The Loveshade Family Blog

For every 100 people who say they don't believe in stereotypes, probably 98 of them actually do.

10 MYTHS ABOUT MEN

Brendan Tapley explores 10 myths about men. Two of Tapley's points have gotten a lot of negative feedback: "Myth #2: Sex Is What Matters the Most" and "Myth #7: A Woman's Looks Are Everything."  Posters claim these aren't myths, and that men care more about sex and a woman's looks that anything else.

Are current gender stereotypes so pervasive that even men believe the stereotypes about themselves?  Sadly, this appears to be true, even though it's not surprising.  Some blondes really do think blondes are dumber than brunettes, and many American blacks in the 1940s believed blacks (or negros) were inferior to whites.  This type of self-stereotyping often begins in childhood.  Children who are taught to feel inferior, or who are raised to believe they "want" to behave a certain way, will usually fall into the role laid out for them.

But these stereotypes, like all stereotypes, aren't true--they don't apply to everyone.

BEAUTY IS IN THE EYES OF THE BEHOLDER

I remember many years ago I knew two women who lived in the same complex.  One of them I found drop-dead gorgeous; the other I must admit I found a little homely.  I got to know both of them.  They were both very nice people.

After a while, the one that had seemed gorgeous looked pretty to me.  I liked her, but I had gotten used to her looks.  And one day I noticed that the one who had seemed somewhat homely now looked pretty to me as well.  I liked her, and had gotten used to her looks.

To put this principle bluntly, if men were just going for sex, the girl who "gave it up" on her first date would snag a husband immediately.  And if looks were the thing men were going for, Playboy would have gone out of business in the 1960s because there were already issues available with women men found sexually attractive.  The attraction that happens because of looks can fade very quickly, which is why Playboy--and publications that are much more extreme--still make money with new models.

It's also why a friend of mine who does judge women by their looks has had unhappy relationship after unhappy relationship.  And as long as men, women, boys, girls, and transgendered individuals are crammed into their separate boxes, relationships will continue to be ruined by stereotypes and assigned gender roles.

LEARN MORE

To see the other myths visit http://glo.msn.com/relationships/debunking-dude-theory-1533313.story?gt1=49006

For more on gender stereotyping, see Gender Genesis.

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Image is a line drawing of a human male. Taken from an image of the w:Pioneer plaque as created by NASA.  (vectorised by OldakQuill for wikicommons). Found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pioneer_plaque_line-drawing_of_a_human_male.svg

Entries by persons who are members or associates of The Loveshade Family do not necessarily represent the views of the whole family.

Posted by Alden Loveshade at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

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Senator Al Franken (D-MN). introduced The Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA) in the U. S. Senate.  If approved, the bill would require schools that receive federal funding to not discriminate against students on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

A version of the bill was previously been introduced into the House of Representatives by Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) in January.  The Senate bill has 22 co-sponsors, and sponsorship of the House bill has increased to over 100.

This bill would not only help prevent discrimination against gay and lesbian students, but also those who are transgendered.

LINKS

To see all our entries dealing with the Student Non-Discrimination Act (including our first entry on Constance McMillen), click on http://www.loveshade.org/blog-mt/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=student non-discrimination act

To see all our entries dealing with homosexual issues, click on http://loveshade.org/blog-mt/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=homosexual

To read the House version of the bill, go to http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.4530.IH:

It sometimes takes a few days for a version of a bill to be available online.  We will include a link to the official Senate version when available.

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 07:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

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'I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.' -- Bill Hicks, Queen's Theatre Late Show (1993)

'Like the war on drugs, the war on terror is absolutely unwinnable.' -- Tim Strawman (2004)

'In the grand scheme, it has not been successful. Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified." -- U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske (2010)

The so-called War on Drugs has failed.  Even Kerlikowske, who is in command of the "troops", now admits that the effort that technically began in 1970 has failed.  The war has cost a trillion dollars and thousands of lives, yet drug use hasn't dropped.

Even the much lauded DARE program, where school children spent part of a day getting balloons and stickers and hearing people talk about how bad drugs are, has had no measurable effect.  But the program continued, and school board members and city officials got their smiling but concerned faces in front of newspaper-reading voters.

In reality, the war's been fought much longer than 40 years.  America's "war" began in 1920 with the passing of the 18th amendment to the U. S. Constitution, the one that created the Prohibition against alcohol.  The result was the creation of a criminal society where ordinary citizens regularly violated the U. S. Constitution.  It also led to the creation of organized crime in America, and may have been a factor leading to the Great Depression.

In 1933, the amendment was repealed, and the Depression slowly began to ease.  But organized crime remained, simply focusing on different businesses.

In a real war, you know the enemy.  You know who you're fighting.  It's Japan or Germany or the United States. In a drug war, there is no enemy, unless it's everyone who takes drugs.  But that's virtually all of America.

For every ad on American TV that tells people to say no to drugs, there's dozens pushing them.  Even drugs that require prescriptions are being pushed every day on American televison.  You don't have that in a real war.

In World War II, movie goers saw many shorts promoting the America war effort.  But for every one of those shorts, movie goers did not see dozens of reels telling them to recycle their rubber for Japan.  And there weren't hoards of Americans sneaking Japanese and Germans into their homes so they could be shot by them.  That is of course ridiculous, and the war analogy simply collapses on paper and in real life.

And we cannot divide drugs into good and bad.  Alcohol is legal; used in moderation, it can help prevent heart attack.  The Bible says a little wine is good for the stomach, and there's evidence that's true (some medical exceptions apply).  Abused, it can kill.  So can life-saving prescription drugs.  And some illegal drugs are known to be highly effective in certain treatments.

And locking people up hasn't stopped it.  Aproximately 50% of people housed in American federal prisons are there because of drug-related charges.

What is the solution?  It's what was proposed by those "crazy freaks" way back in the 1960s: education and counseling and professional medical help.  Drugs don't force themselves into people's mouths and veins; people take them willingly.  People need to be given accurate information from the beginning, not the exaggerated horror stories the government likes to tell.  And some people take drugs in a subconcious attempt to self-medicate because they don't have access to the medical care they really need.

And others take drugs simply because they make them feel good.  If those people are trained in their safe use, that's not necessarily a problem--until the government makes it a problem.

Timothy Leary, back in the 1960s, advocated training people in the safe use of drugs, telling them what to avoid, monitoring their use in the beginning, and teaching them how to use them responsibly.  In other words, use the same methods we use to teach people how to drive or to fly a plane or to play the piano.  Don't let someone crash a plane and then teach them how to fly.  It's being prepared, and it's also the old but still true proverb that, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Leary also said, back in the 1960s, that fighting drug use would not work.  He said it would lead to more organized crime and violence.  Representatives of the U. S. Government who thought they could stop drug use literally laughed at him.  Who's laughing now?

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The Associated Press has a detailed article on the failure of the War on Drugs, which includes the quote by Gil Kerlikowske, called "AP IMPACT: US drug war has met none of its goals" at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100513/ap_on_re_us/failed_drug_war.  Thanks to Danacasso for pointing this out to us.

The Tim Strawman quote is from 'We can't win the "war on terror" because there's no such thing' at http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2004/09/we_cant_win_the.html

The Prohibtion picture at http://richarddetrich.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/prohibition.gif appears on the page http://richarddetrich.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/the-wasted-war/

The ad for Mordidine at http://laurakmoore.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/vintage-drug-ads.jpg appears on the page http://laurakmoore.wordpress.com/category/health-and-fitness/.

No threat to any copyright the photos may have is intended.

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 02:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

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"

Paranoia strikes deep / Into your life it will creep / It starts when you're always afraid / You step out of line, the man come and take you away."

-- Neil Young and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, 'For What It's Worth,' 1966.

In certain times and certain places, being pinned with a certain label can destroy you.  The label pinned on you could be Communist, or Jew, or Nazi, or Gypsy, or Witch, or Homosexual, or Pedophile, or Christian.  The label doesn't matter, as long as fear and ignorance and their offspring hate go along with it.  When fear and ignorance are in control, "presumed innocent until proven guilty" doesn't matter.  If you're accused, you're guilty.

Former Georgia kindergarten teacher Tonya Craft, who lived with two years of accusations, hate and death threats, was cleared of all 22 counts of molestation and sexual abuse.  It began--and ended--with three young girls.  But her real-life trial is far from over.  There are still threats against her.  And her case cost Craft her job, her reputation and her home.

The charges came from when she was a kindergarten teacher at the American Chickamauga Elementary School, and one of her accusers was her own daughter.  The girl claimed her mother had put medicine on her.  But in a country obsessed with tracking down and destroying child molesters/pedophiles, that, and the testimony of two girls, was enough.

Two young girls were found touching each other. According to history and psychology, that is normal human behavior.  But not in this time of paranoia.  A monstrous, depraved, perverted adult must have done something awful and against the girls' will, so that person must be found and punished.

Fortunately for Craft, the girls were not very skilled at being consistent in telling their stories.  After five weeks of trial, the court and the jury discovered the youngsters were telling the tales they had been taught by their parents.  In cases like this, that sort of coaching by parents and prosecutors is commonplace.  And so are the angry mobs.

Some of us recently saw an article on the Internet where a man had been arrested on suspicion of similar allegations.  People posted that they wanted him raped in prison, tortured and killed.  He hadn't been found guilty, hadn't been tried, hadn't even been formally charged.  It didn't matter.  Paranoia says attack and destroy first, ask questions later.

One of us personally knows of a case where two very young boys engaged in oral sex with each other.  When questioned, one of them tied the act in with his grandfather.  The child was removed, and the family went through hell.  The authorities finally learned that the boy who "accused" his grandfather was not the one who initiated the act.  The grandfather had nothing to do with it.  Fortunately, the supposed perpetrator did not work in a school, and did not get his name blasted for public degradation on TV, radio and newspapers.

Craft was not so lucky.  She is the victim of paranoid people who do not or will not understand how a child's mind works.  Young children will try to get out of trouble by saying an adult told them to do something or showed them how to do it.  And children will follow the promptings of adults on what is real and what is not.  Even a misworded question--or something a child saw on TV--can make fantasy real in a child's mind.

As a simple example, children believe Santa Claus is real and brings presents with flying reindeer on Christmas Eve because people tell them that's real.  Without the coaching of adults and older children, Santa would be no more than some white-haired man in a red suit.

Craft may never teach again, and is thinking of entering the legal profession to help others.  She said, “I want to make people aware that this can happen anytime, anywhere, to anyone...(and) children that are a part of false allegations are just as devastated as children that truly are molested.”

Craft was able to get together $500,000 for a defense, but she lost her job and her home.  And she lost two years when she could not even see her daughter, and rarely got to see her son.  No court of law can give those lost years back--and the court will not return her money or her home.

Think for yourself.  If you were accused, how much money could you raise?  And if you couldn't raise it and as a result got falsely convicted, how would you handle years, maybe the rest of your life, in prison?  And if you did finally "serve your time" for being innocently accused and convicted, how would you handle being proclaimed on your driver's licence and to the world on the Internet that you are a Registered Sex Offender?

We live in a time when more and more evidence shows that intimate, affectionate, skin-to-skin contact between a young child and parents, teachers and family is critical to that child's well being.  And we live in a time when people are becoming increasingly paranoid about giving children the affection they desperately need for fear of being called abusers and arrested.

If we really care about children--and themselves--we will do what it suggests in the song quoted above: "We better stop, children, what's that sound? / Everybody look what's going down."

Read more at: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/37103788/ns/today-today_people/?GT1=43001#ixzz0nm5lA49t

The problem with paranoically "protecting children" is not unique to the United States.  In another case this month, Sherry Sherret-Robinson who had been falsely convicted of infanicide was finally cleared in Canada.  But even though innocent, her name remains on the Child Abuse Registry.  Learn more at http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2010/05/sherry-sherret-so-little-resolved-still_10.html and learn about this and many more cases at http://www.fixcas.com/news/now/news.htm.

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The photo of Edith, Lorina and Alice Liddell is by Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll (1832-1898).

The photo of the girl with Santa Claus is by John Boyd (1865-1941) as found at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Little_girl_with_Santa_Claus%2C_1909.jpg

The photo of the handcuffs is by Klaus with K and is described at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Handcuffs01_2008-07-27.jpg

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 02:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

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Sue Lowden, a Nevada Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has got a doozey of a way to reform health care.  If you get a check up from a doctor, give him a chicken as payment.  What a novel idea.  I'm all for it.  Bring back the barter system.  If you get a heart transplant, paint the doctor's house.

Our forefathers in the rural areas used the barter system, not like those big city dudes who used money.  So I'm all for this.  Screw the doctors.  Why should they make money?  So what if they spent 12 years in medical school and as an intern.  Why should they expect to buy a car and raise their families?  But I'm not against the doctor I'm against the health insurance. Those death panelists get way too much. 
 
This idea could catch on and it can be used for more than medicine.  If I want a new car (like a Mercedes or BMW), I can give them a cow in trade.  If I need a yacht, I can trade an old comic book (not too old) for it.  I can give the IRS two chickens to pay for my taxes.  All in all, it sounds like a good idea.
 
This is another brilliant idea from the radical Republicans.  This comes from the same people who won't recognize the president's official birth certificate, and who say that the Earth doesn't rotate about the sun.  Are these people for real?  Farmer Joe might be able to barter for small things, but not brain surgery.  Wake up; it's time to get real.
 
Heres the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/21/chickens-for-checkups-dem_n_546762.html
 
Some Democrats put up a site where can "write a letter to Sue Lowden with your ailment and what you're willing to trade" at http://www.dscc.org/chickens

And somebody figured out exactly how many chickens it would take for a tonsilectomy and other procedures at http://www.lowdenplan.com/


Have a Great day.

Rooster photo by Muhammad Mahdi Karim is licensed by the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation--for more details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rooster_portrait2.jpg

Entries by persons who are members or associates of The Loveshade Family do not necessarily represent the views of the whole family.

Posted by Vernon Avaritt at 03:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

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