Mysogenist Murderer's Critics Too Generous

Emily Lindin, founder of an organization dedicated to combating misogynistic sexual bullying, wrote this of the murderer whose lengthy manifesto touched off the #YesAlWomen hashtag:

Rodger and others like him believe that sex is a reward to be earned, not a consensual activity between adults who respect each other, and that women are prizes to be won, not actual people with the agency to make decisions about their own bodies.

"In Killer's World, Victims Get Blamed" at cnn.com

It's too generous.  The killer seems to give no indication the indulgence he demanded for his whims needed to be earned in any way from those he chose to kill.  He illustrates instead a culture of entitlement, in which his disappointment in sexual wish fulfillment is all the justification he needs for unchecked violence.  He doesn't think women have the right to expect him to earn their attentions at all: he feels entitled to be indulged by women and entitled to commit violence against them when his demands aren't met. There's certainly a place to criticize males who are less outrageous than Rodger, but when dealing with such blatantly misogynistically entitled thugs we ought not sugar-coat the depths of their distance from civilization.

Civilization, unfortunately, is what epidemic violence against women exposes as a myth: we as a species haven't much of it, apparently.  Today's news from Pakistan shows that although local law allows violent crime victims to derail prosecution by "forgiving" their assailants, the effect of this doctrine on intra-family violence against women is stark: women's murderers go unpunished as a matter of course because the perpetrator's families "forgive" them for killing their female relative. In this instance, the murdered woman was killed while headed to court to testify that her chosen husband hadn't abducted her (an allegation made by her rejected suitor and their shared male relatives). Of all the attackers, only the woman's father was even arrested.  He admitted the whole thing, expressing no remorse – fully entitled to murder a woman who didn't submit to his demands. The legal and social environment surrounding the gang-beating makes men feel safe to murder their female relatives for exercising agency in their lives instead of acceding to their sexual demands.  This, in a country with laws, police, and courts.

This isn't an American problem, it's a global problem.  It's not be worst in the U.S., but it exists in the U.S..  The problem needs real thought.  Like drinking-related highway deaths, the solution is surely not after-the-fact investigations but social reform to change the cultural acceptance of the target behavior.  We need to get cracking now.  The anti-bullying work I see in schools is a start, but it must intensify.  Bystanders must not accept or condone victimizing conduct.

This doesn't mean we can't have due process for accused attackers, but it does mean we can't accept vicious assaults on victims whose reports expose them to unchecked ridicule.  The #YesAllWomen hashtag offers a look at the range of concerns included in the topic.  Most of those alive are women; this is a problem that, improved at all, will improve the world.

UPDATE: The story in Pakistan is even crazier than originally reported.  The man whom the victim intended to marry admitted he'd murdered his previous wife to make himself available to marry the woman murdered by her refused lover and his cousins.  Moreover, the intended husband had provided 80,000 rupees and gold jewelry to the victim's father to secure his approval for the marriage.  Read about the craziness here.  Apparently in Pakistan fathers take money for permission to marry their daughters.

Marital Status Disappearing from French Addresses

As in Germany (which halted use of the word "Fraulein" in official forms and documents in 1972), and following earlier steps by French municipalities, the government of France has killed "mademoiselle" from official use. Women will be addressed as "Madam" regardless of their marital status, just as men regardless of marital status are addressed as "Monsieur."

This may sound quaint, but we've done much of the same in the US with the move toward "Ms."

For an explanation why, ask yourself what's wrong with living in a world with perfect purity of language, depicted so wonderfully by Douglas Hofstadter.

Remember: the only language that doesn't change is a dead language.

Temple of Lies

Iran's propaganda machine is much more effective than the Americans'.

This week, Iran released missile launch video and said belligerent actions would be met with harsh reprisal. The fact the video was apparently doctored to conceal technical failures in the launch, and the fact that the missile launches were mostly short-range missiles and not the more concerning longer-range missiles indicated by the government in Tehran, will probably go largely unnoticed in the part of the world where the video was intended to be digested.

Last year, Iran made a show of strength by kidnapping British sailors patrolling Basra on the pretext that they were trespassing in Iranian waters. When one confronts stateless terrorists, one expects grainy videos of disheveled prisoners being subjected to public humiliation by being made to read ultimatums and participate in propaganda. It is, however, surprising to see such maltreatment accorded uniformed soldiers captured by Geneva Convention signatory states. Ratification of terrorist conduct isn't new for the regime in Tehran, though. Ratification by directly apeing it on television may be a clearer admission than previously available of exactly how uncivilized the nation's leadership is. Interestingly, British doctrine for soldier interactions with captors, updated to handle the realistic probability that capture will be by stateless criminals uninterested in honoring the international laws governing civilized behavior, turns out to fit in just fine when Tehran stages a kidnapping. In the Middle East, where the video was intended to be digested, Tehran's behavior was interpreted not as barbarism but evidence of strength.

Iran has been reassuring anyone who would listen that bombings and murders and assassinations within Iraq are not a product of Iranian training or funding or direct involvement, but result solely from US policy blunders.

Well, that latest point might be half-true. The policy blunder of the United States is a failure to articulate its objectives in a way anyone -- foreign or domestic -- can understand. Years after ousting the tyrant who used to run Iraq, Americans haven't established a "victory condition" sufficient to support departure from the theater of operations -- or explain why Americans should be in the area indefinitely. The result is widespread belief -- supported by opposition propaganda -- that Americans efforts are a failure and that the United States is in an endless, losing battle against local forces. In short, failure to articulate its definition of success has left opponents to define it however needed to depict its impossibility.

Without a clearly articulated vision of success, America can hardly claim victory is feasible. Indeed

On the theory advanced by some critics -- that inability of Americans to leave with their heads up proves their failure -- the U.S. occupations of Germany and Japan are also a failure, in that they're still there and still face both embarrassment and failures in local relations as a result.

The question I see is whether anti-Soviet military presence in newly democratized countries (or, in the case of Germany, re-democratized) is a good model for countering the new crop of religious radicals (the Soviets were arguably radical in asserting there was no God and punishing unapproved religious conduct as China now does) and their hypocritical efforts to bring righteous government to the masses by murdering them until they accept some self-proclaimed caliph as their absolute master. The basic idea is the same: a frightening ideology that promises to steamroller the engines of human progress threatens to overtake legitimate governments by force, and has shown willingness and capability to throw weak governments into chaos at the expense of local life and prosperity. Communism and Islamofascism aren't much different in that regard. The question is simply whether the tactics that were applied to the last eruption of the threat are good tactics for the current bout.

It's an interesting parallel to attempt, and we shouldn't look at the end of the Soviet Union as a model for relations with the proponents of the present evil. I think that Americans and the Soviets eventually reached a kind of realization that their assets and interests were too important to risk by a serious escalation. By contrast, Iran has little compunction -- and stateless terrorists none at all -- about killing people who stand in their way. Like the beginning of the conflict against international totalitarian movements masquerading as communism, the beginning stages of the conflict against reactionary tyrants pretending to advance Islam is doomed to be violent.

As in the old conflict, we will need to pay close attention to the terms in which the conflict is cast, and take care not to lose control of the framing of the conflict. Losing control of how the conflict is framed in the public dialog will result in propaganda defeat, and cause great increase in the duration and cost of any American effort toward any objective American policymakers may eventually deign to articulate.

It may not be possible to prevent other players from cheating, but it doesn't hurt to announce the rules. The United States' failure to articulate an achievable military purpose when it sent forces into Iraq (or failure to articulate a follow-on purpose after it was clear Mr. Hussein's regime no longer controlled the country) invited critics to supply their own framing of the issues, tailor-made to ensure the United States has as little opportunity as possible to achieve political objectives involving the region. The United States has made this error before, and lost the propaganda conflict for minds despite success on the field.

The powers that be should wake up and smell the coffee. What effect swords (bullets), if their achievement can be readily undone by an unchallenged pen (video)?

23% of Surveys Senseless A Waste of Bandwidth

The NPR survey proclaims 92 Percent of Americans Believe in God, with 71% being "absolutely certain" about the reality of the divine. American conviction there is a God, though, seems to run deep: not quoted on this NPR stream, though mentioned on KUHF, is the fact the survey identified that among self-identified atheists 21% said they believed in God. Indeed, 8% of atheists "expressed absolute certainty" about the existence of God.

With data like this, who needs the uncritical repetition of wild-a**ed guesses?

Other "data" one can get asking Americans about their beliefs is interesting, though less shocking -- but should one credit what they say, given the content of this last self-report? For example:

Although there was correlation between traditional religious beliefs and practices, and conservative social positions on abortion and homosexuality, "Americans ... were very comfortable being people of faith living in a modern, diverse society." In other words, Americans weren't bent on creating ethnic or religious homogeneity of the sort one hears urged by some Arabocentric mouthpieces advocating an Islamofascist state. On the other hand, maybe the survey underreported the views of folks living close to the borders or in major ports of entry, where this author has observed some fairly intense views about the epidemiological projections that depict a generally brown, Catholic nation by the end of the century.

US believers seem remarkably non-dogmatic: 7 of 10 report belief that multiple faiths can lead to eternal life, meaning that there's not just one true faith. If not "All Roads Lead To Rome" then at least more than one. One religions position not apparently well-tolerated by Americans is no religion at all. Apparently respect for freedom of religion doesn't necessarily embrace respect for freedom from religion.

Three quarters pray at least once a week. This isn't so surprising, considering there's no detail regarding the content of these weekly prayers. A surgeon once confided in me that, cornered by a family devoted to prayer and given to conspicuous religious display, the inevitable question arose whether the surgeon's faith was adequate. "Doctor, do you pray?" The answer was immediate, intense, honest, and certain to satisfy: "Ma'am, I pray every time I enter the operating room." What wasn't admitted was the content of the prayer: Please, God -- don't let me f*ck up!

Again, though ... the religiously confident pro-God atheist has got to be the silliest feature I've heard posited about the American public in some time, crazier even than the several percent of the public who report being serial alien abductees.

SPECIAL: In honor of George Carlin's passing yesterday, I offer this, his very own irreverent dig:

The only good thing to come out of religion was the music.