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coochiequeens · 6 months ago

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‘100% feminist’: how Eleanor Rathbone invented child benefit – and changed women’s lives for ever

She was an MP and author with a formidable reputation, fighting for the rights of women and refugees, and opposing the appeasement of Hitler. Why isn’t she better known today?

Ladies please reblog to give her the recognition she deserves

By Susanna Rustin Thu 4 Jul 2024

My used copy of the first edition of The Disinherited Family arrives in the post from a secondhand bookseller in Lancashire. A dark blue hardback inscribed with the name of its first owner, Miss M Marshall, and the year of publication, 1924, it cost just £12.99. I am not a collector of old tomes but am thrilled to have this one. It has a case to be considered among the most important feminist economics books ever written.

Its centenary has so far received little, if any, attention. Yet the arguments it sets out are the reason nearly all mothers in the UK receive child benefit from the government. Its author, Eleanor Rathbone, was one of the most influential women in politics in the first half of the 20th century. She led the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (Nusec, the main suffragist organisation, also formerly known as the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies) from 1919, when Millicent Fawcett stood down, until the roughly five million women who were not enfranchised in 1918 gained the vote 10 years later. In 1929, aged 57, she became an MP, and remained in parliament until her death in 1946. While there, she built up a formidable reputation based on her advocacy for women’s rights, welfare reform and the rights of refugees, and her opposition to the appeasement of Hitler.

It would not be true to say that Eleanor Rathbone has been forgotten. Her portrait by James Gunn hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Twenty years ago she was the subject of a fine biography and she is remembered at Somerville college, Oxford – where she studied in the 1890s and ran a society called the Associated Prigs. (While the name was a joke, Rathbone did have a priggish side – as well as being an original thinker, tremendous campaigner, and stubborn, sensitive personality.) She also features in Rachel Reeves’s book The Women Who Made Modern Economics, although Reeves – who hopes shortly to become the UK’s first female chancellor – pays more attention to her contemporary, Beatrice Webb.

A thrilling tome … The Disinherited Family by Eleanor Rathbone. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

But Rathbone, who came from a wealthy dynasty of nonconformist merchants, does not have anything like the name-recognition of the Pankhursts or Millicent Fawcett, or of pioneering politicians including Nancy Astor and Ellen Wilkinson. Nor does she enjoy the cachet of writers such as Virginia Woolf, whose polemic about women’s opportunities, A Room of One’s Own, was published five years after Rathbone’s magnum opus.

There are many reasons for Rathbone’s relative obscurity. One is that she was the first woman elected to parliament as an independent (and one of a handful of men at the time). Thus there is no political party with an interest in turning her into an icon. Having spent the past three years writing a book about the British women’s movement, I am embarrassed to admit that when I started, I didn’t know who she was.

Rathbone was not the first person to propose state benefits paid to mothers. The endowment of motherhood or family allowances, as the policy was known, was written about by the Swedish feminist Ellen Key, and tried out as a project of the Fabian Women’s Group, who published their findings in a pamphlet in 1912. But Rathbone pushed the idea to the forefront. A first attempt to get Nusec to adopt it was knocked back in 1921, and she then spent three years conducting research. The title she gave the book she produced, The Disinherited Family, reflected her view that women and children were being deprived of their rightful share of the country’s wealth.

The problem, as she saw it, was one of distribution. While the wage system in industrialised countries treated all workers on a given pay grade the same, some households needed more money than others. While unions argued for higher wages across the board, Rathbone believed the state should supplement the incomes of larger families. She opened the book with an archly phrased rhetorical question: “Whether there is any subject in the world of equal importance that has received so little consideration as the economic status of the family?” She went on to accuse economists of behaving as if they were “self-propagating bachelors” – so little did the lives of mothers appear to interest them.

Rathbone’s twin aims were to end wives’ dependence on husbands and reward their domestic labour. Family allowances paid directly to them could either be spent on housekeeping or childcare, enabling them to go out to work. Ellen Wilkinson, the radical Labour MP for Middlesbrough (and future minister for education), was among early supporters. William Beveridge read the book when he was director of the London School of Economics, declared himself a convert and introduced one of the first schemes of family-linked payments for his staff.

But others were strongly opposed. Conservative objections to such a radical expansion of the state were predictable. But they were echoed by liberal feminists including Millicent Fawcett, who called the plan “a step in the direction of practical socialism”. Trade unions preferred to push for a living wage, while some male MPs thought the policy undermined the role of men as breadwinners. Labour and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) finally swung behind family allowances in 1942. As the war drew to a close, Rathbone led a backbench rebellion against ministers who wanted to pay the benefit to fathers instead.

Rathbone celebrates the Silver Jubilee of the Women’s Vote in London, 20 February 1943. Photograph: Picture Post/Getty Images

It is for this signature policy that she is most often remembered today. At a time when hundreds of thousands of children have been pushed into poverty by the two-child limit on benefit payments, Rathbone’s advocacy on behalf of larger families could hardly be more relevant. The limit, devised by George Osborne, applies to universal and child tax credits – and not child benefit itself. But Rishi Sunak’s government announced changes to the latter in this year’s budget. From 2026, eligibility will be assessed on a household rather than individual basis. This is intended to limit payments to better-off, dual-income families. But the UK Women’s Budget Group and others have objected on grounds that child benefit should retain its original purpose of directly remunerating primary carers (the vast majority of them mothers) for the work of rearing children. It remains to be seen whether this plan will be carried through by the next government.

Rathbone once told the House of Commons she was “100% feminist”, and few MPs have been as single-minded in their commitment to women’s causes. As president of Nusec (the law-abiding wing of the suffrage campaign), she played a vital role in finishing the job of winning votes for women.

The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in women’s suffrage, partly due to the centenary of the first women’s suffrage act. Thanks to a brilliant campaign by Caroline Criado Perez, a statue of Millicent Fawcett, the nonmilitant suffragist leader, now stands in Westminster, a few minutes walk from the bronze memorial of Emmeline Pankhurst erected in 1930. Suffragette direct action has long been a source of fascination. What is less well known is that militants played little part in the movement after 1918. It was law-abiding constitutionalists – suffragists rather than suffragettes – who pushed through the 1920s to win votes for the younger and poorer women who did not yet have them. Rathbone helped lead this final phase of the campaign, along with Conservative MP Nancy Astor and others.

Rathbone was highly critical of the militants, and once claimed that they “came within an inch of wrecking the suffrage movement, perhaps for a generation”. Today, with climate groups including Just Stop Oil copying the suffragette tactic of vandalising paintings, it is worth remembering that many women’s suffrage campaigners opposed such methods.

Schismatic though it was, the suffrage movement at least had a shared goal. An even greater challenge for feminists in the 1920s was agreeing on future priorities. Equal pay, parental rights and an end to the sexual double standard were among demands that had broad support. After the arrival in the House of Commons of the first female MPs, legislative successes included the removal of the bar on women’s entry to the professions, new rights for mothers and widows’ pensions. But there were also fierce disagreements.

Tensions between class and sexual politics were longstanding, with some on the left regarding feminism as a distraction. The Labour MP Marion Phillips, for example, thought membership of single-sex groups placed women “in danger of getting their political opinions muddled”. There was also renewed conflict over protective legislation – the name given to employment laws that differentiated between men and women. While such measures included maternity leave and safety rules for pregnant women, many feminists believed their true purpose was to keep jobs for men – and prevent female workers from competing.

Underlying such arguments was the question of whether women, once enfranchised, should strive for equal treatment, or push for measures designed to address their specific needs. As the debate grew more heated, partisans on either side gave themselves the labels of “old” and “new” feminists. While the former, also called equalitarians, wanted to focus on the obstacles that prevented women from participating in public life on the same terms as men, the new feminists led by Rathbone sought to pioneer an innovative, woman-centred politics. Since this brought to the fore issues such as reproductive health and mothers’ poverty, it is known as “maternalist feminism”.

Rathbone and other Liverpool suffragettes campaigning in 1910. Photograph: Shawshots/Alamy

The faultline extended beyond Britain. But Rathbone and her foes had some of the angriest clashes. At one international convention, Lady Rhondda, a wealthy former suffragette, used a speech to deride rivals who chose to “putter away” at welfare work, instead of the issues she considered important.

The specific policy points at issue have, of course, changed over the past century. But arguments about how much emphasis feminists should place on biological differences between men and women carry on.

Eleanor Rathbone did not live long enough to see the welfare state, including child benefit paid to mothers, take root in postwar Britain. Her election to parliament coincided with the Depression, and the lengthening shadows of fascism and nazism meant that she, like her colleagues, became preoccupied with foreign affairs. In the general election of 1935, the number of female MPs fell from 15 to nine, meaning Rathbone’s was one of just a handful of women’s voices. She used hers to oppose the policy of appeasement, and support the rights of refugees, including those escaping Franco’s Spain. During the war she helped run an extra-parliamentary “woman-power committee”, which advocated for female workers.

She also became a supporter of Indian women’s rights, though her liberal imperialism led to tensions with Indian feminists. During the war she angered India’s most eminent writer, Rabindranath Tagore, and its future prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, when she attacked the Congress party’s policy of noncooperation with Britain’s war effort. Tagore criticised what he called the “sheer insolent self-complacency” of her demand that the anti-colonial struggle should be set aside while Britain fought Germany.

Rathbone turned down a damehood. After their first shared house in Westminster was bombed, she and her life partner, the Scottish social worker Elizabeth Macadam, moved around the corner to a flat on Tufton Street (Macadam destroyed their letters, meaning that Rathbone’s intimate life remains obscure, but historians believe the relationship was platonic). From there they moved to a larger, quieter house in Highgate. On 2 January 1946, Rathbone suddenly died.

Rathbone’s blue plaque at Tufton Court. Photograph: PjrPlaques/Alamy

A blue plaque on Tufton Street commemorates her as the “pioneer of family allowances” – providing an alternative claim on posterity for an address more commonly associated with the Brexit campaign, since a house a few doors down became its headquarters. She is remembered, too, in Liverpool, where her experience of dispersing welfare to desperately poor soldiers’ wives in the first world war changed the course of her life, and where one of her former homes is being restored by the university.

I don’t believe in ghosts. But walking in Westminster recently, I imagined her hastening across St James’s Park to one of her meetings at Nancy Astor’s house near the London Library. Today, suffragettes are celebrated for their innovative direct action. But Rathbone blazed a trail, too, with her dedication as a campaigner, writer, lobbyist and “100% feminist” parliamentarian.

Sexed: A History of British Feminism by Susanna Rustin is published by Polity Press (£20). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

#Eleanor Rathbone #The Disinherited Family #Books by women #Books about women #Child benefit #National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (Nusec)#Rachel Reeve #The Women Who Made Modern Economics #Women in politics #UK #Seed: A History of British Feminism #Susan Rustin

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bimboficationblues · 1 year ago

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being a young liberal or socialist student of political philosophy trying to learn outside of your comfort zone, you decide to read some conservative writings because you want to read the best version of the thing you oppose, not just swipe at the low-hanging fruit of the numbnuts pundits of the world.

and then it is all insane troll logic. critically thinking about why and how our societies exist in the way they do, and if they could be different, is going to cause Literally 1984 (<- this is what Friedrich Hayek actually believed). real socialism would involve making absolutely zero changes to the structure or policies of the economy and is just about feeling good about your place in the abstract concept of the nation (Spengler, most fascist thinkers). rulers are kind of like your dad and political constitutions are divinely inspired (classic early modern reactionaries like Filmer and de Maistre - the OGs if you will.) socialism neglects “spiritual needs” - what those are is an exercise for the reader to figure out, but it probably includes business owners not having to pay taxes (Bozell, ghostwriting for Barry Goldwater).

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luminalunii97 · 2 years ago

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Some tankie bs detection

I saw this post on my dash. The user is blocked now. But just to educate people so that they won't fall for idiotic claims online, here are a couple of facts:

1. The Islamic Republic is not anti imperialist, they're anti USA. The regime is very much in love with Russian imperialism. At this point, Iran is an unofficial russian colony. And by the support of their imperialist father figure they have their small version of imperialism in middle east. Ask Iraq and Lebanon.

2. There's no "safety" when it comes to economy in Iran. The "national sovereignty" is called "those fvckin thieves in power" here. Iran's regime is one of the most corrupt regimes by international index. Rent, nepotism, embezzlement and money laundering are serious issues in Iran. Done only and only by the governors and people in power. Social class is not only a thing, there's a raging gap between rich people and those in poverty. And the gap is getting bigger and bigger by month. If you have connections in government or you are in the government, you'll get richer and richer. Other wise, soon enough you'll be in poverty too. Many families, including mine, who used to be considered middle class, have incomes lower than the poverty threshold now.

About 15% of Iran's economic failure including inflation is on the sanctions. The rest is on the corruption within the regime.

Iran's banking system is also a corrupted organ. The so called Islamic banking is anything but Islamic. The loan interest rate is one of the highest worldwide, 23%, so that often you have to pay back more than twice the money you've received. It's called Riba in Islam and it's Haram. According to the regime themselves, the banking system in European countries, even in the USA, is more Islamic than us. The fact that some of the biggest embezzlement in Iran has been done by bank managers should give you a picture of how they're drinking our blood.

None of this is on USA imperialism. It's all the Islamic Republic.

3. The Islamic Republic doesn't support Palestinians. The regime is extremely racist and anti Arab. I dare you talk about this with an actual Arab. IR don't give two shites about Palestinians lives. The regime is antisemitic. That's what they are. Palestine is just an excuse to attack Israel. In the past 20+ years of my life, living in Iran and dealing with these posers, not once we've been educated about Palestine and Palestinians lives. Everything I know, I've learned from online resources and documentaries make by Palestinians. The regime doesn't talk about Palestinians when they pose as supporters. I'm pretty sure they don't know or care to know anything noteworthy about Palestine, considering my knowledge of the human rights violations there is always more than basiji people of my country, and I don't even know that much. All the regime talks about is how Israel should be eliminated. IR supports a terrorist organization called Hamas, not Palestinians.

4. Let's forget about everything I said so far. I wonder if tankies like the op has any ounce of humanity in them! The regime has been oppressing women, violating every type of human rights and murdering lgbtq people and other-thinkers for the last 40 years. The spectacular environmental disaster in Iran is the direct result of regime's policies and neglect. This is a case of human rights violation since it's ruining people's lives, especially ethnic minorities, like Arab farmers in south.

No religious minority is safe in Iran, be it atheist, Baha'i, Jew, christian, or Sunni Muslim. They commit crime against children, through labor and through war. IRGC have little regards for human lives in general but it descent into no regards at all for ethnic minorities.

They have MASS EXECUTED 30,000 leftists (members of Marxist Communist parties and their supporters) within the first decade of their autocratic rule. It's unbelievably funny to me when foreign leftists support a regime that has executed many of their fellow thinkers and still arrest and torture any left activist in Iran.

To say the reason the 1979 revolution happened was to get rid of western influence and to establish a democratic free independent government is true. But the Islamic Republic is not that result. Don't be fooled.

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batboyblog · 2 years ago

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Jewish American Heritage Month

May is Jewish American Heritage Month, there's no way I can make a post to highlight ALL the ways Jewish Americans have contributed to American life, culture, politics and History but here are a few

The Touro Synagogue in Newport Rhode Island is the oldest Synagogue in the United States, built in 1763 for a congregation that dates back to 1658 when 15 Sephardic families moved to America. Touro is also famous for a letter sent to them by President George Washington in 1790 where he assured them of freedom of religion in the new United States:

... the Government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. ... May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

- Letter of George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island

Emma Goldman (1869-1940) Born in what is today Lithuania Goldman immigrated to the United States at the age of 16. She would become in the 1890s one of the leading voices of the anarchist movement and remains one of Anarchisms most important thinkers. Goldman also spoke out and was arrested for supporting birth control at a time when it was illegal. She supported Free Love and even gay rights before the dawn of the 20th Century making her the only major figure of her time to speak out in favor of homosexual love.

Irving Berlin (1888-1989) Born in what is today central Russia, the Berlin family immigrated to America when Irving was 5 years old. Starting with 1911's "Alexander's Ragtime Band" Berlin would go on to write upwards of 1,500 songs over his 60 year music career. He wrote the scores for 20 Broadway shows, 15 Hollywood movies, was nominated for 8 Oscars and had 25 number one songs on the charts. His most famous songs include, Puttin' on the Ritz, Cheek to Cheek, White Christmas, Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better), and There's No Business Like Show Business. Fellow Jewish composer George Gershwin (1898-1937) declared Berlin "the greatest songwriter that has ever lived"

Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) A towering legal mind Brandeis would in the early 1900s earn the nickname "The People's Lawyer" for refusing payment in cases for "the public interest" Brandeis fought many antitrust cases in court and fought businesses in court in support of early work place safety laws. Brandeis was also the first to articulate the idea of a Right to Privacy in 1890. Brandeis idea would become the basis of rulings supporting the right to birth control, abortion, and gay rights. Nominated to the Supreme Court in 1916 Brandeis was the first Jewish Justice and was vehemently opposed by antisemites. Fellow Justice James Clark McReynolds refused to speak to Brandeis for years, never signed his name to opinions written by Brandeis, and would often openly start reading a news paper when Brandeis read his opinions from the bench. McReynolds, along with Justices Pierce Butler and Willis Van Devanter sent a letter to President Hoover begging him to not "afflict the Court with another Jew" when he appointed the second Jewish Justice, Benjamin Cardozo, in 1932. Brandeis served 23 years on the Court from 1916 till 1939 and is regularly counted as one of the greatest Justices to ever serve championing Free Speech and progressive policies often from opposition to the Conservative majority of the time.

Stan Lee (1922-2018) and Jack Kirby (1917-1994) Born Stanley Lieber and Jacob Kurtzberg respectively, Lee and Kirby were among countless Jews who adopted less Jewish sounding names in hopes of escaping discrimination. Lee and Kirby along with countless other Jewish artists and writers formed the backbone of the Golden and Sliver ages of comics. Characters such as Batman and Superman had Jewish creators. Kirby and Lee themselves are responsible for such cultural icons as Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Black Panther, Daredevil, and The X-Men. The preponderance of Jews in the early comics was a result of persistent discrimination against Jews. High class advertising agencies didn't want Jewish artists drawing their ads and literary magazines like The New Yorker weren't interested in Jewish staff writers. So young Jewish artists and writers found themselves in the "less respectable" world of pulp and penny comics where they made a huge cultural impact though many, like Kirby, would fight for years to get the money they deserved and many never did.

Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) Kirk Douglas (1916-2020) Douglas was born "Issur Danielovitch" but changed his overly Jewish sounding name to make it in the Hollywood of the 1940s and 50s. regarded as one of the greats of classic Hollywood Douglas would be nominated for Oscar for Best Actor 3 times, for Champion (1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Lust for Life (1956). He is most well known for his work with Jewish filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) who's first two major films Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960) starred Douglas who was also a producer, they are still thought of as some of the best films ever made. Kirk Douglas is also the father of actor Michael Douglas(1944-) Elizabeth Taylor was an iconic star of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Best known for Cleopatra (1961), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Taming of the Shrew (1967). Taylor converted to Judaism in 1959. An iconic beauty, Taylor was married 8 times to 7 different men (she divorced and remarried and divorced again many time co-star Richard Burton) including to the heir of the Hilton fortune and a US Senator. In the 1980s she would become one of the leading celebrities speaking out and raising money to fight AIDS at a time when fellow Hollywood Star, President Reagan, refused to even say the word in public.

Sammy Davis Jr. (1925-1990) A singer, dancer, performer and actor Davis was one of the most popular acts of the 1950s and 60s. Well known for performing with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in what was known as the Rat Pack. Davis would star along side Martin and Sinatra in Ocean's 11 (1960) as well as other Rat Pack films. In the 1980s he toured with Sinatra and Liza Minnelli. Davis was politically active and influential using his fame to push Presidents Kennedy and Nixon on civil rights. Davis' cross over popularity and being booked to co-star with white acts helped break down the color barrier and push integration. After a nearly fatal car accident in which Davis lost his left eye (he wore a glass eye for the rest of his life) in 1954 he began his path to conversion formally converting to Judaism in 1961.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Joachim Prinz (1902-1988) with King. Both Heschel and Prinz were Rabbis in Europe before WWII, Prinz in particular had served as a Rabbi in Berlin in the 1930s and was expelled from Germany by the Nazis in 1937 for embarrassing them internationally. Both men settled in the United States after leaving Europe and would become leading lights of American Jewish community. Prinz would serve as the President of the American Jewish Congress from 1958 till 1966, he would help create the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in 1956 and be its President from 1965 till 1967. Heschel wrote a number of highly influential books such as Man Is Not Alone, God in Search of Man, The Sabbath, and The Prophets which are still widely read today. Both men felt called on by their experiences with the Nazis to become involved in the 1960s Civil Rights movement. Heschel was close personal friends with Dr. King and marched with him many times, most famously the 3rd Selma to Montgomery march between Dr King and John Lewis who'd been beaten badly at an earlier march. Prinz served as one of the organizing forces behind the 1963 March on Washington and Prinz gave the speech directly before Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" Speech. Heschel acted as a Jewish representative at the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council where he was able to get the Church to drop centuries old antisemitic lines blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus from the liturgy.

Andrew Goodman (1943-1964), James Chaney (1943-1964), and Michael Schwerner (1939-1964) In the summer of 1964 The Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) launched a massive effort to register disenfranchised black voters in Mississippi to vote, they called the effort Freedom Summer. Goodman and Schwerner both natives of New York were among the hundreds of CORE volunteers from the North who came south to help local activists like Mississippi native Chaney with the registration drive. Many of the white northern volunteers, like Goodman and Schwerner were Jewish, Jews had also been heavily represented among the white Freedom Riders of 1961. On June 21, 1964 Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were pulled over together by a Deputy Sheriff before being set upon by a conspiracy of local KKK members. The 3 were murdered, and their bodies hidden in an earthen dam, there is some evidence that Goodman was still alive when he was buried. Their disappearance set off a massive FBI lead search known as Mississippi Burning. Public outrage particularly fueled by the image of the 3 men's crying mother's arm in arm at Chaney's funeral would help push through the Civil Rights act of 1964.

Bob Dylan (1941-) Born Robert Zimmerman Dylan lead the American Folk revival of the early 1960s. His songs Blowin' in the Wind (1963) and The Times They Are a-Changin' (1964) became anthems of both the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of the 1960s. His 1965 transition from Folk to Electric pushed Dylan to the forefront of late 1960s Rock and Roll. Dylan is often ranked as one of the most iconic artists of the 1960s ranked up along side the Beatles. His musical influence is massive and still felt today. In 2016 Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition"

Mel Brooks (1926-) and Gene Wilder (1933-2016) born Melvin Kaminsky and Jerome Silberman respectively. Brooks is a comedic legend, writing and directing for film and stage. Brooks is one of only 18 people to complete the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony Awards). Brooks collaborated with Wilder on a number of his most famous works, The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles (1974), and Young Frankenstein (1974). Other works include History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). Just this year at the age of 96 Brooks wrote and produced History of the World, Part II a TV series sequel to his 1981 film. Wilder worked closely with Brooks as well as with Richard Pryor. He had a star turn in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972). Wilder is best known for his iconic role of Willy Wonka in 1971's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

Gloria Steinem (1934-), Bella Abzug (1920-1998), Betty Friedan (1921-2006) with Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (middle seated). Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is widely understood as the spark that started Second Wave Feminism or "Women's liberation". In 1966 Friedan helped start and would be the first President of, National Organization for Women (NOW). NOW remains a major feminist and progressive political organization. Friedan left NOW in 1970 to focus on the fight to pass an equal rights amendment to the US constitution (ERA). Together with Steinem and Abzug Friedan formed the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971. She also helped found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, known to say simply as "NARAL". Bella Abzug known as "Battling Bella" for her fire breathing progressivism was first elected to the US House in 1970. Her slogan was "This woman's place is in the House—the House of Representatives" a slogan that has been reused by many women candidates since. Abzug was an early pioneer of ecofeminism. She also was a leading figure in the movement to impeach Nixon. Abzug would be one of the first supporters of gay rights in Congress sponsoring the first federal gay rights bill in 1974. Steinem was an influential counter-culture journalist and speaker. Her feminist magazine Ms. served as a voice piece for the Feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Her connections to the counter culture and her youth caused Steinem to often times act as a bridge between the younger 1960s generation and older activists like Friedan. Steinem remains active in politics and feminism today in her 80s.

Barbra Streisand (1942-) an EGOT winning actress and singer. Streisand first came to national attention with chart topping hits in the 1960s. Across her career Streisand has had 11 number 1 records the most for a woman on the US charts. In the late 1960s Streisand transitioned to film, winning the Oscar for Best Actress for her first role, 1968's Funny Girl. She followed up with Hello, Dolly! (1969), What's Up Doc? (1972), and The Way We Were (1973) before winning her second Oscar this time for Best Original Song for A Star Is Born (1976) the first time a woman won composing Oscar. Streisand's first try at directing was the Jewish classic Yentl (1983) the first time a woman had written, produced, directed, and starred in a major studio film. She became the first and till 2020 only woman to win the Golden Globe for Best director for Yentl. Streisand has always been politically active from the Civil Rights and anti-War movements of the 1960s, feminism in the 1970s, and LGBT rights in the 2000s as well as being active in Democratic politics going back to the 1972 election.

Harvey Milk (1930-1978) The first openly Gay man elected to public office in the United States. Originally from New York Milk moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s and settled in nascent gay neighborhood of The Castro. Milk's small business, Castro Camera soon become a hub of the community. Milk organized gay owned businesses and the local gay community to boycott homophobic businesses and support gay owned ones. He soon earned the nickname "Mayor of Castro Street" for his organizing and leadership of the gay community. He launched his first campaign for office, an election for San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in 1973. Despite being openly gay and sporting classic hippy long hair and a bread Milk swept the Castro and other liberal areas, however he fell short citywide. Milk would run again in 1975, and for State Assembly in 1976 getting closer each time till 1977 when San Francisco introduced districts and Milk won the Castro based District seat. Milk's election made him a national figure and the face for Gay Rights across the country. His brief time in office was consumed by the fight against the Briggs Initiative, a ballot initiative that would have automatically fired any gay teacher or teacher who supported gay rights in California. The Briggs Initiative failed, marking the first time gay rights had won at the ballot box. Harvey Milk and his ally Mayor George Moscone were assassinated on November 27, 1978 by disgruntled former Supervisor Dan White. The Police investigation of White, a former cop, was deeply failed and a straight jury sentenced him to just 5 years for the double murder. In the aftermath of the sentencing the gay community rioted in what is known as The White Night Riots. The gay political movement Milk built in San Francisco remains today with the LGBT community having a powerful voice in local politics.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) Born in what is today Ukraine he fled Europe in 1941. In 1951 Schneerson succeed his Father-in-law as the 7th Rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch Movement. While all Hassidic movements have Rebbes, Schneerson would become such a towering figure both in Jewish life and outside it to this day nearly 30 years after his death he is still "The Rebbe". During his long reign as the Rebbe Schneerson transformed the Chabad movement into a global Jewish outreach organization. In many parts of the world Chabad houses operate as the sole outpost of Jewish life. It is not uncommon in heavily Jewish areas or events to find Chabadiks asking men if they're Jewish and have wrapped tefillin today. The Rebbe and his movement would be at the center of the 1980s struggle to liberate Soviet Jewry as well as efforts to evacuate Jewish youth from Iran in 1979. The Rebbe started a global Chanukah outreach campaign, trying to assure that individual Jews have their own menorah and candles as well as pushing for public lightings of display menorahs, if your city lights one it's likely a Chabad project. During his life time many of his followers came to believe that he was the awaited Jewish Messiah. After his death the Chabad movement has not elected another Rebbe to replace him and likely never will. His grave in Queens is a major pilgrimage sight not only for Hassidic Jews but seekers of all kinds, Jewish and not. Ever since 1978 Schneerson's birth has been marked in the US by an act of Congress and Presidential decree by every President since Carter as "Education Day" focusing on his life long work for education and learning.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) The Second woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Ginsburg entered law in the 1950s at a time when very few women did, her Harvard Law Class had 500 men and just 9 women. She graduated first from Columbia. She was denied a Supreme Court Clerkship because of her gender. In 1972 Ginsburg organized and became the head of the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. By 1974 the Project had been involved with 300 gender discrimination cases. As general counsel of the project Ginsburg would argue 6 gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court between 1973 and 1976, winning 5. She was often compared to Thurgood Marshall in her role fighting for women's rights in Court. She would keep working with the ACLU till 1980 when she was appointed to the US Court of Appeals, Second Circuit by President Carter. She was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1993, as only the second women and the first Jewish woman to serve, she is the longest serving Jewish Justice. Ginsburg was allied with the liberal wing of the Court through out her time on the bench. After Justice O'Connor retired and Ginsburg found herself in the unexpected position as the only woman on the court from 2006 till Justice Sotomayor joined in 2009 she became more outspoken. Ginsburg would become known for her powerful dissents often read from the bench. After Justice Stevens retired in 2010 Ginsburg became the de facto head of the liberal wing of the Court and soon reached cultural icon status with the wider American public.

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These are just a few of the hugely important Jewish Americans who have impacted and shaped every part of American life and the list if not random is just who I thought of, there were many others I thought about but decided I didn't have room for. Have a good Jewish American Heritage Month this May and learn some Jewish History

#Jewish American Heritage Month #Jewish #Jewish history #Jews #judaism #Jumblr

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probablyasocialecologist · 1 year ago

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There are several historical contexts for what is going on now in Israel-Palestine that cannot be ignored. The wider historical context goes back to the mid-19th century, when evangelical Christianity in the West turned the idea of the “return of the Jews” into a religious millennial imperative and advocated the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine as part of the steps that would lead to the resurrection of the dead, the return of the Messiah, and the end of time. Theology became policy toward the end of the 19th century and in the years leading up to World War I for two reasons. First, it worked in the interest of those in Britian wishing to dismantle the Ottoman Empire and incorporate parts of it into the British Empire. Second, it resonated with those within the British aristocracy, both Jews and Christians, who became enchanted with the idea of Zionism as a panacea for the problem of anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe, which had produced an unwelcome wave of Jewish immigration to Britain. When these two interests fused, they propelled the British government to issue the famous – or infamous – Balfour Declaration in 1917. Jewish thinkers and activists who redefined Judaism as nationalism hoped this definition would protect Jewish communities from existential danger in Europe by homing in on Palestine as the desired space for “rebirth of the Jewish nation”. In the process, the cultural and intellectual Zionist project transformed into a settler colonial one – which aimed at Judaising historical Palestine, disregarding the fact that it was inhabited by an Indigenous population. In turn, the Palestinian society, quite pastoral at that time and in its early stage of modernisation and construction of a national identity, produced its own anti-colonial movement. Its first significant action against the Zionist colonisation project came with al-Buraq Uprising of 1929, and it has not ceased since then.

#israel #palestine #zionism #gaza #settler colonialism

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

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Twinkfrump Linkdump

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Welcome to the seventeenth Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

If you're reading this (and you are!), it was delivered to you by an internet service provider. Today, the ISP industry is calcified, controlled by a handful of telcos and cable companies. But the idea of an "ISP" didn't come out of a giant telecommunications firm – it was created, in living memory, by excellent nerds who are still around.

Depending on how you reckon, The Little Garden was either the first or the second ISP in America. It was named after a Palo Alto Chinese restaurant frequented by its founders. To get a sense of that founding, read these excellent recollections by Tom Jennings, whose contributions include the seminal zine Homocore, the seminal networking protocol Fidonet, and the seminal third-party PC ROM, whence came Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and every other "PC clone" company.

The first installment describes how an informal co-op to network a few friends turned into a business almost by accident, with thousands of dollars flowing in and out of Jennings' bank account:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/TLG.html

And it describes how that ISP set a standard for neutrality, boldly declaring that "TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information." They introduced an idea of radical transparency, documenting their router configurations and other technical details and making them available to the public. They hired unskilled punk and queer kids from their communities and trained them to operate the network equipment they'd invented, customized or improvised.

In part two, Jennings talks about the evolution of TLG's radical business-plan: to offer unrestricted service, encouraging their customers to resell that service to people in their communities, having no lock-in, unbundling extra services including installation charges – the whole anti-enshittification enchilada:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/

I love Jennings and his work. I even gave him a little cameo in Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which will be out next winter. He's as lyrical a writer about technology as you could ask for, and he's also a brilliant engineer and thinker.

The Little Garden's founders and early power-users have all fleshed out Jennings' account of the birth of ISPs. Writing on his blog, David "DSHR" Rosenthal rounds up other histories from the likes of EFF co-founder John Gilmore and Tim Pozar:

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/the-little-garden.html

Rosenthal describes some of the more exotic shenanigans TLG got up to in order to do end-runs around the Bell system's onerous policies, hacking in the purest sense of the word, for example, by daisy-chaining together modems in regions with free local calling and then making "permanent local calls," with the modems staying online 24/7.

Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today's ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.

Instead, ISPs want to offer "slow-lanes" where they will relegate the whole internet, except for those companies that bribe the ISP to be delivered at normal speed. ISPs have a laughably transparent way of describing this: they say that they're allowing services to pay for "fast lanes" with priority access. This is the same as the giant grocery store that charges you extra unless you surrender your privacy with a "loyalty card" – and then says that they're offering a "discount" for loyal customers, rather than charging a premium to customers who don't want to be spied on.

The American business lobby loves this arrangement, and hates Net Neutrality. Having monopolized every sector of our economy, they are extremely fond of "winner take all" dynamics, and that's what a non-neutral ISP delivers: the biggest services with the deepest pockets get the most reliable delivery, which means that smaller services don't just have to be better than the big guys, they also have to be able to outbid them for "priority carriage."

If everything you get from your ISP is slow and janky, except for the dominant services, then the dominant services can skimp on quality and pocket the difference. That's the goal of every monopolist – not just to be too big to fail, but also too big to care.

Under the Trump administration, FCC chair Ajit Pai dismantled the Net Neutrality rule, colluding with American big business to rig the process. They accepted millions of obviously fake anti-Net Neutrality comments (one million identical comments from @pornhub.com addresses, comments from dead people, comments from sitting US Senators who support Net Neutrality) and declared open season on American internet users:

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing

Now, Biden's FCC is set to reinstate Net Neutrality – but with a "compromise" that will make mobile internet (which nearly all of use sometimes, and the poorest of us are reliant on) a swamp of anticompetitive practices:

https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them

Under the proposed rule, mobile carriers will be able to put traffic to and from apps in the slow lane, and then extort bribes from preferred apps for normal speed and delivery. They'll rely on parts of the 5G standard to pull off this trick.

The ISP cartel and the FCC insist that this is fine because web traffic won't be degraded, but of course, every service is hellbent on pushing you into using apps instead of the web. That's because the web is an open platform, which means you can install ad- and privacy-blockers. More than half of web users have installed a blocker, making it the largest boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But reverse-engineering and modding an app is a legal minefield. Just removing the encryption from an app can trigger criminal penalties under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP that it's a felony to mod it.

Apps are enshittification's vanguard, and the fact that the FCC has found a way to make them even worse is perversely impressive. They're voting on this on April 25, and they have until April 24 to fix this. They should. They really should:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf

In a just world, cheating ripoff ISPs would the top tech policy story. The operational practices of ISPs effect every single one us. We literally can't talk about tech policy without ISPs in the middle. But Net Neutrality is an also-ran in tech policy discourse, while AI – ugh ugh ugh – is the thing none of us can shut up about.

This, despite the fact that the most consequential AI applications sum up to serving as a kind of moral crumple-zone for shitty business practices. The point of AI isn't to replace customer service and other low-paid workers who have taken to demanding higher wages and better conditions – it's to fire those workers and replace them with chatbots that can't do their jobs. An AI salesdroid can't sell your boss a bot that can replace you, but they don't need to. They only have to convince your boss that the bot can do your job, even if it can't.

SF writer Karl Schroeder is one of the rare sf practitioners who grapples seriously with the future, a "strategic foresight" guy who somehow skirts the bullshit that is the field's hallmark:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

Writing on his blog, Schroeder describes the AI debates roiling the Association of Professional Futurists, and how it's sucking him into being an unwilling participant in the AI hype cycle:

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/dragged-into-the-ai-hype-cycle

Schroeder's piece is a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of SF's thought-experiments and parables about AI to the promises of AI hucksters, who promise that a) "general artificial intelligence" is just around the corner and that b) it will be worth trillions of dollars.

Schroeder – like other sf writers including Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross (and me) – comes to the conclusion that AI panic isn't about AI, it's about power. The artificial life-form devouring the planet and murdering our species is the limited liability corporation, and its substrate isn't silicon, it's us, human bodies:

What’s lying underneath all our anxieties about AGI is an anxiety that has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s a manifestation of our growing awareness that our world is being stolen from under us. Last year’s estimate put the amount of wealth currently being transferred from the people who made it to an idle billionaire class at $5.2 trillion. Artificial General Intelligence whose environment is the server farms and sweatshops of this class is frightening only because of its capacity to accelerate this greatest of all heists.

After all, the business-case for AI is so very thin that the industry can only survive on a torrent of hype and nonsense – like claims that Amazon's "Grab and Go" stores used "AI" to monitor shoppers and automatically bill them for their purchases. In reality, the stores used thousands of low-paid Indian workers to monitor cameras and manually charge your card. This happens so often that Indian technologists joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Isn't it funny how all the really promising AI applications are in domains that most of us aren't qualified to assess? Like the claim that Google's AI was producing millions of novel materials that will shortly revolutionize all forms of production, from construction to electronics to medical implants:

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

That's what Google's press-release claimed, anyway. But when two groups of experts actually pulled a representative sample of these "new materials" from the Deep Mind database, they found that none of these materials qualified as "credible, useful and novel":

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643

Writing about the researchers' findings for 404 Media, Jason Koebler cites Berkeley researchers who concluded that "no new materials have been discovered":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

The researchers say that AI data-mining for new materials is promising, but falls well short of Google's claim to be so transformative that it constitutes the "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge" and "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity."

AI hype keeps the bubble inflating, and for so long as it keeps blowing up, all those investors who've sunk their money into AI can tell themselves that they're rich. This is the essence of "a bezzle": "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Among the best debezzlers of AI are the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, who edit the "AI Snake Oil" blog. Now, they've sold a book with the same title:

https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-snake-oil-is-now-available-to

Obviously, books move a lot more slowly than blogs, and so Narayanan and Kapoor say their book will focus on the timeless elements of identifying and understanding AI snake oil:

In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.

The book's out in September and it's up for pre-order now:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/ai-snake-oil-what-artificial-intelligence-can-do-what-it-can-t-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-arvind-narayanan/21324674

One of the weirder and worst side-effects of the AI hype bubble is that it has revived the belief that it's somehow possible for giant platforms to monitor all their users' speech and remove "harmful" speech. We've tried this for years, and when humans do it, it always ends with disfavored groups being censored, while dedicated trolls, harassers and monsters evade punishment:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/

AI hype has led policy-makers to believe that we can deputize online services to spy on all their customers and block the bad ones without falling into this trap. Canada is on the verge of adopting Bill C-63, a "harmful content" regulation modeled on examples from the UK and Australia.

Writing on his blog, Canadian lawyer/activist/journalist Dimitri Lascaris describes the dire speech implications for C-63:

https://dimitrilascaris.org/2024/04/08/trudeaus-online-harms-bill-threatens-free-speech/

It's an excellent legal breakdown of the bill's provisions, but also a excellent analysis of how those provisions are likely to play out in the lives of Canadians, especially those advocating against genocide and taking other positions the that oppose the agenda of the government of the day.

Even if you like the Trudeau government and its policies, these powers will accrue to every Canadian government, including the presumptive (and inevitably, totally unhinged) near-future Conservative majority government of Pierre Poilievre.

It's been ten years since Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page published their paper that concluded that governments make policies that are popular among elites, no matter how unpopular they are among the public:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Now, this is obviously depressing, but when you see it in action, it's kind of wild. The Biden administration has declared war on junk fees, from "resort fees" charged by hotels to the dozens of line-items added to your plane ticket, rental car, or even your rent check. In response, Republican politicians are climbing to their rear haunches and, using their actual human mouths, defending junk fees:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-12-republicans-objectively-pro-junk-fee/

Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit-card late-fees. Trump's presumptive running-mate Tim Scott is making this a campaign plank: "Vote for me and I will protect your credit-card company's right to screw you on fees!" He boasts about the lobbyists who asked him to take this position: champions of the public interest from the Consumer Bankers Association to the US Chamber of Commerce.

Banks stand to lose $10b/year from this rule (which means Americans stand to gain $10b/year from this rule). What's more, Scott's attempt to kill the rule is doomed to fail – there's just no procedural way it will fly. As David Dayen writes, "Not only does this vote put Republicans on the spot over junk fees, it’s a doomed vote, completely initiated by their own possible VP nominee."

This is an hilarious own-goal, one that only brings attention to a largely ignored – but extremely good – aspect of the Biden administration. As Adam Green of Bold Progressives told Dayen, "What’s been missing is opponents smoking themselves out and raising the volume of this fight so the public knows who is on their side."

The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

And now, CFPB chair Rohit Chopra has given a speech laying out the agency's plan to outlaw data-brokers:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-at-the-white-house-on-data-protection-and-national-security/

Yes, this is some good news! There is, in fact, good news in the world, bright spots amidst all the misery and terror. One of those bright spots? Labor.

Unions are back, baby. Not only do the vast majority of Americans favor unions, not only are new shops being unionized at rates not seen in generations, but also the largest unions are undergoing revolutions, with control being wrestled away from corrupt union bosses and given to the rank-and-file.

Many of us have heard about the high-profile victories to take back the UAW and Teamsters, but I hadn't heard about the internal struggles at the United Food and Commercial Workers, not until I read Hamilton Nolan's gripping account for In These Times:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/revolt-aisle-5-ufcw-grocery-workers-union

Nolan profiles Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000 and her successful and effective fight to bring a militant spirit back to the union, which represents a million grocery workers. Nolan describes the fight as "every bit as dramatic as any episode of Game of Thrones," and he's not wrong. This is an inspiring tale of working people taking power away from scumbag monopoly bosses and sellout fatcat leaders – and, in so doing, creating a institution that gets better wages, better working conditions, and a better economy, by helping to block giant grocery mergers like Kroger/Albertsons.

I like to end these linkdumps on an up note, so it feels weird to be closing out with an obituary, but I'd argue that any celebration of the long life and many accomplishments of my friend and mentor Anne Innis Dagg is an "up note."

I last wrote about Anne in 2020, on the release of a documentary about her work, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

As you might have guessed from the title of that doc, Anne was a biologist. She was the first woman scientist to do field-work on giraffes, and that work was so brilliant and fascinating that it kicked off the modern field of giraffology, which remains a woman-dominated specialty thanks to her tireless mentoring and support for the scientists that followed her.

Anne was also the world's most fearsome slayer of junk-science "evolutionary psychology," in which "scientists" invent unfalsifiable just-so stories that prove that some odious human characteristic is actually "natural" because it can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom (i.e., "Darling, please, it's not my fault that I'm fucking my grad students, it's the bonobos!").

Anne wrote a classic – and sadly out of print – book about this that I absolutely adore, not least for having one of the best titles I've ever encountered: "Love of Shopping" Is Not a Gene:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/

Anne was my advisor at the University of Waterloo, an institution that denied her tenure for fifty years, despite a brilliant academic career that rivaled that of her storied father, Harold Innis ("the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan"). The fact that Waterloo never recognized Anne is doubly shameful when you consider that she was awarded the Order of Canada:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence

Anne lived a brilliant live, struggling through adversity, never compromising on her principles, inspiring a vast number of students and colleagues. She lived to ninety one, and died earlier this month. Her ashes will be spread "on the breeding grounds of her beloved giraffes" in South Africa this summer:

https://obituaries.therecord.com/obituary/anne-innis-dagg-1089534658

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement

Image: Valeva1010 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hungarian_Goulash_Recipe.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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gatheringbones · 1 year ago

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[“Perhaps it’s because we’ve been trained since the earliest days of capitalism to see the poor as idle and unmotivated. The world’s first capitalists faced a problem that titans of industry still face today: how to get the masses to file into their mills and slaughterhouses to work for as little pay as the law and market allow.

Hunger was the capitalists’ solution to the labor question. “The poor know little of the motives which stimulate the higher ranks to action—pride, honour, and ambition. In general it is only hunger which can spur and goad them on to labour.” So wrote the English doctor and clergyman Joseph Townsend in his 1786 treatise, A Dissertation on the Poor Laws, By a Well-Wisher of Mankind, asserting a position that would become common sense, then common law, throughout the early modern period. The “unremitted pressure” of hunger, Townsend continued, offered “the most natural motive to industry.”

Once you got the poor into factories, you needed laws to protect your property and law men to arrest trespassers and court systems to prosecute them and prisons to hold them. If you were going to fashion an economic system that required the movement of labor, capital, and products around the globe, you needed a system of tariffs and policies to govern the flow of trade, not to mention a standing army to uphold national sovereignty. Big money required big government. But big government could also hand out bread. Realizing this, early capitalists decried the corrosive effects of government aid long before it was extended to the so-called able-bodied poor. In 1704, the English writer Daniel Defoe published a pamphlet arguing that the poor would not work for wages if they were given alms. This argument was repeated over and again by leading thinkers, including Thomas Malthus in his famous 1798 treatise, An Essay on the Principle of Population.

Early converts to capitalism saw poor aid not merely as a burden or as bad policy but as an existential threat, something that could sever the reliance of workers on owners. Fast-forward to the modern era, and you still hear the same neurotic arguments. The idea is to protect one kind of dependency, that of the worker on the company, by debasing another, that of citizens on the state.”]

matthew desmond, from poverty: by america, 2023

#matthew desmond #currently reading #history stuff

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wombatwisdom · 3 months ago

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Words of Love

I would like to dig into the idea of "love" a little bit. This word gets bandied about quite a bit and I fear we all mean something different.

Part 1: Anita

After the oranges but before the cream pie to the face, Anita Bryant (an infamous anti-gay advocate in Dade County Florida) gave us these delightful words: "I love homosexuals. Its the sin of homosexuality that I hate" and "I don't hate homosexuals. I love them enough to tell them the truth: that God puts them in the category with other sinners".

Anita's "love" for the LGBTQ+ community prompted her to advocate against their basic human rights to employment and housing without discrimination in the 1970s. And her "Save the children" campaign was largely successful--at least in Dade County. Her influence can still be felt today in a lot of right wing canards (you can even see her shadow in the 2024 LDS policy of exclusion).

There is something compelling about Anita's version of "love". She loves the "sinner" enough to tell them the truth, to teach them, to coerce them back to righteousness. She loves them enough to hand them the tough realities of life.

Anita could probably point to scriptures and religious thinkers to support her brand of love. Sinners don't fare well according to the bible, so wouldn't our "love" motivate us to try and save them? Wouldn't you want to spare a loved one or even a stranger the horrors of eternal damnation and suffering?

Parents intercede for their children to keep them out of harms way. Isn't it loving to tell kids that cigarettes are harmful? Isn't it loving to remind children of the dangers of drinking and driving? Don't parents owe it to their children to protect them from harm from external or internal sources?

A cogent reader might be able to spot the difference here. There is a difference between loving someone by "informing of harm" and advocating for a removal of rights. Further more, this "love" is being conflated for control (however well intentioned), and learning to love without controlling is probably the most challenging part of parenting. But even more, our positions on cigarettes have shifted as science has provided more insights into their harm, similarly, as evidence has mounted showing the positive impacts of living authentically as an LGBTQ+ person, so to have publicly held stigmas and misunderstanding changed.

But, crucially, to Anita, she would maintain that she loves gay people and was motivated by love. It is not her problem that you may not agree with her definitions.

Part 2: Joanne

Before the Cyber bullying lawsuit and after the wild success of Harry Potter, JK Rowling published her attempt at "explaining" the maelstrom of social media debate that had sprung up around her. In the halcyon days of the early pandemic, JK Rowling tweeted almost-compassionate sentiments towards trans people such as: "I respect the right of every transgender person to live life in a way that makes them feel authentic and comfortable with themselves. I would march with you if you were discriminated against because you are transgender."

And in her "essay" published in July of 2020 (which was at one point entitled "TERF Wars" I'm almost certain, but has since been renamed), she specifically cites a transgender acquaintance whom Joanne calls "wonderful". And yet all this lip service to "respect" and "wonderfulness" has yielded some rather caustic twitter discourses, significant contributions to a increasingly transphobic political culture, and even some good old holocaust denialism.

Joanne's "love" (or she would call it "respect") seems to come if she deems it earned. My read is that for Joanne, transitioning should take a long time, require extreme levels of vetting (both internally and externally), and will only be achieved adequately by a relatively small number of people. Besides, if this population is so tiny, then we shouldn't have to accommodate them at the expense of everyone else's comfort. Love, it would seem, is a numbers game.

I do think Joanne's point about knowing a transwoman personally, should not go unremarked. She herself admits that she has met young trans people who she finds "adorable". And yet, even as we cheer for Brene Brown's "it's hard to hate someone up close", Joanne's behavior seems to suggest otherwise. She does know and respect the wonderful and adorable trans people in her circles, but that does not mean that they should have space to exist comfortably.

Joanne shows us that loving someone on a personal level is not the same thing as loving the group they represent. Furthermore, we all love someone close to us but don't agree with every thing they do. We question clothing choices, food preferences, parenting techniques, movies watched, books read, time wasted. To Joanne loving someone does not mean you need to advocate for then.

To Joanne, love is a limited resource and so who is loved and how they are loved must be chosen carefully. Joanne believes to make space for trans people comes at the expense of woman and girls, and don't woman and girls need to be loved too? There are more cis woman and girls than trans people. When love is scarce, than it follows that certain groups must be dismissed and harassed, I suppose.

Part 3: Dallin

Before his inevitable ascent to become the next prophet and after worriedly writing in the 1980's that "one generation of homosexual "marriages" would depopulate a nation...Our marriage laws should not abet national suicide", Dallin H Oaks gave a rather love-focused address in the most recent general conference (Oct 2024, Saturday morning session). He urged for us to remember the first two commandments and to avoid political contention by being peacemakers, despite the fact that he was involved, at least in part, with the recent transphobic policy put in place by the Church a few weeks ago.

My fear here is Dallin, lawyer that he is, has left a lot of words to be defined by the listener. What does it mean to be a peacemaker? What does it mean to avoid contention? And what does it mean to love?

From talks given in the past, Dallin's position seems similar to Anita and Joanne. Dallin's concern is getting people to the celestial kingdom which means that certain people need to be reminded that the way they are will not be compatible with that place. This is a thought birthed from love--he loves people enough to tell them what God expects from them! He's also keenly aware that there is a gulf forming in society and he's got to choose which one to protect because love is scarce, and given the voices he chooses to amplify (see the letter he reads in this young adult fireside), he stands with his more conservative base.

Dallin's love may be short sighted and biased, but he probably doesn't think so. He thinks his motivations are on the side of the angels and who am I to disagree, arguably he knows heaven better than I do.

But you may not find Dallin's version of love very uplifting or meaningful. You may find it motivated more from fear or bias, and perhaps your version of love has space for inclusion and multiple paths, but here is the kicker: your definitions and positions on love have limited reach.

Dallin's love is amplified in multiple languages all over the world every six months at least. When he speaks, people listen and to some degree internalize what he's saying. Dallin knows gay and trans people, he has a grandson that is openly gay, and still he shows his love this way.

Dallin has power and influence in this community and so his version of love gets elevated and replicated. Every six months we get the privilege of grappling with his love and decide what to do with it. Dallin's love comforts a certain subset of the audience while alienating others. His influence will eventually fade, but then we will need to move on to someone else's version of love and that is always a gamble.

Part 4: You

In queer spaces the individuals I have mentioned are often heavily criticized. And from my perspective rightfully so. Their actions and words have costs and inflicted damages our community routinely has to bear. But we need to be aware that our criticism that they should be more "loving" might not land where we would hope it does. They do, in their own definition, act out of love.

Their definitions certainly don't align with most of ours, but we don't often take the time define what we mean by love. And in writing this, I have come to realise that love contains multitudes: both good and bad--and holding people to my definitions just leads to unmet expectations.

What I have learned from this review is to acknowledge the differences in what love can be--I am less interested in love now but motivation and impact. Much of what I do in "love" is actually more motivated by a desire for "safety", "acceptance" or "belonging", which can have mixed results. I need to demonstrate, not to Anita, Joanne or Dallin, but to those in my life that the outcomes of certain "love" can be damaging and negative for me. I now know to avoid or be skeptical of the outcomes of Anita's, Joanne's and Dallin's love, but I also know that they don't think themselves unloving, so trying to convince them to "love" more is a fruitless exercise.

Perhaps, we become peacemakers when we hear the heartbreak of our neighbors and find ways to partner with them to build solutions. But ultimately, all of these words are up to you and how you wield them is your choice--but the fruits of your love will be decided by those who stumble across them and you cannot control how they will be received.

#queerstake #long post #way too long of a post #but love means everything and nothing #ldsconf

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thecurioustale · 7 months ago

Text

My New Book Is Out! | Tokens of Zeal

My new book is out!

Buy it! Buy it now!

That's right: In secret, on January 2 of this year I began writing a book of essays. Some of you may know that I have an online journal, which I created in the summer of 2003 when I was just 21 years old and have kept up with ever since. For my new book I went back to the journal and read through it, entry by entry, drawing out excerpts of interest that became conversation pieces for 81 various and sundry essays reflecting on my past life and past thoughts.

The essays are short, often very short. They are less challenging than my usual writing, I would say. My purpose was not to advance my personal frontier of philosophy and intellectual thought in 2024, or to reach a niche audience of deep thinkers, but instead to reflect sincerely on some things I've seen along the way and muse upon how my thoughts have changed and stayed the same over twenty years.

I mention this to you because I am a bit worried that anyone who reads this book might think there's not much to me as an author, and might be dissuaded from reading my works of fiction when those books eventually come out, so I'll lampshade that by adding that I wrote this book in two-and-a-half months. Make of that what you will. I told myself I wouldn't self-sabotage the book by needlessly saying negative things about it, and I am proud of it, not only the fact that I finished it at all, let alone so quickly, but of the actual contents too.

This book is "Volume 1" in a hypothetical series, as it doesn't cover the entire twenty years of the journal but only the first four months, from August to November of 2003—at which point the essays had reached "book length" (lol). So really this book is a snapshot of my life in the latter half of 2003. At that time, I was fading out of college due to financial hardship and other issues, and did not realize that I would never (as yet) return.

I have been wanting for years to go back and reread my journal, and writing a book out of it was the perfect impetus to finally do it. I think a few things stand out about the Josh of 2023:

First, my principles have remained remarkably consistent, but my awareness and understanding of the world has grown drastically, and so those same principles have led me over time to some different policy views and worldviews on some things.

Second, I was a 21-year-old arrogant block of cheese, full of hormones and self-conviction, and that definitely shows up at times in ways that I simultaneously am not proud of and yet which I admire for their sheer gall. There is something very magnetic about the old me which doesn't exist anymore.

Third, following up on that point, it was pretty inspiring and encouraging to revisit the old me, with all that native optimism and drive. I don't express those qualities anymore because life has worn me down and also because I have come to recognize that humanity's problems are a lot more stubborn and irremediable than I thought. By glimpsing into the past, I couldn't help but be cheered on by the old Josh's proud, utopian sense of human inevitability. It lifted my own spirits in the here and now!

I made the mistake of announcing the book on Patreon right after I finished writing it, i.e. back in mid-March. Then I had to wring my hands every week about how post-production was taking longer than expected. Between the irritating realities of formatting a book in software not properly equipped to format a book (never write a book in Google Docs), the complexities of my detail-oriented manner and strong vision regarding the cover design (and engaging for the first time ever with modern generative AI, and having to learn those ropes), and sustaining illnesses and other life priorities and so on, it would take me another two months in all to finally reach today, where I can now publicly declare:

The book is done! It is for sale right now. It is called:

Tokens of Zeal: Words from a Vanished Age

(Caption: Book front cover of Tokens of Zeal: Words from a Vanished Age, by Joshua Calars.)

You can buy it through Amazon in either paperback or e-book format. (I recommend the paperback version for aesthetics as it is much truer to my design vision for the book's layout and appearance, but my profit margin is actually a dollar bigger with the e-book version, so really just go with whichever version you prefer.) It is available in the US as well as in basically all the other countries that Amazon has expanded its publishing service into. If you need help finding a link to a particular version, give me a ping and I will point you there (if there is a "there" to be pointed to). This is my second published book, following Prelude to After The Hero in 2015, and the first book to be published in print.

If you do read it, first of all thank you! It's an honor that you would take the time. Second of all, I would love any feedback you care to offer. That's not a platitude either; feedback is hard to come by and I really would be interested in anything you have to say, good or bad. You can e-mail me, DM, reblog this, drop an ask, or tag me in an independent post. Whatever you like! Feedback will help me greatly when I eventually get around to writing Volume 2. And feel free to leave a review on Amazon, whether good or bad (though hopefully you enjoy the book); I am told it pleases The Algorithm. But most of all, if you enjoy the book, tell someone about it! Your word-of-mouth is currently 100 percent of my advertising budget, lol.

That's all. I wrote a book; it took four-and-a-half-months; it's done now; and it's the first time I've ever gotten to hold a book that I wrote in my hands as a physical thing, and that's pretty neat.

#Tokens of Zeal: Words from a Vanished Age #New books #Self-publishing #Shameless author self-promotion #Joshua Calars #I am trying on “Joshua Calars” as my new pen name with this book #“The Sinistral” that I used with the Prelude to ATH didn't quite sit right with me #“Calars” is a word in Relance that refers to sunset #They/he are my pronouns; “they” is what I prefer but I won't get mad at you for “he”

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