumstances, cannot end the need for abortion entirely. Contraceptive methods will never be perfect, and women and men will never be perfect users of them. What common sense and research show, however, is that the most effective means of reducing abortion is preventing unintended pregnancies in the first place.

No serious effort to achieve this end, and thus reduce abortion, can succeed without contraception.

Anti-abortion activists who oppose contraception reveal their underlying complaint: they don't like it when people get to have sex and not have children. Here's a tip - if you don't want more unwanted pregnancies, don't let people fundamentally opposed to non-reproductive sex dictate sex education.

homeopathy: most dilute defence ever

Let's deal with this one step at a time:

Sir, The Society of Homeopaths strongly rejects the assertion by Professor Michael Baum and others that homoeopathy is an “implausible treatment for which over a dozen systematic reviews have failed to produce convincing evidence of effectiveness”.

Well, you might reject that assertion but it doesn't stop it from being true. Let's try that Swiss review of 110 trials, published in The Lancet and which found no convincing evidence that the treatment worked any better than a placebo.

Moving on:

There is considerable evidence to show that homoeopathy is effective in the treatment of a wide range of illnesses, including a large study last year of the outcomes over six years from 6,500 patients at the Bristol Homoeopathic Hospital, in which 75 per cent reported improvement.

But that evidence is balls. The study to which you refer was almost entirely meaningless because it simply asked patients if they felt better: it was, at best, a survey. Amongst the problems with this study are that (courtesy of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science):

1. They were looking at a lot of chronic cyclical conditions, or time-limited ones, like the menopause, where people get better with time.
2. There was no comparison group so there's no way of telling how people on homeopathy did compared to those on other treatments or those just left alone.
3. The sample group was drawn from patients who wanted homeopathy - i.e who were selectively disposed towards it.
4. No baseline was recorded - patients merely recalled how they felt later on.
5. The Amazing Disappearing Patients:

Lastly, a large number of patients never came back after their first appointment: and so they were simply, er, ignored in the analysis. That “exclusion” is the very opposite of a “real world analysis”, otherwise known as an “intention to treat analysis”. Did they get worse? Did they get better? Did they go home and die? We will never know.

I'd also add that the study was dismissed in The Telegraph by Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of Medical Research Council:

With no control group, Dr Spence’s report does not challenge the scientific consensus that homoeopathy has no effects other than those of a placebo.

Still, on with the letter:

In questioning the provision of complementary and alternative medicine on the NHS, Baum et al ignore that 70 per cent of GPs feel complementary medicine should be freely available on the NHS and that substantial savings could be made by introducing homoeopathy into general practice.

Ah, a sourceless survey - and one that chooses to ignore the question of whether homeopathy works or not, or whether traditional proven medicine should be given priority.

Access to alternative therapies should be a matter of choice. Describing homoeopathy as an “implausible treatment” patronises the one in four members of the public who want to see complementary medicine on the NHS.

The phantom of "choice" and the idea the general public want it is a red herring: good medical practice is not based on surveys of public opinion. We do not poll the great British public on the best methods for doing heart bypasses, for example, because we assume, quite accurately, that only a tiny number of people are able to make informed judgments about it.

People on the receiving end of heart bypasses also tend to want to receive treatment with a proven success rate rather than treatments which are merely popular in the public imagination. Given that the NHS has a finite budget, would it not make more sense to concentrate spending on treatments which have a proven record?

PAULA ROSS
Chief Executive
The Society of Homeopaths
Northampton

Being a professional charlatan doesn't make you any less of a fraud.

homeopathy still a load of (finely diluted) balls

I love it when doctors talk like this:

We are a group of physicians and scientists who are concerned about ways in which unproven or disproved treatments are being encouraged for general use in the NHS. We would ask you to review practices in your own trust, and to join us in representing our concerns to the Department of Health because we want patients to benefit from the best treatments available.

There are two particular developments to which we would like to draw your attention. First, there is now overt promotion of homeopathy in parts of the NHS (including the NHS Direct website). It is an implausible treatment for which over a dozen systematic reviews have failed to produce convincing evidence of effectiveness.

The only thing I love more is when defenders of homeopathy respond like this:

Terry Cullen, chairman of the British Complementary Medicine Association, said the group's stance was "frustrating".

He said: "It's very frustrating that senior responsible people dismiss complementary medicine for the sole reason that it doesn't have the definitive scientific proof that other drugs have.

"There is so much anecdotal evidence that thousands of people gain benefit from using complementary medicines. We shouldn't dismiss that."

It's just so frustrating that scientists who are responsible for actually healing people keep relying on definitive scientific proof instead of vague, unscientific hearsay. It's just so annoying that they keep using that one argument again and again. If only there was another argument that wasn't so entirely compelling that they'd use instead.

For the record, science doesn't dismiss anecdotal evidence: quite a lot of work has been done (and continues to be done) to investigate such testimony. In fact, science is one of those 'observation based' disciplines - which is precisely why doctors know that homeopathy doesn't work.

fun-loving special: uk life league

Apparently, even asking for a debate on abortion makes you a legitimate target for death threats:

In a House of Commons debate, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon called for the latest scientific evidence on the viability of premature babies, to be debated by MPs. He also said there was a case for very early abortions to be made more easily available.

The MP, who comes from a Jewish family, was sent dozens of abusive messages, including some comparing him to "Dr Mengele" and accusing him of being "a murderer". Others said "Satan is awaiting your demise" and "You must be afraid of dying".

Note that discussion of the viability of premature babies could theoretically lead to a reduction of the upper waiting limit (i.e. leading to greater limits on access to abortions) - though the BMA (British Medical Association) voted against such a reduction on those grounds as recently as last summer.

However, even the smallest suggestion that very early abortion (which is superlatively legal) should be more accessible earns him a sack of hate-mail. Anti-abortion activists don't want the debate because they're opposed to abortion in principal - and refuse to recognise that the vast majority of people don't support that principal.

This anti-intellectual attempt to smear anyone who even wants to raise the issue of abortion provision is matched by a scurry for cover and denial when confronted with the consequences of a rhetoric that describes your opponents as murderers:

Anti-abortion groups including the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) reacted angrily to the MP's intervention. The UK Lifeleague, another anti-abortion campaign group, also criticised the MP in a briefing paper.

However, both SPUC and the UK Lifeleague unreservedly condemned the abusive messages and said they would not have been sent by their supporters.

Of course, the letters must have been sent by an entirely different but politically identical group of activists fun-lovers. There's no reason to believe that they were encouraged by the description of abortion as the 'slaughter,' 'butchery' and 'murder of unborn babies' or made to feel legitimate by the reference to anti-abortion activists as 'martyrs.' Those are the words on the front page of the UK Life League's website - and no, I'm not linking to them.

You funning fun-lovers: of course those letters came from your supporters. While you might have the wit not to cross the line between calling someone a murderer and calling for their death in a press release, a large number of people who support you don't. But please, feel free to scurry for cover whenever someone calls you on your hateful tactics: it only makes you look like an even larger group of cowardly fun-lovers.

I'd apologise for using the word fun-lover before 9am but if you don't have to take responsibility for your choice of words, then neither do I.

(edited with regards to "Die Hard" language standards)

kidney-punching the patriarchy

My martial artist flatmate sent me these pictures of Mrs Edith Garrud - a suffragette and jujitsu practitioner. Here's Mrs Garrud demonstrating her moves with a volunteer dressed as a policeman:







The caption for the set reads: Mrs Garrud, a well-known Suffragette, demonstrates the methods of jujitsu she has taught the W.S.P.U. "bodyguard."

The WSPU was the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Sylvia. I think that these pictures must be those that appeared in a magazine called the London Sketch in 1910 as described here:

When Uyenishi left Britain in 1908, his student William Garrud took over teaching the men while Garrud's wife Edith took over teaching the women and children. Photographs of "Mrs. Garrud, a well-known Suffragette," throwing a uniformed British policeman appeared in the London Sketch on July 6, 1910. Soon after, Punch printed a cartoon showing uniformed policemen cowering before a solitary "Ju-Jutsu Suffragette."

I've uploaded the original complete page here.

While tracking down who Mrs. Garrud was, I found this over at the Journal of Non-lethal Combat - "Ju-Jutsu as a Husband-Tamer: A Suffragette Play with a Moral":

From Health and Fitness (1911), reproduced in the journal:

I saw a rehearsal of the new suffragette sketch, by Mr. Armstrong, in which Ju-jutsu (the real thing) plays a dominant part. The moral of the sketch is great. Liz, the coster's wife [a costermonger, or seller of fruits and vegetables] (personated by Miss Quinn), having been taught Ju-jutsu by Mrs. Garrud, tames her drunken husband into subjection. "I'll learn this 'ere jucy jujubes, Liz, for I could do for you if I was sober," he says.

"No," answers Liz; "you're a good husband to me then, and wouldn't want to, but when you're drunk I'll always be a match for you." "Then I'll never get drunk again," says Bill, and husband and wife embrace. Mrs. Garrud has specially instructed Mr. Roland and Miss Quinn for this sketch, some scenes of which are reproduced above[below]. Follow the numbers and then you will follow the story. Mr. Roland plays the part of Bill:

1. A real good counter and lock for right body-blow (swing or kidney punch)..

Click through for the whole thing.

Isn't it amazing what I can find out when I'm supposed to be finishing my thesis?

manuscript ore

Back to the thesis mine: posting is going to be a little lighter around here for the next few months, probably updating either a few times a week rather than every day. Use this as an excuse to get involved in the comments. :)

Oh, and go read this piece on AIDS entitled "Killing them with morality":

The immediate priority is not just to treat people when they are sick, but to prevent them being infected in the first place. Five years ago the UN declared: “Prevention must be the mainstay of our response.”

If I have time, I'll get back into it later.

sex education sunday

As this seems to be sex-education Sunday, here's news of a London based study on poor levels of sexual health awareness amongst teenagers:

Eight out of 10 teenagers lose their virginity when they are drunk, feeling pressurised into having sex or are not using contraception, a survey has revealed. [...]

The survey of 3,000 London secondary school pupils aged 15-18 found that:

· 39 per cent had sex for the first time when one or other partner was not equally willing
· Almost three in 10 lost their virginity for 'negative reasons', such as wanting to please a boyfriend
· 51 per cent of girls and 37 per cent of boys had had unprotected sex
· 58 per cent of girls and 39 per cent of boys had slept with someone at least once without using a condom
· Two in five wish they had waited longer before having sex
· Only 20 per cent who have sex for the first time take precautions, are in a steady relationship or feel the timing is right.

While there are clearly significant issues here, there are some things to remember before the tabloid swamp reaches this survey. First, it deals with a specific group of teenagers in a specific area of the country and is concerned only with teenagers who are sexually active - a blanket terms that does not seem to differentiate, for example, between someone who has had one sexual experience with one partner, and someone who has had multiple experiences with more than one person. The scary "eight of ten teenagers" line needs to have "who have had sex" appended to it.

Secondly:

However, just 18 per cent of respondents had had sex before 16, the age of consent, which contradicts the impression of widespread underage sex and shows no increase on statistics from previous studies.

And finally - hidden at the bottom of the Guardian's Observer's coverage - it seems that the problem is that new, more explicit guidance and sex education is being passed over by schools because it remains voluntary:

The report's call for Sex and Relationships Education to be made compulsory in schools to help tackle what Teixeira calls 'widespread knowledge gaps' and to help pupils ensure their sexual welfare, was backed by CosmoGIRL magazine, which has been running a high-profile Just Say Know campaign.

Editor Celia Duncan said: 'Some of the findings in this report are shocking and underline the case for all secondary school pupils to be taught not just about how to create a baby, but also about how to handle a guy who is pressurising you to have sex.

'There are too many myths bandied about in the playground, such as 'you can't get pregnant your first time'. If pupils remain ignorant about sex, the consequences will be higher rates of STIs and unwanted pregnancies.'

Anyone clinging to the hope that abstinence might work (clue: it doesn't and leads to poorer sexual health overall) should note that better sex education would equip young women and men with the information to make the decision to not have sex - to be able, for example, to rebut the lie that first time sex doesn't get you pregnant. And notice how many of the stats above relate to discomfort or confusion over consent?

Better sex education isn't just about being able to take care of yourself when you say "yes" - it's about being informed and confident enought to say "no," as well.

scottish sex education reformed

The guidelines for sex education in Scottish schools is finally changing to allow teachers to give accurate and appropriate information about same-sex relationships. Cue Our Friends in the Robes:

But critics are furious about the changes. A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland said: "Before SHARE [Sexual Health and Relationships Education] is updated, we should be seeing results in terms of a reduction in teenage conceptions, sexually transmitted infections and abortions. All the indications are that these have actually got worse.

"To quite graphically equip children with information about same-sex relationships is appalling, outrageous and utterly unnecessary. Where was it decreed that every aspect of human sexuality has to be addressed in the school curriculum?"

I'm not enturely sure what teenage conception and abortion rates have to do with same-sex activity - unless it's the kind of same-sex activity that's actually Shakespearean, in which case everyone is disguised as everyone else and half of the people you thought were boys have a vagina and an estate just outside of Verona.

A person might think the Catholic Church in Scotland was opposed to all kinds of sex outside of marriage: oh, wait, they are.

The redundancy of comment on X from a group fundamentally opposed to X aside, let's note what radical and world-ending advice that schools will be able to impart:

- Protection from sexually transmitted diseases for lesbians and gay men, including information on female condoms for lesbians, and ensuring condoms used by men and women have quality kitemarks;
- How to access sexual health services for homosexuals;
- Same-sex crushes and the emotional side of homosexual relationships;
- The law on consent for homosexuals;
- Contacts for support groups and websites.

Truly, safe, legal consenting and disease free sex will be the end of the Catholic Chur... uh.. all human civilisation.

Giving people advice about something isn't the same thing as promoting it: that objection is based in the idea that many, many more people would be gay if The Global Conspiracy of Homo was allowed to advertise on TV and bus-shelters. It presumes that being gay is something you can be seduced into - ironically casting heterosexuality as a fragile and wilting flower that cannot withstand one extra vagina or surplus penis.

Opponents oppose sex ed that includes same-sex relationships because they know that it makes being gay more legitimate; it also reduces the chance of disease and social stigma that religious conservatives choose to believe is the punishment for ungody, unnatural behaviour.

Luckily, they can get fucked because they lost - all the way back in 2000 - in a change of law that abandoned section 28 and committed Scotland's councils to respect (gasp) "the value of stable family life in a child's development" and recognised "the need to ensure that the content of instruction provided in the performance of those functions is appropriate, having regard to each child's age, understanding and stage of development."

As ever, the objection to that move was the absence of the "no homos" sign over the drinking fountain: fortunately, the Scottish Parliament voted overwhelming that there was no place for that sentiment in a statement of ethics.

Scottish health officials should be commended for taking these steps: the only way our sexual health can improve as a culture is when we're informed and able to make our own decisions. And that applies to queer people too.

closet of the absurd

The movement for a constitutional ammendment banning same-sex marriage in the US is now within the realm of the theatre of the absurd:

The Senate Judiciary Committee moved its meeting today -- including the "mark-up" of a US Constitutional Amendment to restrict marriage equality -- from a public room in a Senate office building to the restricted access President's Room, off the floor of the Senate chamber, inside the US Capitol. According to a statement issued by the Human Rights Campaign, the room "is not open to the public and does not even have enough chairs for every Senator on the committee to sit."

With approval ratings in the gutter on every issue, the appearance of movement against the nasty queers is a way of whipping up support for the Republican party amongst social conservatives in time for mid-term elections - crucially, amongst the religious conservative base who is beginning to lose faith, so to speak, over a failure to deliver on certain election promises.

Yet the full glare of media and public attention would most likely widen the gap between moderate voters and the Republican party, further adding to the meme of a party held hostage to the demands of a minority of religious extremists. So the whole thing has to take place in the closet: how fitting.

more selective emphasis

Once more, a game of compare and contrast. First The Daily Mail:

Teenage girls are now more likely than boys to drink, smoke, steal and take drugs, a survey has shown.
In a disturbing confirmation of the spread of the 'ladette' culture, it found violence, aggression and self-destructive behaviour has spread alarmingly among girls over the past 20 years. [...]

The study of 14 and 15-year-olds was conducted by questionnaire, in schools under exam conditions, and the results compared with a similar one from 1985.

Professor Colin Pritchard, who led the research, said: 'Girls now significantly smoke and binge-drink more than boys. They truant, steal and fight at similar rates, and start under-age sex earlier than boys.'

And now, The Independent on the very same piece of research:

"The good news and, perhaps, unexpected, is that 2005 youngsters have less problematic behaviour than the 1985 cohort, and even with the problematic behaviour, drugs, drink and sex, this is still a minority activity," Professor Pritchard said.

So it's only alarming because the behaviour has spread to a minority of girls: the same behaviour in boys was historically accepted as juvenile masculinity. Ho hum.

move along, nothing to fear here

I'm trying very hard this morning not to think of the circumstances in which the stasi gathered its powers:

Neighbourhood wardens, community support officers, park keepers, housing officers and other frontline council staff should be given regular access to local police intelligence in an attempt to clamp down on antisocial behaviour and other low-level crime, under plans being examined by Downing Street. [...]

James Welch, legal director of Liberty, said: "Police intelligence is highly sensitive and can be very dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands. It should only be disclosed on an absolute need-to-know basis. Wardens do not receive the same specialist training that police do. Why is such sensitive information, seemingly irrelevant to their work, being given to them?"

Given that mindless scaremongering is something that I've freely decried in others, I'll add that this government's propensity for pushing back civil liberties in the name of civil order is not without historical precedent - and it's not positive precedent either. While we're not quite in stasi territory yet, we are about to acquire the kind of technology for surveillance that would have made the stasi drool in envy.

wait, there's more

As news of hundreds of missing passports is dragged out of the Home Office, another related entry in the catalogue of fuck-ups we call the national identity database appears:

The Home Office faced fresh controversy last night after ministers were accused of accidentally repealing the law which makes it an offence to have a forged passport.

In an extraordinary development, it was claimed that Labour's Identity Cards Act had repealed the existing laws before the new laws to replace them come into force.

One court case involving two men who were caught with forged passports has already had to be adjourned.

Wow. I mean - fucking wow. Is it so much to ask that the national identity database issue remain at a plateau of awfulness, rather than reveal ever upward spiralling peaks of incompetence?

thursday link-dump

I'm grinding through a thesis draft today, so a bit of a link dump:

Gendergreek - Prostitution: selling the sisters (out)

Saying that women ‘choose’ to be prostitutes is analagous to saying that women who live with partners who abuse them choose to do so. In the most literal of senses, this is correct. There are points in their narratives in which every abused woman could attempt an escape. But surely our feminist analysis should go beyond the most literal and superficial reading of ‘choice’ and critique the contexts in which such choice is made.

There's a very interesting discussion in the comments that I've yet to find time to join.

For the speech-act theorists amongst you, a paper on the legal implications of the word "fuck" (via Boing Boing).

The inflatable breasts dress (via we make money not art):

Now, you can pump up your breasts to whatever size you want, and adjust them on the fly. Because of the location of the valves, you can inflate your breasts before you put on the dress, or have someone else blow them up for you while you wear it.

Worth clicking through for some interesting commentary on cosmetic surgery and the inability of much media to cope with the sight of real, human nipples - as well as a series of other projects relating to clothes and body image.

Finally, something completely different - a story (via Bruce Schneier) on the vulnerabilities in the Diebold voting machines:

Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways.

Oh, and finally, finally - greetings cards for abstinence rings that kinda sorta look like greetings cards for cock-rings. Enjoy.

Hopefully I'll find the time and inspiration for something original later. :)

"blessed be the fruit"

Via Bitch PhD:

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant...

As ever, I'll point out the *amazing* absence of new guidelines requiring that men be treated as pre-virile - that their health-care and lifestyles be carefully monitored to ensure the fertility and viability of sperm. Just the ladies:

Dear god almighty. The federal government thinks all "females"--that's what we are, ladies, biological specimens, not people. Not women. All females who are "capable of conceiving a baby"--not becoming pregnant, "conceiving a baby"--are to treat themselves, and be treated, as "pre-pregnant." The federal government. From pubescence through menopause. Throughout highschool, college, and most of one's career.

Anyone around here ever read The Handmaid's Tale? More from Echidne of the Snakes:

And I'm still unhappy with the idea that all fertile women should live as if they might become pregnant tomorrow, even if they have no plans to have children any time soon. Consider alcohol. Drinking some red wine can be good for your heart but bad for an embryo. Should all women abstain from alcohol consumption, even at some risk to their own health?

Or take a more serious question: What happens when a medical treatment a fertile-age woman needs might also harm a potential fetus? Is the recommendation that the woman should suffer without the treatment, even if she has no plans of becoming pregnant? These are not idle questions.

asymmetrical prejudice

For anyone flying the flag of classical liberalism and claiming that queer people and their advocates are as intolerant of socially conservative Christians as that group is prejudiced towards "teh queer," it's worth remembering that gay advocate groups have not argued:

- that socially conservative Christians do not have the right to marry or adopt or assume next of kin rights because of their "lifestyle choices"

- that Christianity is a legitimate reason for a person to be denied housing or other goods and services

- that Christians should not be put in charge of teaching children because of the damaging effect it might have on impressionable minds

- that a refusal to have sex outside of a ritualistic union is unnatural or even perverse

- that Christians are going to hell if they do not immediately take up anal sex and go-go dancing.

- that a tendency towards paedophilia is an intrinsic quality of being a religious minister

- that discrimination based on religion (or religious sectarianism) shouldn't be taken seriously, because if the people affected wanted to they could just "stop believing"

- argued that the specific and even generic sex acts of socially conservative Christians are perverted and must not be described in school, even if to prevent the transmission of STI's.

It's not a complete list. :)

Sure, gay people and their advocates might not often like socially conservative Christians, but they still don't arrange mass-financed campaigns that try to deny them the right to live with the same rights as everyone else. They might occasionally argue that someone with prejudices not be in charge of fighting those same prejudices, but that's mainly as radical as it gets.

just not the best candidate for the job

I've been keeping track of various discussions on the Ruth Kelly appointment. Objections to objections (it's recursive blogging, y'know) seem to group around the following:

1. It's liberal fascism.

I'm not sure how many more times I can explain this: Kelly is entitled to her beliefs (religious or otherwise) but as those beliefs appear to contradict the demands of her job, wouldn't it be better if a different candidate was found? At very, very least - is it not slightly strange to put someone in charge of fighting a prejudice they havn't directly rejected? Or feel uncomfortable talking about publicly?

2. We shouldn't judge a politician on his or her personal opinions if they have declared they will have no impact on their political activity.

This excuse is a little defunct: we have already seen how Kelly's beliefs have guided her to vote, or rather, repeatedly not vote. While I don't think that individuals are totally unable to put aside personal opinion and act according to a greater good / collective agreement, we seem to have seen someone who has had great trouble with that up until now.

In fact, she's defended that specific political activity as personal activity because it took place under a free vote - a logic that works if you only count obedience to party political whipping as "real" political activity and ignore that possibility "free votes" of conscience might also consider the desires of constituents.

It's just not a comforting track record. I'm not arguing there's an absolute connection between personal beliefs and political activity, but I refuse to pretend that there's no connection at all, particularly on the basis of this particular politician's track record.

I'd also note that it's much easier to be tolerant of Kelly's reluctance to distance herself from the Catholic Church's position on gay people if you or no-one you care about has been described as intrinsically disordered.

down the memory hole

Sure, Margaret Thatcher can be a gay icon.. if we forget that she was the head of a political party that contained some of the most rabid homophobes in British politics and passed law that forbid local authorities from "promoting" homosexuality and slurred it as a "pretended family relationship," making it difficult or impossible to take action against homophobic bullying in schools.

But aside from any regard for history or politics, she's a perfect fit.

informed choice in scotland

Susan Deacon has restated her position on contraception for women drug-users (see here for context of the debate):

The former minister said mothers should be offered the contraceptive implants in maternity wards after they gave birth.

She said although it cost about £80 to £90 for a long-acting contraceptive implant.

"It is not being made universally available to substance-misusing women at the times and in the right places. Every woman should have access to a range of advice and services to enable them to make informed choices about their reproductive health and fertility.

"There is more that can be done to make these services more widely available."

It shouldn't be exciting when a politician affirms a commitment to informed choice on reproduction - but it's rare enough to remind me that it needs our support. If you have a spare few minutes, show her your suppport on this issue:

Parliament:
Susan Deacon MSP
The Scottish Parliament
Edinburgh
EH99 1SP

Telephone: 0131 348 5753
Fax: 0131 348 5904
Holyrood E-mail: Susan.Deacon.msp@scottish.parliament.uk

If you have another few minutes, you can try emailing the current health minister - Andy Kerr - and ask him if he supports his colleague's thinking: Andy.Kerr.msp@scottish.parliament.uk.

I really need to do some more reading on this issue - the Scottish Drugs Forum seems like one place to start. Any other suggestions?

non-pornographic naked sailors (and the BNP)

Despite literally minutes of searching, I couldn't find you a copy of Richard Barnbrook's non-pornographic naked sailor film.

However, pinknews.co.uk manages some screenshots and a sample of the not-at-all homoerotic poetry:

The film, HMS Discovery, A Love Story, contains scenes of men undressing and touching each other, coupled with nudity and sexual activities, the paper claims. The film says, “A harsh scowl masks your smile, but weakens when your nakedness inspires.

“It bares you like a foreskin's folds ... you will make of yourself a beauty, hard as rusting trucks and slag. Fists in a toilet that smells of piss ... open-mouthed, I shall dream of altar-boys."

You see? There's sinply nothing to see here - certainly no hypocrisy - and we should all stop talking about this story.

Or perhaps not.

monday morning: sex and religion fiesta

Two stories that I think go very well together - first, the news that virgnity pledges are a miserable failure (LA Times via feministe):

Virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, have little staying power among those who take them, a Harvard study has found.

More than half of the adolescents who make the signed public promises give up on their pledges within a year, according to the study released last week.

Research in other studies also suggests that such pledges have little health benefit - and in fact may lead to riskier sexual behaviour:

The reason for the lack of health benefit, according to an editorial summary of the study [2], seems to be that pledgers were less likely to use condoms when they did become sexually active, were more likely to have anal or oral sex (almost always without a condom), and were less likely to seek and receive medical care if they did get a sexually transmitted infection.

Okay - then story two is this one from Think Progress about the use of contraceptives amongst Catholics and Christian evangelical women:

88 percent of Catholic women currently use birth control, roughly the same rate as other Americans. [Catholics for a Free Choice]

70 percent of evangelical women are sexually active and don’t wish to become pregnant. 90 percent of these women use birth control. [2002 National Survey of Family Growth]

Clearly, these women recognize what their religious leaders do not: that responsible sexual activity is a normal and healthy part of life; that not every sexual act is intended for reproduction; and that preventing unintended pregnancy – by using contraception – is a responsible, moral decision.

Can the media please stop treating the opinions on contraception of people opposed to sex with such reverence? Abstinence and virignity pledges (and bans on the pill and abortion) aren't about good sexual health: they're about social control, and then mainly of women. It certainly has very little do with the consensus of medical opinion.

Religious leaders are, as ever, entitled to their opinions - but we shouldn't believe that they're any more qualified to address issues of STI transmission than ensuring the flight worthiness of a Boeing 747: they're simply not qualified. The fact that sex is a religious issue for some does not mean that it should be a religious issue for the rest of us.

cardinal o'connor: fighting discrimination.. through discrimination

There's no hyprocite like a hypocrite in a pointy hat:

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, regarded as the spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain, dismissed his press secretary, Stephen Noon, three years ago. Sources suggested that the Cardinal was prepared to accept Mr Noon’s homosexual orientation but when he was presented with irrefutable evidence that he had a partner and was living an openly gay lifestyle he felt he had to act.

The row is embarrassing for the Archbishop because, although Mr Noon was dismissed in 2003, details have emerged only days after Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor wrote in a letter to The Times: “The Church has consistently spoken out against any discrimination against homosexual persons, and will continue to do so.” He was writing to counter suggestions that the deeply held Catholic faith of Ruth Kelly might be at odds with her new role as Equality Minister.

The Cardinal was so committed to fighting discrimination against gay people that he had no choice other than to.. discriminate against a gay person. Bravo - maybe inhaling a little less incense might help. Maybe there's some kind of elaborate moral ju-jitsu at work here, where discrimination is used against itself. Perhaps not.

While the Church might claim to "speak out" against homophobia, it continues to describe homosexuality as "a strong tendency ordered towards an inherent moral evil" - which to anyone not a bishop would sound rather like an argument which legitimises discrimination. Because it is.

more medical advice (from the horse's arse)

Let's see if we can see the exact moment at which Prince Charles shifts from generic health advice to talking out of His Royal Whazzoo. Oh, it's right from the beginning:

The Prince of Wales will urge doctors to start using unconventional techniques such as chiropractic, acupuncture and herbal medicines to treat serious illnesses, in a speech to the World Health Organisation next week.

Prince Charles will claim that such major chronic illnesses as diabetes and heart disease, which affect tens of millions worldwide, could be successfully treated using complementary medicines and a "whole body" approach to healthcare. [...]

The Prince is expected to argue that doctors should put less reliance on conventional drug-based treatments and take a more "holistic" view by putting greater emphasis on preventive healthcare, diet and healthy lifestyles.

Let's start with the fact that a 'whole-body' approach need not preclude the use of conventional drug-based treatment. Let's note that if you're a physiotherapist or an occupational therapist, or.. what's the word.. a doctor.. then this will form a part of your treatment and assessment of a patient. The fact that some doctors have less time then they'd like to treat patients and may be more reliant on drugs than they'd like in the age of performance quotas is a different issue from whether a treatment is 'natural' or holistic.

Let's continue with the realisation that preventive healthcare (diet and healthy lifestyles) will rely upon existing empirical science that forms the basis of traditional medicine anyway. Why do we know some foods are better for us than others? Because we have the evidence of observational based science.

Let's note that 'successful' treatment will mainly rely on procedures that actually work - so diet and drugs (with science and evidence that shows it works) rather than acupuncture and chiropractic (which really doesn't). Let's notice that this latter group of treatments aren't really 'medicine' in any real sense of the word.

Let's notice that herbal medicines work - when they work - because they have active chemicals in them that work in a scientifically explicable manner, and not because they are 'alternative' or 'herbal' or grown in organic mud.

It's actually very irresponsible and rather dangerous to suggest treating serious illnesses with unproven remedies - or even worse, remedies which have a history of evidence demonstrating the highest forms of quackery. A real, licensed medical doctor could find themselves involved in a malpractice suit if they chose 'alternative medicine' (which is either not medicine, or not alternative) over proven remedies.

Prince Charles is of course free to state any opinion he chooses: however, he should realise that he's not being critcised for speaking, but for what he chooses to say.

I really did tell you so

Critics of the national identity database rarely say things like 'I hate to say it but I told you..' That limited form of empathy vanishes for this govenrment because it's determined to go ahead with the scheme no matter what moral, financial or techical problems emerge. Even a giant flaming turd of a problem that cannot be flushed or smothered is held aloft as proof of problems that the ID database will solve, rather than exacerbate.

So let's all glory in this case-study of human interaction with supposedly secure systems - where the human is always the weakest link:

An internal investigation at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has found that civil servants are colluding with organised criminals to steal personal identities on "an industrial scale".

Ministers have been privately warned that the investigation will show that hundreds of thousands of stolen personal details have been ripped off from official databases, often with inside help. Key personal details such as national insurance numbers can be used to commit benefit fraud, set up false bank accounts and obtain official documents such as passports.

Goodness - the only thing worse would be if corrupt civil servants had access to all of our biometric information as well.

still not taking rape seriously

When the Amnesty International report on attitudes toward rape was released - and decried - I found myself darkly asking who exactly had to get raped for the issue to be taken seriously. Will this do?

Extraordinary figures showing the extent of the rape of children under 16 are revealed today. They reveal the number of victims is nearly 5,000 a year - yet only 7 per cent of the attackers are convicted.

It is the first time the Home Office has released such statistics because the ages of rape victims were recorded for the first time only in 2004-5. In that period, 974 girls aged under 13 and a further 3,006 under 16 were raped in England and Wales, while 293 boys under 13 and 320 aged under 16 were raped. Only one in 15 assailants - a total of 303 - were found guilty in court. Senior police officers believe actual numbers of rapes may be far higher because many children do not report the crime.

I think it will probably be a little more difficult for critics to describe these particular victims as (and I paraphrase not very much at all) out-all-night, alcopop-swilling, scantily-clad whores who have it coming - though, I'm sure, not impossible.

The conviction rates (maginally above that for adult cases) is further evidence of systematic failure of our legal system's ability to investigate and prosecute cases of sexual violence - and quite possibly our culture's ability to recognise that it's happening at all.

single reversible prejudice logic gates

Seeing as I've already gone past the saturation point on the Ruth Kelly story, there's no harm is pointing this one out:

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales was last night drawn into a furious row over a senior aide sacked because of his homosexuality.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, was personally involved in the dismissal of his personal Press secretary, who is also a devout Catholic.

Stephen Noon, who has held a series of senior appointments in the Commons, was told that being gay was 'incompatible' with his position in the Church.

So, gay people are incompatible with supporting the Catholic Church, but being Catholic is not incompatible with supporting gay people. Kelly's position is looking more piously magnanimous (lit. "like a crock of horse shit") with every passing hour.

every time you ovulate, the pope cries

Sometimes this planet is beyond parody:

Polish state television has agreed not to air ads for alcohol, contraceptives, lingerie – or even sanitary towels – when Pope Benedict XVI visits later this month, an official said today.

Suggestions of sex will also be strictly forbidden according to the guidelines, as will be commercials for explosives, though none are known to exist.

Yes, only a ban on things that don't exist can protect the Pope.

*sigh*

ruth kelly versus the pope

Oh, that tricksy pontiff:

"Only the foundation of complete and irrevocable love between man and woman is capable of forming the basis of a society that becomes the home of all men," Benedict told a convention of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute today. The pope said "confusing marriage with other types of weak love" should be avoided.

Would Ruth Kelly like to join the leader of her religion in finding same-sex relationships to a form of 'weak love'?

A person might be led to believe that the Vatican thinks that same-sex relationships are not equal in value to straight ones: I wonder what the Minister for equality thinks.

(I once more marvel at the celibate man lecturing others on the wonders of heterosexual loving, ooh yeah.)

mini me

Busy day at work so couldn't get away to post until now: consider this one of those open threads where you can post your own personal avatar:



Found via DK. For anyone looking to waste even more time on an avatar, there's Hero Machine - and, of course, Second Life.

smile for the (CCTV) camera

We must be about a week away from plans to announce new standardised faces which will make identification easier:

Sharper CCTV images are needed so shots of suspected criminals can be matched to the proposed identity card database, a Home Office minister has said.

Baroness Scotland told the Lords poor quality CCTV currently runs the risk of innocent people being wrongly arrested. "Digital pictures... will enable us, particularly when ID cards come in, to identify those who are responsible for very serious crime," she added.

Once again, the Home Office decides to spend more of our money on a technology that doesn't really work. Given that facial recognition scans only worked for 69% of the "quota" group and 48% of disabled volunteers under ideal test circumstances, how accurate do you think even high resolution CCTV is going to be? Maybe the Home Office can pass a law requiring us to sidle past CCTV cameras crab-style, so that a full portrait image can be captured each time. Idiots.

on hair and other female tragedies

I had to read this article in The Times several times before I could work out what the hell was going on:

So nice for all of us, from J-Lo (photographs of whose steel-grey parting were all over the papers this week) to the present writer, to find in Kidman a role model not merely for life's trivial disappointments — divorce, death and so on — but for the real tragedy of female existence: that chilling moment when one's tumbling golden locks begin to turn to straggling, witchy grey.

I really, really hope that this is supposed to be darkly ironic, some kind of extended parody of an educated middle-class woman mourning the cruel burden of being an educated middle-class woman:

Here I relish the ambiguous qualities of Miss — its complex cadence of lost love, lingering possibility and a certain racy defiance of convention. As for Ms, with its distressing upper partials of miserable and misery — no one, not even a Government official, has yet attempted to call me that.

Only the fat cheque for writing rambling columns for The Times can soothe the fevered brow, etc. etc.

compulsory contraception versus informed choice

I move that Duncan McNeil be sterilised until we can prove that he won't father children as stupid as he is:

Duncan McNeil, Labour MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, said there was a real problem of drug addicts having children and the Executive should look at adding some sort of oral contraception to the heroin substitute which is prescribed to thousands of addicts.

Mr McNeil did not say whether the contraceptive-laced methadone should be compulsory, but he argued that most addicts could probably be persuaded of the merits of the scheme.

What are the magic words missing from this? Let's try that again:

Duncan McNeil, Labour MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, said there was a real problem of female drug addicts having children and the Executive should look at adding some sort of oral contraception to the heroin substitute which is prescribed to thousands of female addicts.

Mr McNeil did not say whether the contraceptive-laced methadone should be compulsory, but he argued that most women addicts could probably be persuaded of the merits of the scheme.

I believe that male drug addicts are free to continue fucking with impunity; suggesting compulsory (though highly reversible) vasectomies would presumably be a step too far.

If addicts can be "persuaded" of the merits of this idea, then there's no need to even suggest spiking one treatment with another. It's a proposal that also depends on an almost complete ignorance of how either methadone or oral contraceptives are prescribed.

As a spokeswoman for the Scottish Drugs Forum points out, "the real issue here is that too many women drug users are not getting access or receiving proper contraceptive advice and treatment." One rational measure, put forward by Susan Deacon, the former Labour health minister, is to offer the "informed choice" of long-term contraceptive injections. However, that solution is only workable if you address the underlying problem: access to and provision of information and health-care.

on art and politics (now with extra penis)

Another serving of schadenfreude:

A BNP leader has produced and directed a "gay pornographic film", despite his party's criticism of indecency and hatred of gays. [...]

The film, made in 1989, has been described by one cinema website as "Marxist gay cinema from conceptual artist Barnbrook". It attempted to emulate the style of film-makers such as Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway, although it achieved no critical acclaim.

Wow. That's particularly brutal criticism: Barnbrook is a failed Marxist avant-garde pornographer. It's amateurish, student homo-erotica. Oh, if only he'd had access to YouTube..

In its election manifesto, the BNP asked local parents if they wanted to " prohibit the teaching of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle choice". [...]

Mr Barnbrook, who takes the production and direction credits in the film, denied writing erotic poetry played across the footage. "I am not interested in this," he said. "It was an art film, end of story. It was not a bloody porn film. It is not about homosexuality ­ it's about sexuality. The only nudity in it is a couple of guys running in a river."

Rule change, everyone: the whipping of semi-naked men by other semi-naked men, with occasional moments of mock fellatio does not refer to homosexuality in any way. If sailors want to swim naked together while poetry about foreskins is projected on-screen, then it's entertainment that everyone can enjoy: it's certainly not "wrong and unhealthy for any community" (BNP manifesto, 2005).

I think we can all embrace - in a sexual, but not homoerotic manner - this suprisingly mature new understanding of sexuality on the part of Mr Barnbrook, as well as his refreshing ability to refuse to call a piece of art 'pornographic' simply because it contains nudity and simulated cock-suckery. Of particular merit is his capacity to deep-throat so much hypocritical bull without being choked by it.

However, as the value of art is often in the eye of the beholder, I will be scrupulously fair and attempt to provide a link to a torrent for Barnbrook's film in the near future so that you can judge for yourself.

fresh dogs, please: the hounding of ruth kelly

A couple of interesting comments from a thread over at Comment is Free regarding a call to stop "hounding" Ruth Kelly:

If her conscience prevents her from taking part in a vote, how can she claim to introduce the subject of gay rights to parliament in a way that is impartial? How could she persuade others to adopt a measure in which she doesn't believe and involves a battle with her own conscience?

and

"There will, I confidently predict, be not the slightest shred of evidence to show that her private beliefs colour her political actions."
Is that not the definitive version of a hypocrite?

I'm continually amazed that defenders of Kelly fail to recognise that her personal beliefs make her, at very best, an uneasy bedfellow to her political responsibilities. Kelly has herself admitted that matters of personal conscience - her feelings on consent, adoption etc. etc. - have had a direct effect on her political activity: not turning up to vote.

The fact that there might be any gay or lesbian people in her constituency expecting her to vote in their interests seems to be entirely ignored in the rush to defend her personal beliefs. Representative democracy, ho!

How many more ways can we say this? Surely even Opus Dei must be thinking that she's a bad candidate for this job.

embryo selection to reduce cancer risk approved

Embryo selection to protect against cancer has been approved. Following on from Phil M's comment the other day, I wanted to highlight this description of the method:

PGD involves selecting a healthy embryo for implantation into the mother's womb during IVF. The procedure entails removing a single cell from the fertilised embryo once it starts to divide in the laboratory. If genetic tests on that cell are normal, the embryo is implanted into the womb and the pregnancy continues normally. Currently 10 clinics in the UK are licensed to provide the service for serious genetic conditions such as cystic fibrosis.

Once again, we're exposed to the slippage between where "life" starts and pregnancy begins, which forms the basis of the pro-life opposition to embryo research: is it implantation or fertilisation? Is a fertilised but unimplanted embryo enormous potential short of humanity, or a full human "life" requiring the protection of any grown child or adult?

It would seem that most research scientists working with embryos would tend to answer yes to the first of both questions, while pro-lifers adopt the latter positions. I'm aware those are broad strokes - but does it sound about right?

CORE are also back with their claim that this represents a quest for eugenic perfection, despite that the fact that this is a rare genetic trait, thankfully common to few families, not all of whom are going to want to use this procedure. If it's a quest for perfection, it's entirely ineffectual. While I'm free of cancer and probably not carrying this particular gene trait, I wouldn't count myself as perfect: the bar has yet to drop quite that far. :)

Once more, it's scare-mongering used to conceal a devotion to the welfare of the embryo, seemingly regardless of circumstance. I'll do a little reading to check - but it would seem logical that CORE also opposes IVF, given the number of 'waste' embryos that procedure can involve - something strangely unreported whenever they are approached for opinion on that subject. It's the same blindness that allows groups fundmentally opposed to abortion (such as LIFE) to comment on proposed changes in abortion law without that basic premise being reported.

outsourcing my sarcasm to disney

The US government has decided not to close Guantanamo even though the UK government asked nicely.

"Oh, there's a big surprise. That's an incred--I think I'm gonna have a heart attack and die from not surprise!"

Iago, Aladdin (1992)

ruth kelly's doublethink

A quick post because objections to Ruth Kelly are already being framed as a kind of religious intolerance. To make that claim means completely failing to recognise the doublethink at work here.

If a person is seemingly confirmed in certain prejudices and has made no attempt to recant them, is it not in the slightest bit odd that the same person would be put in charge of challenging those very same prejudices?

Kelly is fully entitled to whatever religious beliefs she chooses - but to pretend that the Catholic Church's position on gay people is compatible with advancing or protecting gay people's interests is ludicrous.

Unless we embrace a kind of internalised hypocrisy as a virtue, her beliefs make her a bad candidate for this job. She's entitled to those beliefs but we can't pretend they don't raise huge questions about her competence to take on this role.

ruth kelly is going to hell

Mere days after the queer blogosphere starts asking questions, the issue of Ruth Kelly's suitability to oversee equality legislation surfaces in the mainstream press:

The newly appointed government minister responsible for equality is facing controversy after she refused to say whether she believed homosexuality was a sin.

Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Communities, a committed Catholic and member of the Opus Dei group, was embroiled in a renewed row over her religious beliefs yesterday. And critics attacked her new role as the Government's equality champion after it emerged she had missed a series of votes on equal rights since 1997.

To miss one vote on equality might just be unfortunate, to miss twelve on issues ranging from consent to adoption looks like you're hiding something. This has long been the strategy of choice for MP's wishing to avoid having their colours nailed to the mast: the strategy stops working when you're made Minister overseeing the issues you've been hiding from.

Kelly's verbal fencing of the personal versus the political is a little irrelevant - though it is a little fun to hear her sweat:

Interviewed on BBC Radio Five Live, Ms Kelly twice declined to say whether she thought homosexuality was a sin. [...]

Pressed again, she replied: "I don't think it is right for politicians to start making moral judgements about people. What I think the question is, is what are my political views? As a politician, those are the ones that I'm accountable for to the public."

So a member of Opus Dei, whose whole life is supposed to be shaped by her religious beliefs, thinks that there's no link between personal beliefs and political decisions? That personal beliefs have no political consequences? I supposed that would be true if you were an entirely vapid hypocrite: it's certainly an interesting "defence" to hear from a government minister.

Kelly also fails to understand that to refuse to reject the characterisation of homosexuality as sinful is itself a moral judgment. Someone needs to ask her how she would have voted on consent or adoption if she hadn't been unavoidably detained, again and again. Someone needs to ask her if she's prepared to prosecute "Christian" owned businesses who continue to discriminate against gay people.

Someone needs to ask her if she supports Cardinal O'Brien (head of the Catholic Church in Scotland) in believing that gay people live short, unstable and perverted lives.

The claim to collective ministerial accountability - that she is committed to the policies of the Blair government - is an argument that she has no spine of her own. Whatever Kelly might personally believe is irrelevant because she's a good Blairite: when he says "Jump!", she says "You're wonderful."

Such blind loyalty is not comforting, because it's a loyalty to Blair rather than to a principal of equality - and as a rule, queers and women are looking for a Minister rather than a puppet.

This tap-dance is, as I suggested, almost irrelevant. If Kelly is a devout Catholic - and as a member of Opus Dei there's no reason to think otherwise - then she follows the teaching of the church that homosexuality is sinful and harmful, that gay people are deserving of pity and that homosexuality itself is little more than a developmental disorder linked to paedophilia.

Rather pleasingly, this means that if Kelly is true to her word and supports gay people to the fullest extent - she is endangering her immortal soul by aiding and abetting the Global Conspiracy of Homo. It certainly puts things in perspective: what's a little hypocrisy when it comes to eternal damnation? Why, those damn queers should even be a little grateful.

(This is the post of the day, so I'm going to keep it at the top of the page for a little while. And yes, I'm using "queer" in its most irritating, inclusive sense.)

when furniture attacks: my working week

Dear Members of the General Public,

I sit behind a desk and answer questions. Please do not assume that I am, in fact, a desk and thus unworthy of simple courtesy. If you fail to respect a basic human dignity on my part, I will club you to death with my four wooden limbs.

Yours,

BD.

sixth carnival of bent attractions

The sixth Carnival of Bent Attractions is up over at Multidimensional Me: I have a post, as does Winter at Desperate Kingdoms. My personal award for insomnia driven clarity of thought goes to this:

Confession the second: I'm prejudiced and intolerant. I am prejudiced against and intolerant of sexists, racists, chauvinists, homophobes, and conservatives. The difference is I don't incite violence against them.

It's a great read and very well edited.

possible evidence of "stupid design"

FYI, the pop-tart of public intellectuals is due in Edinburgh this week to tell us that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and that man co-existed with dinosaurs because they were both on the Ark:

Evolution? "God created man in his own image. Each species is utterly separate, so the idea that humans could have evolved from apes is completely unfeasible. Neanderthal man was not a stepping stone on the way to homo sapiens; man was created perfect, so Neanderthal man was a degeneration from that perfection." In other words, the exact opposite of evolutionary theory.

The idea that men evolved from apes is one of the more instantly dismissable critiques of evolutionary theory - because it's not a part of evolutionary theory.

A friend told me that he's due to "debate" someone somewhere on the University campus: will try and find out more.

is it a ghost? no, it's a hack in a sheet

I think this story might be a tiny bit filled with bollocks:

Coventry University is offering the chance to look into haunted houses, extra-sensory perception and "the survival of bodily death".

Tony Lawrence, director of the two-year parapsychology course, said it would be "controversial yet thought-provoking".
The focus will be the "middle ground" between religion and science, he added.

Ah, non-secular, non-religious "humanist" paranormal studies. That's perfectly clear, then.

The divide between religion and science is presented here as a difference of belief systems, which rather misses the point that - for example - the science of aerodynamics keeps a plane in the air whether you believe in it or not. On the face of the sales pitch, the course seems so determined to avoid 'passing judgment' - and presumably turning off true believers - that it's devoid of critical involvement that might make this sound like an academic programme.

Extra-sensory perception - where two people seem to communicate without using sound, vision, touch or smell - will also be looked at.

Dr Lawrence said: "We've got to look at what people are experiencing.

"No one has bothered to look, so people's view of the world has been divided into two components: the secular and humanist, and the religious.

No-one has looked at the human perceptual experience of the paranormal? Let me hit the bell I keep for these occasions: wrrrronnggg! Wrrronggg! The traditional academic study of parapsychology has repeatedly included the examination perceptual and physical phenomena - and, very frequently, has found rational (i.e. science based) explanations.

More frequently, that study has found that extra-sensory perception doesn't exist, in double-blind peer reviewed studies where ESP has spectacularly failed to be reproduceable, detetctable etc. etc.

Any unexplained phenomena is just that: currently without explanation, not permanently inexplicable. It certainly doesn't occupy some space "beyond" current frames of definition. I've read my post-structural theory: I recognise bollocks, okay?

The sales pitch doesn't get any better:

The course also looks at people's interest in the spiritual and paranormal, as seen on TV, in films and in books. It promises "an honest, open systematic examination of the evidence for these exceptional human experiences".

Student will use yoga and meditation "to extend or enhance their personal development".

A systematic examination of the 'evidence' would hopefully consider the quality of that 'evidence.' Fictional and anecdotal accounts are at best hugely unreliable and uniformly calling them all "evidence" is intellectually dishonest. Thinking that a non-judgemental assesment of such "evidence" is somehow "honest" is laughable. I suppose we should be thankful we avoided the evidence-proof tango.

There's certainly room in academia for a (sociological) study of why people adopt specific explanations for certain 'exceptional human experiences' (hey, it's already happening) but to pretend there's some kind of anthropological approach that isn't evidence or observation based is bull. Again, there's no mysterious 'third way' - study is either evidence based, or not, and it's only as reliable as that source material. There's little virtue in a discipline that gathers evidence but has no interest in assessing its validity.

It confuses me why Dr Lawrence would seek to screw over his own discipline with this kind of language: it's the soft sell of a discipline that requires the most rigorous investigation if it hopes to be more than an extended episode of 'Most Haunted.' I get the feeling that this might well be a case of 'over ambitious press release' syndrome, where the pitch of an exciting new course is twisted beyond recognition. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

*sigh*

thanks

I've got to get back to work - so I'll be posting more later tonight: I just wanted to mention that I really appreciate everyone who leaves comments here, regardless (of course) of whether they agree with me or not. :)

cancer is bad, m'kay?

Can we at least agree that preventing cancer is a better idea than trying to treat cancer?:

WOMEN with inherited forms of breast cancer will be allowed to select embryos free from genes that can cause the disease. The recommendation will be approved tomorrow by the Government's fertility watchdog. [...]

The genes covered by the recommendations carry a lifetime cancer risk of 80 per cent, which can be substantially reduced by preventive surgery, such as a double mastectomy, chosen by many women who test positive for BRCA1 or BRCA2.

Critics said that the move marked a further step down a "slippery slope", which was permitting screening for ever less serious genetic traits. "The current calculations put late onset of these conditions at an 80 per cent risk level, and for diseases that are treatable," Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said. "A previous licence decision was based on a penetration rate of 90 per cent. Will it be 50-50 next time?"

Patient groups, however, welcomed the recommendation as a measure that would help families that have suffered genetic disease in several generations.

The slippery-slope-as-cliff-face is nice little piece of scare-mongering; it also presumes that action taken to prevent genetic diseases from being passed to later generations is always morally dubious. The key, it would seem, is what traits or conditions we describe as diseases: I'm pretty sure there's no controversy over the nature of cancer as, you know, a bad thing.

I'm also not sure whose interests CORE thinks it acts in when it argues for the continuance of hereditary cancer risk - presumably the embryos who might grow up to die from cancer. At the very least, I'd challenge the right of CORE to decide on my behalf what constitutes a 'serious' genetic trait.

While the "slippery slope" argument can sound persuasive, it fails to recognise that these licences are issued individually on the basis of their own merits: precedence has rahter greater weight in the public imagination than the minds of doctors and fertility experts. It also assumes that there is no cultural limit to an acceptance of genetic intervention; CORE, seeing their own threshold passed, impose their own concerns on a broader, more tolerant culture.

Presuming - for a moment - that we commonly reject genetic tampering for "aesthetic" reasons (hair colour, height etc. etc.) what is the moral case against removing the risk of genetic traits which only carry a "low risk" of terminal disease? If we can prevent a disease which has a 50% chance of occuring, why shouldnt we? What's the argument against preventing cancer, beyond claiming it might lead to less desirable forms of intervention?

CORE's moral code seemingly prohibits all intervention, disavowing any possiblity of an intervention which is both pragmatic and moral in its own right: it certainly ignores the moral code which says that limiting the risk of conditions like cystic fibrosis is not only acceptable but rational.

Absent from The Time's coverage of CORE's objections - but present in the BBC's - is the bogeyman of genetic cleansing:

Josephine Quintavalle, director of the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "PGD is currently nothing more than a weapon of destruction, aimed at the ruthless elimination of any embryo which does not conform to eugenic concepts of perfection.

"Given the permissive track record of the HFEA, it is hardly surprising that we now see them recommending the inclusion of lower penetrance cancer susceptibility on the growing hit list of undesirable genetic conditions to be put to the test."

Quintavalle creates a false binary here, where an embryo carrying a 90% risk of inherited cancer is imperfect, and that same embyro minus the cancer causing genes is perfect. The pursuit of perfection is a creation of CORE intended to scare us; it's also couched in the rhetoric of anti-abortion activists.

The argument that HFEA is morally unqualified conceals CORE's own strict moral code, an absolute respect for the human embryo (to quote their website) which is not widely shared. CORE's commitment to the human embryo beyond any issue of viability or life expectancy is certainly not widely replicated; their code would also seem to problematise (if not deny) abortion in the event of rape, incest or a threat to the life of the mother.

If CORE is genuinely interested in an ethical debate, it would do better than to engage in speculative scare-mongering - or assuming that everyone shares their absolute beliefs.

more fun with UKIP: cheap at half the price

Another UKIP story to be filed under schadenfreude:

As leader of the anti-immigration UK Independence Party, Roger Knapman has railed against eastward expansion of the European Union and opposed the use of imported labour.

However, political doctrine appears to have given way to the need for thrifty home improvement; Mr Knapman has hired cheap Polish builders to do up his country mansion, it was revealed yesterday.

Mr Knapman, an MEP and the UKIP's leader since 2002, recruited the workers through his son, whose company specialises in bringing foreign labour to Britain.

The men have been at Mr Knapman's grade-II listed home in the village of Coryton, west Devon, for 11 months. They sleep dormitory-style in the attic.

I understand the new UKIP slogan is "Buy British (Except When Polish Is Cheaper And Hopefully No-One Finds Out)." Remember, immigrants are only cool when they are half-price.

temporary prescott related blindness

Sometimes a headline needs a few extra words to avoid unexpected mental imagery:

Police probe Prescott sex claim

knives out for the uk life league

Less we forget that anti-abortion activists rely on fear rather than fact:

In a separate court case last week, Veronica Connolly, 50, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, was convicted of sending pictures of aborted foetuses to pharmacies in Birmingham in protest at use of the morning after pill. Her case has been referred to a higher court for sentencing.

Both Atkinson and Connolly were described yesterday as "activists" in the UK Life League, a militant anti-abortion group which has adopted American-style tactics of harassment and intimidation.

The group's leader, James Dowson, a former member of the Orange Lodge in Northern Ireland, said: "They are the first martyrs and they certainly won't be the last. This is the beginning of the firming up of our campaign ... Unless we do things like [this] we won't get the issue taken seriously. We want to put ourselves between the butcher's knife and the baby."

Even a minimal understanding of the morning after pill (or indeed human biology) would tell you that there's no foetus or baby involved: it involves a cluster of cells so small as to be imperceptible to the naked eye. It's also a cluster of cells which the female body rejects about 40% of the time without any outside intervention. Strangely, the UK Life League have yet to ask for women to submit their used sanitary towels for emergency recovery procedures.

The UK Life League want very much to be martyrs: in the interests of suffering to protect life, can I suggest that they each sell a kidney on the black market and donate the proceeds to premature baby care research? I am prepared to supply as many butcher's knives as are needed.

women's rights, shuffled

Emma at Gendergeek rather brilliantly draws attention to a largely unseen consequence of the recent cabinet re-shuffle:

The bit that concerns me is that the Minister of Women is no longer Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Media, Culture and Sport, and lifetime feminist and proponent of women’s rights. It is now Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for the new portfolio of Communities and Local Government. Ruth Kelly is a member of Opus Dei, and ardently pro-life.

For all their potential merits (I'm being kind, here) Opus Dei can't be described as anything like the moderate or liberal wing of the Catholic Church. While I'm not assuming that Kelly will be unable to make independent judgments, she has put herself in a position where conflict is likely.

Kelly is both head of the new Department for Communities and Government - with responsibility for "equality policy, including policy on race, faith, gender and sexual orientation" - and the Minister for Women.

(Rather curiously, these roles are separate from the work of the Women and Equality Unit which is now part of the Department of Trade and Industry. Hmm.)

These roles carry the expectation that she will be the in-house cheer-leader for women's and GLBT rights: political agendas that include contraceptive freedoms, access to abortion, same-sex marriage and adoption, all issues on which the Catholic Church has mounted continued opposition.

Catholic teaching has also shyed away from explicit sex education - a potentially worrying influence given today's news of an apparently low level of knowledge of the risk of STIs amongst young people.

For a taste of potential conflicts between faith and policy, we only have to look as far as Scotland - where leading members of the clergy have been far from shy in their opposition to plans to open adoption to unmarried and same-sex couples. Though presented as pragmatism, such opposition has repeated some of the most persistently ugly lies about gay people:

"Homosexual unions are notoriously fragile and unstable, and the small number of homosexual couples living together make the suggestion that this measure would increase the number of potential adoptive parents unrealistic."

Despite these dire sounding predictions, we can only judge Kelly on her future actions: it's perhaps fortunate that a number of contentious bills on gay rights have already passed through the UK Parliament, avoiding a situation where she might have had to campaign for policies to which she was personally opposed.

What we really need is for someone to interview Kelly and ask her a few direct questions: as Minister for Women, does she support sex education for young women that includes contraception and abortion? How does she propose we address the link between virulent homophobia and certain religious beliefs, including Islam and Catholicism?

Does she count access to contraception and abortion as a woman's right? How, if at all, does she view reproductive freedom (or the right to choose) as a basic women's right?

What would you ask her?

on criminalising the victims of human-trafficking

More terrifying news of the human-traffic trade in Britain:

Three months ago police believed women were being sold for between £3,000 and £4,000. Now, they say, officers have found that trafficked women - particularly virgins - are being sold between trafficking gangs for as much as £8,000.

"The picture now is very different to pre-Pentameter," [the investigation to combat trafficking] said Grahame Maxwell, deputy chief constable of South Yorkshire, who is programme director of the operation. "We've realised that younger women and virgins are being sold for twice as much as we thought."

He added: "Many women are being held against their will in normal residential streets, and neighbours are completely unaware - we didn't realise the extent of this. There are very few places in Britain, if any, where this is not happening."

This article - distressing but worth reading - also notes how our current law criminalises the highly vulnerable victims of sex-trafficking, treating them as illegal immigrants and oftentimes placing them in detention centres for return, "in spite of the fact that branches of the same criminal networks who brought them into Britain await them in their country of origin."

I think we need to seriously consider how we might offer asylum as an option for the victims of sex-trafficking: anything else feels like washing our hands and hoping the problem doesn't come back.

crisis in rape case evidence-gathering

It's hard not to think that rape remains a second-class crime when you get news like this:

Doctors have warned the government that the system for evidence-gathering in rape and sexual assault cases is in crisis and could drive the record low conviction rate for rape even lower. [...]

The study found a large gap in standards between the 14 NHS-based specialist sexual assault referral centres (Sarcs) in London and other cities, and services in most of the country, where complainants are seen in victim examination suites attached to police stations.

Let me be completely clear about this: you can neither honestly convict someone, or clear their name, unless you gather the evidence that allows a full investigation. It's bad news for men accused of rape; it's more terrifying news for women who are being told that assault against them isn't worthy of a basic level of time and attention.

Unless evidence gathering meets some kind of uniform, high level of competence, we leave ourselves open to that evidence being challenged in court:

Many doctors surveyed, particularly those operating outside Sarcs, expressed fears about the risk of contamination of DNA samples, for instance where complainants could pick up fibres in waiting rooms before being examined.

Doctors in Sarcs estimated that the likelihood of DNA contamination was low, apart from one centre where the risk was put at medium. But among the 53 non-Sarcs answering the question, 11 felt the contamination risk in their facility was high and 20 put it at medium.

It doesn't take a legal genius to argue that fibres didn't come from a defendant, that it can't be proved they didn't come from the examination room and for that reason they aren't reliable evidence of anything. It isn't necessarily about dismissing forensic evidence, but rather leaving a route open for the reputation of such evidence to be disputed, to be more easily called into doubt.

A lack of coverage in evidence recovery - either due to shortcomings in facilities or training - creates the intolerable situation where the kind of justice you receive depends on where you live: primarily justice for women, but also for men. On that note, those who choose to emphasise the danger of false rape accusations should be all over this issue. It would also be nice if we could rely upon their support beyond self-interest.

schism update: move along, nothing to see here

A footnote from the BBC's coverage of the new married, heterosexual Californian bishop (see yesterday's post) somewhat undermines the idea that schism has narrowly been avoided:

The issue of gay clergy is splintering the Anglican Church. A number of Anglican provinces have already broken with the American church, which they believe is pursuing a liberal, unbiblical agenda.

The Californian election has to be ratified at the US Church's general convention next month.

Some bishops had already suggested they would block the consecration of a second homosexual bishop in order to preserve the fragile unity of the Church, the BBC's Jane Little in Washington says.

I'm slightly curious about the algebra of queer: one gay bishop is fine, but two would break the camel's back? There's only so much barely concealed distaste to go around?

more local stories for local people

The Scotlad on Sunday reports one response to the plans to reform the rule governing lap-dance clubs in Edinburgh. I'm going to quote a chuck before it disappears:

A stripper, calling herself Veronica Deneuve, claims to be acting on behalf of a number of dancers in the adult entertainment industry. She has written a 17-page submission to ministers and MSPs. The letter-head features her name in pink italics alongside a picture of pouting lips wearing glittering red lipstick.

She has called for a number of recommendations by the Scottish Executive's Adult Entertainment Working Group (AEWG), which last month published its report to ministers, to be scrapped.

She said: "The report has, however understandably and for the best of motives, misunderstood some of the issues and got some of the outcomes badly wrong. It has some recommendations that are actively dangerous to the dancers and will create and exacerbate the harms that the group was trying to prevent. Agents and escort agencies will get more heavily involved; pimping will become a growth industry.

"It will be a rapist's dream environment. The bad news is that the sharks are already circling, and have been since the review started last year, trying to lure dancers into other things."

Deneuve, who declined to give her real name in case it might cause problems for her in her "day job", told Scotland on Sunday: "I have genuine concerns that these rules will drive girls into the illegal business where they no longer have the protection of working in a proper club.

"The private dancing in booths is where they make the real money. If they can't do it in a club then they will do it somewhere else, and it will be more dangerous."

A couple of things: first of all, measures that will make life more dangerous are not good news. However, this directs attention to the fine line between individual autonomy (I do private dances because it makes me money that I want), expectation (I do private dances because it's expected of me) and necessity (I'm desperate for the money and I'll dance in an illegal club to earn it) - situations which describe very different kinds of "empowerment."

I'd also note that the claim for respectable work is made at the same time as a claim to necessary anonymity so as not to interfere with the "day job" - which further suggests our culturally screwy approach to sex-workers and adult entertainers. While prostitution remains illegal, regulation of adult entertainment industries will always intertwine the protection of women and the policing of their bodies: it's hard to write rules for behaviour on the edges of our cultural norms that provide safety rather than enforcement.

I think I need to do some more research and see who the AEWB consulted when they were drawing up their recommendations - if and how they met with the women working within these clubs, particularly as this article is a little low on detail as to who exactly this letter is supposed to represent.

mackinnon interviewed (and yes, she likes clothes)

A promising interview with Catherine MacKinnon in The Times falls over itself to pay lip-service to the "ugly feminist" myth in the opening paragraph:

In the pantheon of American feminists, Catharine MacKinnon will be for ever linked with her friend and colleague the late Andrea Dworkin, the anti-pornography crusader whose outsize “feminazi” appearance in baggy dungarees was the cause of a great deal of mirth and endless sexist jokes.

MacKinnon, in contrast, is lithe and stylish and loves wearing Nicole Farhi. She also has an unexpected vice: an addiction to People magazine, the American celebrity weekly that is obsessed with Britney and Angelina Jolie. “I read it cover to cover,” MacKinnon confesses, who also tells me about “this incredible, velvety swing coat thing” that she got years ago at a Farhi sale.

It's all right, everyone - even though she works with the victims of Serbian atrocities, she's still lithe and stylish. Phew. It's not that it was stupid to call Dworkin fat and ugly, or to judge women mainly on their clothes - but rather that not all feminists are fat, ugly or badly dressed. Hurray!

The rest of the interview is very interesting: it's a pity it had to include a traditional anti-feminist call to prayer.

That said, I particularly like MacKinnon's take on post-feminism:

Post-feminism is really a return to pre-feminism, she asserts. “It’s kind of funny. When we started, what we were trying to accomplish was so radical and so far out that nobody could take it seriously and then all of a sudden we’re told everything we ever want has already been accomplished and we are passé. I want to know, when are we current?

“There’s a sort of let’s pretend approach. Let’s pretend we are equal and life will feel better today. Even if it isn’t any better.”

I think one of the major strengths of MacKinnon's work is her international approach - putting front and centre a refusal to treat the lives of women in America and elsewhere in the west as the template for women's lives everywhere. Worth a read.

those explosive queers

Sometimes the analysis of hateful rhetoric doesn't require any effort. On the possibility of one of the three gay candidates becoming the Episcopal Bishop of California:

It would be like “a terrorist bomb which is timed to destroy a peace process”, says the Rev Paul Zahl, dean of the conservative Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Pennsylvania.

When your critics describe you as a terrorist atrocity intended to intimidate and kill, then you've passed the point where you can pretend to be on the same side. Hoping that it'll all work out okay is looking more and more like a willingness to simply tolerate the most extreme and hateful beliefs. This is what a religious schism looks like - it's already in full flight.

non-contraceptive condom use

Let's see if we can follow this latest piece of "logic" from our friends in the Catholic Church:

The leader of Scotland's largest Catholic congregation yesterday backed the use of condoms by Aids patients to prevent them infecting their spouses.
But Mario Conti, the Archbishop of Glasgow, added that such a position was not a support for contraception.

He added: "But two things need to be said. It is not contraception, it is not allowing people to use contraceptive practices. You are using the condom as a sheath against the spread of infection, but it should be said that that is not an infallible means of preventing infection and the church must be very careful not to encourage something that can result in the death of even one or two people."

First of all, it is contraception. Unless Vatican-approved condoms miraculously allow clean sperm ot pass through, it's contraception. It's also an admission that the theory of abstinence doesn't work to prevent the transmission of disease.

Second of all, the concern not to encourage the use of "fallible" condoms is a moral sham. Sex with correct use of condoms with proper knowledge: 98% protection against AIDS, rising to near total protection with the use of spermicides. Sex without any protection at all: 0% protection. Though this decision is about people who already have AIDs, the smarter strategy is to help prevent people from contracting AIDs in the first place.

Encouraging people to not use condoms at all is far more likely to result in deaths than suggesting condom use will substantially bring down their risk of infection. If this is a numbers game, and we're trying to protect the greatest number of lives - then people need to be informed and free to take measures to protect themselves.

If you want people to live responsibly and protect themselves, you have give them the information that will let them do that. Demonising sex outside of marriage doesn't work.

Here's something appropriate from Nick Kristof's discussion of the refusal to release plan B in the US, reproduced at Feministe:

We encourage young people to abstain from sex, and then provide condoms in case they don’t listen. But that’s because we understand human nature: We also tell drivers not to speed, but provide air bags in case they do.

The administration’s philosophy seems to be that the best way to discourage risky behavior is to take away the safety net. Hmmm. I suppose that if we replaced air bags with sharpened spikes on dashboards, people might drive more carefully — but it still doesn’t seem like a great idea.

The Catholic Church seems to only want air bags in the cars of people who have already crashed.

wax

Unpleasant Charles Clarke story from yesterday's popbitch, reprinted for the purposes of gloating about the sacking of an illiberal politico:

Charles Clarke's woes are not complete. Word reaches us from BBC about an interview the Home Secretary once did for them. Clarke had belligerently berated the crew about his ear piece being faulty, and messing up his live appearance, before storming off.

The sound technician quickly discovered what the problem was. The ear piece had been jammed... with an enormous piece of ear wax.

FYI, we now have about two days between getting a new Home Office minister and said minister completely losing it and trying to have us locked up.

a local election fable: the great white threat and the invisible greens

The "great white threat" meme is in full swing this morning, with media across the political spectrum reporting the BNP's line that yesterday's gains mean that they're "on their way":

BNP leader Nick Griffin said it had benefited from "people wanting to kick the Labour Party really hard and we're the politically incorrect way to do it".

[Hmm... so a vote for the BNP doesn't actually indicate support for the BNP?]

He added: "When you look at some our results elsewhere in the country where we've hammered the Conservatives as well, this is a revolt against the entire liberal political elite by the hardworking people of Britain who resent being taxed to have our country transformed."

Sliding past how that supposed revolt translated into only very localised support for the BNP (not least in areas described by one successful candidate as "traditionally Anglo-Saxon") and mainly as support for the existing political elites in the guise of the Conservatives - we might notice that the Green Party also had a very good day.

While the BNP might have doubled their number of councillors (taking the total to 44) the Green Party added a further 20 seats, taking their total to 91 at last count. If the BNP are "on their way," then the Green Party must have almost arrived.
Strangely, the story of substantial gains for a party which is at least twice as popular as the BNP has gone almost entirely unreported.

Though the Guardian, Times, Telegraph and the BBC all found time to write about separate stories about the BNP's results - slavishly reporting the claim to national political momentum - little more than a paragraph has been published about the Greens.

Funny that.

EDIT - Hmm. DK once more argues for the significance of support for the BNP. I'm still not convinced. I certainly think his judgment of what might be 'reasonably expected' is a little bit fast and loose.

I don't think anyone's arguing that all BNP votes are protest votes; I'm certain many are voting for the BNP on its own merits. However, it's interesting to hear the leadership of that party attributing their own success to such a thing.

I do, however, dispute that there's national support for the BNP which cuts across both class and region. The percentage returned figure, for example, is a little misleading - not least because it doesn't reflect a national distribution of vote, or different electoral strategies (as in "candidates eveywhere" versus "candidates where we can win"). We could, perhaps, choose to read the fact that the Greens were able to field a larger numbner of candidates as indicative of wider grass-roots support.

That said, there is clearly a group of people who feel they're not being heard. I just don't think it's a group that deserves such frantic - let's say liberal guilt-ridden - media attention. Unrepresented minority groups are a recurring feature of our political system's dominance by two major parties. I still don't see why the overall low level of support for the BNP warrants such special attention.

Remember that YouGov poll? Nationally, the BNP polls at 7% - significant, but not quite as significant as the BNP would like.

boo yah

Let the great culling of May 2006 begin:

Charles Clarke has been axed as home secretary as Tony Blair seeks to regain the initiative after a night of losses in English local elections.

Next!

the thursday "fuck you"

Lowri Turner: please take your fucking useless column and get out my life.

Your argument that men should be absent from the birth of their children is at best a hackneyed rehearsal of gender stereotypes: that women instinctively know what the hell is going on when a person climbs out of their vagina and that men are useless to the point of endangering their partner's lives.

The problems that you describe - that some men are uncomfortable with the reality of women's bodies during birth - are only ever going to get worse in this culture if we insist on arbitrary divisions. Where exactly do you think that 'useless men' learnt that behaviour from? From a culture that didn't expect anything different.

Not all men are going to want to be present at the birth of their children; not all men will be 'helpful' - though those are criticism we'd never voice of women scared of giving birth. However, if we treat people like unhelpful idiots then that's probably the behaviour that we're going to get from them.

How dare you decide what's best for all pregnant women? How dare you proclaim that men treat their pregnant partners as 'flat pack furniture'? Fuck you, entirely, for romanticising and homogenising the vast range of experiences that surround giving birth.

family values

Here's an interesting consequence of our recognition of same-sex couples:

A growing number of gay and lesbian Americans are being forced to leave the United States and resettle in Britain, where new immigration rules grant them the same rights as straight couples, according to the New York-based civil rights organisation Human Rights Watch. "Many US citizens go into exile to preserve their families and stay with their life partners," says an HRW report, Family, Unvalued, released this week. [...]

The UK's immigration rules were changed to grant equality to same-sex couples as an amendment to the Civil Partnership Act, which came into force in November last year. As a result, many Americans with European Union partners have moved to Britain. [...]

The report says binational couples are "trapped between two ferocious panics sweeping the US". The first concerns gay marriage, which became a divisive issue in the last presidential election. The second is immigration, due to become a key issue in the forthcoming congressional elections after huge pro-immigrant demonstrations and a draconian anti-immigrant bill presented to Congress.

Start the clock on the count down to the "Invasion Of Teh Queer" tabloid meme.

On a related migration/queer cross-over, Boing Boing reported on Yahoo's explanation of how San Francisco became a gay mecca:

As it turns out, the military is the main reason so many gay men settled in San Francisco. During World War II, the United States armed forces "sought out and dishonorably discharged" homosexuals. Many men who were expelled for being gay were processed at San Francisco bases.

So the hub of supposedly dubious sexuality in the US is the result, in part, of the morality that was supposed to stamp it out. Sweet.

some animals are more equal than others

Amidst the news that Charles Clarke has suddenly discovered all new, stronger than ever powers to fight crime (like a fat Power Ranger discovering what that big red button in the cockpit does) it's interesting to see what motives are being claimed - and who is being blamed for being 'out of touch.'

You'll remember that during the debate over the 90 day detention measure, critics of that bill were accused of being out of step with the desires of the public - that somehow, criticism meant that you were more in favour of terrorists than the right of ordinary people to live without fear. The fact that these were alleged terrorists about to be held for three months without trial or charge was somehow forgotten. Sympathetic polls were written which framed opposition to such a policy as distrust of the police and support of terrorists.

It was a traditional piece of legerdemain: responding to criticism of a particular policy by claiming its critics were opposed to what the policy was supposed to achieve - so, somehow, opposing detention without trial meant you wanted terrorists on every street corner.

We then saw it again when Blair responded to criticism through a series of emails printed in the Observer. Opposition to the Abolition of Parliament Bill from a member of the judiciary - a bill now being rapidly watered down and apparently on the edge of withdrawal - demonstrated 'how far out of touch much of the political and legal establishment is today with the reality of people's lives' and was used to segue into the state of crime on housing estates. To put it politely, the link between the Abolition of Parliament Bill and anti-social behaviour is not immediately apparent.

However - and once again - it was the critics who were 'out of touch' with the Blair government which has an almost supernatural ability to detect not only what people want but the methods they'll find acceptable. The Blair / Home Office argument seems to be that the British public are crying out for a firm hand, and a specific hand at that: we like it rough.

That attempt to demonise critics was followed rapidly by Charles Clarke's speech to the LSE where he described a "pernicious and even dangerous poison" in the British media. There's a moment of superb mental gymnastics here, where the Blair government is at once the representative of the desires of the ordinary people and at the same time uniquely able to understand complex debates and make the best decisions: a "some animals are more equal than others" moment.

Now we're wading through the same fetid spin, as opposition to Charles Clarke's authoritarian response to his departments own ineptitude is once more represented as outrageously outfield:

Downing Street, in more bullish mood than the Home Office, signalled it was prepared for a succession of court battles over the deportation of foreign prisoners. Tony Blair's spokesman said: "It may prove controversial in Parliament and parts of the media. But we believe we have to end a disconnect between a system that's developed over decades and public expectations."

Here, the media and parts of Parliament (including some people you might have elected to voice such a view) have no relationship to public expectations - expectations that might reasonably include enforcing our existing laws instead of making up new ones every time a car back-fires. Once more, the Blair government lays claim to being the only true judge of the public's desires, the one true warden of their welfare.

Given today's local elections, it will be interesting to see exactly where the 'disconnect' in British culture lies. If Labour loses - and loses hard - in the 4,000 odd seats up for grabs today (with around 23 million, or half the popoluation, eligible to vote) it will be much, much harder to sustain this most pernicious piece of spin. Not impossible, but it's hard to speak for the people when a large number of them have just told you to get fucked. As ever, the degree to which we dissent is a direct reflection of the degree to which we are free.

You can follow the results as they begin to come in here.

blair: not useless, just fearful of hypocrisy

Shorter Tony Blair: Yes, Charles Clarke lied to Parliament when he fucked up, but I can't fire him for that - or someone might expect me to resign.

on big pharma and aids research

The motivation for those researching new treatments for HIV isn't hope. According to one of Pfizer's lead research scientists, that's too mild a word - it can be closer to despair.

I've been listening to the BBC World Service's Quest For A Cure, a documentary covering a cycle of research on a remedy for AIDs that has lasted nearly twenty years. It's a series that gives an unusual level of insight into what multinational pharmaceutical companies bring to the process of medical science, how big money invests in low-yield processes in the hope of discovering a new drug.

The first generation of anti-HIV medication focussed on controlling the virus' replication; while moderately successful, regimes based on drugs like the retroviral AZT can be highly toxic to the point of the supression of bone marrow supression. That's right - a drug used to treat an auto-immune system that can supress... the immune system. More recently, big pharma has concentrated on the innovation of drugs which might block the mechanism by which the HIV virus enters individual cells. So how did they know to pursue this line of research?

In 1995, a paper was published in the journal Science that described the role of chemokines - a class of naturally occurring compounds that can halt HIV and prevent the progression to AIDS. This work was the result of publicly funded research carried out by a group of scientists (notably including Robert Gallo), published through the process of peer-review.

It is, perhaps, then slightly ironic that this initial stage of open exchange - where the veracity of a piece of a research is dependent on open and independent review - always leads to big pharma each pursuing their own line of development in the strictest of secrecy. (As a side note, there are a number of pragmatic reasons why a degree of secrecy is a necessary thing: notably that all human trials are preceded by animal testing).

However, one of the strategies described in the documentary and pursued by Pfizer suggest a methodology that isn't normally pursued by publicly funded institutions, not least on the grounds of cost. Pfizer (and presumably its big pharma competitors like Glaxo-Wellcome) maintain huge libraries of compounds, literally millions strong - some of which are known to have particular qualities but many merely because of their unusual and exotic composition, stored on the off-chance that they will one day form part of a new drug.

That library is only interesting - a display of technical prowess - until it's slaved to purpose. So on the discovery of the importance of chemokines (and their capacity to block CCR5 and CXCR4 coreceptors and therefore prevent HIV from biding with cells), the library is methodically tested for compounds whose profile might reproduce or trigger such activity in the human body.

It's called throughput testing - and it's not only incredibly time-consuming but has an incredibly low yield of potential 'hits.' Though the discovery of penicillin was blessed by serendipity, the researchers at Pfizer explain that throughput is about making your own luck.

Before I repeat anymore of the original programme, I'll point out that the series is downloadable and podcastable - it's well worth a listen for an insight into the glacial speed of drug development, and for some of the many, many reasons why combatting AIDs is a long fight.

Pointless ethical disclaimer: I'm the child of an industrial pharmacist (and there's no way to say that without making it sound as though I were grown in a lab.)

getting high on date rape drugs (on total fucking idiots)

An almost unbelievable story in the Telegraph about a man who tried to make a date-rape drug from a recipe he found on the internet:

A man who tried to make a date rape drug created a substance that might have killed himself and three friends, a court was told yesterday. David Platt, 20, of Johnstown, near Wrexham, north Wales, used a recipe from the internet after watching the ITV programme Tonight with Trevor McDonald.

A judge at Mold Crown Court was told he intended to make the drug GHB to experience the effects. The substance he made was the main ingredient in drain cleaner and paint stripper.

It was so toxic that Platt's heart stopped, a friend went into a coma and a third man went to hospital. The wife of one of his victims was temporarily unable to walk.

The worrying thing is that this guy decided to development his own brand of GHB after watching a TV programme warning against the dangers of such drugs. What kind of person watches a documentary on women being drugged and assaulted and decides that it's a sales-pitch book for getting high? A complete and total fucking idiot, that's who.

bringing down the quality of blogging everywhere

I apparently need to know that my parcel has 'Arrived at Hub.' Is there a glossary explaining what this means?

No.

There's a collection date (from the originator, maybe?), but is there a delivery date?

No.

As far as I can make out, my parcel is Bolton, awaiting.. well, I'm not sure quite what. I'm so very, very glad I paid extra for next day delivery.

UPDATE: The delivery driver came to my door, completely missed the sign saying to knock, and pushed a card through saying that Amtrak would try again tomorrow. Presumably it's my own fault for not leaving the door open with a trail of candies leading to my chair. So, can I contact the driver to get him to come back?

No.

Can I speak to an actual person at the Edinburgh Depot?

Apparently not.

My experience of Amtrak hasn't so much been of a parcel delivery company as of a shadowy illiterate cabal who may or may not drive vans.

second hand passport for sale (several previous owners)

More telling incompetence from the people who want our identities to be confirmed by one handy-to-steal
ID card:

THOUSANDS of passports "lost" by government departments may have fallen into the hands of terrorists and criminal gangs.

Official figures show 20,660 passports sent out by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and 13,650 by the UK Passport Service (UKPS) have gone astray over the past five years. A further million were reported as "lost, stolen or unavailable" by their owners over the same period.

The UKPS has also admitted it lost nearly 700 passports in the first year of a costly "secure delivery" system via Special Mail Services. [...]

Andy Burnham, a Home Office minister, said the UKPS was not able to provide information on how many of the missing passports were still in circulation.

Please note that a national identity database will not solve this kind of problem: it will make this kind of crime marginally more complicated for the criminal but overwhelmingly more expensive for the tax-payer.

In fact, if you have a stolen passport, you're well on your way to falsifying the papers you need to forge an entry on the national ID database. For the second time in as many posts - hurray!

a tiny flying penis

The idea that you shouldn't mock people needs to have a get-out clause that applies to the ridiculous:

Flog the Ferrari. Sell off the speedboat. For the businessman who has everything, the latest "must buy" is a fighter jet.

Chief executives and hedge fund managers are scrabbling to get their hands on the plane that has been described as the ultimate boy's toy. [...]

Daniel Fox-Davies, a 31-year-old London financier who is the first Briton to put down a six-figure deposit for a Javelin, described the plane as the "ultimate boy's toy".

"I grew up watching Top Gun," he said. "This is the closest I'm going to get. It will be fantastic when I get it - I can't wait.

"It is a boy's toy; I'm not ready to settle down and give up the single life. Buying the jet is probably cheaper than getting a girlfriend anyway."

Someone out there thinks it's flattering that a girlfriend is seen as the more expensive option than a £1.2 million jet; around these parts, it sounds like a gentle bit of misogyny: ho, ho, ho, women are expensive money-sucking leeches, it's funny because it's true, ha ha ha.

This does also give me the opportunity for some Freudian dating theatre:

"Do you want to go out on a date?"
"No, I want to go home and watch Top Gun while polishing my jet."
"Yes... yes, I expect you do."

Hurray!

wow

Wow. Two lengthy tirades and an interactive duck: truly, this is the Monday of the Gods.

Back to work now.

abortion and punishment

The Scotland on Sunday once more chooses to distort its discussion of abortion to fit the line of a small conservative minority:

THE Scottish NHS is introducing controversial "lunchtime" abortions under local anaesthetic in a move it claims will make the procedure safer and quicker for thousands of women each year.

Doctors will begin a pilot next year in which women undergo terminations while fully conscious in outpatient treatment rooms, rather than operating theatres. Health chiefs believe the move could boost abortion safety by reducing the need for general anaesthetics or powerful drugs. It would also free up operating theatres for other
patients and save money.

But Church leaders and anti-abortion groups have reacted with fury and disbelief, accusing NHS managers of reducing abortion to something as trivial as a trip to the dentist.

How strange that particular meme should manage to take control of the headline, given that if you read to the bottom of the page you discover that:

Dr Anna Glasier [the clinical director for sexual health at NHS Lothian] Glasier said: "This pilot is intended to assess whether there would be advantages in offering women the option of using local anaesthetic rather than general for a surgical termination.

"This would only affect the choice of pain relief for women undergoing this procedure, and not any other aspect, such as the timing of the procedure or the number of abortions being done.

"There are many possible advantages in opting for local anaesthetic rather than a general anaesthetic. Using a local anaesthetic is potentially safer."

So the whole 'lunchtime' idea is a bold-face lie. This shabby piece of scare-mongering is actually about undermining research that might make abortion safer and less traumatic. The idea that a local anaesthetic would make abortion a less significant procedure exists only in the minds of people who are wedded to the idea that abortion is and must always remain an irreduceable trauma.

It's the same logic that's behind the opposition of the HPV vaccine - a measure which would reduce cervical cancer that's opposed on the grounds that it would encourage underage sex (because of all of those teens who have been holding off from going all the way because of the risk of cancer?). It's the same mentality which explains why anti-abortion activists are rarely pro-contraception. It's a desire to see that sex outside of marriage be followed by some kind of punishment.

While the argument offered is that 'sex has consequences,' that line disguises the kind of consequences that are most likely when abortion is difficult or dangerous, and contraception is rare or ineffective. Somehow, the consequences of sex always have to be negative - to be punitive - unless sex takes place within the protective coccoon of marriage, where the decision to not have children seemingly no longer
exists. Well, that's horseshit.

The Catholic Church's position reported here remains intolerably patronising, that unless abortion involves being rendered unconcious that there will be a

higher risk that that the woman will not fully consider her options. This will make abortion more convenient and make it less likely the woman will be able to pause for thought.

It's an argument that feeds the lie that women considering abortion do so lightly and without thought, and that abortions take place due to demands of vapid convenience untouched by any moral consideration. It also refuses to recognise that women (having paused for thought and decided to go ahead anyway) will want a form of abortion that minimises any emotional or physical trauma.

Yes, abortion can be traumatic and it can be dangerous (though it still remains less dangerous than actually bearing a child to term) which is a reason for trying, whereever possible, to make it less dangerous and less traumatic - unless, of course, you think that some part of abortion should always be about punishing women for the choices they make.

justice duck

From the front page of today's Independent:

People calling for [Charles Clarke's] resignation have not said who they think can do a better job of clearing up the problems.

If I might make a small suggestion?

As a bonus, if he fucks up, we're allowed to kill and eat him.

behold the invisible cape of bisexuality

There was a story over the weekend in my favourite newspaper (in a love-to-hate kind of way) about John Osborne, the British playwright. The story promised to reveal - through the promotion of a new biography - whether Osborne was gay or not.

Why does the Mail write stories about being gay or not, despite its socially conservative readership? I think it's because if there's one thing more unnerving than people who are gay, it's people who don't conform to that kind of labelling. The Obsborne article is a prime example of the desperate rush to confirm the "truth," one way or the other, from an available list of sexualities: did he give or receive? And to or from whom?

Central to this confusion is a wife, wheeled on from stage-left to express alarm and confusion that his sexual attraction to her didn't exclude sexual attraction to other people - other people who happened to include men.

While the sense of betrayal is understandable, the thing missing from that story is that while the capacity of husbands to deceive wives (and vice versa) is almost universally accepted the same privilege is not extended to men who cheat with other men. That a man might have an affair with another women is unremarkable; that a man might have an affair with another man is unthinkable - not just because it's a betrayal of his wife but because it's also a betrayal of his presumed sexuality.

This kind of panic is a regular feature of the tabloid coverage of men who sleep with men and women) - when news of a Liberal Democrat leadership contenders affair with a male prostitute surfaced, the Mail gleefully reported the logic that Oaten was gay because he had had sex with a man and that for him to claim that he wasn't gay was a lie.

Instantly, the ten year marriage which had yielded children collapsed under the revelation of six-month's worth of executive stress relief - because, in tabloid world, the touching of two peni is so powerful that it travels backwards in time and erases past acts of heterosexuality. As I theorised at the time, it might one day form the basis of a safe and easy form of time travel.

Similarly, the idea that Shakespeare might have expressed desire towards another man is rejected as the greatest peversion of our greatest playwright - even though recognising such a desire in some of his sonnets is not the same as simply claiming he was gay in any contemporary sense we'd recognise, 'cos he was a frickin' Elizabethan. It's rejected because that seeming indeterminacy is threatening - as if a desire for the occasional shepherd erases the literary quality of King Lear.

Glaringly absent from all of this is the possibility that a man might identify as heterosexual but happily enjoy relationships with men and women, or that a man might not even get around to identifying as one thing or another at all. Instead, we have the logic that desire has a fixed relationship to specific identities.

Even if you've trained and worked your whole life as a carpenter and only occasionally look on the internet at pictures of, say, astronauts, then that means you must actually be space explorer even if you've never so much as been up in a plane. Or that going up in a plane on holiday is the same as having a pilot's licence. But I digress.. :)

So bisexuality (or worse still, not being interested in defending your sexual choices as the reflection of being straight or gay) is unrepresentable. It's unrepresentable because it pulls down the carefully built divide between 'us' and 'them' that sees difference in sexuality as the same kind of difference, always and everywhere.

Still, if you think that bisexual men are invisible, you've clearly never witnessed the power of the bisexual woman in the media - whose main power seems to be to use her bisexuality to turn on straight men.

*sigh*