Atheism Plus Zombies

As an atheist (I still haven't decided how militant I can/should be on that front), I'm pretty darn happy with this Atheism Plus thing. It's no secret to anyone who follows atheism on the intertubes that there have been some spectacular battles over such groundbreaking and controversial issues like cornering women in elevators and whether harrassment policies at conferences are a good thing or else an authoritarian nightmare that will undermine the very fabric of a free society. Furthermore, I've found some pretty unskeptical attitudes in some social justice movements that don't appeal to me, and have contributed to my arms-length distance from some of them. So, to have a group of atheist and skeptical people discussing issues of social justice is something that I will be following for some time.

That's all I'm going to say about that for now.

In zombie news, I've been reading a bunch of stuff lately, some good, some bad, some ugly.

The good:

Blackout by Mira Grant: The 3rd in her Newsflesh trilogy provided a very satisfying conclusion. When I reviewed the first book (Feed) I think I short-changed her on the score. At the time, I felt that the story built to its climax too slowly. That problem was corrected in the sequel, Deadline, and this third book as the action stayed fast-paced and riveting. The protagonists of the series, Shawn and Georgia, are very well-drawn and believable, and while maybe Grant could work a bit more on developing the secondary characters a little more, her focus on the first-person narrators doesn't hurt the story at all. I'm confident that this series is the best zombie lit that I'll read this year. I give it a 4.5 severed thumbs up (or whatever my scoring system is).

The bad:


Shakespeare Undead by Lori Handeland: Okay, so I'll be gentle with this book, because I don't think I'm the target audience. It's a pulpy supernatural romance between William Shakespeare (a two-thousand year old vampire) and his Dark Lady, Kate, who hunts zombies as a hobby while her merchant-noble husband is away in the New World. They fall passionately in love, then kill zombies, then are passionately in love some more, then kills more zombies, then there's an evil vampire and they fight him, the queen of England shows up and they save her, and then they fall in love some more, again, and then some. Part of what threw me was from the very start there's some vaguely heterosexist content where Shakespeare is drawn to Kate while she's disguised as a boy, and he agonizes forEVER about whether he's suddenly turned gay or not, not that there's anything wrong with that. What a friggin' RELIEF when he finds out that his true love isn't a boy but is actually a lady. It was a relief to me, too, because then I didn't have to read about how self-hating Shakespeare expected to become if he actually was gay or bi or whatever. Also, there's some casual racism in there, but whatevs, lighten up, right?

The other thing that bugged me was the plotting or pacing was so, so, SO bad. This book, in order for the zombie threat to actually become threatening, depends on its protagonists saying and doing stupid things (in general, making out) instead of trying to solve the problem. Basically, Will and Kate get attacked by zombies, then, instead of doing ANYTHING to find out about where the zombies are coming from, etc, they just make out and wonder if they should reveal their secrets (Kate is married, Will is Undead: can it ever work???). It's about 75% through the book that Shakespeare actually does anything other than react: he goes to a house and knocks on the door, and then is attacked by more zombies, and later (probably) makes out with Kate some more.

So, I'll say 1.5 severed thumbs out of 5. In this book's favour, the writing is readable, the book has a consistent breezy tone, and it plays with some interesting ideas. I'm not a pulp-romance reader, so maybe this book would be just the thing for someone wanting something light-weight and "fun"(?) for the beach or whatever. It irritated me to no end, but I can't say that I would like the time back that I spent on it.....unlike.....

The ugly:

Autumn: the city by David Moody: This is a lesson for me: any time a zombie novel says, on it's back cover blurb, "there's no flesh eating, no fast-moving corpses, no gore for gore's sake," I need to just WALK AWAY because they are NOT KIDDING. Oh, this book. This horrible, horrible book.

Okay, so, I haven't read the first book in the series (just called Autumn, maybe?), and there are a billion other books after this one. I am unlikely to read those. Basically, this book is a standard zombie apocalypse story, where survivors first experience zombie-onset trauma, then they gather together, then they fight amongst themselves to decide what to do. Except for the first half of the book, the dead people who become zombies? They just stand there. Later on, they reach for you and grab at you, which I can imagine is certainly unnerving, but from what I could see in this book, the zombies are not actually dangerous, except that they crowd and could (presumably) trample someone to death. If a zombie bites or scratches you, do you become a zombie? I don't know, because to my knowledge, no zombie ever bites or scratches anyone in the entire book. The first post-apocalypse death is a suicide when a woman jumps off a ledge because her baby died.

But the zombies in a zombie novel are only one part of the equation. I can see an argument for a really creepy story where the dead just kind of stand there and the survivors are creeped out by that. But if that's the story, I imagine it would depend heavily on the characters. So, how are the characters in this one? Ugh. I don't know. They're all so bland and boring and interchangeable, I ran into trouble later in the book when the cast expanded past "the guy" "the woman" and "the little kid". I kept mixing everyone up. Even the inter-character conflict was so muted and generally polite that when one guy decided to just go and get drunk in a bar to kill himself, I kinda just shrugged. Who was he again? I don't know. Why suicide? I guess he was sad? Sigh.

This book was BORING. I can't even be bothered to raise objections about sexism or whatever, because, really, nothing happened. Most of the world died instantly, some of those bodies started walking around, and the survivors just sit around and mope blandly for however many pages this book has. 0 (that's a zero) out of 5 severed thumbs. Both of the UNsevered thumbs are pointed down.

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So, this was my "keep the blog alive!" post. I've been keeping things going at my sobriety blog, and I guess staying sober has been a big focus of my life lately. Now that I'm approaching one year of THAT, I'd like to expand my focus to include other interests, including this blog. We'll see how that goes.

Rant about sexism

I've got a younger half sister, who is of adult age, and she goes on the internet. Especially because I was a teenager when she was born, and I've watched her grow up and develop interests and explore the world in her own way, I'm somewhat protective of her. I'm fiercely protective of her. I am rabidly and perhaps not completely rationally protective of her.

I was raised by a single mom, and as I grew up and began to see that her challenges were different than mine would ever be, I grew to feel protective of her as well. My mom also goes on the internet.

Both of these women are strong people. I've seen them come through difficult times, I've seen them stand up to others for themselves and for those weaker than they are. They are tough, and I'm learning about what it means to be strong in part by watching them go through life.

So when I hear someone call someone a "cunt" or "bitch", when I hear a dude "joke" about how someone "deserves a good raping", or a woman is judged by her attractiveness and sex appeal, or when a guy calls another guy a woman in some way in order to shame him....I think about my sister and my mom and the other women in my life, and I know that somewhere, sometime, some asshole is saying the exact same thiong about them.

When my gay friends joke about bitches and women being crazy or disgusting, I think of my sister and my mom.

When my straight rugby mates talk about women only being good for one thing, I think about my sister and my mom.

I know that what I hear is only a fraction of what women must put up with, and yet I'm already fed up. I am male, but I have serious issues trusting other guys, because the first second that they're in a room by themselves, the second all the women leave, the room fucking changes, and it gets ugly. Not all the time, but it's enough.

My friends are starting to realize that I dislike "gendered insults". I'm speaking up about it, because the right to call someone a bitch does not trump someone's right to live free of harrassment. Call someone an asshole, a fuckwad, a jerk, a loser. Or better yet, argue against their actions instead of the person (because what makes you think they're any more responsible for their failings than you are for yours?). Think about our own mother, your sister, your wife or girlfriend, your daughters, your friends.

It's not a joke if it's hurting the ones you love.

Student Protests

Cromunist says everything I could ever want to about the Quebec student protests.

Most frustrating for me personally? I've talked with students here in Ontario and some of them think the protests are a bad idea. I want to shake rhem and ask "Do you have no sense of self-interest?? We could do that here and tuition would stop going up a hundred dollars every freaking second!"

We Must Punish Them

So yesterday at the Eaton Centre, a large mall pretty much 3 blocks from my home, a gunman opened fire and killed one man and injured several other people. To my knowledge, they are still hunting the shooter, two people (maybe three?) are in hospital but will probably pull through.

This is obviously a tragedy, horrific, and must have been terrifying to the thousands of people who were in the mall at the time, forced to stampede to safety. Horrible, too, for the family and friends of those who were injured and the young man who was killed. So far as I know, I don't have a personal connection with any of the victims (it's possible, though: a group of my friends were on that corner to see a movie at the exact time. They're all okay, but who knows who else was in the neighbourhood?), so maybe it's that that gives me a feeling of emotional distance.

I've lived in neighbourhoods where a violent crime has happened (3 or 4 years ago a person was shot near a bus stop that I frequently used to get to work, and when I lived in Halifax I was only a few streets away from the infamous "Crack Corner" and came home from work one night to see the security guard mopping up buckets of blood after an older man was beaten savagely by teenagers with baseball bats in my own lobby), so I've come to just acknowledge that violent crime happens, individual instances can't be predicted, and that even when national trends are down, individual events can make make it appear that I am less safe than I actually am.

The popular opinion, at least according to what I've seen in comment threads and after a very brief survey of my social sphere, is that the shooter is a Bad Man and should be brought to Justice. More, people "like him" should be taken into an alley and shot, or, you know, whatever happens to be the most painful and vicious punishment we as a civil society can divise.

I don't know anything about the shooter, who he was or why he did what he did. What I do know is that I am deeply skeptical of the idea of a "Bad Man".

The Bad Man to me is a kind of boogey monster. It's a way for us to simplify the world into easily-digestible concepts. The idea that anyone, even good, basically decent people, could commit atrocious crimes and cause harm to innocents, is a deeply troubling one. This shooter was someone's baby once. It's difficult to think of an innocent child growing up to be a mass killer, and undermines a lot of the ideas we use to help us feel safe and in control of our lives.

So instead we create a category of people who are just "bad". Why are they bad? It doesn't matter, they just are. They aren't like normal people, they aren't like us. They should be segregated and killed. They aren't natural.

I don't believe in monsters. I can think of a few reasons why someone might commit an atrocious crime. Primarily, mental illness and addiction are two right off the top of my head. I have a really hard time thinking of reasons why a healthy, rational person would take a gun to a crowded mall and harm complete strangers who are presumably innocent of any wrong-doing. Faced with the two options, the idea that this shooter is mentally ill in some way seems far, far more likely.

And to my mind, people with mental illness or who are struggling with addiction need help, not punishment.

Recently in the news there was a bit of an uproar because a diagnosed schizophrenic who had killed and eaten people on a bus near Winnipeg was allowed to leave his hospital - under supervision by professionals, note - because of the nature of his crimes. Again, comment threads called for his head. He should be locked up forever, or killed. Because of his actions, he has lost any right to be considered as a human being. He should be put down like a dog.

From a practicality stand-point, people who have harmed others or who are at great risk of harming others should be seperated from society. There's an obligation of the state and society as a whole to protect its members. When I get on a bus, I should feel relatively confident that my seat-mate isn't going to pull a knife on me. But I feel that this is just the begining of responsibility, it's the tip of the iceberg.

At what point do we assign personal responsibility to people for their actions? I'm an alcoholic, though I am not drinking now and have been sober for 8 months. On my sobriety date, did I suddenly stop being a Bad Man? I've done awful things, some things that I will probably never talk about, because of or to fuel my addiction. I understand the need to take responsibility for my actions, because at certain points there were choices that I made. But they weren't rational choices. I was not playing with a full deck. Because of circumstance, it was impossible for me to make the right choice. In fact, I think that when people do make the right choice, it's less about the quality of their character and more because most times the right choice is easier. "Good" people don't do good things because of some innate quality, they do good things because the bad thing has too high a personal cost. As a social species, we've evolved to be very tightly tied to our societies. It's in our biochemistry to obey social norms.

But because of variability, and because the universe is an infinitely complicated place, we get individuals who go against the social norms. Are they themselves at fault? Or is the blame more spread out?

My prefered action in a case like this Eaton Centre shooting is to catch the man, have him evaluated, and then provide whatever support we can to rehabilitate him. Further, we should be putting more money into poverty reduction, improving access to education, and looking into harm-reduction and other ways of helping addicts recover. My solution is very expensive. It's much cheaper to just kill the guy.

Not Cool Skepchick

Skepchick is one of only 4 or 5 sites that I try to check daily, and usually I think it's great, but not today.

Yesterday's "Afternoon Inquiry" was about obesity and while the questions asked sort of set off little warning flags for me, what really did it was the "faceless fatty" that is traditionally used when the media tackles obesity. Because unlike just about every other demographic, being fat is so completely shameful and taboo that we dare not show a fat person with their head when we are talking about their fatness.

In the comments, someone called out Sam Ogden (the writer) for choosing a photo that reinforces the taboo and shamefulness that our society associates with obesity, and, to my surprise, Sam responded by attacking the commenter, saying that they were maybe not ready for grownup conversations and pretty much telling them to stop whining.

This, from the website that brought us elevatorgate? Niiiiice.

A few people also commented about the picture, and when I returned just now, the picture had been changed. To this:





Is that a joke? Is this meant to trivialize the very valid concerns about how obese people are portrayed in the media?

My "best case scenario" is that this was an honest mistake. There's some discussion in the blogosphere about breastfeeding lately, so maybe the picture got misfiled. But lately, life is showing me that I tend to overestimate peoples decency when I try to assume the best case scenario.

I really hope someone apologizes.

Edit:  Oooookay, the clown picture is intentional, but it's meant to represent giving babies McDonalds food, not to trivialize the concerns of the commenters. I'm gonna let things lie for a little bit while I figure out if I'm still mad, and, if I am, why.

This Just In: It's Not Okay to Criticize White People Anymore!

First, sorry about the lack of updates. I left my last job and so the last month (and probably all of next month) are consumed by job-hunting craziness, and so a lot of my thinking has been directed toward getting myself a job. I'm not prepared to blog here about something that personal and frankly boring. It was beginning to look like the whole month would go by without an entry, but then I stumbled onto an article on the AVClub begging us to please stop talking about "white peoples' problems" because, I guess, it's just not funny anymore.

I forced myself to read through the article, and there are some half-formed points in there that I can get behind, but throughout most of it I just had this poor, poor white people feeling. Being white myself, I gotta say, we got it tough!

First, an acknowledgement: race issues are complex. I understand enough about intersectionality and social justice to know that the world is a very complex place, and it's difficult to condemn or support one position without undermining another. This is one of the reasons why the skeptic/atheist-y blogosphere keeps coming up against these debates on sexism or gender identities or people of colour in the sciences, because even the most well-meaning people can say one thing that on the surface seems liberal and progressive and open-minded, but looked at from a different angle is actually hurtful, privilege-laden, and/or just stupid. I'll probably do it in this post, because my experiences can't possibly have prepared me well-enough to understand what it's like to be non-white, just like I wouldn't expect a heterosexual to completely understand my experiences as a gay man.

I can certainly get behind the idea that "white peoples' problems" as a phrase is problematic, maybe even when used "smugly and reductively" as the AVClub writer Noel Murray describes. But when Murray tries to dig into the issue, he comes off as just another entitled white guy getting upset that now everyone wants to pick on the white guys! Oh Noes!

Basically, worrying about the use of the phrase "white peoples' problems" is, basically, a white person's problem. Last I checked, the numbers for unemployment, poverty, mental illness, violent crime, lack of representation in places of power, addiction, and education issues still show quite clearly that you have less to worry about (statistically speaking) if you're white. The ladder of success you have to climb to achieve your goals is still much, much shorter for white people than it is for people of colour.

The phrase is used, when I've heard it anyway, to illuminate that there is still a discrepancy in these and other issues. It's used to bring perspective to a conversation. Yeah, it's used dismissively, and I can definitely imagine someone using it hurtfully (I'm trying to think of an area where white people maybe don't have it so good right now, and my brain is blanking. All else considered equal, is it EVER bad to be white, statistically speaking?), but I feel that any tool that brings to light the horrible and criminal inconsistencies between groups of people based only on arbitrary features like skin colour or nation of origin is overall a good thing.

As I was reading, though, I wondered about my taking exception to people using "that's so gay." Because I DO take exception to it. Isn't this "white" thing a little bit like the "gay" thing?

Well, no. Not at all. And at it's most simple, I can be verbally and physically harrassed, lose a job or an apartment, or denied the right to, say, marry who I choose depending on where I live (okay, in Canada I personaly don't have it so bad, but ask a high school kid in the middle of nowhere how great and accepting his classmates are). The power and authority is completely in the hands of straight folks. Their using "gay" to mean something negative or lame is not only a direct attack at me and people like me, but it also helps to reinforce inequalities that are a part of the world I live in.

It's not the same for white folks. When someone says "that's so white" they aren't making the disparity between oppressor and oppressed wider. In many ways, they're helping to bring that disparity closer. White folks could stand to be taken down a notch or two, is what I'm saying.

I mean, when Murray writes:

people aren’t sniping about “whiteness” to be funny, or even defiant—at least not entirely. They’re using the term as a form of criticism, meant to be dismissive. “That movie looks very white,” or, “That sounds like music for white people,” is another way of saying, “That can’t be any good.” And I do have a problem with that.

 He's flat-out wrong: being dismissive of the people in power IS being defiant and, often, very funny. And it's too bad that THIS, and not the white-washing (and straight-washing, and cis-washing, and rich-washing) of mainstream media is what he has a problem with.

The article almost gets some traction with the idea that a failed internet connection being a "white persons problem" is dismissive of the fact that people of colour can and do use the internet, and cell-phones, and get cable. so, yeah, he stuff we dismiss as "white peoples' problems" bug people of colour, too: it's just that in addition to all that crap, they also have this whole other pile of stinking crap they have to wade through as well, because, y'know, they aren't white.

There's a last-minute attempt at the end of the article for readers to suggest media produced by people of colour so that all of us white folk can brush up on our diversity, so that's nice I guess. But basically, until we actually have equality between white folk and not-so-white folk, I encourage all of you to keep on using "white" as a perjorative.

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On a completely different subject, and to bring in some zombie stuff, I saw Cabin in the Woods last week and overall enjoyed it, though I feel like it was a bit of a step backward for the folks who once worked on "Buffy" from a feminist angle. Not gonna go through it (for fear of being spoilery?), but I feel like the "last girl" was rescued one or two many times, and not really in a self-aware, parodying sort of way.

And that's all for now!

Open Letter to Metro's The Scene

In today's copy of Metro, the free daily newspaper, there was a column about Jenna Talackova, a transgender woman who was disqualified from the Miss Universe Canada competition and is challenging that decision as a case of discrimination. The column argued that Jenna should just accept it, because she shouldn't have lied about her gender on the application. This is the email I sent. Oh, and the title of the article? "There he is, Miss Universe Canada?" Horrible. You can send an email to complain to scene@metronews.ca.

Dorothy Robinson,

In 1916 when Manitoba was the first province to give women the vote, I am certain that there were people who argued that the country wasn’t “ready” for it. When Rosa Parks in 1955 decided to disobey the bus driver’s order to move to the back, she faced more than her share of disapproval. The fact is, the fight for equality is always an uphill battle, and sometimes it takes people breaking or bending the rules to get there.

You may not be aware, but transgender people are not protected from discrimination in the Human Rights code of Canada. They are also one of the most vulnerable demographics for violence, discrimination, and abuse. In the media, transgender people and issues regarding anything beyond strict adherence to traditional gender roles is almost exclusively portrayed in a negative light or as something to be mocked. People like Jenna Talackova face the threat of violence and harassment on a daily basis.

Your column begins with an insult in the title, calling Jenna Talackova a “he”. That is an insult to her, and to all transgender people, and a clear sign that they are still not regarded as equals for who they are, and instead must face constant discrimination for something that is beyond their control and does not harm anyone.

Transgender people face a catch-22 when asked to state their gender on a form. If a transgender person states the gender they identify as, they risk being called a liar or worse, and if they state the gender they were born as or assigned, they cause confusion when they present as something completely different. Imagine if you were told every day that you were not a woman? No matter what you feel, deep in your core, every person you met told you that you were wrong. How is that any way to live?

This is clearly a case of discrimination, and just like before women got the vote and before the civil rights movement, it is an uphill battle to convince the rest of the world that there is a problem. Well, there is a problem and it isn’t with transgendered people, it’s with the rest of us.