Peterson: Makeup in the workplace is “sexually provocative”

Jordan Peterson

So there’s this college professor from Canada (sorry, everyone, we don’t always produce winners) who’s made a name for himself by giving young men groundbreaking advice like “clean your room” and other things their moms presumably told them for years, and who those same young men now revere as some sort of philosophical luminary. I don’t see it. What I do see, nonstop, is Jordan Peterson saying dumb things that make misogynists giggle. Things like how maybe there should be a rule against women wearing makeup in the workplace because red lips are “sexually provocative”. No, really:

JORDAN PETERSON: Here’s a rule. How about no makeup in the workplace?

VICE: [incredulous] Why would that be a rule?

PETERSON: Why should you wear makeup in the workplace? Isn’t that sexually provocative?

VICE: No!

PETERSON: It’s not?

VICE: No.

PETERSON: Well, what is it then? What’s the purpose of makeup?

VICE: Some people would like to just put on makeup, just to …

PETERSON: Why? Why do you make your lips red? Because they turn red during sexual arousal. That’s why. Why do you put rouge on your cheeks? Same reason. […] How about high heels? […] They’re there to exaggerate sexual attractiveness. That’s what high heels do. They tilt your pelvis forward so your hips stick out. That’s what they do. And they tighten up your calf muscles. They’re sexual display. Now, I’m not saying people shouldn’t use sexual displays in the workplace. I’m not saying that. But I am saying that that is what they’re doing, and that is what they’re doing.

[…]

VICE: Do you feel like a serious woman who doesn’t want sexual harassment in the workplace, do you feel like if she wears makeup in the workplace, is being somewhat hypocritical?

PETERSON: Yeah. I do think that.

As a sidenote: I sought out the unedited interview to see what may have been left out of the version most people saw (and, perhaps futilely, to negate the usual cries of “out of context!”). Turns out all they’re missing is a bit of cross-talk and a lot of pseudo-philosophical meandering. I’d like to bill someone for the minutes of my life I won’t get back.

Back to Peterson. But not for very long, because everything he said is so dumb and wrong there’s only so much one can say about it. There’s certainly a conversation to be had about the origins and nature of the beauty standards society imposes upon the genders, and women especially. But trying to frame lipstick and high heels as “sexual displays” in the workplace – and additionally, the notion that they ought to be proscribed, presumably because they make poor men too horny to work – is the kind of ridiculousness you expect from bad satire, not from someone bandied around as a public intellectual. Lipstick on women is no more sexual or distracting than ties and combed hair are on men, and I have yet to learn of a workplace that’s fallen apart because its male employees spent all their time gawking at their female colleagues’ tight calf muscles.

Honestly, Ed Brayton put it better than anyone:

But let me just ask one question: Isn’t Peterson asking for it? I mean, really, during this interview, he was dressed well, wearing an expensive suit that shows off his wealth. He was wearing a tie that points directly to his penis, in a blatant sexual display. So if a gay man were to sexually harass him, he has no one to blame but himself, by his own “reasoning”[.]

If you can’t differentiate between polishing up your appearance in concordance with cultural norms and sexual signaling, there’s just no helping you. And perhaps you should stay away from women.

Daily Links #125: Oklahoma bans same-sex adoption

• Oklahoma officially allows religious adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex parents. It’s the Christian way.

• The fallout from SESTA/FOSTA continues: Cops realize it’s making their jobs harder, whilst sex traffickers are having a field day. It’s not like anyone predicted this would happen or anything …

• PZ Myers says all I have to say on the “Intellectual Dark Web” of regressives who whinge about how they can’t spout bigotry and play footsie with fascists without suffering social consequences.

• Andrew Shirvell, who rose to fame as the homophobic former Michigan Assistant Attorney General who obsessively harassed a gay college student, has been permanently disbarred.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Finally: in Creativitas news, I’ve recently revised and updated three of my orchestral songs, “Inhuman Suite”, “Setting Out” and “Softer Dreams”. I plan to revisit some of my older songs – some of which I haven’t touched in the better part of a decade, back when I was just starting to write music – and give them the overhaul they deserve, so stay tuned.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

The racist US criminal justice system in action in Michigan

Siwatu-Salama Ra & daughter

How can any criminal justice system produce such an outcome and not be universally condemned as catastrophically broken?

Siwatu-Salama Ra is a 26-year-old black mother who watched in horror as an angry assailant—a neighbor with whom Ra had a dispute—deliberately crashed her vehicle into Ra's car while Ra's two-year-old daughter was playing inside. Ra removed her unloaded, legally purchased handgun from the glove box and brandished it, scaring the neighbor off.

The assailant, Channel Harvey, was never charged. Ra was arrested for felonious assault. She is now serving a mandatory two-year-sentence, even though Michigan is a Stand Your Ground state and Ra was clearly defending her family on her own property.

Ra is pregnant, and she is expected to give birth in prison.

The entire case is a clusterfuck from start to finish.

Incidentally, for some reason, I don’t see the NRA going to bat for this law-abiding gun owner who exercised her Second Amendment right to defend herself and her family. Isn’t that what they’re all about?

(via @robbysoave; retweet by @Popehat)

Louisiana GOP sacrifices bestiality law on altar of homophobia

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: The modern Republican Party.

In Louisiana, a proposal to strengthen the law against bestiality is facing unexpected opposition from conservative lawmakers who see it as an underhanded move to strike the state’s unconstitutional ban on sodomy.

[…]

“This bill was written because the far left wants to undermine our other laws that protect family and traditional values that the people of Louisiana hold dear,” said Sen. Ryan Gatti, a Republican who was one of 10 senators to vote against the bill.

Where to even begin …?

The thing is, they could have made the plausible argument that the state already has a bestiality ban on the books and that the party of Small Government and Fiscal Responsibility and whatnot is opposed to expanding a legal definition that’s already sufficient. They could even have argued – and I’d agree – that it’s a waste of the legislature’s time and taxpayer money to pass laws to cover problems that are so rare as to be practically nonexistent. It would still have been evident what their end goal is, but at least it might have let them save face.

But they just had to stick to their anti-gay guns, even at the cost of being publicly labeled as the party that prefers letting humans have sex with animals over allowing consenting adults of the same gender – and species – to get it on. Particularly given that the anti-sodomy law is blatantly unconstitutional and is one court challenge away from being stuck down anyway.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Daily Links #122: Utah police kill unarmed Black man

Elijah James Smith

• Whatever else Elijah James Smith ^[pictured] may have done, the fact remains that Utah police shot an unarmed Black man dead for obeying their order to remove his hands from his pockets.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Free speech advocates warned FOSTA/SESTA would stifle free speech online. Now that the bills are law, they’re … stifling free speech online.

• Meanwhile, the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules comes into effect today. Any changes will be gradual, and that’s if the multifaceted efforts to restore the old rules on state and federal levels don’t succeed first.

• Actual religious persecution: Russian government continues its crackdown on Jehovah’s Witnesses, forcing thousands to flee abroad or go into hiding.

• A Minnesota court just ruled that basically everyone on Twitter is now a stalker.
  (via @ScottGreenfield)

• Finally, James Comey’s new book is exactly what you expect from the memoir of the former director of the FBI. That’s not a compliment.
  (via @cjciaramella; retweet by @Popehat)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links #121: Trump’s trans military ban blocked yet again

Will you look at that: 500 posts. Do I win something?

• Trump’s trans military ban just keeps getting, er, banned by federal courts.
  (via @fark)

• The Supreme Court just made it a little harder for the Trump administration to deport immigrants.
  (via @Popehat)

• What white people can learn from the Starbucks arrests; or, the importance of recognizing, and fighting against, implicit bias.

• You’d think a professional defender of the Catholic Church’s handling of child-diddling priests would know better than to weigh in on the David Silverman affair. (Yes, of course it’s Bill Donohue.)

• Finally, Ed Brayton presents: Eight Rules for Understanding Our Teenage President.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

US legislatures haven’t passed one anti-LGBTQ bill this year

Every few weeks or so comes the news that some state Republican legislator has introduced a bill that would chip away at some aspect of LGBTQ rights – ban same-sex adoptions, strip away workplace anti-discrimination protections, block trans people from using the proper restroom, and so on. Their number seems to have increased visibly since Trump took office, as various anti-gay factions – okay, it’s mostly evangelical Christians – feel emboldened. This can seem rather disheartening.

But for those who’ve been following the course of these bills through state legislatures, the reality is stark, and in a good way: Not a single one of these discriminatory bills has been enacted this year.

In the thick of this year's legislative sessions, LGBT activists were tracking about 120 proposed bills that they viewed as threats to their civil rights. Not one of them has been enacted as many sessions now wind down; only two remain under serious consideration.

A key factor in the shift: In the Republican-led states where these types of bills surface, moderate GOP lawmakers and business leaders are increasingly wary of losing conventions, sporting events and corporate headquarters.

North Carolina, Indiana and Arizona were among the states that faced similar backlash in recent years over such legislation.

"Being anti-equality is not considered good politics anymore," said legislative specialist Cathryn Oakley of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT rights organization.

It’s easy to look at the crop of regressives currently in charge of the federal and many state governments, as well as the hordes of howling yahoos who put them there, and feel that the country has taken a massive step back. But the illusion is dispelled when you look at the actual numbers: Being anti-gay, or even perceived as anti-gay, is becoming prohibitively costly for politicians, in both money and votes. And as those are the only things most politicians pay any attention to, most are smart enough not to jeopardize their capital by going against the public tide. Mind you, 2018 is still young, and there may well be some asshat somewhere who manages to get a bigoted piece of legislation signed into law. But as things stand, they’ll always be in the minority, and it’s not usually long before a court strikes such laws down, anyway.

It’s always good to be reminded that the regressives are losing. Of course, that’s all the more reason to keep at it.

(via Joe.My.God.)

American Atheists fires David Silverman over sex assault claims

David Silverman

When news broke just a few days ago that American Atheists, the largest godless advocacy group in the US, had suspended their president and spokesman David Silverman over as-of-then unrevealed allegations, we knew something big was going down. And now, the bombshell has detonated, as yet another luminary of the organized atheist movement stands accused of sexual misconduct.

David Silverman, a firebrand atheist with a knack for generating publicity for his cause, has been abruptly fired as president of American Atheists, one of the leading secular organizations in the US.

The group’s board held an emergency meeting on Thursday evening and unanimously voted to fire 51-year-old Silverman, based on explosive written allegations of sexual assault and undisclosed conflicts of interest, BuzzFeed News has learned.

“Last night, the American Atheists Board of Directors voted to terminate David Silverman as President of American Atheists,” the group said in a statement released on Friday. The board made its decision after reviewing “allegations raised regarding Mr. Silverman’s conduct,” the statement said. The board also said it intends to cooperate with any future investigations.

Go read the accusations. They’re damning. For his part, Silverman, though his lawyer, denies any wrongdoing and says the encounters were consensual. Bizarrely, his lawyer also mentions that Silverman was in an open marriage at the time the incidents allegedly took place, as if that were some sort of defense. He does realize that having your partner’s consent to fool around with other people doesn’t give you permission to force sex upon those people against their will, right?

Good on the accusers for bravely coming forward, even though it’ll inevitably trigger an absurd shitstorm of hateful idiocy from large swathes of the movement. Good also on the board of American Atheists for taking all the right measures – suspending Silverman pending an internal investigation into his possible alleged conflicts, and then canning him without delay once they heard the far worse sexual misconduct accusations. That’s exactly how you want an organization to respond to such a situation. (Of course, I’m assuming here that they weren’t aware of the alleged incidents until recently.)

Incidentally, this report was published by the same outlet, BuzzFeed News, that broke the Lawrence Krauss scandal. Defenders and apologists were quick to come out of the woodwork to attack the Krauss story for being published by an “unreliable” outlet – which makes no sense, given that BuzzFeed’s news division has one of the finest investigative teams in the business and has broken numerous heavy-hitting stories in the last few years. Expect the same ridiculous and empty attacks this time around as well.

As a sidenote, the irony – or is it poetic justice? – that Silverman’s most famous photo (above) comes from his appearance on a TV show hosted by a man who was also fired for sexual misconduct is not lost on me.

(via @steve_shives)

Daily Links #119: SC cops shoot at man 57 times over $100 pot sale

Julian Betton

• South Carolina cops shot at a man ^[pictured] 57 times, hitting him nine times and paralyzing him, during a drug raid over a $100 pot sale. They claimed they’d announced themselves and that he fired at them first, and an “oversight” agency claimed the shooting was justified; his surveillance camera proved they lied about everything. The shooters and prosecutors have now given him a $2.75 million settlement.
  

• Slate exposes the junk science and blatant lies behind Trump’s trans military ban, including the fact that Defense Secretary Mattis was overruled by Mike Pence who, aided by fellow bigots like Tony Perkins, helped sway Trump to ignore the testimony from actual experts who say the ban accomplishes nothing good.
  (via @fark)

• Trump’s EPA continues to attack and lie about science at every turn.
  (via @BadAstronomer)

• You know someone has a bad case of Christian persecution complex when they complain that Sweet Jesus ice cream shop’s name is “offensive”.

• Finally, coal baron Bob Murray apparently thought it would be a good idea to send a complaint letter to the judge who dismissed his bogus defamation suit against John Oliver. The ACLU is amused. The judge is not.
  (via @adamsteinbaugh; retweet by @Popehat)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Louisiana AG: No charges for cops who killed Alton Sterling

Alton Sterling

The last couple years have seen an uptick in the number of cops charged (or even successfully prosecuted) for the wrongful shooting of Black people, but it’s important to remember that those cases are still a minority. Case in point: The Louisiana Attorney General has decided that family of Alton Sterling will see no such justice.

More than 20 months after the fatal police shooting of a black man outside a Baton Rouge mini-mart touched off protests nationwide over police treatment of African Americans, the Louisiana attorney general said Tuesday that he would not charge two white officers in the death.

The decision from Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry's office brought strong condemnation from Alton Sterling's family and civil rights activists, and closed the possibility of criminal charges in one of the most prominent police shootings in recent years.

Landry's announcement came close to 11 months after the U.S. Department of Justice similarly ruled out federal charges against the officers, Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II.

Meanwhile, Sacramento police killed unarmed Black man Stephon Clark in his own backyard after mistaking his cellphone for a weapon, whilst a Houston deputy gunned down unarmed Black man Danny Ray Thomas in only 17 seconds. And those are just the reports I’ve heard of over the last week.

It doesn’t matter how many badge-wearing thugs get hauled into a courtroom; the number of Black lives needlessly lost will always far outpace the prosecutions of their killers.

(via @SinKirabo, retweeted by @pzmyers; Danny Ray Thomas link via @FairPunishment, retweeted by @radleybalko)

Trump admin. enacts new trans military ban

The Pentagon had until tonight to institute Trump’s policy to ban trans servicemembers, and characteristically, Trump signed the order at the last minute. Months of legal challenges later, the trans military ban is now in place:

Following a Pentagon policy review after a tweet by President Donald Trump last year, the White House said the policy will say "transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery -- are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances."

[…]

According to a Pentagon memo about the policy, exceptions to the ban include people who have been "stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex prior to accession," servicemembers who "do not require a change of gender" and troops who started serving under the Obama administration's policy prior to the new memo.

It doesn’t matter what excuse or rationale they bring up to bolster this move; it won’t hide the fact that this is no more than a gift to Trump’s regressive base, the same that has a conniption at the thought of trans people using the right bathrooms. The facts were already clear when Trump first tweeted the policy change last August and they’ve only been hammered home since: Thousands of trans troops are already in the US armed forces, they serve every bit as competently and professionally as their cisgender comrades, and throwing them out would only weaken the military, not strengthen it. (It’s never been made clear just how throwing out thousands of dedicated soldiers, trans or otherwise, is supposed to strengthen the military’s combat readiness.) This is discrimination in its plainest form.

The lawsuits are guaranteed to keep coming, so it’s anyone’s guess how it’ll turn out. But I’m not holding onto hope; in the end, the executive branch has the power to implement whatever conditions for enlistment it wants, barring anything blatantly unconstitutional. Trans people were already banned up to 2016; there’s little reason things couldn’t go back to that.

Ohio Republican bill would put abortion doctors on death row

In which “pro-lifers” yet again illustrate the irony in their chosen label by trying put people they don’t like to death, this time on Ohio:

A bill from two Republican lawmakers, introduced Monday, would ban all abortions in Ohio. Doctors could be charged with murder or sued for the wrongful deaths of aborted fetuses, according to the proposal. […]

Opponents of the bill fear it could charge doctors with murder, punishable by life in prison or the death penalty.

There’s basically zero chance this bill will become law – even the majority of the state House GOP caucus haven’t signed on, likely because they know it would be challenged and struck down quasi-instantly, and even the famously anti-abortion Gov. John Kasich (R) previously vetoed a “heartbeat bill” that was similarly doomed. But there’s also basically zero chance these zealots will give up their attempts to curtail women’s bodily autonomy, at least not until they finally get their long-awaited Supreme Court challenge. And Roe v. Wade is quite likely one single justice death or retirement away from being overturned.

(via Friendly Atheist)