C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

We can't level a playing field by pretending it's already level. The laser cutter that I use is frequently mis-aligned, and cuts poorly unless I level the platform. Imagine if I keep getting bad lasering jobs, and instead of leveling the platform, I get mad because I feel all defensive and accused. "I'm in favor of a level playing field! I'm not the sort of person who pushes it out of level! Why would I do that?"

This is why there are two definitions of racism and sexism. By one definition, racism and sexism are deliberate choices, made by bad people, out of hostility and antagonism toward a group. By the other definition, racism and sexism are systems of unintentional disadvantages, resulting from the well-intentioned actions of good people, like you and me. If you don't understand why somebody told you that you did something racist or sexist, it might be the second kind.

The second kind is like my laser cutter's alignment.

I'm going to say something now that will be scary to many of you for a minute, but bear with me, and it will get less scary. Almost every time I use the laser cutter, I have to grab the higher end of the platform (whites, men, straights, Christians, able-bodied, thin, that's you), to keep it from rising, while I grab the lower end of the platform (non-whites, women, LBGTs, non-Christians, disabled, fat, that's you) and lift it up to the same height. That's how to get a level playing field.

Un-leveling mostly happens accidentally, passively, easily. Leveling happens deliberately, with energy and difficulty. I favor the lower side of the platform over the higher side until there is no longer a higher and lower. I can't do it by being "level-blind". If I'm "level-blind", I'm keeping the platform out of level. Breathe deeply while I say the next thing-- Are you ready? -- By the second definition, if you say "I'm color-blind", you are an unintentional racist.

If the higher end of the bed were a person, it would probably feel like it's being punished. If it only knows the first definition, un-leveling is only something that happens deliberately. It knows it's a good person who does not deliberately put the platform out of level. Therefore, it assumes the bed is already level. All it has to do is abstain from deliberately un-leveling it. Therefore, the laser must be cutting fine, and the resulting parts must have been intended to look that way. And even if it is out of level, isn't it the whole machine's fault? So change that! Or redefine the word "up" so the current alignment of the platform is the absolute reference frame of the planet Earth. Anything but putting my hand on top of the right side of the platform to prevent it rising while I raise the left side.

The right side of the bed will assume, since it believes that it's already level, that if it lowers, it will go out-of-level, and be lower than the left side. This is why, very early in any discussion of equality, the subject changes from helping a disadvantaged class, onto making sure the people who are already advantaged do not become a new persecuted class. We pay far too much attention to that. That is not what's at stake, but that doesn't even need to be said. Whites, men, straights, Christians, the able-bodied, and the thin, do not need to ask for reassurance about that.

If you want reassurance of that, just be on the lookout for your advantages. It takes time, but it's possible to start noticing them. Pretty soon you'll realize how wealthy with privileges you are, and you'll realize just how little it costs you to level the playing field. And that's the part where this concept becomes much less scary.

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" is reviled in some circles for being about date rape. If you're interested, I would like to explain why this interpretation is perfectly reasonable depending on what lens you look through, and at the end, discuss something I learned about lenses.

To start with, let's face it. Mid-twentieth century America was not a sterling example of sexual equality. But they were too wholesome to accept a song about a woman being roofied and date-raped. Times really have to change for this interpretation to emerge. For purposes of illustration, I will construct an amalgam from actual blog posts I've read, and call this person Christmas Carol.

Carol grew up around no one but sexists. They considered it only to be expected when a man pressured a woman for sex. If he wouldn't stop turning up the pressure until he got it, they considered this an understandable and forgivable offense. Later, in Carol's early adult life, she and every woman she knew filled their lives almost entirely with men who thought that way. Those men abused every substance imaginable and tended to be in and out of jail a lot. Her life was in constant danger. At some point in adult life she decided she neither deserved this treatment nor had to endure it, and escaped.

After she got used to life without constant threats, Carol had a revelation that she was not the only person who considered her personal boundaries normal and acceptable. It no longer felt like Carol vs. the world-- a world of harrassment, molestation, and excuses for it. That was only the world she grew up in. There are other, better people. At that point, Carol became a little less angry.

So if this is the case, Carol wondered why we wrote, and sung, and listened to (much less enjoyed), a song in which a cornered Doris Day tried to escape from a pushy and demanding Bing Crosby who spiked her drink and is likely to impregnate her, thereby ruining her life. Unfortunately, people from warm and happy places thought every place was warm and happy. They had no clue why Carol was hating on a cute little Christmas song in which Doris Day tried to come up with excuses to do what she wanted to do (instead of what a sexist society told her she ought to do), and Bing Crosby passively provided those excuses. Carol became a little more angry again.

So in these blog posts, Carol did some consciousness-raising. She explained to the rest of us that there exist entire invisible subcultures, right here in our wholesome suburbs, which enculturate men and women to tolerate sexual entitlement. You don't know because you don't see their home lives. I won't go into the harrowing details of Carol's biography, because I just ate. Suffice it to say that people with that upbringing have given me a new perspective every time I encounter a woman I don't know. I try not to stand between her and a door. Because I'm a man, she might be scanning for escape routes.

This week, a lawyer who works with a domestic abuse charity told me the highest rate of domestic violence around here is Oakland County. Pretty, idyllic, prosperous Oakland. I look in the mirror, and it's difficult for me to imagine anyone feeling threatened by me. Then again, it's difficult for me to imagine feeling threatened by Oakland County. I never thought I would be OK with the idea that someone can go ahead and think something horrible about me that I don't deserve. But you know what? I'll be fine.

The people inside rape culture and the people outside it mostly don't know the other culture exists until they're told about it. The way their world works seems like the way the whole world works.

Imagine something you think everyone knows. There are probably entire communities walking around on this planet, not only unaware of that obvious thing, but not even aware that anyone in the world thinks otherwise. The first time they are exposed to disagreement on that topic, they will react with incredulity. Not incredulity that they were wrong. Incredulity that you believe the obvious thing. Even hostility, depending on how much they cherish their misconception. For that matter, you might react that way in return.

I can tell you from personal experience that consciousness-raising is more difficult to do graciously when you think the entire world sings songs to celebrate what happened to you. Mistreatment by an isolated jackass: this, you can roll your eyes at. When you feel like the isolated one, the isolation itself brings on a whole new level of rage. This is why I try not to listen to Christian radio. The holiday season is a bit harder, because it's pretty much every channel, but it gets easier every year.

I'm not equating the seriousness of my own grievances with someone else's. I'm saying many examples like "Baby It's Cold Outside" have opened my eyes to how a person's background colors their interpretations. That includes me and my background. It also illustrated to me that when someone blows something out of proportion, there are constructive ways I can react.

I came from an incredibly insular self-validating subculture. The thing about fundamentalism is that it doesn't just fall into this human failing; it calls it faith. It admits it, celebrates it, promotes it, and criticizes you for not doing it. Since I don't want to fall out of the frying pan and into the fire, these days I'm constantly checking my own social environment for the insularity and self-validation inherent to human groups. It's as if I'm scanning the room for an escape route.

Of course, we all fall prey to this weakness. Once you oppose something, you might think you're not vulnerable to it any more, but that just makes you more vulnerable. Basic drives like sex and groupthink need to be channeled and managed in a healthy way. Groupthink scandals are embarrassingly common in the secular community, the same way sex scandals are embarrassingly common to Christians. In fact, the analogy is perfect. Religious devotees embrace groupthink the way secularists embrace safe and responsible sex. Fundamentalists embrace groupthink the way thugs embrace gangbangs. I meet religious moderates who sincerely have no idea how bad it gets, much less how prevalent it is. Our experiences will color how we overestimate or underestimate threats and put-downs when we hear expressions of religious sentiment.

Enjoy the Christmas music!

Brandon Sanderson, a Mormon, a fantasy author (I'll leave off the easy joke), and Penguicon's Author Guest of Honor, recently took a position similar to mine; that the government should get out of the marriage business. Everyone should just get a civil union, and if you want to also get married, you can get that in any ceremony of your choice. If you're religious, you get it through whatever ceremony your religion involves.

He also claimed that homosexuality is sin; but only a minor impediment to spiritual growth, like littering. We see this all the time these days. "I have to say homosex is a minor speed bump on the path of spiritual growth, I guess?" *SHRUG* I think it should be called the Shrug Maneuver. Or maybe the Palms Upturned Shoulder Shrug Evasive Equivocation. I remember being in the same place. I give it ten years, and he'll have changed his mind about this too.

Then there's the second classic maneuver: "But the gays are not nearly as bad as I am! If I call myself bad too, then it's OK!" (Imagine the equivalent: "I think blacks smell funny, but I'm not racist, because smelling bad is not some great evil, and because I think I smell terrible!") It's just not a fact.

No matter how milquetoast and apologetic he is about it, he himself would be outraged at the very thought of such a position if it weren't for his faith shoving this baloney down his reluctant, gagging throat.

He describes the tough place one is in when trying to reconcile tradition. There is a unique irony in this. It's kind of like the way he was chosen to finish Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. How many pages long was it when he got it? Like the Book of Mormon, it must have landed on his desk with a thud. Here, Brandon! You're stuck with thousands and thousands of Robert Jordan's judgements and decisions and have to figure out how to work around it. Most of them are pretty good, but none of them perfect, and some of them atrocious. but they're canon now, and you've got to act like God gave the Wheel of Time series to Robert Jordan on gold tablets.

Now, you might think it is consistent with an iconoclastic style to say "screw the Wheel of Time canon" or "Star Trek is better in J.J. Abrams' reboot" or "I like the new Battlestar Galactica". Actually no. I'm just advocating for original work. At the risk of stretching this metaphor too far, atheism means original work. Which is why you can't get atheists to agree on very much.

Trying to retcon stupid doctrines basically constitutes fanservice. In a long history of bad ideas, the idea of a god's perfect word through a prophet is the worst idea this species has ever had. Gods do not hand down perfection to man, whether it's Joseph Smith or anyone else. That just gets in the way of correcting mistakes. God had some good characters but seemed to get lost in a cult of personality bigger than Heinlein, lost the plot, and vanished up his own ass somewhere around Leviticus, when he wasn't even four books into the series. The reboots made some improvements, but not near enough.