I blame Glee. I do. It's the only explanation that makes sense. Really, it's absolutely the only thing that can possibly explain the latest ruse on the part of Itawamba School District in their ongoing battle against both lesbian student Constance Mcmillen and the notion of basic human decency. Someone at the District has been watching too much Glee, probably at the same time as their weekly Oxycontin binge, and so, during the latest meeting of the Emergency Keep Out The Gays Committee, this member of staff, high on a cocktail of power ballads and hillbilly heroin, pipes up with:
'Like, why don't we just hold a fake prom?'
Because that's what they actually did. Held a fake prom to which Constance and her friends were invited, while the rest of the students partied the night away elsewhere. Like I say, I can only blame Glee - except that wouldn't really cut it, because even Sue Sylvester would regard this plan as somewhat outlandish. In fact, frankly, a Scooby Doo villain would take one look at this 'fake prom' idea and say 'for fuck's sake, you're not serious, are you? I mean, pretending to be a headless horseman haunting the school grounds might just about work with a decent special effects budget, but expecting to be able to hold an entire other prom without one person in the whole town blowing the gaff, pfffft, yeah right, don't even bother putting petrol in the Mystery Machine because Scrappy Doo could solve this fucker. You pesky meddling twats.'
And yet that's what Fulton High School and the Itawamba School District have been reduced to. And because of that, every single member of staff at that school, and every single member of that school district, should be fired immediately without pay, and be disbarred from having anything to do with education for the rest of their lives. This kind of excuse is not the kind of thing sane, rational adults do. This is the kind of thing the dumb husband does in a stupid American sitcom when he realises he's forgotten his wife's birthday. But real life isn't like that. Forget your wife's birthday and it doesn't matter how much shenanigating you engage in putting clocks back, gluing calendar pages back on and replacing every single copy of the local newspaper with yesterday's edition, you've dug your way into a vast pit of humiliation so deep that any attempt you make to dig yourself out short of the most grovelling, self-abasing, Maoist-self-criticism level of apology will merely strip you of what little dignity you have left.
This is the level of behaviour to which Fulton and Itawamba have been reduced. If this were a sitcom or a straight-to-DVD comedy movie they'd be played by Kevin James, and the closing scene would feature them frantically running around the party trying to convince Constance and her mates that what appears to be a teenage high school prom is in fact the annual meeting of the National Arab-American Proctologists Association (because Rob Schneider needs a chance to play more racist stereotypes), and it would all end with a ridiculous moment where Rob Schneider, dressed in a Saudi Prince's outfit, dry-humps James on a bucking bronco in a pool full of jello, and James would say something like 'I really made myself look like an ass this time!' and it would all be hilarious. And, you know, that's what it is. Hilarious.
Until you remember that these people are meant to be adults, they are meant to be teachers, and their bigotry and their intolerance and their craven refusal to act like grown-ups and admit they were wrong have ruined the biggest night of a young woman's life. That's when it stops looking hilarious and starts looking, frankly, pathetic.
Monday, 5 April 2010
Friday, 2 April 2010
Think you're a Big Man, Littlejohn? Suck on this:
*trigger warning: the following contains foul imaginings involving the sexual activities of a vile right-wing journalist. Fair warning*
So, if you watched Question Time last night, you no doubt saw the moment when that jowly fuck Littlejohn laid into some poor young fellow who had the temerity to come out with what he calls 'the lie' that he's 'the BNP's favourite columnist'.
I saw that moment after I'd had a long, relaxing bath with a Honey Bee bath bomb from Lush, then spent the better part of an hour rubbing Lemony Flutter into the rougher bits of my skin, attending to my regular facial skincare routine and doing my nails, and I'm glad I did, because this level of papmpering had fortunately left me relaxed enough that when I witnessed this outrage I merely went purple and spent the next ten minutes showering invective on Littlejohn, Dimbleby, the BBC, television in general and the astonishing number of foul racist pricks who apparently make up the politically-engaged population of Stevenage. If I was in a less relaxed state it's entirely possible that I would have exploded, and the morning's news reports would centre on how Washington had been destroyed by a teraton of thermonuclear rage.
Leaving aside the fact that it's a bit rich for Richard fucking Littlejohn to call other people liars, given that his entire ouevre consists of lie upon lie upon lie, what annoyed me was that I could predict, based on this little interaction, exactly what Littlejohn would do when he got back to his hotel room later. He would take off his ill-fitting suit and have a shower, then, without even properly towel-drying his lank, thinning hair, would throw himself down on his anonymous bed and set about wanking his tiny, shrivelling infra-cock into a froth of onanistic self-congratulation, endlessly frotting away at a mental image of himself as some kind of Chuck Norris-style hardman, a veritable rightwing cockney Terminator, all because he was rude to a callow youth. Big fucking man, Littlejohn. You're so fucking hard, you've got me quaking in my Airwalks. You're like Batman, baby.
Well, actually he's more like that scene in V for Vendetta where Roger Allam feels himself up in his wet room while looking at videos of his own Glenn Beck-style rants, except that Roger Allam has an odd sort of sexy old guy appeal while Littlejohn oozes all the raw sexuality of a festering dog turd. But, because I like playing Codename V to the Lewis Protheros of this world, and because I figure Littlejohn is such an egomaniac he probably spends hours sat in his Florida mansion googling his own name, so there's at least a chance he'll see this, I feel it's incumbent on me to sour Littlejohn's little victory-shuffle by reminding him of two people who threw him to the floor and made him their bitch.
First, Johann Hari: yes, he spends far too much of his time sticking up for his pal Julie Bindel out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, but you have to give him props for pwning Littletool all over the shop in the lions' den that is Sky News , to the extent, in fact, that Littleman felt the aerated husks of his testes withdrawing so far into his scrotal cavity he lost the ability to speak and had to cut to viewers' emails.
But the daddy of Littlejohn-pwnership is and always will be esteemed fabulist Mr William Self, who famously swashbuckled Littleprick into such a rhetorical corner he wound up declaring himself better than Tolstoy.
That sound you hear? That low, whipped-dog whimper you detect emanating from somewhere near the Florida Keys? That's Littlejohn, keening at the funeral of his hard-on. He could take to the streets of Miami and find a seventeen-year-old American boy to act the arse with, but, y'know, they carry guns and besides, he doesn't have an audience of idiots brainwashed by his right-wing bullshit who can back him up if things turn ugly. No, for Littlejohn it's another lonely night in his ex-pat mansion, blowing his nose into fistfuls of dishonestly-earned cash as he weeps for the fact that whenever he appears on TV and goes up against a grown-up, he ends up with his pants 'round his ankles and a bouquet of marigolds shoved up his arse.
Good night, Richard. Sleep well. Don't have nightmares.
*Edited: How could I forget Stewart Lee's awesome piss-take of Littlejohn and all the crap he stands for? Well, I did, but I've fixed it now. *
So, if you watched Question Time last night, you no doubt saw the moment when that jowly fuck Littlejohn laid into some poor young fellow who had the temerity to come out with what he calls 'the lie' that he's 'the BNP's favourite columnist'.
I saw that moment after I'd had a long, relaxing bath with a Honey Bee bath bomb from Lush, then spent the better part of an hour rubbing Lemony Flutter into the rougher bits of my skin, attending to my regular facial skincare routine and doing my nails, and I'm glad I did, because this level of papmpering had fortunately left me relaxed enough that when I witnessed this outrage I merely went purple and spent the next ten minutes showering invective on Littlejohn, Dimbleby, the BBC, television in general and the astonishing number of foul racist pricks who apparently make up the politically-engaged population of Stevenage. If I was in a less relaxed state it's entirely possible that I would have exploded, and the morning's news reports would centre on how Washington had been destroyed by a teraton of thermonuclear rage.
Leaving aside the fact that it's a bit rich for Richard fucking Littlejohn to call other people liars, given that his entire ouevre consists of lie upon lie upon lie, what annoyed me was that I could predict, based on this little interaction, exactly what Littlejohn would do when he got back to his hotel room later. He would take off his ill-fitting suit and have a shower, then, without even properly towel-drying his lank, thinning hair, would throw himself down on his anonymous bed and set about wanking his tiny, shrivelling infra-cock into a froth of onanistic self-congratulation, endlessly frotting away at a mental image of himself as some kind of Chuck Norris-style hardman, a veritable rightwing cockney Terminator, all because he was rude to a callow youth. Big fucking man, Littlejohn. You're so fucking hard, you've got me quaking in my Airwalks. You're like Batman, baby.
Well, actually he's more like that scene in V for Vendetta where Roger Allam feels himself up in his wet room while looking at videos of his own Glenn Beck-style rants, except that Roger Allam has an odd sort of sexy old guy appeal while Littlejohn oozes all the raw sexuality of a festering dog turd. But, because I like playing Codename V to the Lewis Protheros of this world, and because I figure Littlejohn is such an egomaniac he probably spends hours sat in his Florida mansion googling his own name, so there's at least a chance he'll see this, I feel it's incumbent on me to sour Littlejohn's little victory-shuffle by reminding him of two people who threw him to the floor and made him their bitch.
First, Johann Hari: yes, he spends far too much of his time sticking up for his pal Julie Bindel out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, but you have to give him props for pwning Littletool all over the shop in the lions' den that is Sky News , to the extent, in fact, that Littleman felt the aerated husks of his testes withdrawing so far into his scrotal cavity he lost the ability to speak and had to cut to viewers' emails.
But the daddy of Littlejohn-pwnership is and always will be esteemed fabulist Mr William Self, who famously swashbuckled Littleprick into such a rhetorical corner he wound up declaring himself better than Tolstoy.
That sound you hear? That low, whipped-dog whimper you detect emanating from somewhere near the Florida Keys? That's Littlejohn, keening at the funeral of his hard-on. He could take to the streets of Miami and find a seventeen-year-old American boy to act the arse with, but, y'know, they carry guns and besides, he doesn't have an audience of idiots brainwashed by his right-wing bullshit who can back him up if things turn ugly. No, for Littlejohn it's another lonely night in his ex-pat mansion, blowing his nose into fistfuls of dishonestly-earned cash as he weeps for the fact that whenever he appears on TV and goes up against a grown-up, he ends up with his pants 'round his ankles and a bouquet of marigolds shoved up his arse.
Good night, Richard. Sleep well. Don't have nightmares.
*Edited: How could I forget Stewart Lee's awesome piss-take of Littlejohn and all the crap he stands for? Well, I did, but I've fixed it now. *
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Life During Wartime
I'm posting this from the house of my wife, Michelle. I'm staying here at the moment for complicated reasons involving family. Put very simply, my mother, who suffers from a chronic skin condition, and an iatrogenic stomach condition which occurred as a result of a very misguided attempt on the part of one medic to fix said skin condition, had a severe attack of pain on Thursday night, and had to be taken to hospital. My father reacted in the usual way he does to things like this, by being a dick and trying to find some way to blame me for the situation. This is the kind of shit he's pulled since I was a kid. As a 32-year-old human being, I can't be arsed putting up with it, so I packed a couple of bags, headed over to Michelle's and have stayed here since.
Of course, Michelle and I are in the process of getting divorced, so I'm sleeping on the couch, when I sleep at all, which is not enough: I spent all of Thursday night awake and am still groggy from the sleep deprivation. It looks as if, as things stand, many plans are up in the air, but I want to stick to as much as I can: I still have the BPS forms to get filled in, and my writing I can get on with anywhere: I took my laptop with me, though haven't set it up on the broadband here yet, but I have it available to write on, and my poems all filed therein. In an odd way, that's a comfort.
I want to get on with writing. I want to get my BPS membership sorted out, and start moving towards doing something worthwhile in psychology. And I want to sort out getting a place of my own somehow, something I should have done back when, but things kept getting in the way. At this point I'm even considering a council place, something I previously wouldn't have done, but my priorities have changed. I want independence.
Most of all, though, I want my mum to get better.
Of course, Michelle and I are in the process of getting divorced, so I'm sleeping on the couch, when I sleep at all, which is not enough: I spent all of Thursday night awake and am still groggy from the sleep deprivation. It looks as if, as things stand, many plans are up in the air, but I want to stick to as much as I can: I still have the BPS forms to get filled in, and my writing I can get on with anywhere: I took my laptop with me, though haven't set it up on the broadband here yet, but I have it available to write on, and my poems all filed therein. In an odd way, that's a comfort.
I want to get on with writing. I want to get my BPS membership sorted out, and start moving towards doing something worthwhile in psychology. And I want to sort out getting a place of my own somehow, something I should have done back when, but things kept getting in the way. At this point I'm even considering a council place, something I previously wouldn't have done, but my priorities have changed. I want independence.
Most of all, though, I want my mum to get better.
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Ada Lovelace Day
It's March 24th, and that means it's Ada Lovelace Day - the day when bloggers all over the world pay homage to the achievements of women in the field of technology and science. If you're reading this post, then you have Ada Lovelace to thank for it: she wrote the first computer programme, for Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, back in 1843 (why don't we still call computers 'Difference Engines' by the way? In fact why don't we call all pieces of computational technology 'Difference Engines'? I'm gonna start that. Tomorrow morning I will, as is my habit, switch on my Lap Difference Engine to catch up with my blogs, then take my PDE [Portable Difference Engine] to work with me. There I shall labour at a Desktop Difference Engine for about eight hours, before coming home to do some serious writing on the LDE, perhaps followed by a session playing 'Sporting Activities' on my Nintendo Leisure Difference Engine. But I digress.)
Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer programme, and the amazing thing is that she did it as frickin' footnote. She appended notes to a translation of Luigi Menabrea's memoir about Babbage's Awesome Steampunk Name Engine which explained a way the engine could be used to calculate Bernoulli Numbers. The world's first ever computer programme, an item of world-changing importance, the first stirrings of a new world yearning to be born - and she introduced it by going 'oh, by the way, you could use the machine to do this...'
Women in Ada Lovelace's time lived in the footnotes. They couldn't vote. They weren't considered fully paid-up members of society. They didn't get the same education as men, they didn't have the same freedom to act as men, their access to many professions and positions was barred. And so for a long time Ada Lovelace didn't get her due. The Difference Engine was Babbage's invention and it was Babbage who got the credit. The fact that the first programme which could have ran on the engine was written by a woman went unremarked.
These days, women have advanced by leaps and bounds in society, but there are still women who live in the footnotes, whose incredible contribution to the world around is is not generally remarked on by mainstream culture. Here's an example: you're reading this on a computer. I'll be honest here: for all I know computers work by magic. But as far as I can work it out, the agents of that magic are billions of tiny transistors which buzz busily away beneath the sleek, black (or, if you're one of those Mac wankers, creamy white) surface of your console, all carrying out the innumerable near-magical functions which allow me to type these words and upload them to the net to read them. This is all computers are, really: extremely complicated Difference Engines. They can carry out many more functions than Babbage's device, but it's the same basic principle.
As our ability to miniaturise computer technology improves, we can put billions of transistors into these funny little boxes. It wasn't always thus. Gather round, children, and imagine a time when the integrated circuits that make up a computer were thought astonishingly sophisticated if they could hold as many as ten transistors. Then, people got smarter, and figured out a way of including, ooh, hundreds of transistors. Hundreds. Imagine what you could do with that.
What was needed, to get from the ten-diode world of then to the billion-transistor world of now, was a way of getting thousands of transistor-based circuits onto a single chip. This method was Very Large Scale Integration, or VSLI. VSLI was pioneered by Carver Mead and Lynn Conway, and is often referred to as the Mead-Conway Revolution because it represented a massive leap in the amount of functions which could be carried out on the computing equipment of the time. The textbook 'Introduction to VSLI Design', co-authored by Mead and Conway, was one of the standard textbooks on chip design and influenced a generation of computer programmers. The computer on which you're reading this is able to carry out its amazing array of functions because of the advances in chip design pioneered by Mead and Conway. We've came a long way since then, just as we've came a long way since Babbage's engine, but without that intermediate period when it was necessary to make the leap from hundreds to thousands, we wouldn't have billions of diodes-worth of power at our feverishly-typing fingers.
There's another reason why Lynn Conway is an important figure, of course, and it's why I haven't yet included a link to her biography until now.
Basically, the platform on which you're reading this blog exists because of the work of a trans woman. Not only did Lynn Conway revolutionise computer technology, she was also a pioneer in terms of gender identity, transitioning during a time when it was even harder for trans people to be accepted than it is today. Trans women are still horribly marginalised by mainstream society, and suffer consequences from lower wages, status inconsistency, and abuse to having a much greater risk of being murdered than people in the general population. These days, it's trans people who live in the footnotes, and whose contribution, even if it's awesome and game-changing, is overlooked by the mainstream. And, for that reason, Lynn Conway is my high-tech heroine for Ada Lovelace Day this year.
Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer programme, and the amazing thing is that she did it as frickin' footnote. She appended notes to a translation of Luigi Menabrea's memoir about Babbage's Awesome Steampunk Name Engine which explained a way the engine could be used to calculate Bernoulli Numbers. The world's first ever computer programme, an item of world-changing importance, the first stirrings of a new world yearning to be born - and she introduced it by going 'oh, by the way, you could use the machine to do this...'
Women in Ada Lovelace's time lived in the footnotes. They couldn't vote. They weren't considered fully paid-up members of society. They didn't get the same education as men, they didn't have the same freedom to act as men, their access to many professions and positions was barred. And so for a long time Ada Lovelace didn't get her due. The Difference Engine was Babbage's invention and it was Babbage who got the credit. The fact that the first programme which could have ran on the engine was written by a woman went unremarked.
These days, women have advanced by leaps and bounds in society, but there are still women who live in the footnotes, whose incredible contribution to the world around is is not generally remarked on by mainstream culture. Here's an example: you're reading this on a computer. I'll be honest here: for all I know computers work by magic. But as far as I can work it out, the agents of that magic are billions of tiny transistors which buzz busily away beneath the sleek, black (or, if you're one of those Mac wankers, creamy white) surface of your console, all carrying out the innumerable near-magical functions which allow me to type these words and upload them to the net to read them. This is all computers are, really: extremely complicated Difference Engines. They can carry out many more functions than Babbage's device, but it's the same basic principle.
As our ability to miniaturise computer technology improves, we can put billions of transistors into these funny little boxes. It wasn't always thus. Gather round, children, and imagine a time when the integrated circuits that make up a computer were thought astonishingly sophisticated if they could hold as many as ten transistors. Then, people got smarter, and figured out a way of including, ooh, hundreds of transistors. Hundreds. Imagine what you could do with that.
What was needed, to get from the ten-diode world of then to the billion-transistor world of now, was a way of getting thousands of transistor-based circuits onto a single chip. This method was Very Large Scale Integration, or VSLI. VSLI was pioneered by Carver Mead and Lynn Conway, and is often referred to as the Mead-Conway Revolution because it represented a massive leap in the amount of functions which could be carried out on the computing equipment of the time. The textbook 'Introduction to VSLI Design', co-authored by Mead and Conway, was one of the standard textbooks on chip design and influenced a generation of computer programmers. The computer on which you're reading this is able to carry out its amazing array of functions because of the advances in chip design pioneered by Mead and Conway. We've came a long way since then, just as we've came a long way since Babbage's engine, but without that intermediate period when it was necessary to make the leap from hundreds to thousands, we wouldn't have billions of diodes-worth of power at our feverishly-typing fingers.
There's another reason why Lynn Conway is an important figure, of course, and it's why I haven't yet included a link to her biography until now.
Basically, the platform on which you're reading this blog exists because of the work of a trans woman. Not only did Lynn Conway revolutionise computer technology, she was also a pioneer in terms of gender identity, transitioning during a time when it was even harder for trans people to be accepted than it is today. Trans women are still horribly marginalised by mainstream society, and suffer consequences from lower wages, status inconsistency, and abuse to having a much greater risk of being murdered than people in the general population. These days, it's trans people who live in the footnotes, and whose contribution, even if it's awesome and game-changing, is overlooked by the mainstream. And, for that reason, Lynn Conway is my high-tech heroine for Ada Lovelace Day this year.
Sunday, 21 March 2010
Why must we be surrounded by frickin' morons?
So you'll recall I was very pleased with this story, right? Particularly because it suggested that, in a world filled with idiots like Blanchard and Bindel, it showed that some people were behaving like decent humans and accepting the fact that we live in the future?
Well, fucking guess what.
Legally recognising that someone can have a gender outside the limited binary male/female division imperialist culture recognises would seem to be too hard for some people in Australia. Evidently it makes them choke on their Vegemite sarnies. How nice of John Hatzistergos and his ridiculous chin to make sure Norrie May Welby doesn't have the freedom to go about interfering with these people and their dull suburban lives drinking XXXX, watching Aussie Rules Football and quietly wishing for an end to the slow, lingering, inceremental brain-death which is all they've known since birth. What a fine use of his public office. It isn't as if his time could be better used prosecuting, say, actual criminals. Yes, John, you and your chin spend your time going after gender outlaws instead, it's easier than taking on cases which might get you shot. You big-chinned prick.
The future is coming. There is no point standing in the way of a world of greater freedom and diversity for the sake of a few votes from the kind of rat-faced, barely-literate scum who can't count beyond the number two or think beyond the notion of 'us and them.' Some day, politicians will realise that, and we will all be able to breathe a deep sigh of relief. Until then, we just have to keep doing what we can in our own small way to widen peoples' understanding of issues like this, even in the face of obstacles like Kevin Rudd's uniformly appalling taste in ties, or John Hatzistergos's walking solar eclipse of a jawbone.
Well, fucking guess what.
Legally recognising that someone can have a gender outside the limited binary male/female division imperialist culture recognises would seem to be too hard for some people in Australia. Evidently it makes them choke on their Vegemite sarnies. How nice of John Hatzistergos and his ridiculous chin to make sure Norrie May Welby doesn't have the freedom to go about interfering with these people and their dull suburban lives drinking XXXX, watching Aussie Rules Football and quietly wishing for an end to the slow, lingering, inceremental brain-death which is all they've known since birth. What a fine use of his public office. It isn't as if his time could be better used prosecuting, say, actual criminals. Yes, John, you and your chin spend your time going after gender outlaws instead, it's easier than taking on cases which might get you shot. You big-chinned prick.
The future is coming. There is no point standing in the way of a world of greater freedom and diversity for the sake of a few votes from the kind of rat-faced, barely-literate scum who can't count beyond the number two or think beyond the notion of 'us and them.' Some day, politicians will realise that, and we will all be able to breathe a deep sigh of relief. Until then, we just have to keep doing what we can in our own small way to widen peoples' understanding of issues like this, even in the face of obstacles like Kevin Rudd's uniformly appalling taste in ties, or John Hatzistergos's walking solar eclipse of a jawbone.
Monday, 15 March 2010
Late-breaking FAIL: webcomic creator in cissupremacist quiz error
I decided recently that I should apply for membership of the British Psychological Society. I have a valid degree to apply for graduate membership, and the recent business at the APA over the DSM-V categorisation of Gender Incongruence shows that psychology, as a science, needs people who can think beyond the binary. Ironically, one of my favourite webcomics has recently provided an indication of why this is the case.
XKCD is a webcomic produced by Randall Munroe. Munroe comes from a scientific background, having worked as a contractor for NASA, and often includes geeky, science-based humour in the strip. He's also currently conducting some kind of research into colour blindness, and has included a survey on colour-blindness on his site.
If you've been following this blog awhile, you'll have worked out what's annoyed me. It's this question:
Do you have a Y chromosome?
If unsure, select "Yes" if you are physically male and "No" if you are physically female. If you have had SRS, please respond for your sex at birth. This question is relevant to the genetics of colorblindness.
What's particularly annoying about this is the fact that Munroe is clearly trying to be gender-inclusive, bless him. And I can sort of see why you might want to know the birth gender of people who are colour-blind, if you're studying the genetics of the condition. But...the fail. It burns.
It burns for a lot of reasons. Mainly because it's more complicated than that. Munroe doesn't allow for intersex people: by reducing 'physical maleness' to the matter of having a Y-chromosome, he excludes men with Klinefelter's syndrome (on which note check out Helen from Bird of Paradox's post about KS Awareness Week), who have a Y chromosome, it's true, but also have an extra X chromosome, and are less 'physically male' than the generic-model XY-guy. He excludes those people with tetragametic chimerism who can have XX and XY chromosome structures in different parts of their bodies. And he is of course tremendously hurtful to trans people by reducing the issue of their gender to what chromosomes they were born with.
I don't think that this was deliberate on Munroe's part. He's mentioned people who've had SRS, he's tried to frame the question not as 'are you male or female?' but 'do you have a Y-chromosome?' He's tried. This isn't the kind of Cisfail the Guardian, say, engage in when they run columns about trans people and queerness by folk like Julie Bindel or Bea Campbell. But he's got the whole thing bloody wrong. Not just ethically, in fact, but methodologically.
Because the thing is, doing a survey on the internet, in which anyone can take part, is a lousy way to carry out research. You'll get lots of responses, but how do you know those responses are the same people? How do you know which participants make up your sample? The data at the start of the survey are meaningless because - and I'm gonna rock you in your socks here, people - the internet lies. Anyone (i.e. me) could go on Munroe's survey, and claim to be, say, a colourblind Frenchwoman in possession of a genuine Y-chromosome, and then proceed to answer the survey by, say, giving the colours increasingly ridiculous names. This happens when you do research. One of my old psych lecturers said that psychology experiments are tainted, for the most part, because the samples they usually use are made up of psychology students, and usually most of those students will either (a) be nice students trying to 'help' you get the result you 'want' or (b) evil little feckers (i.e. me, again) deliberately trying to give answers which will give you the result you don't 'want.' So, y'know, doing a survey on the internet in which anyone can participate is methodologically unsound from the get-go. So why ask an offensive question in the first place?
It'll get lots more responses, that's certain. But a more tightly controlled research project carried out among a smaller participant population would yield better quality data from participants who could be much better described. As it is, Munroe's survey is basically an open invitation to people to lie about their gender, about whether or not they're colourblind, about what country they're from (and we've noticed the annoying 'Tell us your native language, but answer questions in English' question, haven't we?) and so on, and then to 'answer' the survey by calling the colours things like 'Jan Vermeer's Pannetone Cyclotron', 'Grrr-nommy-nomminy' and 'the mongspoddler'. Not that I would endorse such behaviour (which may or may not have been carried out by me).
The fact is that, frankly, trans people, as much as we might wish it otherwise, are such a statistically small section of the population (yes, even on the internet) that, unless you're actually doing research on the trans community (and research in such a sensitive area should come with very specialised ethical requirements), it isn't worth controlling for the possibility of trans men and women answering your survey. Munroe could easily get away with asking the question 'Are you male or female?' safe in the knowledge that most of his results will come from cis people, and that any statistical patterns relating to biological gender will be easily apparent in the data. To get into discussion of chromosomes, to talk of being 'physically male' or 'physically female' and to ask trans people to give their birth gender (therefore reminding them of their status in some bigots' eyes as not real women or men, with all the traumatic memories that will trigger) is both unnecessary and irresponsible. It's bad science, in both senses of the word. And, coming from the creator of a strip who's so often found humour in mocking other peoples' scientific errors, it's a depressing thing to see.
As any scientist will tell you, the biggest part of the job is asking the right questions. Munroe has tried to ask the right question in his survey, but he's tried too hard: and when he finds himself toiling through page after page of deliberately buggered-up results, he'll only have himself to blame.
XKCD is a webcomic produced by Randall Munroe. Munroe comes from a scientific background, having worked as a contractor for NASA, and often includes geeky, science-based humour in the strip. He's also currently conducting some kind of research into colour blindness, and has included a survey on colour-blindness on his site.
If you've been following this blog awhile, you'll have worked out what's annoyed me. It's this question:
Do you have a Y chromosome?
If unsure, select "Yes" if you are physically male and "No" if you are physically female. If you have had SRS, please respond for your sex at birth. This question is relevant to the genetics of colorblindness.
What's particularly annoying about this is the fact that Munroe is clearly trying to be gender-inclusive, bless him. And I can sort of see why you might want to know the birth gender of people who are colour-blind, if you're studying the genetics of the condition. But...the fail. It burns.
It burns for a lot of reasons. Mainly because it's more complicated than that. Munroe doesn't allow for intersex people: by reducing 'physical maleness' to the matter of having a Y-chromosome, he excludes men with Klinefelter's syndrome (on which note check out Helen from Bird of Paradox's post about KS Awareness Week), who have a Y chromosome, it's true, but also have an extra X chromosome, and are less 'physically male' than the generic-model XY-guy. He excludes those people with tetragametic chimerism who can have XX and XY chromosome structures in different parts of their bodies. And he is of course tremendously hurtful to trans people by reducing the issue of their gender to what chromosomes they were born with.
I don't think that this was deliberate on Munroe's part. He's mentioned people who've had SRS, he's tried to frame the question not as 'are you male or female?' but 'do you have a Y-chromosome?' He's tried. This isn't the kind of Cisfail the Guardian, say, engage in when they run columns about trans people and queerness by folk like Julie Bindel or Bea Campbell. But he's got the whole thing bloody wrong. Not just ethically, in fact, but methodologically.
Because the thing is, doing a survey on the internet, in which anyone can take part, is a lousy way to carry out research. You'll get lots of responses, but how do you know those responses are the same people? How do you know which participants make up your sample? The data at the start of the survey are meaningless because - and I'm gonna rock you in your socks here, people - the internet lies. Anyone (i.e. me) could go on Munroe's survey, and claim to be, say, a colourblind Frenchwoman in possession of a genuine Y-chromosome, and then proceed to answer the survey by, say, giving the colours increasingly ridiculous names. This happens when you do research. One of my old psych lecturers said that psychology experiments are tainted, for the most part, because the samples they usually use are made up of psychology students, and usually most of those students will either (a) be nice students trying to 'help' you get the result you 'want' or (b) evil little feckers (i.e. me, again) deliberately trying to give answers which will give you the result you don't 'want.' So, y'know, doing a survey on the internet in which anyone can participate is methodologically unsound from the get-go. So why ask an offensive question in the first place?
It'll get lots more responses, that's certain. But a more tightly controlled research project carried out among a smaller participant population would yield better quality data from participants who could be much better described. As it is, Munroe's survey is basically an open invitation to people to lie about their gender, about whether or not they're colourblind, about what country they're from (and we've noticed the annoying 'Tell us your native language, but answer questions in English' question, haven't we?) and so on, and then to 'answer' the survey by calling the colours things like 'Jan Vermeer's Pannetone Cyclotron', 'Grrr-nommy-nomminy' and 'the mongspoddler'. Not that I would endorse such behaviour (which may or may not have been carried out by me).
The fact is that, frankly, trans people, as much as we might wish it otherwise, are such a statistically small section of the population (yes, even on the internet) that, unless you're actually doing research on the trans community (and research in such a sensitive area should come with very specialised ethical requirements), it isn't worth controlling for the possibility of trans men and women answering your survey. Munroe could easily get away with asking the question 'Are you male or female?' safe in the knowledge that most of his results will come from cis people, and that any statistical patterns relating to biological gender will be easily apparent in the data. To get into discussion of chromosomes, to talk of being 'physically male' or 'physically female' and to ask trans people to give their birth gender (therefore reminding them of their status in some bigots' eyes as not real women or men, with all the traumatic memories that will trigger) is both unnecessary and irresponsible. It's bad science, in both senses of the word. And, coming from the creator of a strip who's so often found humour in mocking other peoples' scientific errors, it's a depressing thing to see.
As any scientist will tell you, the biggest part of the job is asking the right questions. Munroe has tried to ask the right question in his survey, but he's tried too hard: and when he finds himself toiling through page after page of deliberately buggered-up results, he'll only have himself to blame.
Sunday, 14 March 2010
The Week in FAIL
Maybe it's something in the stars. Maybe the turn of the seasons, and the first signs of proper spring weather have made people friskier than usual. Maybe there's something in the water. Or maybe years of exposure to bad media have finally, irrevocably cracked the collective global brain. But if this week was marked out by any one thing, it was by masses, absolute steaming shitheaps, of FAIL. FAIL everywhere you look: here a FAIL, there a FAIL, everywhere a FAIL-FAIL. Want examples?
Well, for starters, there was the UK Government report which decided that it's apparently alright for teachers to be members of the fash. What a load of cock. The BNP are scum, usually with lists of criminal convictions as long as your arm, and they operate a policy of trying to intimidate people out of opposing them. I don't have kids; but if I did, I wouldn't want BNP members anywhere near them. Schools have a duty to help kids develop a sense of citizenship as members of a multicultural society, and the BNP are actively against that. As well as being actively against trans people, gay people, disabled people, and the existence of rape as a concept. If you hold views like that, you shouldn't be in schools. In fact, you shouldn't be in society. You should be in the woods, dangling from a tree with your own shit running down your legs while birds piss in your eyeballs. And that's what I think when I'm in a forgiving mood.
What else happened in the world of FAIL this week? Well, Lady Gaga finally put the kibosh on the rumours that she's (yawn) 'actually a man', and, ironically enough, did so in a manner which completely sucks up to THE man. It's okay, everyone! She doesn't have a dick after all! Lad-mag readers: you may now masturbate yourself safely into scrotal oblivion untroubled by complex thoughts about gender and sexuality! Rejoice! Let joy be unconfined! Whatever. I still like the tunes, but as far as the really cool kids are concerned, the Gaga moment is now over. She belongs to the people who drink in Wetherspoons now. She's dead to us.
(Oddly enough it was something of a week for the intersection between trans issues and annoying little pop-waifs. An entity that calls herself Kesha has been sharing her 'appreciation' of trans women with media outlets for...well, some reason or other. It's unfortunate that she seems to have confused trans women with drag queens in her description, but I suppose her heart is sort of in the right place and it's nice to see someone in the media saying something positive. Still, though. Category error is a form of FAIL.)
But the top FAIL of this week has to be the ludicrously disproportionate response of some big beasts of UK poetry to Todd Swift's complaints regarding the editorial selections for Roddy Lumsden's poetry anthology Identity Parade. I'm not entirely sure I agree with Swift regarding Lumsden's decisions, but I can respect the fact that, unlike some toilers in the poetic vineyard, he isn't afraid to put his career on the line by fronting up to the big boys. Said big boys did not exactly cover themselves in glory with their responses: Lumsden felt so confident in his selection that he called in a pal to deep-six Swift's impending review of the anthology, and Bloodaxe head honcho Neil Astley took to ripping the piss out of Swift on his Facebook page like a fourteen-year-old girl making an especially inept attempt at cyberbullying. Nice work, fellas. You've really countered the view of the UK poetry scene as cliquey, tribalist and backstabbing. FAIL.
And that was the week in FAIL. Now, here's Bill with the weather...
Well, for starters, there was the UK Government report which decided that it's apparently alright for teachers to be members of the fash. What a load of cock. The BNP are scum, usually with lists of criminal convictions as long as your arm, and they operate a policy of trying to intimidate people out of opposing them. I don't have kids; but if I did, I wouldn't want BNP members anywhere near them. Schools have a duty to help kids develop a sense of citizenship as members of a multicultural society, and the BNP are actively against that. As well as being actively against trans people, gay people, disabled people, and the existence of rape as a concept. If you hold views like that, you shouldn't be in schools. In fact, you shouldn't be in society. You should be in the woods, dangling from a tree with your own shit running down your legs while birds piss in your eyeballs. And that's what I think when I'm in a forgiving mood.
What else happened in the world of FAIL this week? Well, Lady Gaga finally put the kibosh on the rumours that she's (yawn) 'actually a man', and, ironically enough, did so in a manner which completely sucks up to THE man. It's okay, everyone! She doesn't have a dick after all! Lad-mag readers: you may now masturbate yourself safely into scrotal oblivion untroubled by complex thoughts about gender and sexuality! Rejoice! Let joy be unconfined! Whatever. I still like the tunes, but as far as the really cool kids are concerned, the Gaga moment is now over. She belongs to the people who drink in Wetherspoons now. She's dead to us.
(Oddly enough it was something of a week for the intersection between trans issues and annoying little pop-waifs. An entity that calls herself Kesha has been sharing her 'appreciation' of trans women with media outlets for...well, some reason or other. It's unfortunate that she seems to have confused trans women with drag queens in her description, but I suppose her heart is sort of in the right place and it's nice to see someone in the media saying something positive. Still, though. Category error is a form of FAIL.)
But the top FAIL of this week has to be the ludicrously disproportionate response of some big beasts of UK poetry to Todd Swift's complaints regarding the editorial selections for Roddy Lumsden's poetry anthology Identity Parade. I'm not entirely sure I agree with Swift regarding Lumsden's decisions, but I can respect the fact that, unlike some toilers in the poetic vineyard, he isn't afraid to put his career on the line by fronting up to the big boys. Said big boys did not exactly cover themselves in glory with their responses: Lumsden felt so confident in his selection that he called in a pal to deep-six Swift's impending review of the anthology, and Bloodaxe head honcho Neil Astley took to ripping the piss out of Swift on his Facebook page like a fourteen-year-old girl making an especially inept attempt at cyberbullying. Nice work, fellas. You've really countered the view of the UK poetry scene as cliquey, tribalist and backstabbing. FAIL.
And that was the week in FAIL. Now, here's Bill with the weather...
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