The HPV Vaccine, Young Girls, and Power Power Power!!

Frankly, the idea of a mandatory HPV vaccine has been blowing my mind for some time now. As usual, there’s a breathtaking array of interest groups who are colluding on this particular outrage: local and state governments, Big Pharma (Merck tapping its fingers together, Mr. Burns-style, at the thought of all those captive patients), and the public schools with their hypocritical Just Say No campaigns coupled with forced druggings (I’m thinking of Ritalin et al. here). The Religious Right is also slugging it out, not in defense of girl children who do not have the power to say yes or no when it comes to what is injected into their own bodies, but mostly out of fear that the vaccine will cause them to be more promiscuous! Let one needle prick in, and they’ll be letting in pricks left and right!

Ugh. Well, why stop with HPV shots? Why not administer Depo-Provera (injectable birth control) at the same time? And, to appease those who fear that the girls will then become uncontrollably unchaste, the public schools can administer chastity belts that only a girl’s teacher can unlock. What a no-brainer, people!

Hey, Ritalin is mostly administered to hyperactive young boys. You didn’t think the pendulum was going to swing that way forever, did you? It had to swing back sometime. So now the girls can be forcibly medicated, and we’ll be back to equality of the sexes. As long as we’re violating all children equally.

Here’s a link to a post from a blog called, I kid you not, “Pharma Marketing.” At least its author thinks the promiscuity issue is too ridiculous to be discussed.

Do as I say, not as I do

Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’? — $30,000 utility bill

Armed with Gore’s utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president’s 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours.

“If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn’t care,” says the Center’s 27-year-old president, Drew Johnson. “But he tells other people how to live and he’s not following his own rules.”

Scoffed a former Gore adviser in response: “I think what you’re seeing here is the last gasp of the global warming skeptics. They’ve completely lost the debate on the issue so now they’re just attacking their most effective opponent.”

Also see the article at The Tennessee Center for Policy Research

Watch Michael Crichton very gently and politely rip Al Gore a new one

Interviewer Charlie Rose at approximately 35:35: “So Al Gore’s movie and book express rank prejudices?”

Michael Crichton: “That’s my view, sure.”

Oh well, I’m sure that Academy Award will ease the sting.  Or maybe the honorary doctorate.

Watch on Google video (about an hour long) here

Read the transcript (pdf format)

Strange Bedfellows? Feminism and libertarianism

This essay by Roderick Long and Charles Johnson of the Molinari Institute’s Industrial Radical is really good.

The parallels between libertarian and feminist insights are striking. “The state is male in the feminist sense,” MacKinnon argues, in that “the law sees and treats women the way men see and treat women” (MacKinnon 1989, Chapter 8 ¶ 11). The libertarian completion of this thought is that the state sees and treats everybody—though not in equal degree—the way men see and treat women. The ideal of a woman’s willing surrender to a benevolent male protector both feeds and is fed by the ideal of the citizenry’s willing surrender to a benevolent governmental protector. “We are not among wild beasts; from whom, then, does woman need protection? From her protectors,” Ezra Heywood remarked (McElroy 1991, p. 227); in the same way, libertarians have often described the state as an entity that protects people primarily from harms caused or exacerbated by the state in the first place. Just as, under patriarchy, forced sex is not recognized as real or fully serious rape unless the perpetrator is a stranger rather than one’s husband or boyfriend, so, under statism, governmental coercion is not recognized as real or fully serious tyranny unless it happens under a non-democratic government, a “dictatorship.” The marriage vow, as a rape license, has its parallel in the electoral ballot, as a tyranny license. Those who seek to withhold consent from their country’s governmental apparatus altogether get asked the same question that battered women get asked: “If you don’t like it, why don’t you leave?” — the man’s rightful jurisdiction over the home, and the state’s over the country, being taken for granted. It’s always the woman, not the abusive man, who needs to vacate the home (to go where?); it’s likewise the citizen, not the abusive state, that needs to vacate the territory (to go where?).

Despite these parallels, however, many libertarians — libertarian feminists definitely included — seems surprisingly unsympathetic to most of what feminists have to say. (And vice versa, of course, but the vice versa is not our present topic.) When feminists say that gender and sexuality are socially constructed, libertarians often dismiss this as metaphysical subjectivism or nihilism. But libertarians do not call their own Friedrich Hayek a subjectivist or nihilist when he says that “the objects of economic activity,” such as “a ‘commodity’ or an ‘economic good,’ nor ‘food’ or ‘money,’” cannot be “defined in objective terms” [CRS I. 3], and more broadly that “tools, medicine, weapons, words, sentences, communications, and acts of production,” and generally all the “objects of human activity which constantly occur in the social sciences,” are not such in virtue of “some objective properties possessed by the things, or which the observer can find out about them” [IEO III. 2], but instead are “defined in terms of human attitudes toward them.” [IEO II. 9]

Libertarians are often unimpressed by feminist worries about social norms that disable anything a woman says from counting as declining consent to sexual access, but they are indignant at theories of tacit or hypothetical consent that disable anything a citizen says from counting as declining consent to governmental authority.1 Libertarians often conclude that gender roles must not be oppressive since many women accept them; but they do not analogously treat the fact that most citizens accept the legitimacy of governmental compulsion as a reason to question its oppressive character; on the contrary, they see their task as one of consciousness-raising and demystification, or, in the Marxian phrase, plucking the flowers from the chains to expose their character as chains.

When radical feminists say that male supremacy rests in large part on the fact of rape—as when Susan Brownmiller characterizes rape as “a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear” (Against Our Will, p. 15)—libertarians often dismiss this on the grounds that not all men are literal rapists and not all women are literally raped. But when their own Ludwig von Mises says that “government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action,” that it rests “in the last resort” on “the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen,” and that its “essential feature” is “the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning” [HA VI.27.2], libertarians applaud this as a welcome demystification of the state. Libertarians rightly recognize that legally enacted violence is the means by which all rulers keep all citizens in a state of fear, even though not all government functionaries personally beat, kill, or imprison anybody, and even though not all citizens are beaten, killed, or imprisoned; the same interpretive charity towards the radical feminist analysis of rape is not too much to ask.

Brownmiller’s and other feminists’ insights into the pervasiveness of battery, incest, and other forms of male violence against women, present both a crisis and an opportunity for libertarians. Libertarianism professes to be a comprehensive theory of human freedom; what is supposed to be distinctive about the libertarian theory of justice is that we concern ourselves with violent coercion no matter who is practicing it—even if he has a government uniform on. But what feminists have forced into the public eye in the last 30 years is that, in a society where one out of every four women faces rape or battery by an intimate partner,2 and where women are threatened or attacked by men who profess to love them, because the men who attack them believe that being a man means you have the authority to control women, male violence against women is nominally illegal but nevertheless systematic, motivated by the desire for control, culturally excused, and hideously ordinary. For libertarians, this should sound eerily familiar; confronting the full reality of male violence means nothing less than recognizing the existence of a violent political order working alongside, and independently of, the violent political order of statism. As radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon writes, “Unlike the ways in which men systematically enslave, violate, dehumanize, and exterminate other men, expressing political inequalities among men, men’s forms of dominance over women have been accomplished socially as well as economically, prior to the operation of the law, without express state acts, often in intimate contexts, as everyday life” (1989, p. 161). Male supremacy has its own ideological rationalizations, its own propaganda, its own expropriation, and its own violent enforcement; although it is often in league with the male-dominated state, male violence is older, more invasive, closer to home, and harder to escape than most forms of statism. This means that libertarians who are serious about ending all forms of political violence need to fight, at least, a two-front war, against both statism and male supremacy; an adequate discussion of what this insight means for libertarian politics requires much more time than we have here. But it is important to note how the writings of some libertarians on the family—especially those who identify with the “paleolibertarian” political and cultural project—have amounted to little more than outright denial of male violence. Hans Hermann Hoppe, for example, goes so far as to indulge in the conservative fantasy that the traditional “internal layers and ranks of authority” in the family are actually bulwarks of “resistance vis-a-vis the state” (Secession, the State, and the Immigration Problem § IV). The “ranks of authority” in the family, of course, means the pater familias, and whether father-right is, at a given moment in history, mostly in league with or somewhat at odds with state prerogatives, the fact that it is so widely enforced by the threat or practice of male violence means that trying to enlist it in the struggle against statism is much like enlisting Stalin in order to fight Hitler—no matter who wins, we all lose.

Some of libertarians’ sharpest jabs at feminism have been directed against feminist criticisms of sexual harassment, misogynist pornography, or sadomasochism. Feminists in particular are targeted as the leading crusaders for “political correctness”, and characterized as killjoys, censors, or man-haters for criticising speech or consensual sex acts in which women are denigrated or dominated; it is apparently claimed that since the harassment or the portrayal doesn’t (directly) involve violence, there aren’t any grounds for taking political exception to it. But the popularity in libertarian circles of Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead (a deeply problematic novel from a feminist standpoint,3 but instructive on the present point) indicates that libertarians know better when it comes to, say, conformity and collectivism. Although its political implications are fairly clear, The Fountainhead pays relatively little attention to governmental oppression per se; its main focus is on social pressures that encourage conformity and penalize independence. Rand traces how such pressures operate through predominantly non-governmental and (in the libertarian sense) non-coercive means, in the business world, the media, and society generally. Some of the novel’s characters give in, swiftly or slowly, and sell their souls for social advancement; others resist but end up marginalized, impoverished, and psychologically debilitated as a result. Only the novel’s hero succeeds, eventually, in achieving worldly success without sacrificing his integrity — but only after a painful and superhuman struggle. It would be hard to imagine libertarians describing fans of The Fountainhead as puritans or censors because of their objections to the Ellsworth Tooheys of the world—even though Toohey’s malign influence is mainly exercised through rhetorical and social means rather than by legal force. An uncharitable reading that the situation unfortunately suggests is that libertarians can recognize non-governmental oppression in principle, but in practice seem unable to grasp any form of oppression other than the ones that well-educated white men may have experienced for themselves.

A more charitable reading of libertarian attitudes might be this: while the collectivist boycott of independent minds and stifling of creative excellence in The Fountainhead is not itself enacted through government means, collectivism clearly is associated with the mass psychology that supports statism. So is patriarchy, actually, but it is most closely associated with a non-governmental form of oppression—that is, male supremacy and violence against women. All this makes it seem, at times, that libertarians—including libertarian feminists—are suffering from a sort of willful conceptual blindness; perhaps because they are afraid to grant the existence of serious and systematic forms of political oppression that are not connected solely or mainly with the state. It’s as though, if they granted any political critique of the outcomes of voluntary association, they would thereby be granting that voluntary association as such is oppressive, and that government regulation is the solution. But such a phobic reaction only makes sense if you first accept (either tacitly or explicitly) the premise that all politics is exclusively the domain of the government, and as such (given Mises’s insights into the nature of government) all political action is essentially violent action. This is, as it were, a problem that has no name; but we might call it “the authoritarian theory of politics,” since it amounts to the premise that any political question is a question resolved by violence; many 20th century libertarians simply grant the premise and then, because they hold that no question is worth resolving by (initiatory) violence, they call for the death of politics4 in human affairs.

Don’t you wish your little daughter was hot like mine?

Goodbye to Girlhood at the Washington Post:

Pre-adolescents’ propensity to try on different identities can make them particularly susceptible to media messages, notes the APA report. And for some girls, thinking about how one’s body stacks up can be a real downer.

In a 2002 study, for example, seventh-grade girls who viewed idealized magazine images of women reported a drop in body satisfaction and a rise in depression.

Such results are disturbing, say observers, since eating disorders seem to strike younger today. A decade ago, new eating disorder patients at Children’s National Medical Center tended to be around age 15, says Adelaide Robb, director of inpatient psychiatry. Today kids come in as young as 5 or 6.

APA report of the Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls

From the NYT: Classroom Distinctions

Meredith drew this to my attention (not directly, but via Facebook):

“Classroom Distinctions,” by Tom Moore:

Every day teachers are blamed for what the system they’re just a part of doesn’t provide: safe, adequately staffed schools with the highest expectations for all students. But that’s not something one maverick teacher, no matter how idealistic, perky or self-sacrificing, can accomplish.

Moore does a lot of whining about the “system” and its inability to provide safe schools for inner-city children; what he leaves out is that this is an issue of public, not private, schools. I suspect that, if pressed, Moore would say that more money is all that is needed to solve the problem.

I linked to this article not only to bitch about Moore’s bitching, but because I would also dismiss the “maverick teacher” panacea that seems to be as prevalent a myth as that of the under-funded public school. I can’t believe how many college grads get seduced into that Teach for America bullshit, for instance. (The Colbert Report recently interviewed Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America; the best part was when she disclosed that she’s never actually taught in a public school or anywhere else!) Not to mention all my college-grad friends who are directly involved in teaching, substitute teaching, or, worst of all, graduate school to get teaching credentials. All of these render them next to worthless for networking. Damned idealists! But when they are not buying into some other self-serving mythology about teaching, at least some of them must be falling back on that maverick teacher stuff, right? They’re Making a Difference, etcetera.

Here’s some more amusing shit-talking about Teach for America from the conservative City Journal; not like I’m really going to link to the NYT without anything to balance it. I’m kidding, mostly; I don’t agree with everything in this article either, but it’s also worth a read.

Not sure if my position on Iraq is clear

I’m no Catoist (Catoite?) but this is worth reading:

Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq, by Ted Galen Carpenter

Staying in Iraq is a fatally flawed policy that has already cost more than 3,000 American lives and consumed more than $350 billion. The security situation in that country grows increasingly chaotic and bloody as evidence mounts that Iraq has descended into a sectarian civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. Approximately 120 Iraqis per day are perishing in political violence. That bloodshed is occurring in a country of barely 26 million people. A comparable rate of carnage in the United States would produce more than 1,400 fatalities per day.

That’s, like, two WTCs a day, right?

Goddamnit

Al Gore may receive an honorary doctorate from U of M for his “climatology work.”

What’s next, the Nobel Peace Prize for GW??

Year of the Man?

Over at SFGate Culture Blog, G. Allen Johnson says that he wants Daniel Craig nominated for Best Actor. He doesn’t want him to win, he just wants him to get nominated.

So, based on that, and the relative (ok, very relative) prominence of Clive Owen, I’ve decided that it’s the Year of the Man, or that The Man is Back, or something.

There are defined eras for this sort of thing, right? In today’s Salon, Camille Paglia returns to write of Anna Nicole Smith that she had “genuine talent but no place to put it” since she was born in the wrong era, where the days of Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Anita Ekberg are long over. The fifties and sixties also gave us the elegant, gamine, asexual brunettes Jacqueline Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn, but I think I’d concede that the era belonged to the likes of Monroe.

I’m not knocking Hepburn, by the way, for all that I agree with Jeffrey Eugenides’ observation that she was a figure whom “all women idolize and men never think about.” (I did try repeating that to a male acquaintance, who protested that she was more attractive than Marilyn Monroe, but that dude is totally a homo and his opinion doesn’t count.) Truman Capote had wanted Monroe to play his Holly Golightly, and was disappointed when the studio went with Hepburn. I’ll have to go with Capote on this one. Monroe, who actually was an orphan like Holly, could probably have brought some real pathos to the part. Hepburn was just too much of a goddamn Old World princess (which the producers of Roman Holiday clearly picked up on) to be convincing as a playgirl with a tragic past. Her beauty and style in the film are iconic to this day, but the film itself borders on the unwatchable.

Anyway, I know that Clive Owen has his detractors, but in a very limited and unscientific study of a few female friends, I’ve found that Daniel Craig is universally drooled over. His Bond has been criticized as more muscular and less cerebral, but obviously these women aren’t complaining. Nobody’s clamoring to bring back, say, Pierce Brosnan.

I was surprised to find that I had a similar reaction. Daniel Craig’s Bond is so macho that it almost veers into Eurofag territory, but not quite; he keeps it in check.  I think George Clooney was voted People’s Sexiest Man Alive for two years in a row, but even though he could be considered something of a man’s man, he’s too damned smirky and too much our generation’s Cary Grant, just a little too much Old Hollywood. My point is, the trend toward dudeliness was there, and with the likes of Daniel Craig it’s reached a crescendo.

My conclusion: we’re sick of fags. The end.

The global cooling consensus…

…That was in the 70s. However, it seems that in the 70s, one could respond to the “global cooling consensus” without wholeheartedly advocating that the entire First World voluntarily plunge itself into poverty and, implicitly, that the Third World should maintain its miserable state.

Today, however, questioning the likes of Al Gore and his hysterical pseudoscientifics is usually bound to get one labeled hysterical and pseudoscientific, and/or accused of being in Exxon’s pocket. Nonetheless, it looks like there are some brave souls who manage to get their controversial findings published.

One such brave soul is Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist. He has a new book coming out called The Chilling Stars, but it’s available only from Amazon.co.uk. Read his article about it at the Times Online:

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.