Just in case there are any American women out there cheering John McCain’s choice of a woman as a running mate, I have something to remind you about:
Margaret Thatcher
Current Affairs
Danger, Terrorist Boobs
Here’s the news story that every editor has been waiting for – underwired bra sets off security alarms at airport!
So now we women all have to make sure that we don’t wear underwired bras when flying, because yes, the detectors may be that sensitive.
I do, however, have a plan. I want you all to spread a rumor that the TSA is full of lust-crazed lesbians desperate for any excuse to feel up the boobs of good Christian women. That should give the Defenders of the Patriarchy something to think about.
Judging People By Appearances
Today I got directed at this LiveJournal post by a Disabled person pointing out that just because you happen to have one disability that doesn’t mean that you are totally helpless and of no use to your fellow humans. He also tries to draw a distinction between the medical issues that he has and his identity as a person. It is a useful distinction to make. If someone has ‘flu we don’t regard them as a “‘flu person” and make all of our judgments about them on that basis, but if some has a more serious (and generally that means incurable) condition then they become a “sick person”, with all of the negative connotations that carries.
When the email with that link came in I happened to be reading this superb post on Daily Kos about the currently ongoing employment case of Diane Schroer. Colonel Schroer is a former US Special Forces officer with a wealth of experience in both battle zones and security. The case is about her being denied a job at the Library of Congress because she is transgender. The Washington Post coverage of the case notes that Schroer was denied the job because Charlotte Preece, a manager at the Library, was:
concerned that Schroer “might be unable to maintain high-level contacts in the military intelligence community” and “might not be viewed as credible” by members of Congress
Unfortunately for the Library’s case, Colonel Schroer is so well regarded in military intelligence that she has had no trouble setting up her own business and winning contracts. The Library, however, preferred to judge her on appearances, and even more so on the fact that it assumed other people would do so as well. The Daily Kos post has this to say about the case:
In the America of the past, we’d likely have said that Charlotte Preece’s assumptions were enough to justify taking away the job. In the past, failing to live up to society’s expectations about who men are and who women are, would surely have been taken as a sign of instability. But in the America we aspire to be, we won’t be willing to accept stereotypes as shorthand for capacity. Knowing how wrong that kind of shorthand has been, and how much people have been hurt by it, we’ll insist on keeping our eyes on what really counts: ability.
And that, I think, applies equally to people who have many useful skills but also happen to have a specific disability that sometimes means they can’t do everything that “able bodied” people can do.
Science-Fictional News
Today’s RSS feeds and email have included quite a few items that reinforce the idea that we now live in a science-fictional world.
Continue reading
And on the Subject of Health Care
Ellen Datlow has the low down on the Bush Administration’s latest assault on women’s health.
But take note, America, this is what happens when you have federal funding of health services – suddenly certain groups of people find that they can’t get health care because they have been labeled “immoral”.
Double Plus Ungood
This is a disaster. I wasn’t terribly happy about laws against “religious discrimination” to begin with, and now I see I was right. From now on all of the laws the UK has protecting people against discrimination of any sort are useless, because all that the bigots have to do is claim that they have a religious right to be bigoted. I’m sure it won’t be long before some bampot brings a case against an LGBT person claiming that their mere existence infringes his “religious rights”.
Huge Step Forward for Simian Rights
I quote from Nature:
The Spanish parliament’s environment committee last week approved resolutions for chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans to gain some statutory rights currently applicable only to humans. It is thought to be the first time a national legislature has taken such action.
Mickey Watching
The pork sniffers in Washington appear to have noticed the Mickey Tax and are blogging about it. Crooked Timber has an update.
A Small Piece of Sanity
Good news for rail passengers in the UK. The British government has finally admitted that installing airport-style security screening at railway stations is “currently not feasible”. Well, yes.
Or, as The Guardian put it: “A trial found that introducing airport-style checks would be impractical and antagonise the public.”
Now if only someone would wake up to the fact that the security theater in airports also antagonizes the public.
Why We Still Need Pride
In today’s Guardian there is a report on homophobic hate crimes in the UK. This makes the case fairly clearly:
The poll found a homophobic crime or incident had been experienced by 12.5% over the past year and 20% over the past three years.
One in six of the victims had been physically assaulted and one in eight had been subjected to unwanted sexual contact. Almost nine in 10 had experienced homophobic insults and harassment.
Three-quarters of the victims had not reported the incident to the police, often because they did not think the complaint would be investigated.
Only 1% of hate crimes that were reported to the police resulted in a conviction. Two-thirds of victims who reported incidents to the police were not offered advice or referred to support services.
A graphic demonstration, if ever we needed one, that simply having laws is not enough. Social attitudes, especially amongst members of the police, have to change too.
Score One for Retired Clergy
The Guardian has an article about how many retired clergymen in California are offering to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples so that their colleagues who are currently in work won’t have to risk their jobs by doing so. The article isn’t very good. It tries to suggest that there is one universal “church law” that all types of Christian, including Mormons, adhere to. But, assuming that the actual events it reports are correct, it is good to see an apparent outpouring of support for same-sex marriage from clergymen.
Jan Morris on Liberty
The whole David Davis by-election story has pretty much sunk without trace, but Jan Morris has made a brave attempt at making people aware of the issues:
The so-called war on terror is of course the supposed excuse for this appalling violation of all our privacies, together with the ominous rise of the secret intelligence agencies. The public has been gulled into acceptance of the supervisory state, with all its paraphernalia of surveillance and identity cards, DNA databases, armed police and arbitrary search, by the mantra: “If you don’t do anything wrong, why worry?”
Exactly.
So Much For New Labour
Not many people would have given you good odds on New Labour sinking even lower once Tony Blair had left power, but nevertheless they have managed it. With Pride London due up in two weeks time our Home Secretary has blithely announced that gays are perfectly safe in Iran, as long as they are “discreet”. Just in case you have forgotten, Iran is one of those countries in which homosexuality is punishable by death. But Jacqui Smith thinks you’ll be OK if you just, you know, keep quiet about it.
Regardless of the absurdity of that claim, I note that going to a foreign country and asking for political asylum is not, by any stretch of the imagination, being discreet. And therefore by sending such asylum seekers back to Iran Ms Smith is condemning them to death, regardless of whatever spin fantasies she might concoct to try to salve her conscience.
Two Nations Under One Flag?
Also in today’s Economist, a fascinating article about how Americans are increasingly choosing to live near people who have similar political views. Note that this is not an accident of economics. It is not a case of rich people voting Republican and poor people voting Democrat. It is people from all works of life making a positive decision to live in parts of the country where the prevailing political orthodoxy is comfortable for them. The article even talks about a planned Libertarian township (to be called “Paulville”). And the effect of all this?
America, says Mr Bishop, is splitting into “balkanised communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible.†He has a point. Republicans who never meet Democrats tend to assume that Democrats believe more extreme things than they really do, and vice versa. This contributes to the nasty tone of many political campaigns.
Saved by the Board
Apparently the Board of News International has put the dampers on Rupert Murdoch’s ambitions to bring Fox News style politics to the UK, and Murdoch isn’t prepared to fund the campaign out of his own pocket, so it looks like the whole David Davis affair will disappear without trace. I rather hope that the Monster Raving Loony Party manages to save its deposit for once.
The Cory Column
Cory Doctorow is back in The Guardian today. This column is about the sheet quantity of data collected by modern day security services. Cory’s quite right that it does them little good, though I’m not sure that his SF-based explanation as to why this is so will work for non-SF readers. Still, he does manage to plug Charlie Stross and Rudy Rucker along the way, which is a very good thing.
But tell me, what about this? The column begins:
The Singularity is a conceit of modern science fiction: a place inside vast computers where whole universes are simulated whose reality is every bit as sharp and instantaneous as the physical world we inhabit.
Um??? I guess he must have been edited.
Score One for Pychologists
I had cause to mention the odious DUP a while back, and in case you are wondering just how odious they are, one of their members has managed to get a staring role in a post on Pharyngula. Obviously there’s no point in my adding to one of Mr. Myers broadsides – it would be like firing a pea shooter in the wake of a cruise missile. However, I would like to note that the British Psychological Society has firmly rejected the idea that LGBT people are mentally ill.
I’m slightly less impressed with the statement in that article that transgender is a “sexual orientation”, but that bit isn’t in quotes so it may be an error on the part of the journalist rather than by the BPS folks.
The Dog Question
Over the weekend I got a new request in for a Challenge Cheryl article. This one was quite interesting in that it really was about something I’d never normally write about. It required research too. And it ended up being a very interesting question. If you want to find out what I think of Breed Specific Legislation (or even what that means), you can find the article here.
As usual, I remain open to further suggestions for Challenge Cheryl articles. Ask away.
All Us Deviants
I have been pointed to an excellent article in today’s New York Times by Stanley Fish. It is about what we mean by “normal” when it comes to people. The article focuses on issues such as groups of autistic and deaf people who are happy the way they are and do not want to be “cured” or even seen as “disabled”, but Fish touches on many of the wider issues as well, including mentioning that up until 1967 mixed race marriages were illegal in the USA. We find that appalling now. Not too many years in the future people will also find it appalling that same-sex marriages were once illegal. And what does Fish choose to illustrate that “different” does not mean “wrong” – why, the X-Men, of course.
(Thanks Donna).
UK Politics Interesting Shock!
Last week I mentioned an article in The Economist suggesting that disgruntled Libertarians might be a danger to John McCain. I wasn’t entirely convinced by their argument, but you could have knocked me down with a feather yesterday when Libertarianism raised its head in the House of Commons, causing a fair amount of trouble for David Cameron along the way.
Continue reading