Unto the breach

Today I dodged a battle on social media, and I honestly don't know if it makes me a coward or just someone who tries to be prudent about which battles are even winnable.

The person in question, an acquaintance I only know through a mutual friend but who connected to me a couple of years ago for reasons unknown, has thrown out some questionable stuff before, but nothing as bad as this. " There aren't many genders," she posted.  "There are TWO genders and many mental disorders."

After I stopped seeing red enough that I could tell what was on my computer screen, I pondered a variety of responses I could have made.  Among the top contenders:

• "Wow, that's some weapons-grade stupidity, right there."
• "Do you realize what a narrow-minded bigot this makes you sound like?"
• "Get off your fucking high horse and do some research."

Then I calmed down a little more, and considered other, marginally less obnoxious responses:

• "Maybe before you post stuff like this, you should talk to someone who is trans and get actual information on what it's like."
• "I believe the Bible you claim to be so fond of has a lot more to say about charity, kindness, and passing judgment than it does about the biology of gender.  You should reread those verses."
• "I hope like hell your grandchildren don't turn out to be LGBTQ.  For their sake, not for yours."

But finally I said nothing, and unfriended her.

I know it's the duty of every responsible person to confront racism, homophobia, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and general idiocy.  Not doing so, leaving this kind of thing unchallenged, gives it tacit permission to continue.  I never would have let something like this go in my classroom; the few times I ever got really, truly angry at students during my 32 year career were over issues like this.

But lord have mercy, I am tired.  I'm tired of seeing this kind of bullshit trumpeted as if it was a proclamation of an eternal truth.  I'm tired of trying to convince the anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers, the nitwits who claim the 2020 election was stolen and that Trump is the Second Coming of Jesus, the people who believe that the January 6 insurrectionists were Antifa and liberals in disguise.

Plus, there's the question of what good it would have done if I had confronted her on her nasty, sneering post.  She barely knows me; I think we've maybe talked in person once.  Since then I've had zero interactions with her, online or anywhere else.  Why would she listen to me?  More likely she'd write me off as another godless liberal, getting all bent out of shape because she dropped a Truth Bomb on me.  What is the chance that anything I could have said, polite or rude, would have changed her attitude one iota?

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Blaine A. White, The Argument 01, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Still, I can't help but feel that I took the coward's way out.  If I'm not going to challenge stupidity and bigotry, it kind of gives lie to the entire raison d'être of this blog I've written so diligently on for the last fifteen years.  Every time we let someone like her get away with something like this unchallenged, it does double damage -- it further convinces any LGBTQ people who read it that they don't have (or aren't deserving of) unequivocal support, and it gives any other bigots in the studio audience free license to perpetuate their own hateful views.

So I dodged my responsibility, and I'm still feeling a little sick about it.  I'm not going to go back and re-friend her just to have an opportunity to say, "Oh, and about that post...!", and I guess there's an outside (probably minuscule) chance that when she sees she's lost friends over it, she might reconsider.

But I still think I made the wrong decision.

Right now, I'm taking a deep breath and recommitting myself to fight like hell against this sort of thing.  I can't let bigotry slide, excuse it by saying "it's just their religion/politics/age," give it a pass because I'm afraid of what they might say in response or who else I might piss off.  Okay, I'm tired, but it's still a battle worth fighting -- and one that can be won, but only if we refuse to accept prejudice and hatred every damn time we see it.

Shakespeare put it far more eloquently, in Henry V:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.

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Pushing the envelope

Two nights ago, I watched "The Star Beast," the first of three sixtieth anniversary specials of my favorite show, Doctor Who.  As I might have expected, it was campy good fun, and featured the return of my favorite of the Doctor's companions, Donna Noble (played brilliantly by the inimitable Catherine Tate).

As I also might have expected, the howling from the right-wingers started almost immediately.

The problem this time is Donna's daughter, Rose (played by the wonderful Yasmin Finney), who is a trans woman.  The script looks at her identity head on; our first introduction to Rose shows her being taunted by some transphobic classmates, and there was a scene where Donna's irascible mother Sylvia struggles with her own guilt about sometimes slipping up and misgendering her granddaughter.  It was handled with sensitivity, and not with any sort of hit-you-over-the-head virtue signaling, but there's no doubt that Rose's being trans is an important part of the storyline.

Then later, one of the aliens in the episode, Beep the Meep (I shit you not, that's this alien's name), is talking with the Doctor, and the Doctor asks what pronouns the Meep uses, and gets the response, "My chosen pronoun is the definite article.  The.  Same as you, Doctor."

Which is a funny and poignant line -- especially considering that the Doctor's previous incarnation was female.

Well, you'd swear Doctor Who had declared war on everything good and holy in the world.

"Doctor Who has gone woke!" one ex-fan shrieked.  "I'm done with it for good!"  Another declared that Doctor Who "hates men."  Yet another made a whole YouTube video dedicated to the statement that the show had "set its legacy on fire."

To which I respond: my dudes, have you ever even watched this show?

Doctor Who has been on the leading edge of social acceptance and representation ever since the reboot in 2005.  Captain Jack Harkness gave new meaning to "pansexual" by flirting with damn near everyone he came into contact with, ultimately falling hard (and tragically) for a Welshman named Ianto Jones.  Freema Agyeman and Pearl Mackie were the first two Black women to play companions; Mackie's character, Bill Potts, was lesbian as well, as was the Thirteenth Doctor's companion Yasmin Khan (played by Mandip Gill).  Then there's the wonderfully badass Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh) and her wife Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart), who are in a same-sex relationship that is also an interspecies one.

Not only has this show steadfastly championed representation, its themes frequently press us to question societal issues.  It's addressed racial prejudice (several episodes, most notably Rosa and Cold Blood), slavery (The Planet of the Ood), climate change (Orphan 55), whether it's ever possible to forgive your sworn enemies (Dalek), the terrifying evils of tribalism (Midnight), how power eventually corrupts anyone who wields too much of it (The Waters of Mars), how easy it is to dehumanize those whom we don't understand (The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People), if vengeance ever goes too far (Human Nature/The Family of Blood), and the devastating horrors of war (The Zygon Inversion).

So it's not like the people running this show shy away from looking hard at difficult issues.  It's pushed the envelope pretty much from day one.

More to the point, though -- the most troubling part of all the backlash is the subtext of the whining about how "woke" Doctor Who is.  What they're saying is they want to be able to pretend that those who are different -- in this case, trans people, but more generally, LGBTQ+ individuals -- don't exist.  They don't want to be reminded that everyone isn't straight and White; even having queer folks or people of color appear on a show like this is "ramming wokeness down everyone's throats."

Well, let me say this loud and clear -- as a queer guy who was in the closet for four decades because of this kind of mindless, heartless bigotry: never again.  We will never again be silent, never again be shamed into hiding, never again pretend we're invisible, never again quietly accept that we don't deserve exactly the same respect -- and representation -- as anyone else.  I can only imagine how different the trajectory of my life would have been if there'd been these kinds of positive depictions of queer people on the shows I watched as a teenager; how dare you wish that fate upon yet another generation of young adults.

So if that makes you stop watching Doctor Who -- I think I can speak for the majority of fans by saying, "Oh well."  *shoulder shrug*  We don't need you.  However, it does make me wonder how you don't see the irony of calling us snowflakes, when you are the ones who get your knickers in a twist because of someone asking what pronouns a furry alien prefers.  

In other words, don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.  Because we LGBTQ+ people are here to stay, as are people of other races, ethnicities, cultures, and religions.  If you don't like that, you might want to sit and think about why you believe the world has the obligation to reshape itself in order to conform to your narrow-mindedness and prejudice.

As for me, I'm going to continue to watch Doctor Who and continue to enjoy it, and -- to judge by the great ratings "The Star Beast" got -- so are millions of other "woke" fans.

Deal with it.

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Discarded genius

Way back in 1952, British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing proposed a mathematical model to account for pattern formation that results in (seemingly) random patches -- something observed in as disparate manifestations as leopard spots and the growth patterns of desert plants.

Proving that this model accurately reflected what was going on, however, was more difficult.  It wasn't until three months ago that an elegant experiment using thinly-spread chia seeds on a moisture-poor growth medium showed that Turing's model predicted the patterns perfectly.

"In previous studies,” said study co-author Brendan D’Aquino, who presented the research at the March meeting of the American Physical Society, "people kind of retroactively fit models to observe Turing patterns that they found in the world.  But here we were actually able to show that changing the relevant parameters in the model produces experimental results that we would expect."

Honestly, it shouldn't have been surprising.  Turing's genius was unparalleled; the "Turing pattern" model is hardly the only brainchild of his that is still bearing fruit, almost seventy years after his death.  His research on the halting problem -- figuring out if it is possible to determine ahead of time whether a computer program designed to prove the truth or falsity of mathematical theorems will reach a conclusion in a finite number of steps -- generated an answer of "no" and a paper that mathematician Avi Wigderson called "easily the most influential math paper in history."  Turing's work in cryptography is nothing short of mind-blowing; he led the research that allowed the deciphering of the incredibly complex code produced by Nazi Germany's Enigma machine, a feat that was a major contribution to Germany's defeat in 1945.

A monument to Alan Turing at Bletchley Park, where the cryptographic team worked during World War II [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Antoine Taveneaux, Turing-statue-Bletchley 14, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Turing's colleague, mathematician and cryptographer Peter Hilton, wrote the following about him:

It is a rare experience to meet an authentic genius.  Those of us privileged to inhabit the world of scholarship are familiar with the intellectual stimulation furnished by talented colleagues.  We can admire the ideas they share with us and are usually able to understand their source; we may even often believe that we ourselves could have created such concepts and originated such thoughts.  However, the experience of sharing the intellectual life of a genius is entirely different; one realizes that one is in the presence of an intelligence, a sensibility of such profundity and originality that one is filled with wonder and excitement.  Alan Turing was such a genius, and those, like myself, who had the astonishing and unexpected opportunity, created by the strange exigencies of the Second World War, to be able to count Turing as colleague and friend will never forget that experience, nor can we ever lose its immense benefit to us.

Hilton's words are all the more darkly ironic when you find out that two years after the research into pattern formation, Turing committed suicide at the age of 41.

His slide into depression started in January 1952, when his house was burgled.  The police, while investigating the burglary, found evidence that Turing was in a relationship with another man, something that was illegal in the United Kingdom at the time.  In short order Turing and his lover were both arrested and charged with gross indecency.  After a short trial in which Turing refused to argue against the charges, he was found guilty, and avoided jail time if he agreed to a hormonal treatment nicknamed "chemical castration" designed to destroy his libido.

It worked.  It also destroyed his spirit.  The "authentic genius" who helped Britain win the Second World War, whose contributions to mathematics and computer science are still the subject of fruitful research today, poisoned himself to death in June of 1954 because of the actions taken against him by his own government.

How little we've progressed in seven decades.

Here in the United States, state after state are passing laws discriminating against queer people, denying gender-affirming care to trans people, legislating what is and is not allowable based not upon any real concrete harm done, but on thinly-veiled biblical moralism.  The result is yet another generation growing up having to hide who they are lest they face the same kind of soul-killing consequences Alan Turing did back in the early 1950s.

People like Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Texas governor Greg Abbott, who have championed this sort of legislation, seem blind to the consequences.  Or, more likely, they know the consequences and simply don't give a damn how many lives this will cost.  Worse, some of their allies actually embrace the potential death toll.  At the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said, "For the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.  The whole preposterous ideology, at every level."

No, Michael, there is no "ism" here.  It's not an "ideology;" it's not a political belief or a religion.  What you are saying is "eradicate transgender people."  You are advocating genocide, pure and simple.

And so, tacitly, are the other people who are pushing anti-LGBTQ+ laws.  Not as blatantly, perhaps, but that's the underlying message.  They don't want queer people to be quiet; they want us erased.

I can speak first-hand to how devastating it is to be terrified to have anyone discover who you are.  I was in the closet for four decades out of shame, not to mention fear of the consequences of being out.  When I was 54 I finally said "fuck it" and came out to friends and family; I came out publicly -- here at Skeptophilia, in fact -- five years after that.  

I'm one of the lucky ones.  I had nearly uniform positive responses.

But if I lived in Florida or Texas?  Or in my home state of Louisiana?  I doubt very much whether I'd have had the courage to speak my truth.  The possibility of dire consequences would have very likely kept me silent.  In Florida, especially -- I honestly don't know how any queer people or allies are still willing to live there.  I get that upping stakes and moving simply isn't possible for a lot of people, and that even if they could all relocate, that's tantamount to surrender.  But still.  Given the direction things are going, it's a monumental act of courage simply to stay there and continue to fight.

It's sickening that we are still facing these same battles.  Haven't we learned anything from the example of a country that discarded the very genius who helped them to defeat the Nazis, in the name of some warped puritanical moralism? 

This is no time to give up out of exhaustion, however, tempting though it is.  Remember Turing, and others like him who suffered (and are still suffering) simply because of who they are.  Keep speaking up, keep voting, and keep fighting.  And remember the quote -- of uncertain origin, though often misattributed to Edmund Burke -- "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing."

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Words as edged tools

Words matter.

This comes up because of a couple of unrelated social media interactions that got me thinking about the fact that many people use words and then want to avoid the implications and consequences of how they're perceived.  The first was a post from the Reverend Doctor Jacqui Lewis that (hearteningly) got a lot of responses of the high-five and applause variety, which said, "You don't 'hate pronouns.'  You hate the people who are using them.  If that makes you feel uncomfortable, then good.  It should.  You either respect how people are asking you to know and name them, or you don't.  But stop pretending it's about language."

The other was in response to a TikTok video I made for my popular #AskLinguisticsGuy series, in which I made the statement that prescriptivism -- the idea that one dialect of a language is to be preferred over another -- is inherently classist, and that we have to be extremely careful how we characterize differing pronunciations and word usages because they are often used as markers of class and become the basis for discrimination.  Most people were positive, but there was That One Guy who responded only with, "Great.  Another arrogant preachy prick."

Now, let me say up front that there are perhaps times when people are hypersensitive, and infer malice from the words we use when there was none intended.  On the other hand, it's critical that we as speakers and writers understand the power of words, and undertake educating ourselves about how they're perceived (especially by minorities and other groups who have experienced bigotry).  If someone in one of those groups says to me, "Please don't use that word, it's offensive," I am not going to respond by arguing with them about why it was completely appropriate.  I would far rather err on the side of being a little overcautious than unwittingly use a word or a phrase that carries ugly overtones.

Let me give you an example from my own personal experience.  I grew up in the Deep South -- as my dad put it, if we'd been any Deeper South, we'd'a been floating.  And I can say that it really pisses me off when I see a southern accent used as a marker of ignorance, bigotry, or outright stupidity.  I was appalled when a local middle school here in upstate New York put on a performance of Li'l Abner, a play written by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama (both northerners native to Chicago).  The entire play, in my opinion, can be summed up as "Oh, those goofy southerners, how comically dim-witted they are."  If you've never seen it, you'll get the flavor when you hear that it features characters named Mammy Yokum, General Bullmoose, and Jubilation T. Cornpone.  I don't blame the kids; they were doing their best with it.  I blame the adults who chose the play, and then chortled along at sixth and seventh graders hee-hawing their way through the lines of dialogue with fake southern accents, and acted as if it was all okay.

People who know me would readily tell you that I'm very comfortable with laughing at myself.  My reaction to Li'l Abner wasn't that I "can't take a joke" at my own expense.  The problem is that the show is based on a single premise: characterizing an entire group, rural southerners, using a ridiculous stereotype, and then holding that stereotype up for a bunch of smug northerners to laugh at.

And if taking offense at that makes me a "woke snowflake," then I guess that's just the way it has to be.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Kevin C Chen, SnowflakesOnWindshield, CC BY-SA 2.0 TW]

If, in your humor or your critical commentary, you're engaging in what a friend of mine calls "punching downward," you might want to think twice about it.

The bottom line, here, is that what I'm asking people to do (1) can make a world of difference to the way they come across, and (2) just isn't that hard.  When a trans kid in my class came up to me on the first day of class and said, "I go by the name ____, and my pronouns are ____," it literally took me seconds to jot that down, and next to zero effort afterward to honor that request.  To that student, however, it was deeply important, in a way I as a cis male can only vaguely comprehend.  Considering the impact of what you say or what you write, especially on marginalized groups, requires only that you educate yourself a little bit about the history of those groups and how they perceive language.

Refusing to do that isn't "being anti-woke."  It's "being an asshole."

Words can be edged tools, and we need to treat them that way.  Not be afraid of them; simply understand the damage they can do in the wrong hands or used in the wrong way.  If you're not sure how a word will be perceived, ask someone with the relevant experience whether they find it offensive, and then accept what they say as the truth.

And always, always, in everything: err on the side of kindness and acceptance.

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Fish tales

Undoubtedly you are aware of the outrage from people on the anti-woke end of the spectrum about Disney's choice of Black actress Halle Bailey to play Ariel in their upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid.

This is just the latest in a very long line of people getting their panties in a twist over what fictional characters "really" are, all of which conveniently ignores the meaning of the words "fictional" and "really."  Authors, screenwriters, and casters are free to reimagine a fictional character any way they want to -- take, for example, the revision of The Wizard of Oz's Wicked Witch of the West into the tortured heroine in Gregory Maguire's novel (and later Broadway hit) Wicked.  This one didn't cause much of a stir amongst the I Hate Diversity crowd, though, undoubtedly because the character of the Witch stayed green the whole time.

But that's the exception.  In the past, we've had:

• A French professor claiming the Smurfs are communists
• An Islamic cleric issuing a fatwa against Mickey Mouse
• Right-wing media calling Dora the Explorer an illegal immigrant
• The Vatican declaring that the Simpsons are Roman Catholic

The current uproar, of course, is worse; not only is it blatantly racist, it's aimed at a real person, the actress who will play Ariel.  But these lunatics show every day that they care more about fictional characters than they do about actual people; note that the same folks screeching about Black mermaids seem to have zero problem with using public funds to transport actual living, breathing human beings to another state, where they were dropped on a street corner like so much refuse, in order to own the libs.

Oh, but you can't mess about with the skin color of mermaids.  In fact, the outrage over this was so intense that it has triggered some of them to invoke something they never otherwise give a second thought to:

Science.

Yes, if you thought this story couldn't get any more idiotic, think again.  Now we have members of the Mermaid Racial Purity Squad claiming that mermaids can't be Black, because they live underwater, and if you're underwater you can't produce melanin.

I wish I was making this up.  Here's a direct quote:

Mermaids live in ocean.  Underwater = limited sunlight.  Limited sunlight = less melanin.  Less melanin = lighter skin color.  Because they live underwater, which has no access to light beyond a certain depth, Ariel and every other mermaid in existence would be albino.

And another:

Correct me if I'm wrong.  But isn't it physically impossible for Ariel to be black?  She lives underwater, how would the sun get to her for her to produce melanin?!  Nobody thought this through..?

Okay, well, correct me if I'm wrong, but applying science to a movie in which there's a singing, dancing crab, a sea witch with octopus legs, and a character named Flounder who clearly isn't a flounder is kind of a losing proposition from the get-go.

Fig. 1.  Flounder from The Little Mermaid.

Fig. 2.  An actual flounder.

Plus, there are plenty of underwater animals that aren't white, which you'd think would occur to these people when they recall the last science book they read, which was One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss.

Oh, and another thing.  It's an ironic fact that the squawking knuckle-draggers who complain about "wokeness" every time some fictional character they like isn't played by a White American and are the same ones who pitch a fit at any kind of representation of diversity, be it in books, movies, music, or whatever, conveniently overlook the fact that (1) Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote The Little Mermaid, was bisexual, and (2) there's a credible argument that the original story itself was inspired by his grief at having his romantic advances rejected by his friend Edvard Collin.  (In fact, in the original story, the mermaid doesn't marry the prince -- he goes off and marries a human girl, just as Collin himself did, and the mermaid weeps herself to death.  Not a fan of happy endings, Andersen.)

Anyhow, anti-woke people, do go on and tell me more about "reality" and "what science says."  Hell, have at it, apply science anywhere you want.  Start with climate change and environmental policy if you like.  Or... does it only matter to you when the subject is people who aren't the right color, gender, ethnic origin, nationality, or sexual orientation?

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First, do no harm

I keep thinking I'm not going to need to write any more about LGBTQ issues, that I've said all I need to say, and yet... here we are.

I'm going to start with a question directed at the people who are so stridently against queer rights, queer visibility, even queer existence.  I doubt many people of that ilk read Skeptophilia, but you never know.  So here goes:

How does guaranteeing that LGBTQ people are treated equally, fairly, and kindly, and are given the same rights as straight people, affect you at all?

It costs you absolutely nothing to say, "I'm not like you, and maybe I don't even understand this part of you, but even so, I respect your right to be who you are without shame or fear."  For example, I'm not trans; I have always felt unequivocally that I am one hundred percent male.  But when I had trans students in my classes, all it required was my crossing out a first name on the roster and writing in the name they'd prefer to be known by, and remembering to use the appropriate pronouns.  A minuscule bit of effort on my part; hugely, and positively, significant on theirs.

What possible justification could I have for refusing?

The reason this whole topic comes up once again is a link sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia about a rugby team in Australia, the Manly Sea Eagles, which had seven of its players refuse to play in an important match because the owner wanted the team to wear jerseys with a rainbow design meant to promote inclusivity.

Note that the jerseys pretty subtle.  There's not even any text explaining, or calling attention to, the rainbow bands.  But even that level of support was a bridge too far for seven homophobic bigots, who chose to stand down from the game instead.

The whole incident is made even more outrageous by the fact that the owner wasn't wanting the jersey design changed permanently; it was for one damn game, as a sign of solidarity with LGBTQ players and fans.  But no, seven players refused to wear them, saying it violated their "religious beliefs."

Retired Sea Eagles player Ian Roberts, who is the first rugby league player to come out publicly as gay, was devastated by the players' actions.  "I try to see it from all perspectives, but this breaks my heart,” Roberts said.  "It’s sad and uncomfortable.  As an older gay man, this isn’t unfamiliar.  I did wonder whether there would be any religious pushback.  That’s why I think the NRL have never had a Pride round.  I can promise you every young kid on the northern beaches who is dealing with their sexuality would have heard about this."

Matt Bungard, of Wide World of Sports, was blunter still.  "I don’t want to hear one single thing about ‘respecting other people’s opinions’ or using religion as a crutch to hide behind while being homophobic.  No issues playing at a stadium covered in alcohol and gambling sponsors, which is also a sin.  What a joke."

Which I agree with completely, but it brings me back to my initial question; how did wearing the jerseys, for one night, harm those seven players?  The jerseys didn't say, "Hi, I'm Gay."  They were just a sign of support and inclusivity, of treating others the way you'd like to be treated.

Hmm, now where did I hear about that last bit?  Seems like I remember someone famous saying that.  Give me a moment, I'm sure it'll come to me.

A Christian baker creating a wedding cake for a gay couple is saying, "I may not be gay, but I'm happy you've found someone you love and want to spend your life with."  Straight parents who give unconditional support to their trans child are saying, "I love you no matter what, no matter who you are and what you'd like to be called."  A straight teacher having books with queer representation is saying, "Even if I don't experience sexuality like you do, I want you to understand yourself and be happy and confident enough to express your own truth openly."

I remember when I first saw this tweet thinking, "How about creating a world where if Billy did wake up and go ask Brad to the prom, it would be no big deal?"  It costs cis-hetero people nothing, zilch, to say, "I'm fine with who you are."  And to queer kids, it would be life-changing.  Heaven knows, my life would have been different if I'd been able to ask Brad to the prom.

Not you specifically, Brad.  I'm just making a point.

Really, all it requires is the ability to say (1) "Your experience is not the same as my experience, and that's okay," and (2) "I'm committed to treating everyone with kindness, respect, and love."

Instead, far too many people are still choosing bigotry, exclusion, and oppression.  And here in the United States, there is an increasing push to codify all that hatred into law.

If you're against same-sex marriage, if you bristle at Pride events, if you refuse to use a person's chosen name and pronouns, if you think businesses should be able to deny services to queer people, I want you to stop, just for one moment, and ask yourself: how is any of this harming me?  Maybe it's time to pay more attention to the "love thy neighbor" parts of the Bible than to the Book of Leviticus, of which (face it) 99% is ignored by most Christians anyway.  Maybe it's time to put more emphasis on compassion, understanding, and acceptance than on condemning anyone who doesn't think, act, or believe like you do.

After all, Jesus said it himself, in the Gospel of John, chapter thirteen: "By this all people will know that you are my disciples: if you have love for one another."

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The myth of the moral high ground

I had a big sign on my classroom wall that said, "Don't believe everything you think."

It's an important rule-of-thumb to keep in mind.  Far too many people become completely convinced that whatever has popped into their brain must be the truth -- sometimes to the point that they don't question it.  Especially if the "truth" under consideration appeals to a conjecture that they've already fallen for.

It's our old friend confirmation bias again, isn't it?  But instead of using slim evidence to support the claim, here you don't need any evidence at all.  "That seems obvious" is sufficient.

Which brings me to two studies that blow a pair of neat holes into this assumption.

In the first, a study by IBM's consulting arm looked into whether it's true that millennials -- people who reached their majority after the year 2000 -- are actually the entitled, lazy twits that many think they are. Because that's the general attitude by the rest of the adult world, isn't it? The stereotype includes:

• having been taught by an emphasis on "self-esteem" that there's no reason to push oneself, that "everyone should get a prize" just for showing up
• being idealists who want to save the world without doing any actual work
• being narcissistic to the point of unwillingness to work on a team
• having a severe aversion to criticism, and an even stronger one to using criticism constructively
• having no respect for authority

And the study has shown pretty conclusively that every one of these stereotypes is wrong.

Or, more accurately, they're no more right about millennials than they are about any other generation.  According to an article on the study, reported in The Washington Post:

The survey... didn't find any support for the entitled, everybody-gets-a-trophy millennial mindset.  Reports of their doting parents calling bosses to complain about performance reviews may be out there, but, on the whole, IBM's survey shows a different picture.  Millennials list performance-based recognition and promotions as a priority at the same rate as baby boomers do, and they cite fairness, transparency and consistency as the top three attributes they want in a boss.  Someone who "recognizes my accomplishments," meanwhile, comes in at only sixth place... 

If there's any big takeaway about millennials from IBM's study, it's that they want pretty much the same thing most employees want: an ethical and fair boss, inspirational leadership and the opportunity to move ahead in their careers.  Where there were differences, they tended to be relatively small.

At the risk of sounding cocky -- because I'm as prone to this bias as anyone else is -- I have to say that I wasn't surprised by its findings.  I worked with teenagers for 32 years, and despite the frequent "kids these days!" and "we never got away with that when I was in school!" grousing I heard from my colleagues, my general attitude has always been that kids are kids.  Despite the drastic differences in cultural context between today and when I started teaching, there have always been lazy kids and hard-working kids, motivated kids and unmotivated kids, entitled kids and ones who accepted responsibility for their own failings.  The stuff around us changes, but people?  They remain people, with all of their foibles, no matter what.

The second study hit near to the quick for me.  It revolved around a common perception of atheists as angry ranters who are mad at the whole world, and especially the religious segment of it.  I've been collared about this myself.  "Why can't you atheists be more tolerant?" I've been asked, more than once.  "You just don't seem to be able to live and let live."

But according to a paper in The Journal of Psychology, the myth of the angry atheist is just that -- a myth.  The study's authors write:

Atheists are often portrayed in the media and elsewhere as angry individuals.  Although atheists disagree with the pillar of many religions, namely the existence of a God, it may not necessarily be the case that they are angry individuals.  The prevalence and accuracy of angry-atheist perceptions were examined in 7 studies with 1,677 participants from multiple institutions and locations in the United States.  Studies 1–3 revealed that people believe atheists are angrier than believers, people in general, and other minority groups, both explicitly and implicitly.  Studies 4–7 then examined the accuracy of these beliefs.  Belief in God, state anger, and trait anger were assessed in multiple ways and contexts.  None of these studies supported the idea that atheists are particularly angry individuals.  Rather, these results support the idea that people believe atheists are angry individuals, but they do not appear to be angrier than other individuals in reality.

Of course, there's a logical basis to this stereotype; it's the militant ranters who get the most press.  And not only do the angry individuals get the greatest amount of publicity, their most outrageous statements are the ones everyone hears about.  It's why, says Nicholas Hune-Brown, the public perception of Richard Dawkins is that he's the man who "seems determined to replace his legacy as a brilliant evolutionary biologist with one as 'guy who’s kind of a dick on Twitter'"

Once again, we should focus on the outcome of the study -- that atheists are no more likely to be angry than members of other groups.  It isn't saying that there aren't angry atheists; it's saying that there are also angry Christians, Muslims, Jews, and so on.  The perception of atheists as more likely to be intolerant and ill-tempered is simply untrue.

[Image courtesy of photographer/artist Emery Way]

So back to my original point.  It behooves us all to keep in mind that what we assume to be true may, in fact, not be.  How many times do we all overgeneralize about people of other political parties, religions, genders, sexual orientations, even appearance and modes of dress?  It's easy to fall into the trap of saying "All you people are alike," without realizing that what seems like an obvious statement of fact is actually simple bigotry.

It may be impossible to eradicate this kind of bias, but I'll exhort you to try, in your own mind, to move past it.  When you find yourself engaging in categorical thinking, stop in your tracks, and ask yourself where those beliefs came from, and whether they are justified.  And, most importantly, whether there is any hard evidence that what your brain is claiming is true.

And if the answer to either of the latter questions is "No," then take a moment to suspend your certainty.  Look at the people you'd been judging without needing to make a judgment.  Get off the moral high ground.  I think you'll find that empathy and tolerance are, in general, a far better perspective from which to view the world.

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An open letter to straight Americans

Dear straight people:

I hope you recognize the path the United States is on, and where it leads.  Because it's easy to blind yourself to problems that don't affect you.  That is, at its heart, what minorities mean when they talk about privilege.  As a Black friend of mine put it, "White privilege doesn't mean White people's lives are easy; it just means that race isn't one of the things making them harder."

Recent developments in Florida (why the fuck is it always Florida?) should bring that into sharp focus.  Because of the state's "Don't Say Gay" law, school administrators in Orange County have now told staff that they can't display rainbow "Safe Space" stickers in their classrooms, they can't assign reading material with any LGBTQ content to their classes, they are required to tell parents if they find out a student is queer, and LGBTQ staff members cannot have photographs of their families displayed anywhere -- including on their own desks.

My first question to my straight readers is: do you have any idea what effect this has, both on staff and on students?

This kind of ugly, bigoted horseshit is why I spent forty years unable to admit that I was bisexual.  During most of that time I couldn't even admit it to myself.  I grew up thinking same-sex attraction was something to be ashamed of, or at the very least, to be fearful about.  Well, fear was justified; I want you to think, really think, about what it'd be like if you were afraid to take your significant other out to dinner because then people would realize you were together.  That you couldn't walk down the street of your own home town holding hands because you'd be jeered at, have hateful epithets thrown at you, and (in all too many places) risk actual physical violence.  That you'd been told over and over that loving who you love made you abnormal, sinful, disgusting, aberrant.

It's that hell that this law is forcing LGBTQ people back into.

We never really left it, honestly, but a lot of us felt like at least we were heading in the right direction.  In the last five years I've become more and more like the iconic character Nick Nelson from Alice Oseman's brilliant graphic novel series Heartstopper:

I'm damn lucky I'm in a situation I can do that.  I live in a pretty tolerant part of the country.  I'm married to a woman, which is fortunate in two respects; not only does it shield me from the stigma that people in same-sex relationships face every single day, my wife is a wonderful human being who accepts me for who I am.

But consider what I, and countless others like me who spent most of their lives hiding, lost in the process.  Think about what it'd be like if there was something about you that you didn't ask for and couldn't change, and now there were laws against it being out in the open.  How about... wearing glasses?  What if at work, you were told you couldn't wear glasses, and had to pretend you could see well?  If anyone asked you about it, you had to say you could see just fine.  Any visits to the optometrist had to be made in secret -- if possible, in another town where you wouldn't be recognized going into the place.  No books in your kids' school could show, or even mention, characters who didn't have 20/20 vision.  And if you did become angry enough to say "fuck it" and wore your glasses in public, you would be ridiculed or beaten up for it.

See how horrifying that sounds?

It's been years that we've known that homophobic ignorance flies in the face of the actual science, but we Americans don't exactly have a stellar record of listening to the scientists about anything.  Back in 2015, Scientific American published an article that goes into the biology of human sexuality, and the details are fascinating; but truthfully, it can be summed up as, "Sexuality is complex, and it isn't binary."  

The homophobes have responded by mischaracterizing how the medical professionals address the issue, because (unfortunately) straw man arguments are all too effective when people don't know, or don't want to know, the facts.  Just last week I saw someone post on social media, "If a five-year-old is old enough to decide what gender they are, an eighteen-year-old is old enough to own a gun."  I'm not going into the last half of it, but the first half is so abjectly ridiculous it's a wonder it generated anything more than derisive laughter.  It makes it sound like an anatomically male five-year-old says, "Hey, I'm a girl now," and the parents immediately whisk them off to get gender-reassignment surgery.  According to a statement by medical professionals who address issues of gender dysphoria, surgeries of this sort are only done if the child is anatomically intersex, and even then doctors almost always wait until the child is the age of puberty before taking any kind of irreversible action.

Unfortunately, no one I saw responded to the person who posted that with, "THAT NEVER HAPPENS."  We've become afraid even to fight the battle, or perhaps just too damn exhausted to argue.

It's understandable.  This is the third time this month (ironically, Pride Month) I've written about these issues here at Skeptophilia.  At some point we feel like, "What more can I say?  And what good is it doing anyhow?"  So that's why I'm going to ask not my queer readers, but my straight ones, to think long and hard about something: what would it take to make you stand up and say, "Hell no, this is wrong," even though it only directly affects a group you don't belong to?  If you were a straight teacher in Orange County, Florida, would you be willing to put up a rainbow flag in your classroom and say to administrators, "Bring it on"?  To say to Ron DeSantis and the hundreds of other elected officials in this country cut from the same cloth, "This is not gonna happen.  Not on my watch."?

"Tired," by the inimitable Langston Hughes

It's easy to support LGBTQ rights in ways that risk nothing.  You vote for candidates who support equal rights for all?  Great, awesome, good for you.  But we are hurtling down a tunnel into a deep, dark place that a lot of us thought we'd left back in the 1980s.  And that downward spiral won't stop until straight people stand up and say, "I'm going to do whatever it takes to halt this, even if it means putting myself in the bullseye."

That is what it means to be an ally.

Thankfully, there are straight people who do just that.  I've laughed with a dear friend of mine, who is straight as they come, because he owns (and wears publicly) more Pride gear than I do.  He's one of the ones who would not hesitate to give a big old middle finger to homophobes, and say, "What are you gonna do about it, asshole?"

But there are too damn few people like him.

So I'm asking my straight readers to stand up and make your voices heard.  It's the only way any of this is going to stop.  And keep in mind that if the bigots win this fight, it isn't going to end there, because queers aren't the only ones these people hate.  Remember the oft-quoted statement by anti-Nazi activist Martin Niemöller that ends, "Finally, they came for me -- and by then, there was no one left to speak for me."

Please, please don't wait until then.

Maybe there's a time that other-sides-ism is appropriate, but that's not now.  I am not obligated to respect your opinion if your opinion denies the rights, and even the humanity, of another group of people.  There is no morally and ethically defensible justification for what is happening in the United States right now.

Pride ends today, but don't expect me to shut up about it.  I was silent for forty years, and it doesn't work.  And maybe -- just maybe -- if enough straight allies will commit to standing in the breach with us, we won't have another generation of queer children growing up going through the hell that I and so many others did.  

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Howls from the losing side

After I wrote a piece two weeks ago about Pride Month and how critical it is for LGBTQ young people to see positive representation in books, television, and movies, I thought I'd finally said all I had to say about the subject.  After all, it's come up enough times before.  Hell, when I first came out as bisexual publicly, it was here at Skeptophilia.  Since then I've dealt with the general issue of homophobia, not to mention my reaction to having a homophobic slur (and a half-full can of soda) thrown at me personally.  I've responded to claims that any kind of queer representation in fiction is "virtue signaling" or an attempt to be "woke."  I've explained, as patiently as I know how, that the science is absolutely crystal clear that neither gender nor sexual orientation is a choice, and that neither one is binary.  I even responded to a reader who basically said that she was fine with my being queer as long as I went back into the closet and stayed there.

But I've also been hit between the eyes by enough horrifying stuff in the last few weeks that it's impossible for me to remain silent. 

[Image is in the Public Domain]

Let's start with Mark Burns, Republican candidate for the 4th Congressional District in South Carolina, who wants to re-launch the House Un-American Activities Committee specifically to root out "LGBTQ indoctrination" of children.  Such indoctrinators, he says, should be tried and executed for treason.

This "indoctrination" includes parents who are supportive of their trans children and teachers who have materials in their classrooms portraying LGBTQ individuals in a positive light.  All different subgroups under the LGBTQ umbrella, Burns said, are merely pedophiles in disguise, and as such deserve to die along with the people who support them.

I'm utterly baffled why such a statement -- threatening law-abiding American citizens with public mass execution -- doesn't immediately disqualify him from running from any office, anywhere, ever.  But no.  And Pastor Dillon Awes of Hurst, Texas, went even further; anyone identifying as LGBTQ should be executed without trial.  "They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head!" Awes said.  "That's what God teaches. That's what the Bible says.  You don't like it?  You don't like God's word, because that is what God says."

It's not only the horrific bloodthirstiness of these statements that is appalling; it's the hypocrisy.  Do you know what the Bible has way more prohibitions against than it does against homosexuality?  Usury.  Also known as lending money at interest.  In other words, the entire foundation of capitalism.  Don't believe me?  Check out Deuteronomy 23:19, Leviticus 25:13, and Nehemiah 5:10.   Oh, and don't overlook Ezekiel 18:13, where the required penalty for basically what we'd call "being a banker" is death.

Then there are the biblical prohibitions against tattoos, against wearing cloth made of two different kinds of fibers woven together, and against eating shellfish and pork.  (It also bears mention that the last-mentioned biblical passage also identifies a bat as being a bird.  Yay for biblical inerrancy, amirite?)

So until Burns and Awes start snarling as loudly about all these other things that are Abominations In The Lord's Sight, they can just shut their fucking mouths.

Then there's right wing author and commentator Nick Adams, who just tweeted last week, without any apparent sense of irony, "Straight white males are the most oppressed group in America today."  Really, Nick?  Show me one person who has recommended taking all straight white males and/or their allies and murdering them.

I'll wait.

Oh, but that's not all.  How about Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, who tweeted last week, "Take your children to CHURCH, not to drag bars."  She was evidently responding to a drag bar in Texas that hosted a "family-friendly brunch" where performers in drag read stories to the children who were in attendance.  While I have serious issues with children going to an event in any bar regardless of its description, the outrage here seems to be centered around the drag queens.  Because this is, apparently, something new?  These people have short memories -- I'll bet as children or young adults a good chunk of them watched Flip Wilson, Harvey Korman, Johnny Downs, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon (Some Like it Hot), Robin Williams (Mrs. Doubtfire), Dustin Hoffman (Tootsie), not to mention pretty much the entire cast of Monty Python's Flying Circus.  (In fact, one of their movies features a hilarious scene of men playing women pretending that they're men.)

Oh, and how about the fact that many of us, myself included, first learned about classical music from a cross-dressing rabbit?

On a more serious note, though, I feel obliged to request that Representative Boebert count up the number of children who have been harmed by drag queens (or any other LGBTQ individuals), and compare it to the number of children who have been molested and abused in churches by members of the clergy.

I'll wait.

The situation is not all dire, and I have some hope that the hypocritical yammering of people like this is a desperate, last-ditch attempt to push an agenda that, in fact, polls show is increasingly unpopular.  The article a friend sent me, that was actually what got the ball rolling on this diatribe, pointed out that the latest research shows that eight out of ten Americans believe there should be specific legislation designed to protect LGBTQ individuals from discrimination -- and this includes two-thirds of the Republicans surveyed. 

People like Awes, Burns, Boebert, and all the others who have been howling about queers corrupting society and taking over America are losing, and they know it.  But the scary part is that they can do a great deal of damage on their way out of the door.  A better world tomorrow won't help the trans kids who commit suicide today after being labeled as aberrations and denied appropriate medical care.  Queer teenagers subjected to the horrors of "conversion therapy" won't ever completely lose those emotional scars, even if they end up in a place where it's safe for them to claim their identity.  Even the subtler damage of the fear, secrecy, and shame inculcated in queer kids by immersion in a homophobic culture doesn't heal quickly, if it ever does.  I knew I was queer at age fifteen, and was terrified to come out until I was fifty-two.

You do the math.

Yes, I know we're all dead exhausted by the necessity of ringing the changes on the same issues over and over and over.  On the other hand, it's no better to swing too far in the other direction and decide that because things are getting better (which they definitely are), we can relax.  We have to keep clamoring loudly for equality, for explicit anti-discrimination legislation, for the rights of people to love who they love and be who they are publicly and without shame.

And until all those goals are achieved, don't expect me to be silent.  Anyone who doesn't like it -- well, feel free to unfriend me, unfollow me, block me, or ignore me into nonexistence.  But I'm not going to do what I did for decades, which is to allow the ugly bigotry imbedded in our culture to shut me up and make me hide.

Never, ever again.

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