Archive
The “Rat Park” Drug Addiction Comic
Stuart McMillen is a comic artist from Australia who uses comics as a medium to explore deep, often philosophical topics.
This month he writes about the experiment that purports that well-socialized and stimulated rats will actually choose opiate withdrawal over giving up their normal interactions. The rats in isolation cages do not.
Read the entire comic here.
Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
Despite all our rage, we’re still just underfunded rats in a cage.
Fallon Fox Has Already Lost
If you’ve been following LGBT issues at all, then you’ve probably heard about Fallon Fox.
She’s a professional mixed martial artist who caused a great deal of controversy when questions came up last March about her medical history–specifically that she’s a transgender woman fighting other women. The controversy garnered even more mainstream media coverage after Joe Rogan went on a rant calling her “a man without a dick” and then again when a UFC fighter got cut for telling a reporter that Fox was a “sociopathic, disgusting freak.”
Birth name unreleased, Fox had gotten sexual reassignment surgery in 2006 and has been on hormone replacement therapy for years before she started fighting.
Fallon Fox was later cleared by the Florida State Boxing Commission to fight women. And she is now scheduled to fight Allanna Jones in CFA 11 on AXS TV, May 24.
[Cat Zingano’s interview tact here was laudable.]
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It was my interest in sex and gender roles that led me to what has become the only sport I enjoy regularly watching. (Who is this Ronda Rousey that made it for women in the UFC when the president said it would “never” happen? I found last year’s Tate v. Rousey and was immediately intrigued by the fast-paced grappling.)
But I struggled with this piece, not only because I don’t participate in WMMA, but because the nature of the sport can make it harder to argue what constitutes “fairness” in competition than in say, a non-contact sport like running. Example: If you’re wrestling and have a leg lock around an opponent’s waist, even adjusted for weight, I imagine that something like hip shape could matter, and it could matter a lot. I had a lot of problems trying to think of how to write an article that defends which characteristics are “important” in determining sex in a way that doesn’t open up a slippery slope into scrapping sex segregation in sports all together.
All the major MMA news sites I’ve read have had an outstanding professional and nonjudgemental style when reporting the controversy. But the more critical opinions of the fans can be found in the comments sections of sites like CagePotato, MMAjunkie, YouTube videos, MMA forums, and r/mma.
Many comments are dismissible purely on their ignorance (dur, XX and XY, the end) and hate levels, but there is some civil discussion going on:
Click to enlarge
Most of the arguments about Fox still having the “natural advantages” of men can easily be rebutted with existing scientific literature. The hormone replacement therapy makes the muscle mass and bone density arguments moot. Testosterone levels are going to be well within “female” range. I haven’t found any “muscle fiber type” literature that says women can’t condition train to “manlier” types. And any differences in neurology (reaction time, spatial awareness, etc.), are usually too small to make blanket statement about the sexes.
Not every sexual dimorphism can be neatly plotted on a bell curve, and even when they can, elite athletes are going to be the outliers.
That said, the amount of sexism and transphobia within the fighting community is overwhelming. Cris Cyborg has been getting unparalleled amounts of shit for her masculine physiognomy for years, so it was no surprise to see her name alongside Fox’s in comments like, “let the trannies fight each other.” I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to characterize most MMA fighters, commentators, and fans as giant douchebags. The amount of vitriol, prejudice, and misinformation that has surrounded Fox is what is truly disgusting about the entire ordeal.
- “Actually Mittrione makes sense.”
Upvoted 162 times. Downvoted 3.
- “A man, sex change or not, should not fight a girl.”
Upvoted 130 times. Downvoted 3.
- “Matt’s just sayin what everybody thinks!….except for the overly sensitive, politically correct sheeple.
Upvoted 93 times. Downvoted 3.
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If Fallon Fox loses to Allanna Jones on Friday, she loses. If she wins, it’ll be toted as proof that male-to-female transgender means superior. Either way, she’s still going to have to face a bunch of judgment and questions about her legitimacy as a a woman and a fighter. She may have problems finding consistent sponsors. Major promotion agencies, which have pretty much all been bought by Zuffa (UFC), are going to want to avoid this controversy until the fans will it to happen. Fox is now 37, late for a budding MMA career, and transgender folk still have a long way to go before society matches them at current tolerance and understanding levels of homosexuals. By those metrics, Fox has already lost.
The silver lining in all this is that the Florida State Boxing Commission made the right call. At the end of all the quibbling about bone proportion and safety, there should be a segregation of men and women in MMA and Fox should be allowed in one of the two.
The doctors and the overseeing commission say that Fallon Fox is a woman. So fight on, Fallon “Queen of Swords” Fox, fight on.
We Giggle Behind Small Hands and No Speak Engrish
“Cho and Chang are both last names. They are both Korean last names. I am supposed to be Chinese. Me being named “Cho Chang” is like a Frenchman being named “Garcia Sanchez.”
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Apparently some Asian people got pissed because Cho Chang could “technically” be a Chinese first and last name. Rostad later stated in a comprehensive response that she knew, but sacrificed the details for a punchline.
Whatever criticism of racial stereotypes aside, Cho Chang is still a pretty shitty character and a pretty stupid name.
(As far as I know, no Chinese person romanizes Qiu as “Cho.” A more extreme analogy would be like spelling Hussein “Hoosayne.”)
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The Psychiatric Ward and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Or: An Oddly Personal Reaction to the News.
I was once in a psychiatric hospital against my will. And yes, they can get just as terrible as mainstream media can make them seem. I don’t keep my mental health problems a secret. Or my involuntary commitment a secret; it’s not an experience I care to repress or forget. At the same time, I’ve never publicly blogged about it before it now.
It happened 16 months ago, and although it’s left an indelible mark on my psyche, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get the experience out in a single entry. “The Psych Ward Story” is a complicated story and when asked why it happened I usually sigh and say, “an unfortunate series of events.”
There were lots of traumatic aspects of the ordeal in addition to the obvious confinement: Being denied birth control by the Catholic hospital. Being transferred to another hospital in a poorer area with an under-trained and under-educated staff. Being prescribed psychotropic drugs that I knew from extensive experience were not going to help or agree with me. Being misdiagnosed.* Being falsely accused of being danger to myself.
But the incident that I would ping in my head as “the most wrong” in the week-long experience was when my doctor refused to give me access to my court paperwork and refused to give me the identity or phone number of the public defender. (There were also a nurse and a counselor present at my first and only meeting with the psychiatrist. They were silent.)
It was as simple and as curt as a “No.” My basic rights, probably as citizen and most definitely as a patient, were flagrantly violated.
I never did pursue a civil lawsuit. Besides legal fees and the desire to not re-live the experience, it was disheartening but unsurprising to learn that my requests to pursue my legal options to formally contest the confinement were never documented. My hopeless crying at the psychiatrist’s dismissal of me was ironically* recorded by the doctor in the progress notes as, “Patient thinks [referring to self in third person] does not care.”
These days I get emotional when reading about anything remotely related to civil rights violations, specifically unjust treatment during confinement. Some days I’m afraid I’m becoming a libertarian. I don’t know enough about trauma to talk about it on a medical level, but I do know that I never used to start crying when reading about the disgrace that is Guantanamo. And I have no doubt that had the psych ward incident not have happened, I would not avoid listening to the Bradley Manning tapes out of fear of having a panic attack.
So today when I read that the Boston Marathon bombing suspect was not Mirandized, my immediate thoughts were, “That’s terrible!” and then “I bet Glenn Greenwald is going to go off about this.”
Needless to say, Tsarnaev is probably the single most hated figure in America now. As a result, as Bazelon noted, not many people will care what is done to him, just like few people care what happens to the accused terrorists at Guantanamo, or Bagram, or in Yemen and Pakistan. But that’s always how rights are abridged: by targeting the most marginalized group or most hated individual in the first instance, based on the expectation that nobody will object because of how marginalized or hated they are. Once those rights violations are acquiesced to in the first instance, then they become institutionalized forever, and there is no basis for objecting once they are applied to others.
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I cried a lot at that editorial. Not that I want to hyperbolize my experience by comparing it to individuals of national interest or make a plea on behalf of all those that have undergone civil or criminal commitment. I just wanted to make note of the highly personal ways individuals can react to current events based on their own experiences.
Today, in a weird way, I find myself having empathy for a terrorist. Or, to be fully politically correct, an alleged terrorist. I too have made had my fundamental rights abrogated in the name of “safety.” And as an American and an idealist, it makes me very sad.
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*My only long-standing diagnosis is Major Depressive Disorder. The same inpatient psychiatrist who shit on my Due Process later carelessly listed the “Final Diagnosis” on my discharge report as “Schizophrenia.”
“Sheryl Sandberg would be disappointed in me if I didn’t ask you about money.”
Anecdotes about the impact of Lean In in the media industry via BuzzFeed:
Other editors whom I asked this week told me that women who worked for them had brought up the book — its broadly empowering message, and its specific advice on pushing for a raise. It’s a concrete, if anecdotal, suggestion that Sandberg’s high-profile effort to start a movement is having real consequences on a dynamic that’s well known to managers and backed by volumes of research: Women often ask for less money than they could get, and negotiate less aggressively than men.
The new phenomenon of women invoking Sandberg in salary talks “has happened here,” New York Times editor Jill Abramson said in an email. “I do think the book and all the attendant publicity have emboldened some women to speak up more directly about compensation, which is, of course, a welcome development.”
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I made note of Sandberg’s commentary on women leaders long before I knew she was expanding her ideas into a book.
My reaction was positive, and although I still haven’t gotten a chance to read Lean In, I imagine that my take-away will be on the more sympathetic side of the vast blogosphere vitriol and confusion.
.@lisamcintire @annaholmes I mean, no man reads “Good to Great” worrying that it doesn’t sympathize with guys working at McDonald’s.
— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) February 24, 2013
Abraham Lincoln’s Strangely Socialist State of the Union Speech
Happy Labor Day!
It’s not really socialist. There is just no way a modern president could make these sort of remarks in a modern SOTU address.
Abraham Lincoln, Dec. 13, 1861 excerpt:
It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.
Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
The last sentence in the speech is, “With a reliance on Providence all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us.” That’s how Abraham Lincoln said, “God Bless America.” Compare that shit to Obama’s 2012 SOTU style. Oh, how times have changed.
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Liz Katz and the Cosplay Controversy
I never knew crowdfunding could get so bitter before today. Especially for something like this…
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Liz Katz is a model and actress based in LA and is very active in the nerd /gamer community. Petite modeling, booth babe gigs–she’s a perfect pick for an elf or a faerie photoshoot. She recently set up an IndieGogo page for a “Sexy Princess Peach Cosplay.”
It’s exactly what it sounds like. Funds would go to props, lighting, cameras, etc. Her goal was $650, but she managed to raise $4,690 between 52 backers.
It seems like an example of using social media to do a successful project funding. But amazingly enough, people are pissed off about it.
Nerd Reactor has an article titled “Is Fundraising a Cosplay Outfit Wrong?”
The top comment by James Campbell:
Hah. This sounds like the type of person who would slut-shame someone and then jerk off to them at the same time.
First of all, if you’re getting paid, you’re not a wannabe. If you’re getting paid AND getting press coverage, then you’re definitely not a wannabe. For a model, “free exposure” is a good thing.
Have these people not been to LA? Have they not seen the iconic costume photo hustlers on Hollywood Boulevard?
There is nothing wrong with using an image to make money. Intellectual property can get tricky, but nobody is arresting the guy dressed like Superman for hitting up tourists for a photo op.
There are definitely issues with the videogame industry oversexualizing nearly every female character. Don’t get me wrong. Feminism in videogames is a complex topic. It’s a good discussion topic, and it’s fascinating to watch the dynamics between gamer girls and the so-called “beta males.”
But if the fans start bullying each other’s interpretations of fandom and sexual expression, then they are failing to make an inclusive community.
And that violates the very spirit of cosplay.