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laundryandtaxes · 3 years

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I think it's very very difficult for a lot of people to come to accept that sometimes a set of circumstances can 1) only reasonably be called abusive by sheer virtue of the intensity of the unidirectional pressure, condescension, and outright cruelty, and 2) ALSO be a set of circumstances in which one person was not sitting around actively thinking of ways to abuse the other person, systematically moving them through stages they've established as the track to get someone to continue to endure abuse. I'm sympathetic to the argument at least that we shouldn't call that abuse, but rather mistreatment, and that we should reserve the term for intentional manipulations of other people, but I don't actually agree with it. Ulltimately I think that framework makes it very difficult for people who've been abused to accept what is happening to them, because it requires that they reimagine someone they love and are intimately familiar with as an entirely separate kind of person from other people, as some special kind of evil human being who has spent the last x years just plotting on how to psychologically destroy them. But more importantly, I just don't think it is actually true- for instance, I think the majority of people who regularly hit their children must love them AND must believe that hitting them is a perfectly reasonable way to correct their behavior because they consider it within the purview of loving behavior. I also obviously think they're outright wrong and that that is child abuse, but when something like 80% of Americans still think it is okay to hit children, I simply think it is improbable that everyone in that group, including all the parents, actually hates or even doesn't love children. That is just one instance, but I think this is especially relevant in the context of emotional abuse.

Perhaps this is especially important to me because it's so, so hard for women who date other women to recognize and leave partners who regularly mistreat, condescend to, and pressure them in ways that I think are only reasonably called abuse, because they have this concept of abuse as something bad people do on purpose to harm other people and I think that absolute caricature isn't real and isn't helpful- it's hard enough to get out, I know personally that it's hard enough to get out, of an abusive relationship even when it doesn't require a total reframing of every interaction you've ever had with someone as them proming you for more abuse. Perhaps I'm functionally theorizing my own refusal to see the people in my life who've caused me the most harm as evil masterminds, and perhaps they really are evil masterminds and so is everyone in the country who treats their children poorly or hits them. I'll grant that those things could be true, but I don't think so. I think this abusive boogeyman is like the back alley rapist- real, yes, but certainly not making up the majority of sexual violence in a way that merits centering it as the thing women need to see as their primary concern in a way that informs their safety practices. I also don't think it's a coincidence that focusing on the back alley rapist lowers the defenses of women in situations they may perceive as less dangerous than walking down the street but where they're actually at much greater risk of harm due to being away from other people, etc. But I think that we need to move past this really static idea of what abuse can be (I imagine this has got to stem from domestic violence or abuse and the absolutely massive role that intentional control of another person has in that context- I have known women whose partners who kept regular surveillance of their phones, for instance) because it keeps a lot of people stuck, thinking their partnerships aren't bad, and frankly when a lot of adults in general but especially women who date women are just emotionally underdeveloped and have a low capacity for healthy relationships even when they have the absolute best intentions, we need markers of bad behavior that tell you to get out, not caricatures of essential traits.

#anyway i just woke up so good morning to you all

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wrongfullythinking · 4 years

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Science and Data and Freedoms

There are millions of these rants around, so you are under no need to read mine. In fact, what I am about to say here should not be taken as anything more than one person’s opinion. OPINION. I have several qualifications (I will get to those in a second), but still, this blog is primarily concerned with, as the title suggest, wrong thought. And yes, thoughts can be flat-out wrong, but that’s another topic for another time, yes? I primarily abandoned this blog when tumblr decided to advocate for censorship, and well, if you don’t think that was very bad thinking, then I can’t help you and you certainly should stop reading now. But mostly, I find myself needing a little bit of a platform to rant, so here it is. This is not for you. This is for me. But maybe, if you read it, and you learn something, then it was a little bit more than that, and that’s entirely unnecessary but I’ll be fine with it. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it a secret.

My qualifications 1) I have a Ph.D. from a major research institution in America. What that means, most importantly, is actual training in how to read and understand academic writing. 2) I teach statistics, among other things, and I teach in a public health college at another major research institution in America. 3) I work with epidemiologists, though I don’t claim that title myself (I describe myself a psychometrician with an expertise in educational measurement), and I am currently working on several projects using epidemiological methods. 4) A portion of my work in educational measurement focuses on critical thinking, particularly the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Premises So, let’s organize this in a logical manner. To do so, we generally start with a series of premises. Here are some of mine. 1) Most people are afraid of dying. 2) The fear of dying plays some part in how people live their lives. 3) People are willing to make some tradeoffs between Safety and Liberty. 4) There is an inverse relationship between Safety and Liberty. The more liberty, the less safety. This is only a unidirectional inverse relationship (as liberty ascends, safety decreases), and NOT true in the opposite direction (as safety ascends, liberty must decrease). This is VERY IMPORTANT. 5) People are poor estimators of their own odds of death, and especially how certain events (say, getting drunk at a party or smoking a hallucinogenic drug or driving recklessly) contribute to their risk of death. 6) There is much unknown about the “novel coronavirus” or SARS-COV_2 or Covid-19 (use whatever term you are comfortable with, the distinction between all of these is arbitrary and unimportant... the root of communication is exchange of messaging between two parties, and all these terms work fine in most cases, since we’re hardly in a lab where it is very important to separate out disease, virus, symptoms, and classifications). 7) Action has been taken by governments and individuals exceeding their statutory authorities. 8) Some of the actions taken by governments and individuals makes no difference in the ability of people to live disease-free, but does have other impacts. 9) The “other impacts” in Premise 8 can directly cause loss of life, as well as other ramifications (lack of social mobility, inability to secure safe food supplies, increase in spousal/partner/child abuse, lack of ability to achieve an education, etc.) that have social and personal consequences for potentially many years, if not generations. This is the most controversial premise, because it has a tendency to operate on some slippery-slope type logic, which is exactly what I am going to rant against in a second. Be wary of this one! But it is important too.

Statistical Problem #1: Never Believe a Point Estimate If you take (my) Stats101 class, and hopefully anybody else’s similar course, one thing that should be a key takeaway is “NEVER BELIEVE A POINT ESTIMATE.” That’s huge. Never. Believe. A. Point. Estimate.

So, for the people who haven’t had a Stats class recently, what is a point estimate?

When you see something like “an estimated 2.2 million Americans will die from the coronavirus if action is not taken,” that “2.2 million” is a point estimate. It is a single point. And point estimates are a hallmark of bad reporting of often bad science. In statistics, any time we make an estimate, we generate a confidence interval: that is, the range around which we believe that estimate to be actually correct. This is because we don’t measure everybody; we measure a small sample, and use math to make estimates. Since we didn’t measure everybody, there is some degree of uncertainty, and so we calculate a range that we think is very likely to contain the actual number. This is called a confidence interval. The wider the confidence interval, the LESS confident you are. The narrower the confidence interval, the more confident you are.

An example. The New York Yankees hit 306 home runs last year, and had 5561 at-bats over 162 games, meaning they hit a home run about once every 20 at-bats. Let’s say I believe the season will be cut in half (so, 81 games instead of 162). So, I want to know how many home runs the Yankees will hit in this shortened season. Let’s work through several examples.

The worst example (okay, not actually the absolute worst, because I could just guess, but pretty bad). In half the games, the Yankees will hit half the home runs. So that’s 306/2, so that’s 153.

Here’s another BAD example, but it does look legit, doesn’t it? Half of 162 is 81. So in half the games, they will have half the at-bats, so that’s 2780.5 at-bats. They hit a home run previously in 5.5026% of their at-bats, and 5.5062% of 2780.5 is 153. The Yankees will hit 153 home runs next year.

A much better example The Yankees averaged 1.8888 home runs a game (306 / 162) last season. If we take the low-end of 1.5 home runs per game (or three home runs every two games), and a high end of 2.25 home runs per game (or 9 home runs every 4 games), we expect the Yankees to hit between 121.5 and 182.25 home runs in the shortened 81 game season.

Is there a perfect example? No. This is a great question. Introductory statistics students will start to add all sorts of great considerations to this question: in the shortened season, won’t pitchers have less time to get warmed up, so home runs will go up? But the same is true for batters, so home runs might go down? If the shortened season starts later, and is played in more colder weather, are there fewer home runs? How did the Yankees roster change? Are they playing against more fly-ball or ground-ball pitchers? Who changed in the rotations of the teams they will play most? Will the rule change about facing three batters or the end of an inning increase the amount of home runs? What about conditioning of athletes who are homebound? No statistical estimate can take into account all factors. And we don’t try to. We just play the games and then call it history. So, what are the problems with the “much better example” besides not adding in all those other things? There is nothing wrong with it, it is just not very precise. A range between 121.5 and 182.25 is more than 60, which is basically half of the low-end. We could be like, 50% wrong from our low end and still be in the range! That’s not very precise!

So, what does this have to do with the current issues? Mostly, I want you to very carefully consider any number you hear without a confidence interval. If you hear a number like “2.2 million,” realize that without a stated confidence interval, the interval could be ANYTHING. Something like, oh, I don’t know... 2.199 million. Yep. In other words, the only thing you could take away from that number is “anywhere between 1 person and 5 million people. And how much are you willing to give up for that particular risk?

Statistical Problem #2: Confidence Intervals WITHIN models So, to this point, hopefully I’ve described all the things that can go wrong if you don’t use a confidence interval in your ANSWER. But what about in the MODEL (or the prediction) itself? Let’s say that, in the above example, we wanted to know how many home runs the Yankees will hit, and we know that MLB will shorten the season. But we don’t know by how much.

So, let’s say that I estimate the season will be between 60 and 100 games. That’s a pretty big margin. Using my earlier estimates, now my confidence interval expands again: 1.5 x 60 for the low end is only 90 home runs, and 2.25 x 100 is 225 home runs! Now my range is [60:225]. That is VERY imprecise!

The important part is that this problem compounds each time we don’t know something. You get a wider and wider range, the less you know. So, the more you want to put into a formula, the more you need to know... and the less you know, the wider your estimate.

Statistical Problem #3: The Missing Denominator None of the math here is particularly difficult, especially with the aid of computers and a bit of training. So, if somebody is presenting it to you like it is super complex, think of them like a stage magician: distract, watch the glitter, and you will never notice my hand pulling the pigeon out of my coat pocket and putting it into my hat.

So, what have models been hiding from you?

The big missing piece is the denominator, or in this case, “how many people have the virus.” That’s a VERY important number. We need several things to build an epidemiological model, and without even an estimate of “how many people have it,” then all the rest of this is pretty much pointless. This is because “how many people have it” is needed for at least the following: 1) Transmission Rate 2) Infection Rate 3) Fatality Rate

Luckily... we’re actually getting close to having that number! Or at least, a confidence interval for that number.

Understanding recent data

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1.full.pdf

Basically, that paper says that in one county with a lot of cases, they estimate there are somewhere between 2.49% and 4.16% of the population infected, and they wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers are between 1.80% and 5.70%. There are about 1.93 MILLION people in Santa Clara county. 1,930,000, and between 2.49 and 4.16 are ALREADY infected. So, let’s math that out, and I’m using their narrower confidence interval here.

Low End (2.49%): 48057 already infected High End (4.16): 80288 already infected.

So, now we have an actual denominator! Or at least, RANGES of one. They’re pretty confident the actual number is somewhere between those.

The date is important here. The data here is April 1. That range (48000-80000) the number of infected people as of April 1. As of April 17th (over two weeks later), Santa Clara had reported 73 deaths. 63 of those had one comorbidity, and only 5 had no comorbidities. Here’s the source.

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx

So, what’s the fatality rate?

LOW pop prev: No comorbidities: 5 / 48000 = .0001041666. LOW: One or no comorbidities: 68 / 48000 = .00141666 HIGH pop prev: No comorbidities: 5 / 80200 = .000062344 HIGH: One or no comorbidities: 68 / 80200 = .00084788

We’ll go broad here, and assume one comorbidity. Hey, a lot of us have something that is an issue, right? But let’s apply those number to the American Population of approximately 330,000,000 people.

LOW (zero or one comorbidity) pop prev: 330mil * .00141666 = 467,497.8 HIGH (zero or one comorbidity) pop prev: 330mil * .00084788 = 279,800.4

There’s your number. WOW, you say! Wow! A QUARTER TO HALF A MILLION PEOPLE MIGHT DIE! That seems shocking!

It is, super shocking. Remember, that’s the zero-case scenario. The scenario where we do nothing. Worst-case. No vaccine, no medication, no treatment, no social distancing, nada.

Oh, let’s go ahead and go over some other numbers. Not scenarios, actual data.

Motor Vehicle Deaths (2018): 36,560 Medical Error Deaths (2011): Between 210,000 and 400,000 https://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_New,_Evidence_based_Estimate_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx Accidents (2017): 169,936 Diabetes (2017): 83,564 Influenza/Pneumonia (2017): 55,672 Suicide/Self-harm complications: 47,173 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

((Note, because somebody will inevitably ask: The “Death by Guns” rate is a tough one to count, because the majority of gun deaths are also suicides. The Gun Homicide+Accident fatality rate is likely between about 10,000 and 13,000 per year (about a third of the car accident fatality rate). If you’re interested in that number, be sure to look at the data split by category, or if you are interpreting suicides with guns in your gun death count, just be explicit about it, don’t be a pigeon-holding magician.))

Interpretation: Doing nothing at all, we would expect Covid to jump the rates of Influenza/Pneumonia deaths from 7th to 3rd in America, with somewhere between about 340,000 and 530,000 deaths. I arrive at that number by adding 60,000 to the estimates above, for other non-Covid related Flu/Influenza deaths. That would put Influenza/Pneumonia above the estimates of death due to medical errors, and well behind the two leading causes of death in the US (CVD and Cancer). This is provided that there is no emergent medical option.

So, what’s the downside? Why not do all these drastic things (like shelter-in-place orders and be forced to shut down your business) if it prevents between 1/4 and 1/2 of a million deaths? That’s a good question! The point here is that orders have consequences, and most of them are unknown at the time of the order. For example, let’s take a pretty simple policy: requiring every driver to car insurance. Seems like a fundamental thing, right? Well, now you’ve also driven the price of car ownership up. More rural areas (which are often poorer) now have an additional cost burden, that is not shared by people who live in major cities with large public transportation networks. And you’ve created a secondary market (insurance agents) who now have incentives to raise prices, and huge potential for collusion. And what about people who defy that order? Well, that’s tricky-- in some places there are additional policies for covering wrecks involving uninsured drivers, and in those places, car insurance costs more. So you’re paying more, out of your pocket, because somebody else didn’t follow a policy. And that means you have less money to go shopping or go out to eat, which means fewer people at stores have jobs. All of this ties together.

So, what are the unintentional consequences of the shelter-in-place and business-shuttering orders? The most obvious ones are the losses of income, including jobs, and the 10 million accompanying jobless claims. But is that such a big problem? Think about what is happening in homes without jobs... and remember, you are still legally required to pay car insurance. So that’s the direct one.

But there are multitudes of indirect ones. For example, this is not an academic article, but...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/03/21/coronavirus-pandemic-could-become-child-abuse-pandemic-experts-warn/2892923001/

And remember, a lot of children who are subject of abuse are from low-income families. And what did they normally get? Free and reduced-price lunch at schools. Now, they aren’t getting those. Sure, in a few places here and there, some schools are delivering similar meals. But the vast, vast majority of elementary and high-school aged students on free/reduced lunches are not getting them. So that leaves parents (or caretakers) to pick up the burden. Those same parents and caretakers who are filing the 10 million unemployment claims. Uh-oh. Sounds stressful.

Guess what stress does to people? It makes them sick. And you know what happens when you get an ulcer? Hopefully not much, but bad ones can end you up in a hospital. Where there are many procedures, but most of them minor. Unfortunately, hospitals right now are being forbidden from doing elective surgeries. And elective surgeries helped pay for other services, like necessary surgeries and emergency care. So, the ER is literally understaffed, even in regions where there are no COVID patients, because the state has forbidden the tummy tucks that pay the salaries of ER nurses.

You see the tumble here? This is where I cautioned earlier about the slippery slope argument, and it is an absolutely valid critique of what I’m putting here. But we’ve gone past speculation territory and are now in data territory. And (again, work in health care education), I know some people who are starting to see these effects. One of the faculty at my school (teaches our Law course) is a lawyer for a rural hospital service. He has watched them lay off or furlough over 60% of workers. And they have had... wait for it... 0 covid cases. The few that were suspected, they flew down to a much larger hospital. At high cost, because they can’t charge for COVID services.

Meanwhile, you’re talking a rural system that was one of the top employers in four different counties. Laying off or furloughing 60% of workers. The guy was so upset telling me about this that he almost cried, especially because he knew the families of so many of the people his board had just let go.

Any caveats to add? The big caveat that I place on the interpretation here (basically, that’s we’ve VASTLY oversold the risk of this thing) is that we don’t know about secondary infections. If you can get infected twice, and that second infection is harmful or make you able to spread the disease to others who are then harmed, then all these numbers are too low. Bottom-line it for me, WT. Fear leads to the dark side, where you have no freedoms. Don’t give up things because you were scared and because somebody showed you a point of data that you should not believe.

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queernuck · 6 years

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Specters of Sex: Terror, Reaction, and #MeToo in Contemporary Discourses of Sexual Bodies

Discussing the #MeToo movement, as well as larger structures of discourse around sexual violence in society, inevitably leads to a discussion of the act of accusation, the blowing of the referee’s whistle that stops play, that creates the Event of accusation out of a field of play, interaction, of both conjunctive and opposing flows of libidinal power, the point at which the accusation is levied. When Kanye West rapped about it on his album ye he talked about Russel Simmons, saying that Simmons got “#metoo’d” before “wondering” about how he would handle the same, if it happened to “me, too.” On an album full of contradictions, of statements whose post-Žižek character leads to a genuine questioning of just what Kanye means to do in his musical work, in his performances, in creating and expanding a platform for himself, the way in which this presents a sort of encapsulation of how many approach the specter of sexual violence in contemporary spaces.

To concentrate first on men, a large part of the discursive flow surrounding male reaction to #MeToo (both in concept and in named examples) is encompassed by the emergence of a certain common anxiety, that expressed by Kanye: what if I, too, am accused? There have been countless arguments about this, about the means by which the accused is marked as having a certain sort of body that must be understood in a certain fashion, notions floated that #MeToo could kill dating, the film industry, the advancement of women in the workplace, humor, even the very concept of space that is not marked solely as male and a resolute promise to never venture into “female” space, into intersubjectivity with female bodies, a kind of refusal of being-at-woman’s-hand. The immediate response, of course, is the one that prevails, with good reason despite uncomfortable aesthetics. If there is nothing to hide, there is nothing to fear. Stating it in such a way is uncanny, in that it resembles Bush-era surveillance and the extension of evangelical sexual mores into public policy, and thus diffusing into the panoptics of state control. The same response is often used to justify attempts to regulate spaces in the name of stopping trafficking, the dissemination of child pornography, the distribution and consumption of illicit or diverted drugs. An unease at this prospect should be apparent, and moreover should raise the question of why such phrasing would be applied to an ostensibly admirable movement, even one that is largely within liberal sensibilities of action. In an attempt to recognize trauma, victimization, violence, there is often an inadvertent capitulation to the structures of carceral justice, whether in pursuing a response that is sustained through these apparatuses, or in backing away from responding specifically to avoid them.

To return to the examples listed above, the extension of prisons into hospitals, schools, other public meeting-places during the post-9/11 transition into the contemporary space of neoliberal globalization, one finds that the courses of action proposed are not about their stated goals, but rather an embodiment of the unstated, the taboo intent, the Southern Strategy of the law. It is understood that the law does not target those it explicitly targets, at least not primarily. Rather, it instead is an apparatus of deniability, such that acts of colonial violence may be justified with proper legal backing. This is the first point at which #MeToo may be distinguished from such laws and the actions taken through them. There is nothing binding about the accusations levied by victims, there is rarely even a particular call to action. Rather, it is far more akin to a confession of status as a victim, as if the victim had themselves committed the offense. The apparent-speediness with which certain punishments or apparent acts of atonement are completed, the way in which it seems to be a sort of swift justice making itself known, is in fact more likely an indication that the act of coming forward is in fact producing an event out of ongoing flows of interaction. To return to the event of the soccer match and the referee’s whistle, a metaphor proposed by Brian Massumi in discussing different concepts of potentiality within the Virtual, he describes the means by which the whistle entails a collapsing of potential, the point at which an “event” is marked and play ceases. Soccer’s running clock, of course, shows that the stoppage is not quite that, is not a stoppage proper as in other sports, but rather a means by which one may name acts and restructure their relationship to one another, to implement the process described in Deleuzean concepts of expanse and Oedipal trauma, in Heideggerian acts of phenomenological encounter, of calling to mind, acts of memory. There is a presence of the act of violence in the moment of accusation, but that is as realizing the culmination of flows that include the act that the accuser is describing, the violence and trauma they have suffered. At once it is in the moment of accusation that the trauma is realized, but insofar as one describes time in a linear fashion, as a unidirectional flow within consciousness, the realization of numerous potential pasts, spaces of potentiality, repeated and co-witnessed in the present.

The way in which a disingenuous defense regarding wrongful accusation has become such a common one points to a larger anxiety regarding the means by which #MeToo has come to the fore: it is through the realization of trauma as not a failure of the personal, but rather as a continual repetition of the initial violence through different experiences of triggering, retraumatization, a fundamental shift in the potential of one’s subjective experience that the violence at hand is named. Thus, rape and sexual assault, sexual abuse, can become something far greater than their status as singular acts, as whistles which are taken to be similarly obvious, the result of an Other, poor-in-the-world, breaking a clear prohibition. The trouble with this conceptualization of abuse and assault is that it acts to exclude the vast majority of abusive behaviors, the means through which abuse is not only realized but the surrounding structure of enabling, justification, and acceptance that is so deeply embedded within the acts of sexing and gendering the body that they effectively form its most violent realization, are ontologically linked to it. So many of the punishments surrounding the prohibitions of gender, transgressions thereof, and regulating them, ensuring they will not be repeated, are based in sexual violence that it is understood any act of sexual violence will be justified as an ironic mirroring of the violent act, as justified by this or that transgression. But the singular conceptualization, the narrow marking of violence as such, is flawed specifically because it requires creating singular actors, singular acts of trauma, the impossibility of re-victimization.

The fundamental recognition, then, that must be made is the one that is most feared, the one rejected by such criticisms of #MeToo as a specter of unjustified accusations, female flows of libidinal energy unchecked by male measuring thereof, what happens when women are allowed to assert their bodies as such, to make a counterclaim against the sexual striation of their body, the traumatic collapsing of their body into a collection of organs as fetish-objects. That so much of harassment is constituted not by actions that cross the threshold into rape or sexual assault, but rather by the assertion of certain spaces of potential by men who will never realize such potential, men who are asserting that a woman’s body can realize these things even if not with them, even if not in relation to them, becomes clear as the fundamental problem. That these acts are so often understood as simply a “part” of masculine identity, of what makes maleness coherent, the regulatory function against women becomes clear. These acts are part of a larger arrangement of sexual violence that has become part of culture in a fundamental fashion, which is then realized in the fear that without realization, without the whistle of accusation, one has engaged in unacceptable conduct already, is already marked and simply waiting for others to realize it. It is an acceptance of understanding combined with a rejection of responsibility, a kind of acknowledgement that the paradigms of sexual violence are foundational to realizing gendered structures of interaction.

Of course, there are fears that a reversal of this, an accusatory process of targeting that specifically reinforces violence through the accusation of sexual abuse in order to open up a body to a sexualized process of response, will be realized, but it is not terribly difficult to realize that this fear is one unlikely to be visited on many who would vocalize it in opposition to #MeToo. White womanhood is sexually violent in that it constitutes a specific sexualization and gendering of white supremacist ideology, and the means by which accusations of sexual impropriety have been used in order to target black men is undeniable. The disparity at hand is one that is essentially racialized, that is realized not through gender or sex themselves, but rather takes gender and sex and creates them as a sort of structure of intersubjectivity within whiteness. This is an established tactic of white supremacist violence, one that does not even necessitate action by any white woman in particular, that can merely be realized and justified on behalf of the ideal of the white woman, as a protection of the space that white women occupy. It becomes clear that this is not about wrongful accusation, but rather about providing a fantasy from which the libidinal flows of white supremacist violence may pour.

There are numerous fantasies that are used in order to justify violence that speaks breathlessly of sexuality, and homophobia, transmisogyny, the violence of heteronormative ideology and the codification of homosexuality as a structure of taboo, of a limit upon the homosocial and homoerotic, as a means of prohibition of gay, lesbian, transgender identities and acts of affinity or identification is thus often sexualized, in a fashion that leads to the use of accusations of violent harassment, sexual abuse, or other actions simply based on identity. That this possibility must be considered, that the ideation of the predatory nature of such identities is so deeply ingrained in the language surrounding them that realizing one’s identity almost inevitably means dealing with the question of predators in one’s community, contact with such predators, an acceptance of their presence as undeniable and an attempt to understand exactly how to protect oneself from them is a common experience in LGBT communities. The means through which individuals may be traumatized and still act in an abusive fashion, may slip into abusive relationships, may undergo an Oedipal act of retraumatization and themselves pass on ideology that retains the harmful character of this predatory structure, that retains a predatory notion of acceptability in sexuality, must be dealt with. However, it will not be dealt with by simply accepting that these identities, trans women often targeted with particular vitriol, are themselves predatory and in need of repression, sublimation into nothingness. Instead, a critical examination of sexuality and sexual norms, sexuality as a process of expression and growth and intersubjectivity must be fostered. That there are predatory, violent trans women who indeed are rapists and moreover must be exposed as rapists is not to be allowed to become a justification for transmisogynist violence, especially given that trans women are so often the victims in these situations. By adapting ideological defenses of white womanhood to the structure of sex, by taking white supremacist ideology and resignifying it in a certain radical feminist language, TERFs manage to take an aesthetic of liberation and transfigure it into a political program a few steps away from traditionalist and reactionary ideology, as seen in the friendship between such groups and their convergence on the question of trans women. This is not accidental, it is specifically because of the fascist character of both ideologies at hand.

Accusation, then, can indeed be used as a tool of violence. A tool of terror, even. But what is to be done in response? How must one live if one understands that shifting perceptions regarding genuine experience of trauma means that one has likely in some way contributed to ideology that reinforces sexual violence at the very least? A process of atonement, reconciliation, of being able to face the Other and reach toward a transcendent expression of commitment must be the primary goal. The ways that sexualized performances of affect, affinity, the processes of realization of sexual desire are tied to so many flows of trauma both located after, before, and within the potential-space of expressing sexuality means that any navigation of sexuality will be fraught. It will, in some way, be overcoded by a language of sexuality that implies certain relationships to white supremacist notions of gendered and racialized appearance, the Oedipal implementation of sexuality as a kind of incestuous act that centers around a conceptual family to-be, a fetishization of the family as a result of sexual encounter, the traumas of doubt and uncertainty and unconscionable change that sexuality realizes, these are the forces at work. Sexuality is complex, and being able to recognize this complexity is all but useless because simply recognizing it does not mean exemption from it.

What, then, of terror? In Lenin 2017, Žižek’s introduction describes one of Robespierre’s final speeches, where the question of revolutionary terror is discussed in detail. Žižek, knowing the answer, poses the question of how Robespierre can deal with the lurking possibility of revolutionary terror turning on him. Rather than offering a defense, Robespierre justifies it by embracing it, by claiming that if it were to turn on him, if he were to be a target of such terror, it would be a justified and fit end. In this way, one should begin to fashion a response to many of the anxieties offered over accusations of sexual misconduct, of processes of correcting violence done through sexual acts of all different magnitudes. Accepting this, accepting the possibility of punishment, the condemnation that results, is, in a sense, the most apt response because it not only recognizes the violence of a given action but takes with utmost seriousness the notion that one can commit such actions without even realizing how they cross the threshold into violence, how violence is repeated without either subject quite realizing. Referring back to intentionally targeting accusations based on race, gender, sexuality, one must of course account for the magnitude and character of accusations when responding. But this is the sort of space that demands a response, and demands one that leaves no room for misinterpretation. Restructuring discourses on sexual assault in order to prevent accusations that turn out to be incorrect, when such accusations are not only rare but largely dictated by circumstances that are vastly different from the ones proposed by those steering such a discourse, must be avoided. Instead, an entirely new concept of sexuality, of exactly what sexuality constitutes, must be the basis for a continuing development of language that can deal with the traumatic and experiences of traumatization.

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corbinite · 7 years

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I think it's time the majority moves away from the model of bigotry as an us-vs-them mentality and towards one of power. I as a gay man do not really have the power to rally together with other gay people to oppress straight people. I just don't, if I tried to introduce new laws or practices which treated straight people as lesser I wouldn't get anywhere, or I'd be severely punished even depending on the course. But if you look at who is in our leadership positions and has all the money, it's largely straight people. I'm not saying that all straight people will actively use power against us but they can is the point, if straight people as a class decided they wanted to they could treat us however they want because ultimately that's where the power lies. That doesn't look like homophobia and heterophobia existing in an us-vs-them dynamic, it's pretty unidirectional. Then you look at actual acts of discrimination. The biggest examples of "heterophobia" anyone can come up with is the safe spaces we've come up for oursleves. Our online communities and our friendships and our clubs. We get called discriminatory against straight people for trying to finally find people who understand us, who understand what we've experienced with homophobia, and we try to do it away from straight people because honestly it's just too much of a risk to try to find those connections otherwise. There's a risk of harassment, and even in straight circles where people say they're accepting there's enough microaggressions that we just can't open up to the same degree as in our gay circles, so being around just other people like us is freeing for once. And... if you really look at it... most of the world is a safe space for straight people. Tv is vastly straight, there's a clear one homo limit in most shows and if you go over it the straight class as a net throws a fit. You always know you can see yourself and almost exclusively yourself when you turn on the tv and based on the pushback against diverse media you seem to like it that way. And at work or in open conversation or with your friends, there's a very high chance that as far as you know it's all straight people (now it's likely that there are multiple non-straight people in any said group but you are likely unaware so it doesn't detract from this experience you have of being in a sea of other straight people like you). You're able to talk about love and sex, maybe not super explicitly but you can bring it up and expect support with zero reservations or discomfort in getting the support, just unbridled participation from your peers who can relate but we never got that, we never got to talk about it and have people fully relate. So we seek out communities of each other so we can emotionally support each other through oppression in ways that straight people quite frankly can't. The other example people love to bring up is when we oppose the so called "freedom" to discriminate against us, that's called heterophobia or a war on religion. I'm going to be frank, it's bullshit. Freedom does not mean the legal or ethical right to mistreat others without consequences. And us protecting ourselves is not "heterophobia" it just isn't, we just want to be protected from mistreatment. Those examples along with the occasional case of a gay person venting frustrations about being mistreated are the best examples of "heterophobia" anyone can come up with. Contrast that with being disowned, being fired, being evicted, being harassed on the street for holding hands, being beaten or killed or raped, being subjected to psychological and sexual abuses as a quack "therapy", being told your whole life that you're a sinner, having people wince at any form of love that resembles yours, never seeing yourself reflected, never being shown or told that it's okay to be this way, growing up thinking you're so gross because you had no model to know it's okay, getting constant subliminal signs that you're gross, that's what gay people have to deal with. Actual acts of discrimination clearly are very unidirectional. Now, let's bring prejudice into the equation. Look at people's actual feelings. Now, gay people certainly can experience a bit of what some would call "tribalism". The way we grow up rejected from straight society that taught us to feel disgust towards ourselves causes a lot of bitterness and it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that sometimes yes we do resent straight people overall for it. Ultimately though that's a reflex that was taught to us by the treatment we got, developed as a defense mechanism to stay sane through our experience. Rather than being heterophobia, any sort of discrimination or true actions taken against straight people, it's all ultimately of a vastly different nature than homophobia. Homophobia however, it's pretty much universal within our society. It's taught to everyone to some degree. Everyone including us gay people. We don't feel true heterophobia but we certainly feel homophobia ourselves. Because picking up at least bits of it is inevitable unless you grow up under a rock and with a perfect family (under a rock because studies have shown that your environment away from home actually has a larger effect on the person you become than how your parents raise you). But no one grows up totally disconnected from the world, no one is an island, we're all contantly learning from each other and transferring ideas including subtle and subconscious attitudes, and that certainly includes bigotry. Even the prejudicial feelings themselves about sexuality are largely unidirectional: always pointed towards non-straight people even within those of us who are the targets. You see, the idea that bigotry is this simple us-vs-them tribalism, it just doesn't check out. It's an attractive notion, I certainly believed in it while I was still in denial of my sexuality and what I had socially were my racial and gender privileges. It's far easier on the conscience to see it that way because it requires nothing of you but to ignore the problem and say it'll go away if we don't feed it with attention. But it just doesn't work that way. Everyone has some level of homophobia. Everyone acts it out in some subtle way at least once in a while. It's inevitable. And I'm going to say: it's okay to notice it in yourself. It's okay to find that you are in fact somewhat bigoted, because you don't live in a bubble and you're not perfect. And the only way we'll progress in our societies is if we look at ourselves and think: are my subconscious attitudes and actions playing right into a power dynamic? Did I inherit a long history and tradition of bigotry? Just try to be a mindful person, being aware of yourself in life is a severely neglected skill in our society, even outside these axes of oppression it's so neglected. No one wants to think they're a bad person so they shield themselves from reflecting on their actions. I did that to an unhealthy degree at one point and I do still sometimes fall back into it because I'm far from perfect. I really was not a mindful person overall in life and it impacted myself and those around me. But I'm trying to be better at it, and I hope other people can too. And if you are a loved one, whatever your relationship to me is or how well you know me, I hope you'll read this and look into yourself for the ways you can be better at removing yourself from bigotry, and even actively challenging it both within yourself and out in the world. Please, for me.

#mine #corbinite gets real #i posted it on facebook first which is why it has the emotional appeal at the end #since most of the people i know on facebook are straight and not as well versed on power dynamics

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angrycollectordaze-me-blog · 6 years

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Paper代写：Public power

本篇paper代写- Public power讨论了公共权力。原始形态的公共权力，指的是人们所共同掌控的、协调和管理社会共同生活的权力。原始形态的公共权力产生于人类共同生活的需要，其基本功能是调解和处理人们共同生活过程中所可能出现的争端和纠纷。近代社会中早期的资产阶级思想家们对权力的公共性做出了充分的理论证明，形成了主权在民的思想共识，观点比较理论化和系统化。本篇paper代写由51due代写平台整理，供大家参考阅读。

Public power and political power is the core concept and the starting point of the study of politics, academic research has been a lot, and made great achievements. In a lot of books and literature equate the public power and political power, that public authority is the political power; Public power is different from the political power, has a certain difference between them. This paper discusses the difference between public power and political power, in order to make some explain and attract the public's thinking.

The concept of "power" is an ancient, both in China and western countries, has long been discussed on the concept of "power". In the west, the typical American scholar Peter blau said: "power is a person or group will impose the ability of others, despite resistance, these individuals or groups can also be through deterrence to do so." German Max weber thinks: "the power is a regardless of the opposition and the actors have to carry out the possibility of his will, no matter what is the basis of this possibility is based on." Mike Ross king thought: "power is a relationship between people, may be one person to another person by its ability to command to do". Power is a kind of social relationship, only when people activities involving others there is power, power is always has the directivity, means that the subject's ability to implement control to implement their will on others.

Engels said: the original form of public power is jointly controlled by people, coordination and management of social living power; Original form of public power generated by the need of common human life, its basic function is people live together in the process of mediation and processing possible disputes and disputes. Public power to confirm and guarantee in the form of the original natural community of equal status, the democratic rights of all members of the premise and foundation. In the modern society of the early bourgeois thinkers publicity on power has made the full theory has been proved that formed the sovereignty in the minds of the people, is a typical theoretical and systematic view, "theory of divine right of Kings" theory of "natural rights" of "popular sovereignty", etc.

About political power representative mainly include: the definition of political power is, in fact, the contrasts of power in a particular relationship, the main body of political power in order to achieve and maintain their own interests and with the restriction of the political power of the object. Political power is in the political relations, relying on a certain subject of political force, in order to achieve a certain interests and applied to power the object of a political force. Refers to reflect the will of the ruling class of state power, and as a representative of the society as a whole, in order to force security implementation, management, the power of the social public affairs. Marxism thinks that: "the political power is in the social and economic development to a certain historical stage of the product, is produced when human society class after a unique phenomenon."

From what has been discussed above we can see: out the concept of public power is the power "and" relationship between subject and object, that is, the power is the people, given by the authority must serve for the people, also must be the supervision of the audience, in this way, the exercise of public power can not be one-sided, but must with the franchisor namely the social public power restriction relationship to each other. Out the concept of political power is the power subject to the object "cure" relationship, namely the public management, is a kind of top-down unidirectional power, this power can easily evolve into despotism, rule oppression and even abuse of power. Political power is the product of history, it has historic.

Citizens and the relationship between the authority and officials are: citizen entrust public power authority, authority by specific officials responsible for enforcing, responsible for the citizens, citizen oversight. In this kind of multi-level principal-agent relationship between citizens is the ultimate owner of public power. In the human political history have representative views "have a divine right theory", "violence" and "social contract", etc. The exercise of political power is highly centralized and one-way, the operation of power from the supervision of citizens, in political darkness, as the rule of the ruling class.

The understanding of legitimacy has two aspects: one is refers to the legal norms and principles; The second is the value of mutual recognition by social members. Max weber said: "the legitimacy and based on the material motivation, emotional motivation or obey the desire of value rationality motivation is different, the latter is not a reliable basis, any rule to consolidate its persistent, will arouse to the legality of the faith". The legitimacy of public power system refers to the value of mutual recognition by social members. Social members to get their citizenship social members by the authority of the recognition and trust, and by the authority agents and exercise, members can supervise the power of operation, there was a big mistake once the authority in the exercise of power, the power of the social members to choose their agent, public power is the value of the social members generally recognized. And the legitimacy of political power is based on legal norms and principles. Of legitimacy and legal norms are not, the legitimacy of political power is in the country, with the principles and norms related to the laws and regulations, etc before the real formation and guaranteed, political power works is to see whether it conforms to the relevant national laws and regulations.

Public power is the power of all social members, maintenance is the basic interests of all members of society generally, what is the exercise of authority is the power of all social members have to hand over, it's just a social member's agent, all the members of the community of the value orientation of public power is a basic value orientation, it represents all the social members in the face and deal with all kinds of contradictions and conflicts, relationship of the basic value position, as well as the basic tendency of value attitude. Political power is exercised by some interest group or class elite rule of its power object, it represent the basic interests of the subject, its value orientation is part of the value orientation of the ruling elite.

Public authority pursues goal is to protect the interests of all the social members of the public and let it to obtain the maximum protection and enhancement, promote the progress of human civilization. And political power to the certain rule group, its goal is the most basic guarantee social members benefit on the basis of maintaining the stability of society's most basic, in order to maximize maintenance and the pursuit of self-interest maximization rule group.

The dynamic mechanism of public power comes from the social public, the dynamic mechanism of political power comes up within the ruling group to the superior; On the operation mode, open to the public power must run, political power is a closed operation of; The operation of public power transparency is far higher than that of the political power operation transparency. Under the public power, the interests of the citizens is the core of the public power agency operations, citizen satisfaction evaluation to its decided to its fate. Under the political power, the executive branch layer level promotion is the pivot of political operation, won the higher satisfaction and joy decides the political future of officials, the dynamic mechanism of typical surface is highly centralized feudal regime.

Constraint mechanism is the agent or manager in accordance with the laws and regulations, value orientation and cultural environment, etc., to the principal or the behavior of management object from the material, spiritual and bound to make its behavior mechanism of convergence or change. Public power constraint mechanism is mainly composed of citizens, society, market and agency of four aspects, the reasonable operation of public power is to rely on those four sorts of mutual cooperation, mutual supervision, play the proper role. Under the modern democratic political system, the law is the main way of constraint and regulate political power, political power, there must be a legal operation in accordance with the law and the constraint mechanism of political power is the a mechanism stipulated in the laws and regulations.

In this paper, we can see that the public power and there are many different political power. Although public power and political power with similar sex, both in terms of function is basically the same, but the political power is the alienation of public power.

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ramialkarmi · 7 years

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I tested out the watch that's approved for use by Navy SEALs

I have a love/hate relationship with watches. I go through months-long stretches where they gather dust in a drawer, as well as equally-long periods where I feel naked if I don't have a band snugly wrapped around my wrist.

My most expensive watch was a $99 G-Shock that I got my senior year of high school and promptly lost in the ocean that summer. Because of this, I have never felt the need to venture into the territory of "nice" watches. Aside from my ill-fated G-Shock, all the timepieces I have owned have cost between $10 and $35 and have been perfectly functional.

But when I had the chance to test out a model from American watchmaker Luminox, I jumped at the opportunity. You see, Luminox has bragging rights in the watch world not because of stratospheric prices or gimmicky features, but because of who their watches are designed for: U.S. Navy SEALs.

The story goes that in the early 1990s, Nick North was in charge of research and development of gear for the SEALs and was testing a number of different watches. The only timepiece that could stand up to the rigorous abuse it was put under was the Luminox.

Fast forward a quarter-century and I'm opening a box containing the Luminox 4221. It's part of the ANU series, meaning that it's "Authorized for Navy Use," which is just about the coolest thing a watch can be authorized for.

The first thing I noticed about the watch was that it's heavy. The stainless steel build is solid, and it's readily apparent that it was designed with America's fiercest warriors in mind.

With a 45 mm case diameter and a 13.20 mm case height, it's safe to say that the 4221 is bulky. However, the 22 mm silicone rubber band has a generous number of size increments, and I was quickly able to find a comfortable fit.

The crown was screwed on tight, and took some effort to twist, but once I had it loose, I found that setting the date and time was simple. The unidirectional rotating bezel clicks solidly, and stays exactly where you set it. This watch was designed to withstand just about anything I could throw at it, and that toughness was evident as soon as I put it on.

Whereas with other, flimsier watches I would worry about accidentally knocking against something or getting the watch wet, I had no such concerns with the 4221.

I wore the watch while swimming, hiking and running, as well as throughout my regular day-to-day. The quartz movement kept the time perfectly, and at no point did I feel like I was approaching an activity that was too tough for it. It's built to withstand depths up to 200 meters, so I doubt I will be pushing this time piece to its limits anytime soon.

But the real draw of any Luminox model — and where the company gets its name (from the Latin "lumi" and "nox," which mean "light" and "night") — is the self-powered illumination system.

The phosphor-coated tritium tubes are placed on every hour marker, as well as on the hour, minute, and second hands. I was surprised by how brightly my watch glowed in the dark, and even had to place it facedown on my nightstand when I was sleeping.

According to Luminox, the glow is guaranteed to not lose brightness for at least 10 years after purchasing the watch, and can last for as long as 25 years.

When it was finally time for me to remove the 4221, I found myself not wanting to. Suddenly, my cheap Casio seemed even flimsier than I remembered, and I missed the feel of the sturdy stainless steel weighing on my wrist.

You can find a 4221 model online for around $500. I'm not sure that I'm quite ready to spend that much money on a timepiece just yet, but when I am Luminox will be among the first places I look.

After all, if it's good enough for the Navy SEALs, it's good enough for me.

SEE ALSO: Here's what I learned from working out with former Navy SEAL commanders before dawn

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