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Expel the evildoer from among you

If you're not reading back over my old entries (why not? I used to be much better before I jumped the shark), you might not have noticed that there was some LJ drama over the last one. robhu conclusively won the debate on whether complementarianism is sexist by the cunning ploy of banning me from commenting on his blog: an innovative rhetorical tactic, and undeniably a powerful one. But it's not over yet. I've realised that he may have made a Tone Argument, which might enable me to reject his ideas out of hand and advance three squares to the nearest Safe Space, so I'm awaiting the results of a steward's inquiry. It's possible I may have too many Privilege Points to make a valid claim for Tone Argument, but I'm hopeful the powers that be will see things my way.

Could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Down on the Premier Christian Radio boards, they're talking about science and religion again, specifically whether science can ignore the possibility of God's existence. I've been sticking my oar in, as usual.

Red Ken again

When I reviewed Ken MacLeod's The Night Sessions, I reckoned that he had something to do with Christianity himself at one point, as the observational humour was too keen to come from a total outsider. It turns out he's the son of a Presbyterian minister. At an SF convention in 2006, MacLeod spoke about his childhood, discovering that creationism was wrong, and the social contract. This old speech of his was linked from his recent blog posting on the changing meaning of evolution. MacLeod says a change occurred in the 1970s when Jacques Monod and Richard Dawkins introduced a thoroughly materialistic theory. This replaced older ideas that evolution is progress up a sort of secular Great Chain of Being, ideas which C.S. Lewis grumbled about, though not for the same reasons as the biologists. "Evolutionary Humanism was no doubt troubling enough to believers, but at least it wasn't a vision of blind, pitiless indifference at the heart of things." It's the latter vision which MacLeod says has so riled modern creationists. I'm not sure whether he's right, but it's an interesting speculation.

Morality

Some people argue that if there's no God, you can't have real morality. We've discussed this previously here (and also here). The debate seems to boil down to which definition of morality you find psychologically satisfying, since as far as I can tell it has no practical consequences: almost everyone thinks that Bad Things are Bad, whether or not they also think there are moral absolutes.

Anyway, Jeffrey Amos over at Failing the Insider Test has an interesting post specifically about the idea that morality shows there's a God. Firstly, he argues that all moral systems have the problem of where you start from, so the Euthyphro dilemma isn't introducing a new problem for theists. Nevertheless, it does show that the problem isn't solved by introducing God, either. Secondly, he argues that a theist must either say that God's ideas of morality are not similar to ours, in which case pretty much everyone is wrong about morality and once we allow this, it's no stretch to say that they might be wrong about it in a different way (for example, maybe true morality doesn't have to be absolute). Or a theist must say that God's morality is similar to ours, but this runs into the problem of pain: a God whose morality was similar to ours wouldn't allow there to be so much suffering in the world. The standard response that God allows suffering for inscrutable reasons doesn't help: if God is inscrutable, how can we know his morality is similar to ours? The second prong of the second argument isn't new (gjm11 makes it here, and I doubt he was the first), but I think Amos's article states it very clearly.

Readers: in a recent thread on robhu's journal, Rob said I had misrepresented complementarians (of which he is one). I'm not sure how many of you click the links in my postings and have noticed that I occasionally have a joke with them, but to be clear, on the occasions where I have linked the word complementarian to Houseplants of Gor, I did not mean to imply that complementarians are the same as Goreans. Unlike Goreans, complementarians do not believe that women are intrinsically inferior to men and should naturally be their slaves. They believe that men and women are equal in status and dignity, but should occupy different roles in relationships like marriage, with women submitting to men's loving, self-sacrificial leadership. You can find a summary of complementarian beliefs in the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

Despite the complementarian assertion that men and women are of equal status, I find complementarianism problematic because it seeks to perpetuate a hierarchy with men in a position of power over women, and claims that this sort of hierarchy is normative. While I should probably be cautious about comparing historically oppressed classes for fear of being called problematic myself (this being one of the worst things that can happen to you on LJ, as some of you will know, second only to being accused of "fail"), I'd note that replacing "men" with "white people" and "women" with "black people" in complementarian statements would not result in something many of us were happy to sign up to (with the possible exception of Rudyard Kipling, who was big on loving, self-sacrificial leadership). To be clear, I am not saying the complementarianism is racist (I'm saying it's sexist), but I believe the analogy is appropriate as members of both classes were and are oppressed as a result of being born into a particular group.

While there are important differences between them, complementarians and Goreans are similar in that both advocate a male-led hierarchy and claim it is the correct and fulfilling state of all male/female relationships. As such, the two philosophies are, shall we say, equal in status and dignity, with complementarianism certainly not deserving more respect merely because it originates in a religion.

Hope that's cleared things up. Must go, scribb1e's just finished cooking my dinner.

Update: Expelled!

Edited to add: So, Rob didn't like my analogy and banned me from commenting on his blog.

Of course, I didn't chose the analogy at random. The question at hand was whether complementarianism should be considered sexist. I think it should. If similar statements to those complementarians make about women were made about another historically disadvantaged group, like black people, we would rightly consider them discriminatory against that group. Likewise, there have been times when sentiments we'd now consider discriminatory have been couched in terms of self-sacrifice and serving the disadvantaged group, as Kipling's poem illustrates.

Is complementarianism as bad as racism or sexism at its most horrible? No. It is patronising rather than hateful, and I'm not sure how much harm it does. There are much worse examples discrimination around today. I suppose what irks me about complementarianism is that it pretends to righteousness (that, and the fact that I was once taken in by it). Were the early Christians ahead of their time in their attitude to women? Quite possibly, but complementarians are behind theirs.

If anyone feels the analogy was taking things too far, I'd be interested to discuss it.

In other news:

• I've brought out this old icon in honour of disgraced pastor Ted Haggard, who was all ready to make a comeback (as it were) until fresh revelations emerged recently. I've mentioned him before, but somehow neglected to mention that Ted Haggard is Completely Heterosexual (Roy Zimmerman = Tom Lehrer for the Naughties).
  
  
• I've been contributing to some threads over at Unreasonable Faith, the blog of Daniel Florien, an ex-Christian. Daniel asks other ex-Christians whether believing was a complete waste of time (you can see my answer). He's also posted about the Ehrman/Williams discussion on Premier Christian Radio, which I've mentioned previously, so I stuck my oar in. There are a few Christians with a strong inner conviction that the Bible is inerrant on there, so I responded to one of them.
  
  
• There's a meme doing the rounds on LJ where you get very angry about something called "cultural appropriation", or get very angry about people getting angry about it. The threads I've seen have largely involved the sort of people who use the word triggering to mean "a bit upsetting" (see also Monstrous Vegiment), so I've stayed out of it. However, livredor linked to an interesting post by nextian about the Jewish attitude to Christian readings of the Hebrew Bible, which reminded me a bit of Karen Armstrong's take on it in The Bible: the biography. livredor also has some discussion on her LJ.
  
  
• scribb1e and I watched Maverick last night. I somehow managed to miss it in 1994. It was funny, in a gentle sort of way.
  

As readers of news will know, LiveJournal is in the process of electing representatives from among its users, to sit on the LiveJournal advisory board, alongside various e-luminaries.

( Who I think you should vote for )

Regardless of whether you agree with me, if you've moaned about what 6Apart and SUP have done over the last few years, please read the candidates' manifestos and vote, and encourage others to do the same. If you have already voted, note that it is possible to change your vote until the election closes, on 29th May.

There's a new LiveJournal meme doing the rounds, where you make a post about what you think of theferrett's Open Source Boob Project. All the cool kids are doing it, so I thought I'd join in. Here's a compendium of comments I've been making elsewhere.

I agree with springheel_jack's point that this is all about geekery. theferrett has been here before, expressing similar sentiments about how it would be easier if you could just tell women you wanted to do them.

The dance that most heterosexual courtship rituals involve is (what? all my courtship rituals have involved dancing) at least partly about face saving if it goes wrong, but also about not scaring off the woman, who is physically smaller and weaker, on average, and probably has reason to fear the sort of man who would ask direct questions of the sort theferrett talks about. Some geeks do dispense with some of the dance, and that can work for them when they're dealing with other geeks.

theferrett wants to dispense with more of the dance than most people are comfortable with. He had a nice time at the convention, which is fair enough. It also seems that the original thing was instigated by women who are happy to defend it. His mistake is to think that experience can be generalised and codified into a "project", and his other mistake is writing about it on LJ, especially in the style he used.

I'm becoming a big fan of synecdochic, whose postings on the drama itself and how not to be That Guy are excellent.

DEEP THOUGHT:
If I might make an observation…

MAJIKTHISE:
We’ll go on strike!

VROOMFONDEL:
That’s right. You’ll have a national philosopher’s strike on your hands.

DEEP THOUGHT:
Who will that inconvenience?

MAJIKTHISE:
Never you mind who it’ll inconvenience you box of black legging binary bits! It’ll hurt, buster! It’ll hurt!

I'd like to remind them that as a trusted radio personality, I can be helpful in rounding up fanficcers to toil in their underground salt mines.

Yes, the Russians bought LiveJournal. Either it's a plot, which has been planned for over a year by the oligarchs, to destroy the free speech of the large number of Russian LJ users; or perhaps it's just that Six Apart got fed up of all the complaints.

Theories abound: some people blame the sale plans for recent attempts to clean-up LJ, like the Strikethrough debacle and the recent introduction of the "denounce" button on everyone's journal. (hairyears has a good posting on the latter, by the way, arguing that it's an entirely sensible move on LJ's part to prevent them from being sued by right-wing nutjobs).

Other good sources: Metafilter has some discussion, Encyclopedia Dramatica has some links to the stupidest responses so far, and vladmuthafucka records the thoughts of Putin himself.

I'll stick around and see what happens, at least. ljdump runs every night here, just in case, but it's far more likely that I'd use it to recover from some technical failure at LJ than to recover from a censored journal.

Oh my. The feminist bloggers have taken on the Internet Hate Machine known as Anonymous. Encyclopedia Dramatica (very NSFW and extremely offensive, don't blame me if you get fired) has the scoop on the post which might have been from Biting Beaver that started it all, as well as the on-going aftermath.

Some of the commenters on the feminist blogs get it, and actually tell them what's going on and how to weather the raids (ilyka, or Holly in this thread). Luckily for Anonymous, the rest of the commenters either ignore them or jump on them and accuse them of misogyny, while beginning the countdown which will end in them reaching Defcon 1 and launching the e-lawyers against the Patriarchy. Hint: the only winning move is not to play.

It's like the Internet perfect storm. Who brought popcorn?

In their latest spasm of incompetence in the on-going Strikethrough 2007 drama, LiveJournal's admins have clarified that they were just kidding about that all that free speech and community stuff for long enough to get the last batch of permanent accounts sold.

Countdown to Harry Potter spoilers being posted in that thread: in 10... 9... 8...

ETA: Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies. Youtube and Google win again. I think I slightly prefer Harry Potter and the Brokeback Goblet, myself. Both spoiler free.

Shock news tonight, as Livejournal administrators delivered a stairwell noncebashing, leaving many fanfic journals braindead and quadraspazzed on a life-glug (script here). LJ's abuse team don't seem to have realised that such excesses are unacceptable in the modern police service. There are persistent reports that journals for survivors of rape and incest were also deleted, but I've seen no real confirmation of this.

A group of hicks from the USA appear to have provoked this, dealing out street justice in between engaging in car chases with a fat sheriff; driving a car with the doors welded shut, a Confederate flag on the blogrollroof, and a horn that plays Dixieland. Some day the mountain might get 'em, but, alas, it seems the law never will.

This is, perhaps, a timely reminder that sites like LJ are businesses (LJ may have started as a hobbyist site, but has not been one since the 6Apart takeover, at the very latest). They are not your friends. They will defend your free speech exactly as far as it profits them to do so, and they're certainly not prepared to undertake legal battles on your behalf. bubble_blunder has a realistic assessment of the likely outcomes of this latest LJ drama.

There are tools which will back-up your journals and comments, and you can configure LJ to email you your own comments on other people's journals. It seems wise to make use of these facilities if you value your journal's contents at all.

LJ are doing their usual headless-chicken imitation when faced with a crisis. They've made no public statement on this business, perhaps hoping that word of it won't spread outside the Snape/Hermione fan-fiction writers. While I've no interest in slash, and I appreciate LJ's right to avoid legal liability, their handling of their users once again sucks.

Edited to add: The CEO of 6Apart apologised. Best comment thread in the responses.

LiveJournal have improved the site's email notification stuff, so that you can register an interest in any thread or posting and get email (or just a message to your message centre) when someone posts a comment on it. You can also register an interest in a particular user's postings, and in various other stuff. Currently this is only available to paid and permanent account holders, but I think LJ are rolling out something a bit less good to everyone else soon (looks like free users will be restricted in how many things they can subscribe to).

This system has been carefully designed to only tell you about stuff that you can see anyway. They've also thought about the situation where you forget to select the right option and make a public post something which you meant to be locked: the notification email doesn't contain the text of the entry, so you've got some grace about locking it. The new system is a very nice feature, something that makes LJ a much more useful place to have a discussion, since you can now easily monitor interesting posts once they've disappeared off your friends page. I'd thought about building something like this into LJ New Comments, but now I don't have to. So that's good.

Despite this, there are countless whinging lamers posting to the announcement saying that this feature is going to aid internet stalking (because an internet stalker isn't obsessive enough to keep hitting refresh on a thread, or to use a free service or browser extension which will tell you when a web page changes). People who believe in security through obscurity are silly. You always assume that the bad guys are as clever as you are (or cleverer, in the case of the complainers).

LJ are also talking about extending the notification system so that soon you'll have the option getting notifications using LJ Talk, LiveJournal's instant messaging service. If you didn't know LJ had an IM service, now you do. It'll talk to any program which uses the standard Jabber protocol. I'm using Adium, Windows users might like Gaim (both of these support other protocols like MSN Messenger and AIM, so you don't need to keep multiple IM programs running). By default, your buddies on the chat service are your LJ friends. Say hello if you see me on there.

Mindful of the recent LJ drama about breastfeeding icons, I propose we take LiveJournal's codebase (which is open source) and start a site where it is compulsory to display breasts in your default icon. That'll show the Patriarchy! Start using those tools to back up your livejournal now, because titsorleave.com will be live soon.

Another controversial LJ Abuse policy which people are complaining about is that LJ don't care about comments made in journals which are actually RSS feeds of blogs off-site, because no-one owns the journal. There's one LJ user whose life's purpose appears to be to post the word "BOOBIES!!" as a comment to every single entry on popular feeds. apod, a feed of NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, also has the_duke, who always posts "I've been there" in response to all the pretty pictures of galaxies and suchlike. The other day, he got the best reply evar.

It would be possible to adapt the web 2.0 technology^TM used by my LJ New Comments script so that you could killfile comments from particular users, I suppose, but I think there's little motivation to do so while the trolls' immaturity is less objectionable than the complainants' huge sense of entitlement.