You need to tailor your response to the reality. You should not tailor your response to the hype. – Ann Jordan
R.I.P. Robyn Few
The founder of SWOP-USA died Thursday (September 13th) at the age of 54 after a long battle with cancer. She became an activist for HIV and medical marijuana in the early 1990s, but prostitution was at that time simply a way to pay the bills ; that changed after she was targeted for her activism by FBI and arrested in June of 2002. In October of the following year she founded SWOP-USA on the model of SWOP Australia, and just two months later helped Dr. Annie Sprinkle organize the first Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers. Biographical details are scarce, but I’m trying to get a proper obituary together for her for this Monday.
Updates
Sometimes, men’s transgender paranoia is so severe it can lead to violence:
…20-year-old Christian Ariel Romero met [a] 41-year-old [transgendered prostitute]…and…offered [her] money for sex, Montgomery County police said…[but] when Romero discovered his companion was a man, he…repeatedly stabbed the victim…The judge set bail at $500,000, which [Romero’s lawyer] called harsh…“The defendant is a person who’s 20 years old, never done anything wrong in his entire life. And the person who is on the other side is…a prostitute…with a track record, a history…”
As is typical in stories involving transgendered people, everyone dances around pronouns and facts are sparse or contradictory; the reporter says the victim was a “man” but she may have been a pre-op transsexual. And the lawyer’s insinuation that the victim somehow deserved a murderous assault is “NHI” thinking at its most repellent.
Robin Hustle has a great deal more patience than I do; if I had a story of coming out to parents who were in denial about my sex work, I certainly wouldn’t tell it on Jezebel. The article is intelligent, well-written, right on and even funny, but of course the comments are largely what you’d expect (starting with the very first one, which basically accuses her of lying). No thanks; I learned my lesson with Feministe.
A disproportionate number of perverts, rapists and pedophiles have been discovered in a job which allows them to grope and fondle women and children with impunity in public. Golly gee, who could’ve predicted that?
As I predicted, a few journalists are beginning to question the “sex trafficking” hype; though this article reprinted from Christian Science Monitor overstates the credibility of some of the fanatics’ claims and quotes professional victim Stella Marr at length, it also interviews prominent trafficking hysteria critic Ann Jordan, criticizes celebrity opportunists like Ashton Kutcher and flatly states that the scare-figures are wildly exaggerated:
…the…statistic…that there are 100,000 to 300,000 sex slaves in the US – figures repeated by interviewers, blogs, TV hosts and…movie stars…are wrong…the number of actual sex-trafficking victims has been estimated by the US government to be in the tens of thousands, but even those numbers have been criticized as unfounded and far too high; between 2008 and 2010, federally funded human-trafficking task forces opened 2,515 suspected incidents of human trafficking for investigation. Among those cases, only 248 suspected sex-trafficking victims under the age of 18 were identified…Hype over such high and inaccurate numbers of “child sex slaves” leads to a misguided response at best…At worst, it siphons financial resources away from preventing other sorts of human trafficking…[and] undermines solutions to problems…that lead to exploited youth in the first place…
Cause: Making it essentially impossible for brothels to operate legally. Effect: Lots of illegal brothels.
…Elena Jeffreys said when sex work was decriminalised 16 years ago, local councils were given the job of regulating the industry…but…they are now knocking back brothels on moral grounds…”Their job is to regulate the sex industry, not just to blanket knock back every single (brothel) application they get. There’s some local councils in NSW that have never approved a brothel application and then they wonder why there’s brothels in their suburb that are unapproved”…Ms Jeffreys said there were more than 6000 sex workers in the state and most people would have lived near a brothel or a sex worker at some point without knowing it…
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an American sex worker activist (other than myself) make this enlightened point:
…Controversial model-actress [Gehana Vasisth] recently tweeted that she wanted to open a…high class hygienic brothel where men could come and satisfy themselves…with professional, medically certified commercial sex workers…According to Gehana, legalising prostitution and pornography in India – like it is in the West – will help reduce crimes against women drastically. “If men can satisfy their carnal desires without any restriction, rape and other crimes against women will be reduced,” she explained…
Metaupdates
How Old is Oldest? in June Updates (Part Three)
Over a year after the controversy which caused his break with Psychology Today, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa is back with a new blog entitled E pur si muove on a relatively new website named Big Think. And though his debut is not without controversy even there, Kanazawa’s “about” blurb states:
E pur si muove is about science. Science is the accumulation of pure knowledge for its own sake; it has no other goals or purposes. In science, only logic and evidence are the arbitrators of the truth; nothing else matters. No scientific conclusions can ever be good or bad, desirable or undesirable, sexist, racist, offensive, reactionary or dangerous; they can only be true or false. No other adjectives apply. If the truth offends people, it is our job as scientists to offend them. In the memorable words of David Hilbert, Wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen. If what I say as a scientist is wrong, because it is illogical or lacks credible scientific evidence, then it is my problem. If what I say offends you, then it is your problem. Get over it. Prepare to be offended.
And really, that’s pretty much my attitude in this blog as well; I wish Dr. Kanazawa the best of luck with his new site and hope Big Think proves to be more dedicated to free speech than Psychology Today has proven itself to be.
Whenever it looks like something might be decriminalized (such as brothel ownership in Brazil), you can bet the police will launch as many “crackdowns” as possible before their window of opportunity closes:
On the eve of June 14…armed members of [Rio’s] Police…and public prosecutor’s office arrived at a brothel called Centauros…[where] they arrested prostitutes, management and the owner, seized documents, computers…used condoms…and…$150,000…in cash. The owner…spent a week at a maximum security prison. The prostitutes were released the same night and found work at other upscale brothels…Quite a lot of drama when you consider that prostitution is not actually a crime in Brazil…But as Rio de Janeiro prepares for its turn on the global stage – as the host of the World Cup in 2014, then the 2016 Summer Olympics – the city is taking drastic action to keep its thriving sex industry out of the spotlight. Rio has already shuttered 24 sex establishments…and…another 33 venues have been threatened or harassed by the police…It’s the biggest crackdown…in a generation…according to anthropologists Thaddeus Blanchette and Ana Paula da Silva, who have been studying prostitution in Rio since 2004 and have authored almost 20 academic papers on [the subject]…
Keep in mind, California is still under a SCOTUS mandate to reduce its prison population, yet this persecution for profit continues:
Fetish filmmaker and distributor Ira Isaacs’ sentencing was put on hold last month because federal prosecutors intended to present evidence to support…a two-level increase in sentencing…[for] federal crime[s] where the defendant knew or should have known that a victim involved in an offense was a “vulnerable victim”…presumably [this means] an actor or actors involved in films deemed obscene…prosecutors have recommended that Isaacs serve a term of up to seven years and three months in prison, as well as a three-year term of supervised release and a $10,000 fine…[the court also stole] all of his websites…copyrights…computers, servers, props and video equipment.
Against Their Will in TW3 (#20)
Another win-win situation ruined by busybodies:
…The Malay Mail reports [that a] car wash in…Kuala Lumpur…had formed a partnership with a local massage parlour, enabling customers to redeem free sex from the brothel as part of a customer loyalty scheme…police stormed the parlour and found several stamped loyalty cards that had been used by customers…officer Emmi Shah Fadhil [said]…“To get the extra ‘offer’, customers must send their cars for washing nine times within a certain period…The tenth car wash will entitle them to free sex.” The parlour would usually charge between 130 and 180 Malaysian Ringgit ($40-$55) – cheaper than the $65 price for a full-service car wash. Prostitution is illegal in Malaysia. As a result of the raid, nine Vietnamese women aged between 18 and 28 were arrested.
Actually prostitution isn’t illegal in Malaysia; only public solicitation is. However, for the past four years the Malaysian government has been engaged in a campaign to violently suppress brothels under the guise of “fighting human trafficking” in order to win a pat on the head and a “good doggie” from the US State Department.
An anti-sex fanatic’s crusade to criminalize a lump of bronze continues:
…a bare-breasted sculpture in an Overland Park arboretum has triggered a grand jury investigation into whether the city is promoting obscenity to minors. The artwork, titled “Accept or Reject” and donated by Chinese artist Yu Chang, depicts…what the artist statement says is the incomplete identity expressed in one’s digital self — critics contend it promotes “sexting” to children…”The statue appeals to an unwholesome obsession with a sexual act” [said petition sponsor Phillip] Cosby…who calls sexting “the most under-prosecuted crime in America”…
Anybody who claims that any crime (other than those committed under color of authority) in America is “under-prosecuted” is certifiably insane.
If abortion is criminalized, do people really want women who get them imprisoned? Or will this turn into another Swedish Model-like agency-denying thing which only persecutes abortion providers (and maybe men who urge or pay for them)?
Here’s a long but must-read essay by Georgina Perry of Open Doors, a London health organization serving sex workers; she explains how Olympic “sex trafficking” hysteria was amplified by politicians, the police, the media and others, and collapsed when one especially vociferous NGO lost its main source of funding:
For the last three years I’ve been…relegated from a professional considered knowledgeable in her field, to a noisy troublemaker, determined to rail against received wisdom. I’ve had the data I assiduously collect, analyse and make public quoted back to me by law enforcement agencies, the media and NGOs but with clumsy interpretations skewed to strengthen a particular rhetoric…as the 2012 London Olympics drew inexorably towards us, the whole of the UK suddenly became an expert on my job…[the]experience…left me cynical and at times speechless at the sheer effrontery of those who stood to gain from talking up a story that…is not, has not and is unlikely to ever be a reality…
Melissa Gira Grant was interviewed on “Behind the News with Doug Henwood” on public radio station KPFA in Berkeley, California this past Thursday; she talked about the rescue industry, agency denial and the neofeminist anti-sex work agenda (starting at 30:00).
This Week in 2011
How “feminist” laws infantilize or pathologize women, how Arianna Huffington panders to hysteria, how politicians judge others but never themselves, and why only some religions have freedom. Also, an Algerian tribe in which prostitution was normal and accepted and an essay on whores in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
This Week in 2010
The importance of caring for husbands sexually, the woman known to history as “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, a few book reviews, a story I wrote when I was 18, “whoredar”, and a little about my lesbian experiences.
I try to steer clear of comment threads on the topic of sex work on most Jezebel-type sites. Stacey Swimme talked about how horrendous the comments were. I’m actually preparing a post about the Jezebel article and the response.
Hi Maggie,
Off topic, but have you seen this review of Joss Whedon’s work?
Let’s try that again. I thought I knew something about html…
Here’s a comment reply by the blog’s author that you might “enjoy.”
Weirdly enough, I have seen that before; I think somebody linked it a while back. I can never read psychotic garbage like that in its entirety, but I saw enough to diagnose it as such.
You should try reading it – it’s pretty funny watching that gal twist a square peg to fit into a round hole. When you dismiss humor from “Firefly” – you’re left with some rank dialog that you can use to interpret any way you want. However, the “humor” element was a major part of Firefly.
I was not a fan of Firefly – it was too campy for my tastes.
I don’t have the time. As soon as I saw her incensed about a crew member calling a ship’s captain “sir” merely because the former was a black woman and the latter a white man, I knew where the rest was going and that the author doesn’t live in the real world.
On See No Evil, it looks like the Simpsons have done it yet again. Or maybe LIfe’s done it again. Anyway, life imitating art is the the thrust of my point here. Oh my, will the Overland Park Know Nothings object to my turn of phrase here? Oh dear me…
(Helen Lovejoy and Maude Flanders arrive at Marge’s doorstep)
Helen: Get dressed, Marge. You’ve got to lead our protest against this abomination! (Shows Marge a newspaper with the Statue of David on the cover)
Marge: Hmm, but that’s Michelangelo’s David. It’s a masterpiece.
Helen: (Gasps) It’s filth! It graphically portrays parts of the human body which, practical as they may be, are evil.
Marge: But I like that statue.
Maude: (Gasps) I told you she was soft on full frontal nudity.
(Kent Brockman comments on the Statue of David)
Kent: Is it a masterpiece? Or just some guy with his pants down?
That’s one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons. Similar to that is “Bart After Dark” when he works at the burlesque house/bordello, La Maison Derriere: “You could close down Moe’s or the Kwik-E-Mart, and nobody would care!/But the heart and soul of Springfield’s in our Maison Derriere!”
Yes, I particularly liked that episode. Of course I have a soft spot for musicals.
I noticed that on your post about prop 35 you mentioned La Traviata. Another great musical! 😉
I knew I liked you for some reason. 🙂
Actually, I think I’m going to watch those two episodes tonight.
Few was one of the guests on Penn and Teller’s episode of bullshit. I found her engaging and intelligent; completely unashamed of her profession and determined to protect her constitutional liberty. A big loss.
In Malaysia sex work is completely illegal for Muslims under sharia law, with punishment on the books including whipping, though Muslim sex wires, mostly ethnic Malays are usually sent to horrific rehab centres instead, though sometimes to prison. The civil law, modeled on uk common law applies to all non Muslims.
So for non-Muslims it’s basically the same as the UK, i.e. legal but no brothels, soliciting, living off avails, etc?
FDR set Hoover after his political enemies in 1937. We’ve seen it ever since. And if not the FBI specifically, the Feds in general. Siobhan Reynolds comes to mind with the DEA, she was definitely a political enemy of theirs.
Siobhan Reynolds was a modern day martyr to the power of the regulatory state. Tanya Treadway is another power luster who should be crouched on her own viscera in hell.
If I believed in hell, I’d run with your comment. I’d rather have Tanya T. (I can’t show her the respect of her family name) suffer hell here. She’s a pimple on Reynold’s ass (no disrespect meant to the dead), I only wish Reynold would have had more time to pop that pimple.
BTW, my wife suffers from chronic (every effing and relentless day) pain. She is a poster child for auto-immune diseases. She follows her prescription regime rigorously, to a fault leading to pain.
The DEA, and the Congress that gave them the power, should suffer in hell, here and now. Burning, sulfurous hell.
I understand. Of course your wife’s pain is long term but in similar fashion, my aunt was dying of cancer and was forced to eke out her opioids with tylenol and aspirin because the docs were afraid to give her sufficient pain killers as the DEA targets medical professionals who “give too many painkillers” in their “expert” laymen opinions.
My younger brother is a pharmacist and says there is ample evidence that most prescription pain killer addiction is created by NOT giving enough to do the job. That living in pain creates such a need for relief that it changes brain chemistry and that brings on addiction. Apparently there have been pain trials done, I believe in regard to post-operative pain, where the patients were given the means, through click metered dosing, to control their own pain meds. As long as they kept themselves ahead of the pain, it was found that meds use declined with the pain and that addiction rates were significantly less than with the pain regimens used in clinical practice.
But we have this myth of the innate evil of “drugs” that rises out of the prohibition mindset and so we have laymen telling professionals what adequate medication is. And they don’t back it up with facts, just with the naked force brandished by Tanya T. and her ilk.
Like you, I don’t believe in Hell. But if I had the means to subject Tanya and her fellow travelers to a chronic degenerative disease and the accompanying pain I would consider requiring them to adhere to the pain protocols that they have forced on other people to be an exercise in karmic justice.
You have no idea how deeply and thoroughly I agree with you.
Addiction is a moralizing term portraying addiction as depraved individuals with no will power shaking for their next fix. I would like to take those who believe such and choke them until they understand their addiction to air or deprive them of water until they understand that addiction. If you are in chronic pain only pain relievers allow you to live any semblance of a normal life.
Addicted? Only fucking moral idiots, immoral dwarves that should be shunned for their stupidity and amoral self-satisfaction that they think to be moral, raise the question. Obviously I mean that strongly.
In my worst moments, I wish excruciating, chronic pain on everyone in the
DEA. They would so quickly change their stand, and never look back at their previous stance, even claiming it never existed.
Empathy is a lost art for government employees. Maybe it’s a union thing.
I doubt it; they would simply do as politicians do with hookers, using the drugs themselves while still denying them to everyone else. It’s not about sense or morality; it’s about power and control.
Ariel, because many people may not know about Reynolds I took the liberty of editing your post to embed a link to Radley Balko’s obituary of her, which discusses her story at length. I hope you don’t mind.
No, I actually thank you for it. Her story has driven me to be even more questioning of the government. There are times when a moral stance far exceeds a legal stance. Her story exhibits neither a moral or legal stance by the government. Pure persecution, and our SCOTUS has given immunity.
If the actions of a bureaucratic government ever come close to anything like a moral position, it’s purely by coincidence.
Thanks, Maggie,
I too had assumed that most readers of this blog were Agitatortots and didn’t consider that they wouldn’t know about Siohban Reynolds.
Same here. Presumption is a bitch, but I have a flaw because I like bitches. Sorry, couldn’t help myself given the nature of the blog. I’ll try to do better, until the next time. I will then again point out my flaw.
Siohban Reynolds was a bitch to the DEA. May more bitches arise…
Satoshi Kanazawa isn’t even close to Galileo. He jumped to a conclusion that way beyond what the evidence supported.
While the same could be said about his critics, there is a very strong correlation to challenging people’s politically correct ideas about race and being a racist. But I haven’t noticed you calling for patience and moderation when the subject is one of your causes.
Finally, I don’t think Psychology Today infringed on his free speech. PT is a platform for people to share their opinion with a wider audience and they can remove what they want from it. It’s their space and they pay for it. Free speech, as I understand, isn’t being violated when people take down your words from their property, even because it’s controversial. Plus, they did have a better reason, in that it was a deeply flawed piece.
You do know that “E pur si muove” (the title of his new blog) is what Galileo is supposed to have muttered after his recantation, right? Or was the reference entirely lost on you? Everyone else seems to have understood the meaning of the illustration just fine, but then it’s easier to grasp stuff like that when you see things they are instead of forcing them through a political filter.
I went to his blog and got this quote “any study that demonstrates that there are innate sex or race differences is a priori “bad science.” Any study that demonstrates that there are no innate sex or race differences is a priori “good science.” That is an example of a good scientist. The knowledge leads where it leads, our feelings, our cherished assumptions, are notwithstanding.
I have a book from the late 1960s-early 1970s. It’s on taxonomy of homo sapiens sapiens. It acknowledges three major races, while accepting bushmen and hottentots as possible outliers, and then breaks those races into a total of 32 subgroups, by skeletal differences, blood types, muscle insertion points, and other criteria. No judgement about the worth of differences whatsoever, straight science. It did give reasons as to why whites have a higher pool of powerlifters and blacks a higher pool of runners (skeletal differences that are born out by performance), but only in the sense of a higher pool. I’ll add more in my next post.
Have something a little more current:
http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm
The three race thing has been obsolete since the early 1970s.
That was actually the point of the book I addressed. But being from the really early 70s, the author chose carefully. When I was done, I was left with 32 races identified by various criteria, all well discrete. If we have Neanderthall ( white Europeans predominately or exclusively) by latest science and at least one other hominid species in our genes by latest assessment, differences would be expected. It makes me wonder if Central Africans actually represent original Homo Sapiens Sapiens. We may be all a later representation of the original.
I do hope the precursor to the Benobos, or they themselves, got a few genes in the mix. So much more fun-loving than Chimps, being nasty war making, tool making primates that they are.
So you have a theory 32 races in the world, and you know this because of your detailed study of an obsolete book from the 70s?
Did you actually read that article I linked?
Yeah, I did, and the first paragraph, and second set the tone. The obsolete book I read (much like Darwin’s “Origin Of Species” is obsolete since it predates my book by 120 years, why do we listen to him, he is so not current) laid out clear reasons for 32 groups of man, by many criteria. Hottentots and bushmen have some real outlier external features, but the book dealt with internal features as well external, and put no weight on either. It really made no judgements, which is vastly different than your link, where judgements are embedded. Really, Darwin used race about finches, we need to get over it’s bad use about Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
Humans are no different than finches, or any other species. There are sub-groups, and like the Galapagos Finches, that distinction is being reduced or being wiped out by mobility. To claim human sub-species don’t exist is just temporally stupid. Whites have a significant Neaderthall base, (I am so not worthy because I am Neanderthall and NA, how do I live with the shame?) Africans don’t, which puts all your fuming to rest. We are sub-species, but it doesn’t mean we can’t play baseball with each other. And it certainly doesn’t predict who will win, especially individual players by stats.
Do you celebrate diversity or do you fight it tooth and nail?
And just in case you didn’t get my sarcasm in all this, whites are definitely a later sub-species, most if not all of our distinguishing characteristics are regressive. So what? Buy me some coffee at Starbucks…
While the basic conclusion Darwin reached is valid, “Origin of Species” does not tell the whole story and it is not being used as a serious tool anymore. Most notably, it’s before the discovery of DNA.
Your book, similarly was written before the advent of many advances in genetic science and it’s conclusion ignores genetics.
Those 32 neat groups have more genetic diversity between members of the group than they do between each other.
Races are not sub-species. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a sub-species of Homo Sapiens which includes several others, including Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Neanderthal.
And Darwin did not use race. He did not deal with one species of finch, but rather thirteen species, which had evolved from one common ancestor from several million years. Which was his main idea.
Most non-African humans have Neanderthal DNA, it’s not unique to whites and it certainly isn’t enough to warrant classifying white people as sub-species.
And again, a sub-species is not a race. Dog breeds are all part of the same sub-species, Canis lupus familiaris. Great danes and Chihuahua are all part of the same sub-species. You do not know what that word means.
Does that change my point that comparing Galileo to Satoshi is wrong, because Satoshi wasn’t right?
Sorry if you thought I was calling you out specifically.
I’ve read your comments and you leave me with where exactly is Satoshi wrong? You haven’t given anything other than “Satoshi is wrong”.
If I think Maggie is wrong, until I give you a specific (hey, my personality is strongly generalist, but I still understand the need for specifics) I’m just pissing in the wind. If you’ve ever been out to sea, that’s consider really messy and questions your intellect. I mean, really, who would piss in the wind?
(I free women from this argument, you tend to piss on your feet and wind has little to do with it. Vive la différence, and I would have it no other way, because you’d have a penis otherwise, and my whole world, in entirety, would collapse. I see Gauguin (if I could find it, he painted a portrait of female genitalia, nicely haired, and called it something akin to genesis). Maggie, can ou help?
I think you probably mean The Origin of the World by Gustave Courbet:
In the june update column, Maggie linked to another colleague of Satoshi who examined the data and refuted his findings.
In addition the London School of Economics reviewed his column and concluded his findings were flawed and forbidden from publishing his findings outside of peer reviewed publications.
If you can’t see the difference between arguing against a scientist’s conclusions on scientific grounds, and demanding his censure because you don’t like his conclusions, there is no hope for you.
Those people were arguing against him on scientific grounds, and being highly talented scientists themselves, they found his conclusions were flawed, which he acknowledged.
“Those people” were not the ones who got him in trouble; they merely followed along after the crucifixion party which was wholly motivated by anger, not science. Make no mistake: It wouldn’t have mattered one bean if he had been totally, indisputably, 100% correct; the outcome would have been exactly the same, and that is what you refuse to acknowledge.
Well, yes, I don’t think that the scientific community would abandoned him if he turned out to be correct. But that’s not what happened. And which one of us is having trouble accepting that in this case, the truth was not what offended?
Except that you’re totally incorrect; the scientific community would STILL have abandoned him. It happens all the time these days in the “soft sciences”; why do you think nobody says boo about all the “trafficking” garbage though it’s well-known in the anthropological and sociology communities to be false? Because nobody wants to stand up on the skyline and get lynched, that’s why.
Wait a minute, I just remembered that I did actually acknowledge the fact that he probably would have been kicked off PT because of that post.
But PT is popular science blogging network, not a peer reviewed journal. It’s a business where they make money off of psychologists’ opinions.
So if the opinion pissed a bunch of people, there’s a big difference breaking ties with a blogger over it and arresting the guy.
And in the soft sciences you can’t even be 100% correct about anything, and certainly not in the confines of a single blog post.
So, it still a stupid move on the guy’s part regardless.
Sommers got his ass handed to him because he suggested that higher math and physics may be the area of males more than females (and a female swooned, a really laughable moment); my son does calc in his head, I’ve had to push him to follow academic requirements by writing his work down for the points in case he makes a mistake. Now he’s just an anecdote, but the studies on IQ put men on a flatter bell curve than women, meaning that there is a higher pool of stupid and genius men than on the female curve. So Sommers question was valid, a higher pool leads to more in that profession, even with any sexual restriction. If you want to fight that, good luck with the NBA. If you thought of arguing the point, please justify the NBA racial make up.
It’s all about pools.
The NBA is statistically insignificance.
It’s a single organization that been around for 66 years in two countries, that simply doesn’t mean anything on its own.
Well, the NBA is in two countries if you count the one team in Canada. Now, I do agree that 360 to 450 players are questionable statistically, given the last political poll I saw used 840 people, but still the predominance of blacks in the NBA because of height is insignificant?
BTW, I wrote much longer on other points, but thanks for going after the lesser point which was only an illustration. So how you doing on that bell curve thingie?
My earlier comment fell out of thread. My fault evidently. I do so like people thinking an objection to a minor point is a devastating rebuttal. It makes my leg tingle.
Well, you and Chris Matthews…
But I guess it does beat the crease!
😉
No, it’s not a minor point, it’s the only point you tried to use to support your idea that races are actually distinctive enough to have different bell curves.
Welcome to the club! 🙂
This is after I made a much larger rebuttal of his primary ideas and pointed out that that minor point was the only one he actually brought up.
That last one being directly above this post.
You don’t actually know what the phrase “statistically insignificant” means, do you?
No, Kanazawa, the job of a scientist is not to offend. Nor to avoid offense. The job of a scientist is to come up with explanations for observed phenomena which are less wrong than the explanations which already exist. If in the process of doing so people are offended, oh well. And if in the process of doing so people are not offended, oh well.
Kanazawa likes to offend. He may also be capable of doing, and in fact may do, excellent science. Or he may suck at science. Most likely he falls somewhere in the middle. But he is deliberately offensive either because he believes that this makes his work more commercial (he wouldn’t be the first to succeed with this formula) or because he, personally, gets a thrill out of offending people.* And it got him in trouble. Well, that’s the price you sometimes pay for pursuing a business strategy, or a hobby.
You can almost hear him giggle when you read his stuff, a sort of underlying tone of, “hee hee, this’ll really make some neck veins bulge!” Which is fine, but don’t hide behind science.
* A third possibility is that he actually does believe that science is innately offensive, and that if people are offended by your work that automatically means that your work is good. Perhaps I’m being too charitable and naïve, but I don’t think he’s that dumb.
I don’t get Jezebel. How can a site named that be populated with people who think like that?
The same way Americans who label themselves “liberal” can be nothing of the kind.
I’ll go further and say anyone who genuinely believes an adolescent who sexts a picture of herself because they saw this sculpture is even more insane.