Thanks, Merci, Spasiba, Danke, Tack, Kiitos etc.

To all you lovely, kind, intelligent and discerning people who gave me money for this blog.  That money means that I can get hold of stuff quickly, that I can go to the primary sources and that I can get enough chocolate to keep the engines running.  It's a win-win, right?

My deepest thanks to all of you who read here and who talk to me and who are part of this big movement to make the world a better place.  That sounds a bit exaggerated but I hope you get the point.

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The Stoopid, It Burns

Even though these news are a few days old they are still a beautiful sign of human stupidity.  From North Carolina:

The House Health and Human Services Committee approved a bill earlier this month that would require teenagers to present a notarized parental consent form in order to access sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, mental health counseling, pregnancy care or substance abuse treatment.

What on earth could go wrong with that? 

It would have little but bureaucratic impact on teenagers who have good relationships with their parents.  On the other hand, it would give teenagers not in those happy circumstances a great incentive to keep any sexually transmitted disease untreated, possibly leading to serious future complications (and ready to be passed on!).

And if there is, say, abuse within the family, the teenager suffering from that cannot get mental health counseling without the express permission from the person who might be the abuser. 

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Human Parthenogenesis. That's how Sluts Get Pregnant!

Going round a full circle:  When I first got acquainted with the US abortion debate I thought it was extremely weird how getting pregnant was interpreted as something that just happens to women, especially women who don't cross their legs.  My friendly alien from outer space might imagine all "good" women hopping around with crossed legs lest that pollen somehow gets into them and causes conception.

Well, after a few years of practical education I forgot all about that and the invisible sperm-providing partner in any conception.  Until today, when I was reading this piece at al-Jazeera and then the comments.  Here's the comment worthy of our notice:

By the way the time to think about whether a baby will get in the way of your selfish pursuits is not after but rather before you spread open your legs.

What do you think our friendly alien (say, Allie or Al) would think about that?  Probably that the avoid-the-pollen-theory is correct.  If only women weren't spreading their legs everywhere, there would be no unwanted pregnancies!

More seriously, that spreading-the-legs argument is a very common one among forced-birthers.  But the equivalent argument for men (perhaps to put a knot on it?) is essentially nonexistent.  Those people assume that it's natural for men to seek sex wherever they can find it, natural for them not to consider whether a baby might get in the way of their selfish pursuits.  And the wider culture pretty much agrees, though not all parts of it.

I'm now wondering what the maker of that comment I copied would say about the role of men in all this. 

Would he (the handle is a male one)  simply think that the game is a form of sexual football where the role of men is to try to kick the ball in the goal and then disappear, and the role of women is to guard the goal and get properly punished if they fail in that?  What is selfish behavior in each gender?  What behaviors are rewarded by the wider society for each gender? 

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Last Day of The Famous 2013 Fund Drive

There's still time to hand over your hard-earned pennies!  Instructions are in the left column of this page.  Many warm thanks to all who have contributed and all who are going to contribute today and all who would contribute if they could.  Love ya all.


Echidne

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On Angelina Jolie's Courage And The Movie Industry

Angelina Jolie's op-ed piece in the New York Times is much spoken about today, and for good reason.  Jolie found out that she possesses a rare gene which makes her breast cancer and ovarian cancer risks very high, and she elected to have a preventive double-mastectomy.  She then elected to make her mastectomy public.

To set Jolie's courage into proper perspective, here are some news about women in the movies:

There's one mountain in Hollywood that even "The Hunger Games'" scrappy heroine Katniss Everdeen hasn't been able to move: the number of roles for women.
Despite the success of recent female-driven movies such as "Bridesmaids" and the "Hunger Games" and "Twilight" series, female representation in popular movies is at its lowest level in five years, according to a study being released Monday by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Among the 100 highest-grossing movies at the U.S. box office in 2012, the study reported, 28.4% of speaking characters were female. That's a drop from 32.8% three years ago, and a number that has stayed relatively stagnant despite increased research attention to the topic and several high-profile box-office successes starring women.
PHOTOS: All-time box-office leaders
"There is notable consistency in the number of females on-screen from year to year," said USC researcher Marc Choueiti. "The slate of films developed and produced each year is almost formulaic — in the aggregate, female representation hardly changed at all."
When they are on-screen, 31.6% of women are shown wearing sexually revealing clothing, the highest percentage in the five years the USC researchers have been studying the issue.
For teen girls, the number who are provocatively dressed is even higher: 56.6% of teen girl characters in 2012 movies wore sexy clothes, an increase of 20% since 2009.
The USC researchers said these trends persist because those working in Hollywood believe attracting a male audience is the key ingredient to box office success.

Bolds are mine.  

What that quote tells us is something pretty basic:  Having a sexy body is very important for female actors in Hollywood.  It's not as important to be able to speak, apparently.

Given all that, nobody would have blamed Jolie had she stayed silent about her double-mastectomy.  Speaking about it can be a career-destroying move, even for someone as famous as Jolie.

And that's what makes Jolie brave.
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 You might also be interested in the identifiable victim effect in stories like this one.  And then the man behind the curtain:  On the patenting of genes such as the one Jolie has and its possible effect on the affordability of early diagnosis.

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Today's Echidne-the-Political-Economist Thought

Income and wealth inequality in this country are growing.  The rich get richer, the rest of us either run in place or get left behind.  Now keep that in mind.

Then notice how concerned the politicians are about getting the entitlements under control:  We need to slash public spending of all kinds but especially public spending on the elderly or the poor.  And the Republicans seem to be trying to get rid of the forty-hour work-week, the states are slashing public jobs, the teachers are under attack for their exorbitant benefits, the unions are demons barely in disguise.

Are these two trends related?  Of course they are, but the question is in what ways.  Perhaps the rich are now so powerful that they can dictate what the government does and the first thing they wish is to get rid of all programs that they don't personally need?  On the other hand,  one study suggests that the non-rich want the same things from the government.  That suggests that people are suicidal, which may well be the case, or utterly uninformed which may also be the case, or just uninvolved, alienated and untrained in how to get the relevant information.

Other links between the two can also be observed.  The right-wing populism makes the government into the enemy, together with immigrants, blacks and uppity women.  That "look-over-there" strategy has worked extremely well.  You combine it with conservative evangelism and you get a country which won't budge when the safety nets are finally whipped off.  Well, it will budge, in the sense of collapsing into a banana republic.

But the point is that far too many voters are looking-over-there.  Worrying about the competition from other poor people and not worrying about the fact that the Waltons of Walmart fame own humongous chunks of this country and are the largest private employer while paying their workers so little that many of them qualify for government help for the poor.

And no, I'm not a communist.  Goddesses seldom are anything but hierarchical.  But market economies do not work without a proper framework, proper safety nets, proper societal institutions and good education.  All of those are under assault in this country.

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Diversity on Evening Cable News

Media Matters for America has studied it.  The results are as expected (white and male is the main flavor in the diversity soup)  but also interesting, because of the differences in different programs.

This study is better than the earlier ones because it gives population percentages as the basis for comparisons.  As I've written many times before, I don't like the term "diversity" that much because diversity can be achieved by taking a gallon of white soup and adding a quarter-teaspoon of blackness into it.  Or similarly for gender and ethnicity.  In short, it's fairness, really, that I'm interested in, not specks of other colors or genders in the sea of one color or gender.

Here is one picture from the study:

Now, the question of fairness is one of those long-term goals: a society where the positions of power are roughly reflective of the various demographics.  But in the short-run those news programs must also take into account the fact that white men are a higher percentage of the powerful than of the general population, and any realistic political program must reflect that if it wishes to interview politicians in the US Congress, for example.

On the other hand,  it is possible to further influence this trend, and one way of doing that is to pick topics which are of greater interest to one group of viewers than the rest, to invite guests from mostly that group, and to consciously or unconsciously omit other possible guests.  As an extreme example, there have been political shows where only men discuss abortion questions, and my guess is that we might have a program where only non-Latinos are present to discuss immigration questions.  And so on.

The question of which topics are deemed important is closely linked to this question of representation.  I think the links are complicated, however.  Certain issues are labeled as "women's issues," for instance, and then women are invited on the panels.  That's both bad and good, I guess.  Good, because at least those issues get covered, bad, because the way they are covered exacerbates the idea that issues which really are everybody's issues (workplace flexibility, say)  aren't of general interest.  Then the "general interest" issues are covered without thinking that women have anything much to say about them.  After all, they got the girls' segment last week.

That's a muddle, but I hope you get what I mean.  All these concerns are intertwined and to some extent rise from the same basic problems.

On a more superficial level, being white and male is the unmarked option.  Belonging to any other group then becomes the marked option.  Thus, to be viewed as an individual rather than as a representative of a group is easier for whites and/or men.  But paradoxically, to get to the point where everybody is viewed only as individual merits requires that all groups have roughly the same representation.  That way a particular guest stands for only his or her own opinions and not for "what women think" or what "people of color think."

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