Eupraxsophy

It’s disturbing to think how many people have wasted their lives - or even lost them - based on faulty evidence. Yet another consequence of not heeding to scientific and empirical knowledge. 

Thanks to a widespread culture of victim-blaming and rape apologism, attackers usually have it pretty cushy. Victims are still not likely to report the assault and when they do they’re very likely to be blamed for it—an awful reality that re-traumatizes the victim and paves the way for future rapes.

So making the world more uncomfortable for rapists—letting them know that there will be consequences that include public shaming—is something I’m entirely at ease with. Especially considering how often women are silenced around issues of sexual assault. Sometimes that silence is enforced through a culture that makes women afraid to come forward, but sometimes that silencing is explicit.

In 2007, for example, a Nebraska woman and her attorneys were banned from using the words “rape,” “victim,” “sexual assault”—even “sexual assault kit” in a rape trial lest they prejudice the jury. From Dahlia Lithwick:

The result is that the defense and the prosecution are both left to use the same word—sex—to describe either forcible sexual assault, or benign consensual intercourse. As for the jurors, they’ll just have to read the witnesses’ eyebrows to sort out the difference.

Something tells me mugging victims have never been ordered not use the word “rob” when recounting the crime committed against them—but when it comes to sexual assault, logic and human decency always seem to go out the window.

We live in a country where a videotaped gang rape can result in a hung jury, where jokes about raping a woman are still considered hilarious and where the seriousness of sexual assault is so minimized that writing a research paper on rape is actually considered a reasonable punishment for attackers.

Rape survivors know that there’s a world of shame and stigma that awaits them should they speak up. In this kind of environment talking about sexual assault—let alone reporting it—is not just difficult, it’s straight up heroic.

A new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that women—even those with full-time jobs—still do the bulk of housework and childcare. On an average day, 48 percent of women and 19 percent of men did housework. Married women with children who work full time spend 51 minutes a day on housework while married men with children spend just 14 minutes a day.

The breakdown of childcare responsibilities was not much different—55 percent of working men said they cared for their kids on an average day, whereas 72 percent of working women did. Women also reported spending more time during the day caring for their children than men.

This isn’t news to most; statistics (and feminists!) have long showed that women work a second shift at home. But despite the glaring inequality on our doorstep—and in our kitchens—the recent debates do little to address tangible ways men can be held accountable. Sure, they’re mentioned as an aside every once in a while—It’s good to have a supportive partner! When men “help out,” life is easier!—but men’s participation in the domestic sphere is largely discussed as optional, while women’s is assumed to be mandatory.

I’ve seen straight, partnered women explain their decision to stay-at-home by noting that childcare would have taken too much out of their paycheck—as if this cost was just theirs to bear! Or couples who call a woman’s decision to quit her job a “personal” issue, while in the same breath noting that it was because her salary was lower than her husband’s. (The last time I checked, the wage gap was a political issue.)

But even more dangerous than the “I choose my choice” brush-off that tends to surface when someone takesthe politics of housewifery to task, is the contention that women want to be doing all this work. That we are naturally inclined towards things domestic—especially caring for our children. Perhaps for some women this is true; but the generalization hurts all of us. After all, how can we effectively fight for workplace policies if the presumption is that when push comes to shove, we don’t really want to be there?

I can’t say I blame them given these dire economic times, but it’s concerning given the trend of each generation becoming increasingly caught up with trying to get by.

Despite, or perhaps because of, all the religious lunacy sweeping our political system, there trend towards secularization - particularly among younger generations - continues unabated. Note that being secular or non-affiliated is not the same as being an atheist: many nonreligious people also identify as deists, spiritualists, or even Christians without a denomination. 

The rapid rise of Nones — including atheists, agnostics and those who say they believe “nothing in particular” — defies the usually glacial rate of change in spiritual identity.

Barry Kosmin, co-author of three American Religious Identification Surveys, theorizes why None has become the “default category.” He says, “Young people are resistant to the authority of institutional religion, older people are turned off by the politicization of religion, and people are simply less into theology than ever before.”

Kosmin’s surveys were the first to brand the Nones in 1990 when they were 6% of U.S. adults. By 2008 survey, Nones were up to 15%. By 2010, another survey, the bi-annual General Social Survey, bumped the number to 18%.

Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church, the nation’s largest religious denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, Methodists and Lutherans, all show membership flat or inching downward, according to the2012 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches.

There’s some concern as to whether this trend will continue at this relatively rapid pace.

Two forces could hold Nones’ numbers down. First, they are disproportionately young, often single, and highly educated — all groups with a low birth rate. Second, the number of believers who immigrate to the USA from particularly religious nations, such as Catholics from Mexico, fluctuates with government policies and economic issues, Chaves says.

But the chief way the category grows is by “switchers.” A 2009 Pew Forum look at “switching” found more than 10% of American adults became Nones after growing up within a religious group.

Indeed, with some exceptions, most of the world’s most secular societies have among the lowest birthrates. Is secularism, which is usually (though not always) correlated with greater individuality and women’s rights, doomed to extinction because of its own progressivism? 

Not quite. The silver-lining to this data is that it actually reveals the strength of our movement, which relies less on mere birth rates and more on the merits of its own arguments. Instead of relegating women to the role of “believer factories” in order to win the demographically, we rely on the moral and intellectual persuasion of our position to win people over.

In a similar vein, polls have shown that many people (again, the youth in particular) leave organized religion precisely because of the intolerance, intrusiveness, and irrationality that grips many of these institutions (even evangelical pollsters like the Barna Group have admitted to these finding). Much of this trend is driven by self-emancipation and individual initiative, which I think is far more preferable to popping out children and indoctrinating them.  

Either way, the efforts to advocate and engage on behalf of secularism seems to be paying off. We must continue campaigns to make non-religious positions more public and acceptable, whether by “coming out” as irreligious or discussing it more in the open with others. 

Of course, this list is hardly exhaustive. Such inequality is becoming systemic in our economy. There are a few surprises, but a lot of the usual suspects too (not to mention some offenders that aren’t widely known). Warning: if you have a strong sense of justice, this report will deeply anger and/or sadden you. 

Let’s be clear: while some level of income inequality is to be expected, the gap of fortune that is present within these companies - and hundreds more - is unjustifiable both ethically and practically (good luck sustaining a healthy economy and society when more and more people are being paid too poorly to get by).

Many of these companies make enough money to pay their workers more while still leaving plenty for their executives. But greed and self-entitlement have reached a level where even a few million dollars won’t satisfy these titans of industry. Meanwhile, most of them work to cut (largely insufficient) government programs, which wouldn’t be so desperately needed in the first if these elitists paid people better.

Don’t like big government or unions? Then why don’t you pay people a living wage so the state isn’t as depended upon? Why don’t you prove that you don’t need regulations to be socially and economically responsible? 

There’s no telling where they’ll be going, but they’re getting there one way or the other.

Courtesy of the BBC and right in time for the Olympics.