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It boggles the mind to see how far anti-choicers are willing to go with their beliefs:
Unborn in abortion case gets a lawyer
i'm at a loss for words.
Unborn in abortion case gets a lawyer
i'm at a loss for words.
Some good news: Mexico City has just voted to legalise abortion. Which is particularly impressive, given that Mexico City is the capital of the world's second-largest Catholic nation.
On a related note,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cheshire_bitten alerted me to this GetUp campaign in support of closing a legislative loophole which "allowed pregnancy counsellors to say whatever they like in their advertising to pregnant women". The closure of this loophole would mean that counselling agencies would be required to disclose in their advertising whether or not they are willing to refer for termination of pregnancy. In other words, it would basically disallow deceptive advertising practices, instead allowing women to make an informed choice regarding their choice of counselling service. So support the campaign!
On a related note,
cheshire_bitten alerted me to this GetUp campaign in support of closing a legislative loophole which "allowed pregnancy counsellors to say whatever they like in their advertising to pregnant women". The closure of this loophole would mean that counselling agencies would be required to disclose in their advertising whether or not they are willing to refer for termination of pregnancy. In other words, it would basically disallow deceptive advertising practices, instead allowing women to make an informed choice regarding their choice of counselling service. So support the campaign!
According to the Gender Genie, this blog entry of mine (the most recent to contain only my own writing) suggests that i'm female (Female Score: 996, Male Score: 699). Which is interesting, because several people have told me that they get that impression from my writing, despite me feeling that i probably sound male (and even though i don't make any particular effort to 'gender' my writing either way). But in any case, i haven't yet had a look at the theory underlying this little gadget, so i'm yet not putting much store in it beyond thinking "Heh". :-)
Alongside news that the demanded sizes for silicone breast implants are increasing, we have a marvellous little piece of research suggesting that breast enlargement can help women's self-esteem:
Improvements in the women’s self-esteem and sexual satisfaction were directly correlated with having undergone breast augmentation. Figueroa-Haas used two widely accepted scientific scales to measure self-esteem and sexuality, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the Female Sexual Function Index, which assesses domains of sexual function, such as sexual arousal, satisfaction, experience and attitudes.Yep, let's not talk about whether it's reasonable for a woman's self-esteem to be based on the size of her breasts. And let's not talk about how the media affects how women feel about their bodies:
The rail-thin blonde bombshell on the cover of a magazine makes all women feel badly about their own bodies despite the size, shape, height or age of the viewers. A new University of Missouri-Columbia study found that all women were equally and negatively affected after viewing pictures of models in magazine ads for just three minutes.Grrr . . . .
First woman honored with Turing Award:
One of the most prestigious prizes in computing, the $100,000 Turing Award, went to a woman Wednesday for the first time in the award's 40-year history.Apart from "Yay! About time!", two other things occur to me:
Frances E. Allen, 75, was honored for her work at IBM Corp. on techniques for optimizing the performance of compilers, the programs that translate one computer language into another. This process is required to turn programming code into the binary zeros and ones actually read by a computer's colossal array of minuscule switches.
- i wonder if the significant contributions to computing made by Lynn Conway will ever be recognised with some sort of award? Or will her transsexuality make that politically untenable?
- i wonder whether this news will make it to reddit, and if so, how high it will end up being ranked?
This sort of thing makes me furious: sacred_harlot, is quite a large woman. She's currently suffering from heart and leg problems, which in recent years have curtailed her ability to do as much physical activity as she used to. She still does a fair amount of physical activity anyway, not only because she's a mother of two teenagers, but because she tries to work out on her exercise bike as much as possible. She also eats better than anyone i know: salads are a regular part of her diet, she very much limits her intake of fats and sugars, she drinks lots of water and fruit juices, and she generally limits her food intake overall, having only health snacks between meals.
But none of this matters to the health 'professionals' she's seen in recent times; most of them have made it quite clear that they're not willing to properly address her health issues until she's "lost that weight". There seems to be an implication that she couldn't possibly be doing any of the above things, because otherwise she would obviously be slimmer. And never mind that she was sexually and physically abused as a child by her mother, which recent research suggests may be linked to heart problems; her heart and leg problems must simply be a result of her being 'lazy'. Presumably just like my ME/CFS and fibromyalgia merely reflects my own 'laziness'. :-P
We're constantly lectured about the (some real, some dubious) health costs of being fat; but what about the health costs of our society's fatphobia?
[ Cross-posted tofat_feminist ]
A woman in Oklahoma suffered for twelve years with a growing ovarian tumor that went undiagnosed. Everytime she went to the doctor, she was told she was just fat and needed to lose weight. After awhile she stopped going to the doctor. It wasn't until she'd become so swollen that the circulation in her legs became compromised and they began to crack and ooze that a doctor finally took her seriously and admitted it wasn't just a problem with "overeating." During an exploratory surgery they discovered a 93 pound ovarian cyst. Yet even then, it was compared to a "big balloon, a big beach ball" and the news reports wrote mockingly of her walking around with a tumor she didn’t know was there.One of my partners,
Luckily, this woman’s tumor was benign. But "obese" women have higher death rates from many cancers than "normal" weight women. Several researchers have looked for reasons for this health disparity and have learned it isn't because of their fat in the way that is popularly believed.
sacred_harlot, is quite a large woman. She's currently suffering from heart and leg problems, which in recent years have curtailed her ability to do as much physical activity as she used to. She still does a fair amount of physical activity anyway, not only because she's a mother of two teenagers, but because she tries to work out on her exercise bike as much as possible. She also eats better than anyone i know: salads are a regular part of her diet, she very much limits her intake of fats and sugars, she drinks lots of water and fruit juices, and she generally limits her food intake overall, having only health snacks between meals.But none of this matters to the health 'professionals' she's seen in recent times; most of them have made it quite clear that they're not willing to properly address her health issues until she's "lost that weight". There seems to be an implication that she couldn't possibly be doing any of the above things, because otherwise she would obviously be slimmer. And never mind that she was sexually and physically abused as a child by her mother, which recent research suggests may be linked to heart problems; her heart and leg problems must simply be a result of her being 'lazy'. Presumably just like my ME/CFS and fibromyalgia merely reflects my own 'laziness'. :-P
We're constantly lectured about the (some real, some dubious) health costs of being fat; but what about the health costs of our society's fatphobia?
[ Cross-posted to
fat_feminist ]
A former 'Playmate' has given an interview in which she provides some insights into Hugh Hefner's lifestyle. Personally, i found it rather disturbing, if not particularly surprising: he very much sounds to me like an elderly man with the mindset of an adolescent boy.
This is interesting: naked_wrat's recent experience in this regard.] And if i then say 'no' more firmly and try to pull away, is he then going to get angry and use physical force on me?" And so on.) And further: in discussions about rape and sexual assault, many men seem fixated on discussing situation in which the perp is a stranger, when in actual fact, in a clear majority of cases, the perp is already known to the victim1. This again suggests that these men have at best a minimal grasp of how the world may look to women - specifically, that strangers are less likely to be a concern than people they know. (Which further complicates matters, since a woman's social circles have no particular interest in taking sides with a stranger, whereas they may well have an interest in taking sides with a perp from their social circle.)
i think the crucial issue here is the desire of a privileged group to listen and at least try to understand what life might be like 'on the other side'. It's like when people mess up the pronouns they use to refer to me: i don't have a problem with it, as long as it's clear to me that the person in question is genuinely trying to get them right. It's when people don't appear to be even making an effort - or worse, to be actively emphasising incorrect pronouns - that i start getting upset.
Similarly, i feel it's one thing for men to have difficulty comprehending women's views of the world; it's another for them to not even bother to make an effort to do so in the first place. Which is something i see all too often. :-/ And how can any issue be resolved if one side believes itself to not have any need to comprehend any other sides' positions?
1. An e-brief entitled "Measuring domestic violence and sexual assault: a review of the literature and statistics" notes that, in Australia:
Galinsky and colleagues . . . . found that power leads individuals to anchor too heavily on their own vantage point, thus leaving them unable to adjust to another person's perspective and decreases one's ability to correctly interpret emotion.i wonder if this doesn't suggest that privileged groups might literally not be able to comprehend how they are, in fact, in a privileged position? For instance, it might explain why so many males seem to have (what i regard as) empathy deficit disorder: years of privilege might have caused their minds have developed in such a way as to have difficulty seeing what life might be like without the power and privilege that often comes with being male. Such that, for example, many men don't seem unable to understand how a woman being pressured / harrassed / forced into having sex by a guy often has a more complex view of the situation than those men typically imagine. (E.g., "If i say 'no', is he going to keep going anyway? [See, for example,
naked_wrat's recent experience in this regard.] And if i then say 'no' more firmly and try to pull away, is he then going to get angry and use physical force on me?" And so on.) And further: in discussions about rape and sexual assault, many men seem fixated on discussing situation in which the perp is a stranger, when in actual fact, in a clear majority of cases, the perp is already known to the victim1. This again suggests that these men have at best a minimal grasp of how the world may look to women - specifically, that strangers are less likely to be a concern than people they know. (Which further complicates matters, since a woman's social circles have no particular interest in taking sides with a stranger, whereas they may well have an interest in taking sides with a perp from their social circle.)i think the crucial issue here is the desire of a privileged group to listen and at least try to understand what life might be like 'on the other side'. It's like when people mess up the pronouns they use to refer to me: i don't have a problem with it, as long as it's clear to me that the person in question is genuinely trying to get them right. It's when people don't appear to be even making an effort - or worse, to be actively emphasising incorrect pronouns - that i start getting upset.
Similarly, i feel it's one thing for men to have difficulty comprehending women's views of the world; it's another for them to not even bother to make an effort to do so in the first place. Which is something i see all too often. :-/ And how can any issue be resolved if one side believes itself to not have any need to comprehend any other sides' positions?
1. An e-brief entitled "Measuring domestic violence and sexual assault: a review of the literature and statistics" notes that, in Australia:
78 per cent of female victims of sexual assault knew the offender (in cases where there was sufficient data to identify the relationship of the offender to the victim). There is also a marked difference when comparing the rates of male and female victims of assault who knew their offender. Looking only at cases with sufficient data to identify the relationship, only 47 per cent of male victims of assault knew the offender while 81 per cent of female victims knew their offender in 2003.
- Rodney Croome still seems unwilling to consider the possibility that just because queers want certain rights, doesn't mean that we necessarily want to exercise those rights for ourselves; instead, we're apparently ignorant of the benefits of relationship registration. To consider the former possibility would, of course, imply the further possibility that state recognition of same-sex relationships may not be quite as important to queers as some queer community leaders have suggested.
- Yet another example of women being just as willing and effective as patriarchy at controlling and/or restricting women's personal development: "Office queen bees hold back women’s careers". It's so sad that we live in a society where so many people have no ethical qualms about bettering their own lot at the expense of others.
- "You will breed": scientists are trying to force gay sheep in a more heterosexual direction.
- Reading about dieting is bad for your health. But hey: nothing is worse than obesity, eh? So some collateral damage in the form of women doing violence to their own bodies via anorexia and/or bulimia is obviously worth it. :-P
Developments
2006-12-03 14:22Over the last few days, i've come across a number of items which i think deserve wider attention:
- The Eid sexual harassment incident:
It was the first day of Eid, and a new film was opening downtown. Mobs of males gatherd trying to get in, but when the show was sold out, they decided they will destroy the box office. After accomplishing that, they went on what can only be described as a sexual frenxy: They ran around grabbing any and every girl in sight, whether a niqabi, a Hijabi or uncoverd. Whether egyptian or foreigner. Even pregnant ones. They grabbed them, molested them, tried to rip their cloths off and rape them, all in front of the police, who didn't do shit. The good people of downtown tried their best to protect the girls. Shop owners would let the girls in and lock the doors, while the mobs tried to break in. Taxi drivers put the girls in the cars while the mobs were trying to break the glass and grab the girls out.
- Quiet Warfare:
On September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire.
Had the criminal, David McMenemy, been Arab or Muslim, this would have been headline news for weeks. But since his target was the Edgerton Women’s Health Center, rather than, say, a bank or a police station, media have not called this terrorism — even after three decades of extreme violence by anti-abortion fanatics, mostly fundamentalist Christians who believe they’re fighting a holy war.
Since 1977, casualties from this war include seven murders, 17 attempted murders, three kidnappings, 152 assaults, 305 completed or attempted bombings and arsons, 375 invasions, 482 stalking incidents, 380 death threats, 618 bomb threats, 100 acid attacks, and 1,254 acts of vandalism, according to the National Abortion Federation. - US teen pregnancy rates decline as result of improved contraceptive use:
Eighty-six percent of the recent decline in U.S. teen pregnancy rates is the result of improved contraceptive use, while a small proportion of the decline (14%) can be attributed to teens waiting longer to start having sex, according to a report by John Santelli, MD, MPH, department chair and professor of Clinical Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health and published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The scientific findings indicate that abstinence promotion, in itself, is insufficient to help adolescents prevent unintended pregnancies.
- The BMI Myth:
[T]he measurement's downfall is that it does not take into account body composition - whether or not excess weight is fat or muscle - which is why fit people often find themselves in the fat category of the BMI rating system. Among those leading the call for the BMI to be replaced is Dr Margaret Ashwell, a visiting research fellow in nutrition at Oxford Brookes University and a former member of the government's Food Advisory Committee. "The important thing to consider is how body fat is distributed around the body, as the real problems occur when fat accumulates in the central abdominal region," Ashwell says.
Assortment
2006-11-06 12:39Unfortunately, i didn't end up making it to the Walk against Warming on Saturday afternoon - i could barely stand up when i got up, and was thoroughly knackered by the time naked_wrat and i had walked to sacred_harlot's place (where we had arranged to meet up before heading out). :-(
i realised recently, reading the posts of other people on my f-list, that i post relatively little about my trans stuff. It's partly because i'm very comfortable with my 'bi-gendered' identity; and partly because i've extracted myself from most of the trans-related fora i'd previously been involved with. Most of them were hotbeds of antagonism, nastiness and general unpleasantness. i don't think i've ever come across any other 'community' which is so full of people demanding to have their own identities recognised and respected whilst simultaneously refusing to themselves recognise and respect the identity of others (and in fact, actively disrespecting the identity of others). i suspect that's because the 'trans' umbrella is a very large one, covering all sorts of gender issues; and so of course the 'community' will be a very diverse one. Having said that, however, i also found that many of the online fora i was involved with had all too many MTFs whose behaviour reeked of (expectations of) male privilege1. Which both disturbed and saddened me.
i've been doing a lot more CS-related reading, mostly in the area of the lambda calculus and process calculi. The latter is primarily a result of this post; whilst the former is a result of my continued interest in Haskell. Discussions on the Haskell-cafe e-list often involve theoretical constructs which i'm less-than-familiar with, and so i often find myself off on journeys of discovery in order to understand what the said discussions are actually about. :-) Happily, i'm now at the point where more often than not, i understand the issues at hand. :-) Later today, i'm hoping to finally make a start on that Haskell-based Jabber client project i mentioned in an earlier post.
Finally, i did a tarot reading for myself yesterday. Of late i've been my family's Tarot Person, and doing lots of readings for everyone else but myself. The reading was . . . . thought-provoking. :-) It suggested making changes to my daily life in various ways, the details of which i'm still pondering.
1. For example, dismissing certain women as 'over-emotional'; dismissing critiques of sexist 'humour' as 'over-sensitive'; dismissing the social-personal-political issues of others as "not as important as mine"; and taking a domineering and/or intimidatory position towards others during discussions.
naked_wrat and i had walked to sacred_harlot's place (where we had arranged to meet up before heading out). :-( i realised recently, reading the posts of other people on my f-list, that i post relatively little about my trans stuff. It's partly because i'm very comfortable with my 'bi-gendered' identity; and partly because i've extracted myself from most of the trans-related fora i'd previously been involved with. Most of them were hotbeds of antagonism, nastiness and general unpleasantness. i don't think i've ever come across any other 'community' which is so full of people demanding to have their own identities recognised and respected whilst simultaneously refusing to themselves recognise and respect the identity of others (and in fact, actively disrespecting the identity of others). i suspect that's because the 'trans' umbrella is a very large one, covering all sorts of gender issues; and so of course the 'community' will be a very diverse one. Having said that, however, i also found that many of the online fora i was involved with had all too many MTFs whose behaviour reeked of (expectations of) male privilege1. Which both disturbed and saddened me.
i've been doing a lot more CS-related reading, mostly in the area of the lambda calculus and process calculi. The latter is primarily a result of this post; whilst the former is a result of my continued interest in Haskell. Discussions on the Haskell-cafe e-list often involve theoretical constructs which i'm less-than-familiar with, and so i often find myself off on journeys of discovery in order to understand what the said discussions are actually about. :-) Happily, i'm now at the point where more often than not, i understand the issues at hand. :-) Later today, i'm hoping to finally make a start on that Haskell-based Jabber client project i mentioned in an earlier post.
Finally, i did a tarot reading for myself yesterday. Of late i've been my family's Tarot Person, and doing lots of readings for everyone else but myself. The reading was . . . . thought-provoking. :-) It suggested making changes to my daily life in various ways, the details of which i'm still pondering.
1. For example, dismissing certain women as 'over-emotional'; dismissing critiques of sexist 'humour' as 'over-sensitive'; dismissing the social-personal-political issues of others as "not as important as mine"; and taking a domineering and/or intimidatory position towards others during discussions.
moominmuppet brought my attention to the following appalling piece of news - Court: Woman Can't Say No After Start Of Sex: An appellate court said Maryland's rape law is clear -- no doesn't mean no when it follows a yes and intercourse has begun. . . .!!!
The appeals court said that when the jury asked the trial judge if a woman could withdraw her consent after the start of sex, the jury should have been told she could not. The ruling said the law is not ambiguous and is a tenet of common-law.
This decision seems to me to be saying: "Once you consent to sex, you no longer have the right to make decisions about what happens to your own body." If Maryland's law is so "clear" on this point, then Maryland law 'clearly' needs changing.
i am disgusted and outraged.
i was both saddened and angered that the Sandinistas have reduced themselves to this:
Nicaragua has approved a sweeping new law banning abortions, even in cases where the mother's life is at risk.:-/
The national assembly approved the bill by 52 votes to none, and the bill is now likely to be signed into law. . . .
Left-wing Sandinistas in parliament supported the bill for fear of alienating Roman Catholic voters before the election, correspondents said.
[ Nicaragua votes to ban abortions ]
Women perform differently on math tests depending on whether they believe math-related gender differences are determined by genetic or social differences, according to University of British Columbia researchers.
In a paper to be published in the Oct. 19 issue of Science magazine, UBC investigators Ilan Dar-Nimrod and Steven Heine explore how women's math performance is affected by stereotypes that link female underachievement to either genetic or experiential causes. . . .
Heine and Dar-Nimrod found the worse math performances belonged to women who received a genetic explanation for female underachievement in math or those who were reminded of the stereotype about female math underachievement. Women who received the experiential explanation performed better – on par with those who were led to believe there are no sex differences in math.
[ Women's math performance affected by theories on sex differences: UBC researchers ]
Further to previous posts i've made on the issue of porn (such as the ones here and here):
The incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85% in the past
25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to
teenagers and adults. The Nixon and Reagan Commissions tried to show
that exposure to pornographic materials produced social violence. The
reverse may be true: that pornography has reduced social violence.
[ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013 ]
[B]efore the fall of the Soviet Union, places like Croatia were not exactly hubs of the porn trade. However, since the fall of the evil empire, porn is now readily available in Croatia, as well as the technology to view it and to download it. So you've got a pretty neat lab setting to do a before-the-influx-of-porn and after-the-influx-of-porn study. And that's exactly what researchers like Milton Diamond have done. Here's what he reports:
"We've just finished a porn study in Croatia. As a post-Communist country, it shows, like all the other countries we've looked at so far, despite a major influx of available porn, there was NO increase in sex crimes."
[ http://www.goofyfootpress.com/weeklycolumn/the_latest_on_sex_the_internet.php ]
Priorities
2006-08-31 23:53Once again, the Catholic Church demonstrates its priorities - "Church condemns abortion performed on raped girl, 11":
In other news, despite much whinging from certain quarters about how women ostensibly have all the power nowadays, there's this:
"Men continue to dominate executive posts"
Apparently the old boys' networks still have some life in them yet. :-P
A Vatican official has said the Catholic church will excommunicate a medical team who performed Colombia's first legal abortion on an 11-year-old girl, who was eight weeks pregnant after being raped by her stepfather.So terminating the existence of a foetus, which at eight weeks only "shows some reflex response to delicate stimulation", is worthy of excommunication, but raping an independently breathing and moving, self-conscious human, again and again over the course of a number of years, is not?
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, said in addition to the doctors and nurses, the measure could apply to "relatives, politicians and lawmakers" whom he called "protagonists in this abominable crime".
In other news, despite much whinging from certain quarters about how women ostensibly have all the power nowadays, there's this:
"Men continue to dominate executive posts"
Apparently the old boys' networks still have some life in them yet. :-P
Inclusion!
2006-08-22 12:37Woah, this is big news for trans people:
MWMF Ends Womyn-Born-Womyn Only Policy!
MWMF Ends Womyn-Born-Womyn Only Policy!
"We didn't expect to change anyone's minds in the workshop -- but in the end we didn't need to. The support we found was overwhelming."i must say this pretty much matches my experiences, overall . . . . almost all my close friends are female, and none of them have a problem with me identifying as a woman. And in fact, in recent times, it's predominantly been 'pro-feminist' men who criticise and/or attack me on this point. What does it say when women accept one's female identity, but men don't?
Both trans women say they were moved by how friendly and supportive other festival attendees were.
"We spent all day inside the festival, talking with other women about how Michigan has grown to embrace the diversity of women's experience," Lombardi said. "The attitudes of festival goers have definitely shifted since the early 90's."
Why Johnny Can't Read: Schools Favor Girls
Blah blah blah. There's one thing that all these people who complain about boys falling behind in our education systems never seem to mention: male culture.
When i was at school, learning seemed to be basically regarded as being incompatible with masculinity - not by teachers, but by students. Only real wusses were more interested in staying indoors and reading than in going outside and playing footy and roughing each other up. Put simply, young males who are interested in reading and learning are often ostracised by their male peers. (And i wonder how many young males who are interested in reading and learning are ostracised by their fathers for being so.) Of course, this isn't necessarily the case throughout the entirety of the educational journey of males - those who get to the level of tertiary education often seem to themselves engage in alpha-male, i-can't-admit-i-don't-know-something, must-be-better-than-all-other-males bullshittery as well.
But natureally, it's not possible that male culture plays a part in the educational problems of young males - it has to be TEH FEMINISM and its REVERSE SEXISM, which means that no-one pays attention to the poor boys anymore! :-P
*sigh* . . . .
Blah blah blah. There's one thing that all these people who complain about boys falling behind in our education systems never seem to mention: male culture.
When i was at school, learning seemed to be basically regarded as being incompatible with masculinity - not by teachers, but by students. Only real wusses were more interested in staying indoors and reading than in going outside and playing footy and roughing each other up. Put simply, young males who are interested in reading and learning are often ostracised by their male peers. (And i wonder how many young males who are interested in reading and learning are ostracised by their fathers for being so.) Of course, this isn't necessarily the case throughout the entirety of the educational journey of males - those who get to the level of tertiary education often seem to themselves engage in alpha-male, i-can't-admit-i-don't-know-something, must-be-better-than-all-other-males bullshittery as well.
But natureally, it's not possible that male culture plays a part in the educational problems of young males - it has to be TEH FEMINISM and its REVERSE SEXISM, which means that no-one pays attention to the poor boys anymore! :-P
*sigh* . . . .
In discussions about women's supposed innate ability (or more specifically, their lack thereof) in the areas of science and mathematics, people often bring up the canard of "Look at all the great discoveries in those fields - they were made by men. Women just aren't wired for that stuff."
Last year i wrote about women in mathematics who have made significant contributions to the field, but who seem to be ignored by people making the above sort of claims. Today i came across an article in The Guardian: "The scientist whom history forgot", about Emilie du Châtalet. The article notes:
Last year i wrote about women in mathematics who have made significant contributions to the field, but who seem to be ignored by people making the above sort of claims. Today i came across an article in The Guardian: "The scientist whom history forgot", about Emilie du Châtalet. The article notes:
Voltaire wasn't much of a scientist, but Du Châtelet was a skilled theoretician. Once, working secretly at night at the chateau over just one intense summer month, hushing servants to not spoil the surprise for Voltaire, she came up with insights on the nature of light that set the stage for the future discovery of photography, as well as of infrared radiation. It was a humiliating contrast for Voltaire, and especially grating when she began to probe into the still recent mathematical physics of Sir Isaac Newton.The question begs: How many times has this happened throughout history?
Voltaire could not follow any of the maths, but on political grounds he wanted to believe that Newton was perfect in all respects. Du Châtelet, however, began a research programme that went beyond Newton and led to her glimpsing notions that would lead later researchers to the idea of conservation of energy fundamental to all subsequent physics. . . .
Almost immediately after Du Châtelet's death, sharp-tongued gossips began to disparage her work. Then, as her insights entered the scientific mainstream, the idea that a woman had created these thoughts was considered so odd that even scientists who did use her ideas came to forget who had originated them.
A couple of times recently, i've posted comments in LJ communities that are basically mini-essays. Since i put a fair amount of effort into them, i've decided to reproduce them here, particularly as they're both about issues close to my heart.
Firstly, an excerpt from something i wrote in response to someone noting that they support hate-speech laws because they feel that hate-speech is a way of terrorising people:
( Read the excerpt . . . . )
Secondly, something i wrote about the use of the words 'pussy' and 'cunt' as insults:
( Read the comment . . . . )
Firstly, an excerpt from something i wrote in response to someone noting that they support hate-speech laws because they feel that hate-speech is a way of terrorising people:
( Read the excerpt . . . . )
Secondly, something i wrote about the use of the words 'pussy' and 'cunt' as insults:
( Read the comment . . . . )
