I've recently read Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, a fascinating book about the decline of violence in the world. He spends a few chapters simply trying to establish that violence is declining, historically, because to most people, that sounds patently false. How can the world be getting less violent, when every day we hear on the news about some fresh new atrocity? It wasn't like this when I was a kid!
Well, no, it wasn't. It was actually worse, what with higher crime rates, various local wars and genocides, all against the backdrop of two superpowers threatening each other with nuclear weapons. And of course, it was still worse, going back a generation to the World Wars. The pattern breaks here and there, but over centuries it's consistent and undeniable. But why do we so consistently have the opposite impression? Why do I have this sense that the world is more dangerous today than it was when I was young?
One obvious explanation is that our world is much more interconnected today. Whether or not violence is more rare, we have almost instant live reporting of it now, so we are drawing our experience from a much larger field.
I think this is probably a big part of it, but it seems to me there may be another even simpler explanation: the cumulative nature of history.
Consider: when you're born, you have no history. Nothing has happened to you yet. And the odds are, you probably won't be affected by crime or violence for some time yet. Even in violent times, parents tend to try to shield their children from exposure to such things.
So when I was little, sure I knew there was such a thing as violence. But murder was just something that people did in carefully calculated schemes that were almost but never quite clever enough to prevent Columbo from figuring out who did it in time for the closing credits. War similarly was known only from toys and historical dramas. I suppose I had heard mention of the Vietnam War, but it felt no more immediate to me as a child than the Boer War. The only actual violence I encountered then was the occasional spanking. The world I lived in was peaceful and free of crime.
Of course, it wasn't actually. As distant from my consciousness as Vietnam was, I did not know at the time that there had been a real possibility of my father being drafted to go fight there before moving to Canada. And in 1965, the year I was born, there was a terrorist bombing at the downtown airport, which I only learned about just now as I was writing this post by googling for "Edmonton murder 1965" to get some idea of what the actual crime rate was. I had never heard of this! How many other noteworthy crimes and acts of violence took place while I was growing up, that never impinged upon my consciousness?
In the sixth grade, I got into my first actual fistfight. The fifth grade bully had, I suppose, established his dominance over all the fifth graders, and as one of the meeker sixth grade boys, I was the next rung on the ladder. Unfamiliar with schoolyard fight protocol, I didn't realize I was supposed to wrestle him to the ground and claim victory by pushing his face in the dirt, so knocked him down with a punch to the jaw. So shocked at this exposure to genuine violence, and affronted at having been forced to harm someone, I was the one who was crying, which I vaguely remember him trying to cite as proof he had beaten me. But the world had become, for me, a more violent place, because the sixth-grade me had been in a fight, while the younger version thought such things the stuff of fiction.
Around that time, I'd suffered other blows to my innocence. One night, someone in a truck had made the rounds, stealing almost every bicycle in the neighbourhood. Another day, someone walked off with my cheap plastic sled from the toboggan hill. So I could point to examples of how the world was nastier than when I was younger: I'd been a victim of two thefts and an assault.
And the list just keeps on growing as I get older. I met my first murderer in university, though I didn't find out he was a murderer until he disappeared from our social scene. A few months later, a friend reported having seen in the paper that this fellow had lost his appeal and been sentence to life in prison for killing his wife! None of us had even known that he'd been married. (A few years later, it just so happened that my crim instructor in first year law was the same lawyer who'd defended him.) Several years ago, there was a fatal stabbing in the parking lot of my local supermarket, three blocks from my house. Two years ago, a shooting just down the street. And of course, with live reporting of breaking news, events that happen far away now register on my consciousness with greater immediacy than when TV was young.
The point I'm making is this: every single experience of violence is like a scar in memory, and we tend to judge how violent the world is by how many such scars we have. My 5 year old self had no scars. My 10 year old self had two or three minor scrapes. My 20 year old self had those two or three minor scrapes, plus another 10 years worth of randomness. My 25 year old self had all of that, plus the scar of having known an actual murderer. My 30 year old self had all that, plus having watched O.J. Simpson's white Blazer in real-time fleeing the police. The actual rate of new scars has been declining, but since the old ones don't disappear, my memory is much more full of nasty incidents today than even five years ago, and so I sense the illusion that the world today is more dangerous than it was.
What I like about this explanation is that it holds true in any age. If you look through writings of a hundred or a thousand years ago, you can almost always find someone complaining about how the world is getting worse, and kids today are disrespectful and unruly and society is going to hell blah blah blah. If that were so, this'd have to be the worst time in all human history to live. Somehow, though, I don't think that's a viable claim to make.
Wednesday, 19 February 2014
Tuesday, 18 February 2014
Response to Government's Public Consultation on Prostitution.
Years ago, I wrote my MA thesis on a principle of effective rule enforcement I stumbled upon while designing rules for a live action roleplaying game. I devoted much of one chapter to the question of prostitution, and how our current criminalization regime is largely responsible for making prostitution as nasty and exploitative a business as it is. (This nastiness, of course, is what we point to to justify criminalizing it. The argument is viciously circular, and not because it's about vice.)
Well, today, a friend linked to a government web page soliciting public input on what to do about the recent Bedford decision, which struck down most of three sections of the Criminal Code dealing with prostitution. I thought I would share the government's questions, and my responses to them, here.
Absolutely not. While I wouldn't feel comfortable about purchasing such services myself, there is no legitimate reason for the state to interfere with consensual transactions between informed adults. The basic principles of contract law are largely effective in reducing abuse and exploitation in other areas, and it is perverse to deny such protection to sexual transactions.
Of course not, for the same reasons outlined in question 1. Commerce including can and should be regulated through zoning and other rules, but the criminal law is absolutely the wrong tool to use.
The very same limitations that we apply to all other transactions: abuse, coercion, fraud must not be allowed, and, if appropriate, health, safety and environmental protocols. For commercial establishments, health inspections and business licenses are appropriate, and perhaps there could be some sort or trademark or certification scheme, but casual transactions are nobody else's business.
Absolutely not. If we make it a criminal offence for people to benefit from someone's exploitation, most of our economy will grind to a halt. It is not the BENEFIT which is the bad thing, but the harm it may induce someone to inflict. Let us ensure that people are free and uncoerced in their various transactions, but I should think that in general we would WANT people to benefit from things.
Prostitution triggers a powerful ICK! response from most people, myself included. But government's duty is to protect our liberties, not to enforce our personal preferences, even if a majority happens to share them. As immoral and distasteful as we may find prostitution, our attempts to stamp it out with the criminal law only serve to make it more abusive, more dangerous, and more in need of stamping out. Not only is this an injustice for those involved, but it is fiscally irresponsible: we are actively spending money to enforce laws which make the problem of prostitution worse and more costly.
Well, today, a friend linked to a government web page soliciting public input on what to do about the recent Bedford decision, which struck down most of three sections of the Criminal Code dealing with prostitution. I thought I would share the government's questions, and my responses to them, here.
Of course not, for the same reasons outlined in question 1. Commerce including can and should be regulated through zoning and other rules, but the criminal law is absolutely the wrong tool to use.
The very same limitations that we apply to all other transactions: abuse, coercion, fraud must not be allowed, and, if appropriate, health, safety and environmental protocols. For commercial establishments, health inspections and business licenses are appropriate, and perhaps there could be some sort or trademark or certification scheme, but casual transactions are nobody else's business.
Absolutely not. If we make it a criminal offence for people to benefit from someone's exploitation, most of our economy will grind to a halt. It is not the BENEFIT which is the bad thing, but the harm it may induce someone to inflict. Let us ensure that people are free and uncoerced in their various transactions, but I should think that in general we would WANT people to benefit from things.
Prostitution triggers a powerful ICK! response from most people, myself included. But government's duty is to protect our liberties, not to enforce our personal preferences, even if a majority happens to share them. As immoral and distasteful as we may find prostitution, our attempts to stamp it out with the criminal law only serve to make it more abusive, more dangerous, and more in need of stamping out. Not only is this an injustice for those involved, but it is fiscally irresponsible: we are actively spending money to enforce laws which make the problem of prostitution worse and more costly.
Sunday, 16 February 2014
Imagine No Religion
Months ago, I made what I thought was a good-natured jest about the so-called Wiccan Rule of Three, which posits that every good deed is returned threefold upon the doer, and how it implies an instability incompatible with a law of conservation of good/evil. That is, even if good and evil are both returned threefold, any inequality in the amount of good and evil in the universe would quickly multiply to the extinguishment of the lesser. While I meant this to provoke some playful thought and analysis, the person I was talking to instead took offence at my making fun of her religion.
I have been reminded of this episode recently by a couple of recent Canadian human rights controversies and also a bill before the Kansas state legislature, purportedly aimed at protecting the religious freedom of people to discriminate against same-sex couples. From the bill itself:
And also, while the motive of the bill's authors almost certainly was to grant an exception to that subset of Christians who oppose same sex marriage, obviously specifying Christian beliefs would run afoul of the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, so no no no no of COURSE it isn't only about Christians. It equally protects Jews, Muslims and Scientologists from being forced to tolerate homosexuality, as well. In principle, it could also protect religious polygamists from being forced to recognize monogamous marriages, or, I don't know, latter-day followers of the Sacred Band of Thebes from having to recognize heterosexual marriages, even.
Fine, it's a silly law on so many levels, but the particular bit of silliness I want to address is this: why does it have to be a religious belief that justifies violating what would otherwise be a legal duty? It isn't just the Kansas bill. In the U.S., various employers are seeking exemptions from having provide health insurance if such insurance covers contraception, on the basis that contraception is against the employers' religion. In Canada, it's well-established that employers must make "reasonable accommodation" for the religious beliefs of their employers, dating back to a case involving a Seventh Day Adventist wanting shifts that didn't involve working on the Sabbath. Last month there was a big controversy about York University ordering a professor to accommodate a Muslim student's wish not to have to work on a group project with female classmates.
I have no problem allowing for exemptions from legal obligations for various reasons, because it is unjust to impose obligations without consideration of the circumstances, but when considering the circumstances, why should religious belief be treated differently from other beliefs? Is it okay for a Christian to refuse to cater a gay wedding, but not for an agnostic?
I suppose one possible rationale for extending special protection to religious belief is that, at least in certain forms of Judeo-Christian belief, there is an overriding extenuating coercion involved. That is, however much one might like to obey the law, one faces infinitely more severe consequences for disobeying divine commands. This is the same rationale for why the courts had trouble with allowing atheists as witnesses; they worried that atheists, not fearing any divine retribution for perjury, would lie with impunity.
But upon closer inspection, this doesn't really support making a special distinction for religious beliefs. A more robust approach would be to apply a general principle that evaluates the reasonableness of the decision under the circumstances, sort of like we do when someone pleads self-defense or duress. We try not to punish people for things they do when they have no realistic alternative. And the belief that they face some much worse fate for obeying the law than for breaking it does not even have to be objectively true; it just has to be reasonable.
I'm not choosing this reasonableness standard as a sly way of ruling out religious beliefs; it can be reasonable to believe what everyone around you has taught you since birth, however ridiculous others outside of the tradition might consider it. What I'm objecting to, rather, is the special exemption we give beliefs that call themselves religious from the standards of reasonableness we expect from everyone else.
In fact, I'm not even demanding that everyone should be held to a standard of reasonableness. There are all sorts of things we can be unreasonable about, but which are our own business. I, for example, utterly refuse to eat mushrooms. There's no rational reason I can cite for my mycophobia; I'm not allergic to them, and I can't even say I just don't like them since even as a child I refused to even try one. I just don't ever want to eat a mushroom, to the point that I've developed a strong personal taboo about it.
But my personal refusal to eat mushrooms is my choice, regardless of its reasons or lack thereof, and I expect my autonomy in this area to be respected, just as we respect the right of a Jew or Muslim to abstain from pork. The only difference is that I do not believe some supernatural being has commanded me to avoid fungus. I take no position on the reasonableness of avoiding pork, because it's none of my business why someone else feels obliged to do something.
And that should be our general principle for law, to respect individual autonomy as much as possible. We ought to try to schedule work shifts to accommodate people who want a particular day of the week off, regardless of whether it's to attend church or to take their kids to the museum, not because churches or museums are important but because individuals should be treated with respect, as "ends in themselves" as Kant put it.
Yes, there will be times when we need to impose an enforceable legal duty that overrides the right to personal autonomy, but we should limit such impositions to where they are necessary to protect human safety and autonomy. We have laws against murder, for example, because the loss of freedom to murder is less than the loss of freedom to do everything else that being murdered prevents. It doesn't matter why one might want to murder someone, even if your god demands human sacrifice; our law-abiding society is still entitled to prevent that. That someone's reasons are "religious" should give them no special weight.
Sometimes, this means people are going to be caught in difficult moral dilemmas. Their religion demands what the law prohibits, or vice versa. I'm sympathetic to that plight, of course. But it's not a special problem that only the devoutly religious face. Atheist and agnostics, too, are often caught between the demands of conscience and those of law. The hard truth of this world is that morality is often very difficult, and there isn't always an easy answer. That's the curse of free will. Is it unfair that Christians may have to choose between defying their god and defying the state? Sure. In exactly the same way it's unfair to everyone else that the law sometimes demands things of us that we don't want to give. The demands of conscience should not be respected more just because they're given the name of religion.
Neither, though, should religious reasons be treated with less respect, which is the mistake the Quebec secular charter makes in trying to ban public employees from wearing religious symbols. Identifying symbols as "religious" in order to ban them is just as silly as doing so in order to promote them, and just as much an affront to human autonomy. It should make no difference why someone wants to wear a crucifix or a hijab or an ankh or a swastika; their decision to wear a symbol or not should only be reviewable if it is demonstrably harms a legitimate public interest.
There might well be good reasons for prohibiting or requiring certain symbols. Government employees are sometimes required to wear badges or uniforms, which perform a valid function in identifying them to the public. They may also be obliged not to wear certain symbols, as the swastika example demonstrates. It doesn't matter why you might want to wear a swastika, and maybe you have perfectly valid personal reasons, but wearing one will almost certainly be interpreted as a hostile sign by most members of the public, however kind and tolerant your actual intent. Likewise, the fact that you were joking or being ironic when you called in a bomb threat isn't a defense agains the criminal charges that will rightly follow.
But the fact that someone's reasons for wanting to do something are religious should be completely irrelevant to the decision to prohibit or require it.
So I'm not advocating the abolishment of religious belief. Rather, I'm just saying that we should abandon "religion" as any kind of special category of belief. With respect to informing human choice, the belief that there's an infinitely powerful and morally authoritative God who really hates it when men marry men is no more and no less privileged than the belief that no such God exists.
I have been reminded of this episode recently by a couple of recent Canadian human rights controversies and also a bill before the Kansas state legislature, purportedly aimed at protecting the religious freedom of people to discriminate against same-sex couples. From the bill itself:
Now, I should acknowledge that the bill is badly drafted, in that it seems to say that one can withhold ANY services, when the stated intent of the bill's sponsor was that it was really meant only to apply to services etc. related to the marriage or the celebration of marriage. However, the modifying clause comes after the semicolon, which kind of implies that the modifying clause is only meant to apply to employment or employment benefits. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, though, and suppose they really only meant to protect wedding photographers, caterers, and justices of the peace from having to be exposed to Teh Gay. (And who can blame them for being afraid of that? Certainly not me!) Surely they didn't mean to allow paramedics to refuse to provide first aid at an accident scene where both occupants of a vehicle with a "JUST MARRIED" sign were female.Section 1. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no individual or religious entity shall be required by any governmental entity to do any of the following, if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender:(a) Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services; or provide employment or employment benefits, related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement;(b) solemnize any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement; or(c) treat any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement as valid.
And also, while the motive of the bill's authors almost certainly was to grant an exception to that subset of Christians who oppose same sex marriage, obviously specifying Christian beliefs would run afoul of the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, so no no no no of COURSE it isn't only about Christians. It equally protects Jews, Muslims and Scientologists from being forced to tolerate homosexuality, as well. In principle, it could also protect religious polygamists from being forced to recognize monogamous marriages, or, I don't know, latter-day followers of the Sacred Band of Thebes from having to recognize heterosexual marriages, even.
Fine, it's a silly law on so many levels, but the particular bit of silliness I want to address is this: why does it have to be a religious belief that justifies violating what would otherwise be a legal duty? It isn't just the Kansas bill. In the U.S., various employers are seeking exemptions from having provide health insurance if such insurance covers contraception, on the basis that contraception is against the employers' religion. In Canada, it's well-established that employers must make "reasonable accommodation" for the religious beliefs of their employers, dating back to a case involving a Seventh Day Adventist wanting shifts that didn't involve working on the Sabbath. Last month there was a big controversy about York University ordering a professor to accommodate a Muslim student's wish not to have to work on a group project with female classmates.
I have no problem allowing for exemptions from legal obligations for various reasons, because it is unjust to impose obligations without consideration of the circumstances, but when considering the circumstances, why should religious belief be treated differently from other beliefs? Is it okay for a Christian to refuse to cater a gay wedding, but not for an agnostic?
I suppose one possible rationale for extending special protection to religious belief is that, at least in certain forms of Judeo-Christian belief, there is an overriding extenuating coercion involved. That is, however much one might like to obey the law, one faces infinitely more severe consequences for disobeying divine commands. This is the same rationale for why the courts had trouble with allowing atheists as witnesses; they worried that atheists, not fearing any divine retribution for perjury, would lie with impunity.
But upon closer inspection, this doesn't really support making a special distinction for religious beliefs. A more robust approach would be to apply a general principle that evaluates the reasonableness of the decision under the circumstances, sort of like we do when someone pleads self-defense or duress. We try not to punish people for things they do when they have no realistic alternative. And the belief that they face some much worse fate for obeying the law than for breaking it does not even have to be objectively true; it just has to be reasonable.
I'm not choosing this reasonableness standard as a sly way of ruling out religious beliefs; it can be reasonable to believe what everyone around you has taught you since birth, however ridiculous others outside of the tradition might consider it. What I'm objecting to, rather, is the special exemption we give beliefs that call themselves religious from the standards of reasonableness we expect from everyone else.
In fact, I'm not even demanding that everyone should be held to a standard of reasonableness. There are all sorts of things we can be unreasonable about, but which are our own business. I, for example, utterly refuse to eat mushrooms. There's no rational reason I can cite for my mycophobia; I'm not allergic to them, and I can't even say I just don't like them since even as a child I refused to even try one. I just don't ever want to eat a mushroom, to the point that I've developed a strong personal taboo about it.
But my personal refusal to eat mushrooms is my choice, regardless of its reasons or lack thereof, and I expect my autonomy in this area to be respected, just as we respect the right of a Jew or Muslim to abstain from pork. The only difference is that I do not believe some supernatural being has commanded me to avoid fungus. I take no position on the reasonableness of avoiding pork, because it's none of my business why someone else feels obliged to do something.
And that should be our general principle for law, to respect individual autonomy as much as possible. We ought to try to schedule work shifts to accommodate people who want a particular day of the week off, regardless of whether it's to attend church or to take their kids to the museum, not because churches or museums are important but because individuals should be treated with respect, as "ends in themselves" as Kant put it.
Yes, there will be times when we need to impose an enforceable legal duty that overrides the right to personal autonomy, but we should limit such impositions to where they are necessary to protect human safety and autonomy. We have laws against murder, for example, because the loss of freedom to murder is less than the loss of freedom to do everything else that being murdered prevents. It doesn't matter why one might want to murder someone, even if your god demands human sacrifice; our law-abiding society is still entitled to prevent that. That someone's reasons are "religious" should give them no special weight.
Sometimes, this means people are going to be caught in difficult moral dilemmas. Their religion demands what the law prohibits, or vice versa. I'm sympathetic to that plight, of course. But it's not a special problem that only the devoutly religious face. Atheist and agnostics, too, are often caught between the demands of conscience and those of law. The hard truth of this world is that morality is often very difficult, and there isn't always an easy answer. That's the curse of free will. Is it unfair that Christians may have to choose between defying their god and defying the state? Sure. In exactly the same way it's unfair to everyone else that the law sometimes demands things of us that we don't want to give. The demands of conscience should not be respected more just because they're given the name of religion.
Neither, though, should religious reasons be treated with less respect, which is the mistake the Quebec secular charter makes in trying to ban public employees from wearing religious symbols. Identifying symbols as "religious" in order to ban them is just as silly as doing so in order to promote them, and just as much an affront to human autonomy. It should make no difference why someone wants to wear a crucifix or a hijab or an ankh or a swastika; their decision to wear a symbol or not should only be reviewable if it is demonstrably harms a legitimate public interest.
There might well be good reasons for prohibiting or requiring certain symbols. Government employees are sometimes required to wear badges or uniforms, which perform a valid function in identifying them to the public. They may also be obliged not to wear certain symbols, as the swastika example demonstrates. It doesn't matter why you might want to wear a swastika, and maybe you have perfectly valid personal reasons, but wearing one will almost certainly be interpreted as a hostile sign by most members of the public, however kind and tolerant your actual intent. Likewise, the fact that you were joking or being ironic when you called in a bomb threat isn't a defense agains the criminal charges that will rightly follow.
But the fact that someone's reasons for wanting to do something are religious should be completely irrelevant to the decision to prohibit or require it.
So I'm not advocating the abolishment of religious belief. Rather, I'm just saying that we should abandon "religion" as any kind of special category of belief. With respect to informing human choice, the belief that there's an infinitely powerful and morally authoritative God who really hates it when men marry men is no more and no less privileged than the belief that no such God exists.
Saturday, 25 January 2014
An interesting specimen
I've mentioned before my interest in chain letters. I classify them as memetic viruses, because just as a DNA or RNA virus gets into a cell nucleus and directs the molecular machinery to make copies of the virus and send them out to infect other cells, so do chain letters get into your consciousness and direct you to make copies to infect other minds. (I should point out that calling them viruses doesn't mean I think they're an evil pestilence, though some clearly are. I'm using the word "virus" in a clinical sense to describe the life cycle, not as a pejorative. Throughout, I'll be using terms related to viruses, such as identifying people who are "infected" as "hosts", and so on, simply because the analogy to biological viruses is so powerful.)
Occasionally I receive interesting specimens from friends and relatives who know I collect them, but yesterday I spotted a new one in the wild, so to speak: it was forwarded to me by someone in earnest. Here's the text I received, minus the names of the participants. I'll talk about the interesting aspects of it below.
The main thing to understand about chain letters is that they exist because people forward them, and the more effective they are at getting people to share them, the more successful they'll be. Most people are actually pretty resistant hosts; we have all sorts of built-in immunities that make us unlikely to just copy something because we were asked. That's why the Superstitiones have to threaten bad luck if you break the chain, why the Pyramides offer the promise of receiving more of whatever you send out. The Petitiones make you think you're doing a good deed for others by forwarding them, as do the Notifers, which are forwarded simply because you think the recipient will find their content valuable in some way.
Those who have looked at the taxonomy of chain letters I've been developing will see that its structure places it squarely in the family Pyramides. All pyramideans I've seen before this one, however, have been of the make-money-fast variety, where each participant is asked to send money to the first (or each) person on the list (of usually from four to ten previous hosts) before altering the list and forwarding the chain. Interestingly, this is the first modern pyramidean I've collected that asks for something other than money to be sent to the earlier hosts. (I have seen a large number of parody chains that appear to request the host to send various things like spouses to earlier hosts, but while these appear structurally as pyramideans, their actual replicative strategy puts them in the family Notifera.)
This is not actually a new trait, however. According to Dan Van Arsdale's brilliant work on Chain Letter Evolution, the earliest chain letters were "letters from Heaven" and prayer requests. In time, a "luck" chain letter appeared, which mutated in the 1930s to the "Send a dime" chain from which all modern pyramideans are descended. Well, maybe not all -- it is conceivable that someone could re-invent a chain letter from whole cloth. However, the presence of common features from previous chains strongly suggests that the authors of even brand new chains are usually inspired by exposure to previous chains, so they are "descended" from the earlier ones in that sense.
The specimen above appears to me to belong to such a lineage, as it explicitly talks about the "turnaround time" and points out that there are only two names on the list, implying a tacit expectation that there would normally be more. It also prescribes a number of people one is supposed to forward it to, as well as a deadline by which one is supposed to do so, both of which are extremely common features to chain letters (particularly of families Pyramides and Superstitiones). So the author was in my view no stranger to chain letters. As well, the instructions about how to use BCC suggest that the author is at least a little bit email savvy. (I have seen many species which were originally paper chains, predating email, and occasionally you can see artifacts of that ancestry in the email version.)
There's a quite clever and novel trait this particular specimen has to boost compliance, which I've never seen before in a chain letter. It's the bit that says, "If you cannot do this in five days, let us know so it will be fair to those participating". Most chains rely to some extent on making you think that your friend who sent it to you is relying on you to do so (consider the Facebook status posts framed as a "personal" favor), but this one asks you to do something if you cannot do the other requested thing. So there's a quite powerful psychological reinforcement, framing it as a choice between complying or explaining why you can't, which of course conceals the third option: ignore.
And then the fourth option, which is to add it to your collection and write a blog post about it.
Occasionally I receive interesting specimens from friends and relatives who know I collect them, but yesterday I spotted a new one in the wild, so to speak: it was forwarded to me by someone in earnest. Here's the text I received, minus the names of the participants. I'll talk about the interesting aspects of it below.
Dear Friend,
We're continuing a collective, constructive, and hopefully uplifting Bible verse exchange. It's a one-time thing and we hope you will participate. We have picked those we think would be faithful, and make it fun. Please send an encouraging Bible verse to the person whose name is in position 1 below (even if you don't know him/her). It should be a favorite verse that has lifted you when you were experiencing challenging times. Don't agonize over it--it is one you reach for when you need it or the one that you a
1. [redacted]
2. [redacted]After you've sent the verse to the person in position 1, and only that person, copy this letter into a new email, move my name to position 1 and put your name in position 2. Only my name and your name should show when you email. Send to 20 friends BCC (blind copy). If you cannot do this in five days, let us know so it will be fair to those participating. It's fun to see where they come from. Seldom does anyone drop out, because we all need new ideas and inspiration. The turnaround is fast, as there are only two names on the list, and you only have to do it once.
Blessings,
The main thing to understand about chain letters is that they exist because people forward them, and the more effective they are at getting people to share them, the more successful they'll be. Most people are actually pretty resistant hosts; we have all sorts of built-in immunities that make us unlikely to just copy something because we were asked. That's why the Superstitiones have to threaten bad luck if you break the chain, why the Pyramides offer the promise of receiving more of whatever you send out. The Petitiones make you think you're doing a good deed for others by forwarding them, as do the Notifers, which are forwarded simply because you think the recipient will find their content valuable in some way.
Those who have looked at the taxonomy of chain letters I've been developing will see that its structure places it squarely in the family Pyramides. All pyramideans I've seen before this one, however, have been of the make-money-fast variety, where each participant is asked to send money to the first (or each) person on the list (of usually from four to ten previous hosts) before altering the list and forwarding the chain. Interestingly, this is the first modern pyramidean I've collected that asks for something other than money to be sent to the earlier hosts. (I have seen a large number of parody chains that appear to request the host to send various things like spouses to earlier hosts, but while these appear structurally as pyramideans, their actual replicative strategy puts them in the family Notifera.)
This is not actually a new trait, however. According to Dan Van Arsdale's brilliant work on Chain Letter Evolution, the earliest chain letters were "letters from Heaven" and prayer requests. In time, a "luck" chain letter appeared, which mutated in the 1930s to the "Send a dime" chain from which all modern pyramideans are descended. Well, maybe not all -- it is conceivable that someone could re-invent a chain letter from whole cloth. However, the presence of common features from previous chains strongly suggests that the authors of even brand new chains are usually inspired by exposure to previous chains, so they are "descended" from the earlier ones in that sense.
The specimen above appears to me to belong to such a lineage, as it explicitly talks about the "turnaround time" and points out that there are only two names on the list, implying a tacit expectation that there would normally be more. It also prescribes a number of people one is supposed to forward it to, as well as a deadline by which one is supposed to do so, both of which are extremely common features to chain letters (particularly of families Pyramides and Superstitiones). So the author was in my view no stranger to chain letters. As well, the instructions about how to use BCC suggest that the author is at least a little bit email savvy. (I have seen many species which were originally paper chains, predating email, and occasionally you can see artifacts of that ancestry in the email version.)
There's a quite clever and novel trait this particular specimen has to boost compliance, which I've never seen before in a chain letter. It's the bit that says, "If you cannot do this in five days, let us know so it will be fair to those participating". Most chains rely to some extent on making you think that your friend who sent it to you is relying on you to do so (consider the Facebook status posts framed as a "personal" favor), but this one asks you to do something if you cannot do the other requested thing. So there's a quite powerful psychological reinforcement, framing it as a choice between complying or explaining why you can't, which of course conceals the third option: ignore.
And then the fourth option, which is to add it to your collection and write a blog post about it.
Sunday, 22 December 2013
On Trinity Western's Law School
Recently, Trinity Western University was given the go ahead to establish a law school. There had been (and still is) considerable objection to this move, given that Trinity requires its students and faculty to commit to a code of conduct which includes a promise not to engage in "sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman."
Most of the criticism of this decision has focused on the obviously homophobic character of the policy, saying that it goes against the fundamental principles of equality that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is meant to protect. But to be fair to the arguments for Trinity Western, the policy does not exclude anyone for their status or identity; it only requires unmarried students and faculty to abstain from sex while enrolled or employed there. (It also, presumably, requires members of lawful same-sex unions to abstain, but I'll get to that in a moment.)
The problem with most of this criticism, though, is that the Charter applies to state actors, and not to private contracts. In a contract, the parties bind themselves, choosing to make promises in exchange for the promises offered by the other party. While s.2 of the Charter guarantees freedom of expression, I can enter into a contract that, in exchange for some benefit, obliges me to say or not to say something. This may seem like a limitation of my freedom of speech, but in fact the ability to enter into such a contract depends on my being able to exercise that freedom; if I weren't already free to choose what to say or what not to say, my contractual promise would mean nothing.
So, on a purely legal basis, there's nothing at all invalid about Trinity Western's code of conduct. Trinity promises to provide an education (or a salary), in exchange for the individual's promise to abide by some arbitrary code of conduct. Sure, the code of conduct appears to be somewhat more burdensome for certain sexual orientations than others, but that's not a fatal flaw for contracts, either; as long as the parties knowingly accept their contractual obligations, they're valid and binding.
If a private law school wishes to require, as part of its contracts, that the other party perform some silly or pointless ritual, or abstain from some otherwise permissible act, then that's something the other party can choose to accept or go elsewhere. So long as it's reasonably possible to go elsewhere, I don't have a problem with that. But there are a few things about Trinity Western's policy that give me pause.
First, while I defend their right to require silly and arbitrary promises of their students and staff, I also assert my right to point out just how silly those promises are. I don't want to get into a religious debate about this (though if past comments threads are any indication, I probably will), but it's just plain goofy to think that the transcribed prejudices of preliterate nomads are a reliable indication of what God wants from us, even if you accept the proposition that such a God even exists. While I see some merit in encouraging people to keep their sexual intimacies within the bonds of a stable matrimony, the fact is that people vary, and that solution is not necessarily best for everyone. Even if it is, it's the business of the couple in question and not the employer of one of them.
But the enforceability of a contractual promise has nothing to do with how silly or pointless the promise itself may be. You have perhaps heard the tales of Van Halen's performance contract, specifying that the dressing room had to have a bowl of M&Ms, with the brown ones removed. As silly a demand as that sounds, it served an important purpose in confirming whether or not the venue had actually read the contract. And so maybe, maybe I can see some sort of pedagogical benefit to an arbitrary requirement on the private behaviour of students. The practice of law does require sometimes (often) that we follow rules whether or not we understand the reasons behind them, so there's that.
More importantly, Trinity Western's choice to implement such a policy raises questions in my mind about the quality of the legal minds behind it, and hence their fitness to teach law. It isn't that I think their decision is illegal, or even that I think they don't understand constitutional or contract law. Rather, it's that I don't think they're using the law wisely to further the interests they purport to have. It's fine that they want to impose their shared vision of morality on members of their university community, but you can do that with a shared statement of values. Setting it up as a contractual obligation is just asking for trouble.
Why? Well, contracts are, ultimately, enforced by courts. Sooner or later, someone's going to get expelled from Trinity Western for homosexual (or heterosexual and extramarital) activity, and contest the expulsion in court. (This is a risk anyway, but especially so if the expelled someone happens to be a law student, who's after all there for the express purpose of learning how to fight legal battles.) And when that happens, the language of that contract is going to come crashing down.
Note that the promise is to abstain from "sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman." This means that, to enforce the contract, Trinity Western is going to have to show, somehow, that the sexual intimacy in question "violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman." And that is going to be a very difficult thing to show. How can the "sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman" be violated by anyone other than a married man and woman?
And seriously, we do not want to have that precedent set. If the sacredness of one sort of marriage can be violated by the mere existence of another sort of marriage, then can the sacredness of Christianity be violated by the existence of Islam? Can the sacredness of hockey be violated by the existence of basketball? Or, perhaps, can the sacredness of tolerance, liberty and the rule of law be violated by the existence of Trinity Western's code of conduct?
Saturday, 9 November 2013
In Defense of White Poppies, and other Heresies
I have always been very conflicted about Remembrance Day. On the one hand, of course I am grateful for the courage and sacrifice of those who are willing to take up arms, wear the uniform and defend out country. And on the other hand, I hate war. How could I not?
That particular conflict is not especially difficult to resolve. War in particular, and violence in general, are unquestionably evil. Violence is simply never a morally valid means of resolving disputes, and it must not be permitted to succeed as such, and so it must be resisted, with as little force as possible, but as much as necessary to bring the violence to an end with minimal loss of life. I have previously compared it to handling poop; if a sewage pipe suddenly ruptures and starts spraying waste around the room, a squeamish desire to avoid getting your hands dirty will only ensure everything else gets dirtier. We should rightly praise as a hero the person who overcomes his disgust, wades in promptly and fixes the problem, but poop is poop, filthy and disgusting. I think we should view violence the same way, as something horrible to be avoided, but not to fear so much that we empower those who are willing to use it.
And so I gratefully and whole-heartedly hail as heroes those who reluctantly but courageously face the horrors of war so that others may live in peace. And yet, I am still uncomfortable with this holiday, because hidden among the pious paeans are some pernicious ideas which really do need to be vigorously rejected.
There's a sign outside my local MLA's office this week which reads: "The poppy is a symbol of why we are free." Well, yeah, on one level this is true, but on another, no. The First World War, whence came the poppy symbol and John McCrae's famous poem, was not fought "to keep us free". It was a stupid, stupid war that started because some idiot thought it would be a good idea to murder an archduke, and then everybody called everybody else's bluff. Whatever started the war, though, it soon became about the war itself: victory at all costs. Consider the last stanza of In Flanders Fields:
We rightly honour our soldiers in that war for their courage and their sacrifice, but to say that they fought to keep us free is simply not true. What they fought so valiantly for King and Country to protect us from was really only an army of other equally valiant young men fighting for essentially the same motives. Even more tragically, the victory they brought us was ultimately used to help pave the way for the Second World War. And while WW2 might have been aptly characterize as The Good War, in that fascism was pretty clearly the enemy of freedom, WW1 was just a terrible, futile waste of lives.
And so yes, it is true that free peoples need to be prepared to fight, in order to resist by force those who would through force make them unfree. But in the big picture, it is force itself which is the true enemy, and the only justification for the use of force is to resist someone else's choice to use force in the first place. I am sympathetic, therefore, to those who prefer to wear a white poppy as an explicit rejection of military action, because it is so very easy to twist respect for our veterans' sacrifices into support for the policies that made those sacrifices necessary.
I think most of us understand in principle that one can object to a particular military mission without disrespecting the soldiers tasked with carrying it out. But in practice this is a much harder principle to realize, because opinions about policy often correlate with the choice to put on the uniform; all other things being equal, someone who approves of a particular mission is more likely to enlist than someone who does not.
This means that, at least in countries where the military is composed of volunteers, when I stand up and say for example "Let's not invade Carthage!" I'm not just expressing disagreement with the leaders who want to invade Carthage; I'm also implicitly challenging the judgment of every person who enlisted because they thought invading Carthage was a good idea and they wanted to be a part of it. And it's exceptionally hard for many of us to recognize the distinction between disagreeing with someone and disrespecting them. We think it's disrespectful to say, "I think you're wrong". But it isn't.
Respect is not synonymous with agreement. Indeed, respect is largely meaningless if you only respect people you agree with. Respect means acknowledging that someone has a different and valuable perspective from your own, and that while you may not agree, you are open to dialogue and the possibility that their reasons may turn out to be superior to your own. I respect you when I invite you to change my mind, and when I show a good-faith expectation that you will wisely consider my own arguments, whatever you may ultimately conclude about them. Violence is the very antithesis of this principle of respect.
Earlier this week, I saw a Facebook meme circulating that said something to the effect of, "If you see someone wearing a white poppy, punch them for a veteran." In other words, use violence to avenge a perceived insult.
No, I say. Don't punch anyone, ever, for saying something you disagree with, however much you think it offends your honour or that of our heroes. If you do so in my presence, I will try to stop you, with as little force as possible, but as much force as necessary.
That particular conflict is not especially difficult to resolve. War in particular, and violence in general, are unquestionably evil. Violence is simply never a morally valid means of resolving disputes, and it must not be permitted to succeed as such, and so it must be resisted, with as little force as possible, but as much as necessary to bring the violence to an end with minimal loss of life. I have previously compared it to handling poop; if a sewage pipe suddenly ruptures and starts spraying waste around the room, a squeamish desire to avoid getting your hands dirty will only ensure everything else gets dirtier. We should rightly praise as a hero the person who overcomes his disgust, wades in promptly and fixes the problem, but poop is poop, filthy and disgusting. I think we should view violence the same way, as something horrible to be avoided, but not to fear so much that we empower those who are willing to use it.
And so I gratefully and whole-heartedly hail as heroes those who reluctantly but courageously face the horrors of war so that others may live in peace. And yet, I am still uncomfortable with this holiday, because hidden among the pious paeans are some pernicious ideas which really do need to be vigorously rejected.
There's a sign outside my local MLA's office this week which reads: "The poppy is a symbol of why we are free." Well, yeah, on one level this is true, but on another, no. The First World War, whence came the poppy symbol and John McCrae's famous poem, was not fought "to keep us free". It was a stupid, stupid war that started because some idiot thought it would be a good idea to murder an archduke, and then everybody called everybody else's bluff. Whatever started the war, though, it soon became about the war itself: victory at all costs. Consider the last stanza of In Flanders Fields:
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
It is perhaps heretical to criticise this otherwise fine and poignant poem, the first two stanzas of which are indeed brilliant and worthy of their popularity, but this bit is a particularly egregious example of what economists call the "sunk cost fallacy". While it's a foolish error to throw good money after bad, it's downright evil to keep on killing in order to somehow vindicate the fallen. If the fight is just (that is, if its purpose is to resist force and restore peace), then by all means keep fighting. But to pursue victory, just so that the dead shall not have died in vain? Dangerous nonsense, particularly if both sides are thinking that way, which they were. And so for four years, young men bled and choked and died in their millions.
We rightly honour our soldiers in that war for their courage and their sacrifice, but to say that they fought to keep us free is simply not true. What they fought so valiantly for King and Country to protect us from was really only an army of other equally valiant young men fighting for essentially the same motives. Even more tragically, the victory they brought us was ultimately used to help pave the way for the Second World War. And while WW2 might have been aptly characterize as The Good War, in that fascism was pretty clearly the enemy of freedom, WW1 was just a terrible, futile waste of lives.
And so yes, it is true that free peoples need to be prepared to fight, in order to resist by force those who would through force make them unfree. But in the big picture, it is force itself which is the true enemy, and the only justification for the use of force is to resist someone else's choice to use force in the first place. I am sympathetic, therefore, to those who prefer to wear a white poppy as an explicit rejection of military action, because it is so very easy to twist respect for our veterans' sacrifices into support for the policies that made those sacrifices necessary.
I think most of us understand in principle that one can object to a particular military mission without disrespecting the soldiers tasked with carrying it out. But in practice this is a much harder principle to realize, because opinions about policy often correlate with the choice to put on the uniform; all other things being equal, someone who approves of a particular mission is more likely to enlist than someone who does not.
This means that, at least in countries where the military is composed of volunteers, when I stand up and say for example "Let's not invade Carthage!" I'm not just expressing disagreement with the leaders who want to invade Carthage; I'm also implicitly challenging the judgment of every person who enlisted because they thought invading Carthage was a good idea and they wanted to be a part of it. And it's exceptionally hard for many of us to recognize the distinction between disagreeing with someone and disrespecting them. We think it's disrespectful to say, "I think you're wrong". But it isn't.
Respect is not synonymous with agreement. Indeed, respect is largely meaningless if you only respect people you agree with. Respect means acknowledging that someone has a different and valuable perspective from your own, and that while you may not agree, you are open to dialogue and the possibility that their reasons may turn out to be superior to your own. I respect you when I invite you to change my mind, and when I show a good-faith expectation that you will wisely consider my own arguments, whatever you may ultimately conclude about them. Violence is the very antithesis of this principle of respect.
Earlier this week, I saw a Facebook meme circulating that said something to the effect of, "If you see someone wearing a white poppy, punch them for a veteran." In other words, use violence to avenge a perceived insult.
No, I say. Don't punch anyone, ever, for saying something you disagree with, however much you think it offends your honour or that of our heroes. If you do so in my presence, I will try to stop you, with as little force as possible, but as much force as necessary.
Thursday, 31 October 2013
On the Racism of Certain Hallowe'en Costumes
I have always enjoyed Hallowe'en. Even before my LARP days, I was very enthusiastic about costuming. Probably the masterpiece of all my costumes was the blood red Fokker triplane, artfully constructed by my extremely handy mother from cardboard under my strict technical supervision. I also did the painting, with careful attention to the insignias and other features. I was going through a WWI fighter aircraft phase in the fourth grade, and I wanted it to look as much like von Richtofen's famous plane as possible. (I chose the triplane over his Albatros D.3 biplane not just because it was more recognizable, but also because the Fokker's stubbier engine cowling was easier to make out of cardboard than the more conical nose of the Albatros. Yes, I was an übergeek.)
The political implications of Hallowe'en costumes didn't really concern me, but they've become kind of a hot topic lately. There's been a lot of attention paid to the idea that certain costumes are racist or disrespectful, and in particular some celebrity's choice to appear at a party in blackface has drawn considerable ire, with some writers arguing that "Blackface is always racist".
My natural tendency, upon seeing such a generalization, is to try to think of counterexamples, and of course that's not too terribly difficult to do. It seems obvious that a commando applying black makeup so as to be less visible at night is not necessarily committing an inherently racist act. Nor is someone who alters her appearance in order to more closely resemble someone else necessarily guilty of racism. And indeed, authentic, traditional blackface minstrelsy isn't necessarily an act of genuine racism if one is, say, acting in historical film about the life and influence of Al Jolson.
I am thus sympathetic to those who do not understand why darkening one's face for a costume is always racist. It isn't always. But at the same time, just because it isn't intended as such doesn't mean it doesn't reveal a racist attitude. You see, wearing a costume is an inherently expressive act; you wear a costume in order to elicit some sort of reaction from your audience. The reaction you're looking for may be quite innocent: "Wow, I never noticed before how much your bone structure resembles Martin Luther King Jr.! And the moustache is perfect!" But expressive acts take place within a shared vocabulary, and for various historical reasons, a white person wearing black makeup has a whole lot of other connotations one should be aware of, connotations that will affect how one's message is received. If you do not know those connotations, then maybe your intention wearing blackface is truly innocent, but you have another problem: you don't know the connotations, which in itself is a sign of privilege, the sort of privilege that helps keep racism going.
Think of it this way. By itself, a swastika is a elegant and attractive design, independently discovered or invented many times by many cultures. Not knowing its most infamous 20th century association, you could easily imagine someone choosing to wear a swastika T shirt just because it was a nice pattern. But almost everyone knows of that association, and assumes that everyone else knows, so if you wear that T shirt, people will make assumptions about what you mean by it. If they call you on it, you don't say, "But it's not racist! It's just a pretty pattern!" You either say, "Oh my god, it means WHAT? I'm so sorry!" as you cover it up or remove it, or you say "Yes, I'm glad you asked. I deeply resent the Nazi's co-opting this ancient and honourable design for their despicable ideology, and I am trying to reclaim it and divorce it from its political connotations. To me it represents..." blah blah. You might be wrong then, but you can at least discuss it respectfully, acknowledging the meaning you are explicitly disavowing, rather than taking the dead end denial route.
Okay, so I get that blackface is "always" racist, at least in the sense that it has a subtext that needs to be acknowledged, and the failure to acknowledge it is itself symptomatic of racial privilege. But I'm less convinced by the complaints that other costumes with cultural stereotypes are inherently racist. That is, I think they're insulting, not because they are depictions of stereotypes but because they're bad depictions. Clumsy, ignorant, insultingly stupid depictions.
A prime example: the "Sexy Chinese Geisha" costume cited as #1 in this Cracked article. Yes, this is insultingly stupid, but mainly because of the name they sell it under. It's not that there's no such thing as a Chinese geisha, because sure, there could be. A Chinese woman could travel to Japan to study and become proper geisha, and maybe even go back to China to set up her own geisha house. I have no problem with that premise, and also no problem with the "sexy" part, because there's nothing inherently racist (sexist, maybe) about taking any old costume idea and making it sexy. Indeed, the costume itself isn't particularly offensive in a racist, taken as a pastiche of loosely interpreted stylistic elements from various cultural sources.
(Years ago, by the way, I drove past an actual restaurant with a big sign that read: "Haiku Palace Authentic Chinese Cuisine". I didn't have occasion to go inside so I don't know, but supposing the proprietor to have been Chinese, I don't think the sign would have been any less insulting, because it still conveys the presumption that the audience is culturally ignorant, regardless of how well or poorly informed the namer of the restaurant might be.)
No, my problem is that the person who named this costume almost certainly didn't do any of this thinking. He or she (or maybe it was a committee?) clearly either had no knowledge of the cultures referenced, or worse, didn't care. It makes little sense to be offended by someone else's ignorance, but what's offensive here is that they unironically invite the audience to recognize as cute or clever something which is devoid of wit. (Unless it's actually a very sophisticated musing on what a sexy Chinese geisha would look like as distinct from a traditional Japanese one, in which case I'm afraid it's far too subtle for me. Is that supposed to be a corset?)
I realize I'm speaking from my privileged position as a white male here, but it seems to me that it shouldn't be the ethnic inspiration of a costume per se that we object to, but the execution. A clumsy, ignorant and lazy stereotype is of course insulting. But on those rare instances when someone takes the time to get it right, to invest time and effort in learning enough about the culture to produce (and correctly wear) an authentic costume, I think it's probably wrong to feel disrespected.
The political implications of Hallowe'en costumes didn't really concern me, but they've become kind of a hot topic lately. There's been a lot of attention paid to the idea that certain costumes are racist or disrespectful, and in particular some celebrity's choice to appear at a party in blackface has drawn considerable ire, with some writers arguing that "Blackface is always racist".
My natural tendency, upon seeing such a generalization, is to try to think of counterexamples, and of course that's not too terribly difficult to do. It seems obvious that a commando applying black makeup so as to be less visible at night is not necessarily committing an inherently racist act. Nor is someone who alters her appearance in order to more closely resemble someone else necessarily guilty of racism. And indeed, authentic, traditional blackface minstrelsy isn't necessarily an act of genuine racism if one is, say, acting in historical film about the life and influence of Al Jolson.
I am thus sympathetic to those who do not understand why darkening one's face for a costume is always racist. It isn't always. But at the same time, just because it isn't intended as such doesn't mean it doesn't reveal a racist attitude. You see, wearing a costume is an inherently expressive act; you wear a costume in order to elicit some sort of reaction from your audience. The reaction you're looking for may be quite innocent: "Wow, I never noticed before how much your bone structure resembles Martin Luther King Jr.! And the moustache is perfect!" But expressive acts take place within a shared vocabulary, and for various historical reasons, a white person wearing black makeup has a whole lot of other connotations one should be aware of, connotations that will affect how one's message is received. If you do not know those connotations, then maybe your intention wearing blackface is truly innocent, but you have another problem: you don't know the connotations, which in itself is a sign of privilege, the sort of privilege that helps keep racism going.
Think of it this way. By itself, a swastika is a elegant and attractive design, independently discovered or invented many times by many cultures. Not knowing its most infamous 20th century association, you could easily imagine someone choosing to wear a swastika T shirt just because it was a nice pattern. But almost everyone knows of that association, and assumes that everyone else knows, so if you wear that T shirt, people will make assumptions about what you mean by it. If they call you on it, you don't say, "But it's not racist! It's just a pretty pattern!" You either say, "Oh my god, it means WHAT? I'm so sorry!" as you cover it up or remove it, or you say "Yes, I'm glad you asked. I deeply resent the Nazi's co-opting this ancient and honourable design for their despicable ideology, and I am trying to reclaim it and divorce it from its political connotations. To me it represents..." blah blah. You might be wrong then, but you can at least discuss it respectfully, acknowledging the meaning you are explicitly disavowing, rather than taking the dead end denial route.
Okay, so I get that blackface is "always" racist, at least in the sense that it has a subtext that needs to be acknowledged, and the failure to acknowledge it is itself symptomatic of racial privilege. But I'm less convinced by the complaints that other costumes with cultural stereotypes are inherently racist. That is, I think they're insulting, not because they are depictions of stereotypes but because they're bad depictions. Clumsy, ignorant, insultingly stupid depictions.
A prime example: the "Sexy Chinese Geisha" costume cited as #1 in this Cracked article. Yes, this is insultingly stupid, but mainly because of the name they sell it under. It's not that there's no such thing as a Chinese geisha, because sure, there could be. A Chinese woman could travel to Japan to study and become proper geisha, and maybe even go back to China to set up her own geisha house. I have no problem with that premise, and also no problem with the "sexy" part, because there's nothing inherently racist (sexist, maybe) about taking any old costume idea and making it sexy. Indeed, the costume itself isn't particularly offensive in a racist, taken as a pastiche of loosely interpreted stylistic elements from various cultural sources.
(Years ago, by the way, I drove past an actual restaurant with a big sign that read: "Haiku Palace Authentic Chinese Cuisine". I didn't have occasion to go inside so I don't know, but supposing the proprietor to have been Chinese, I don't think the sign would have been any less insulting, because it still conveys the presumption that the audience is culturally ignorant, regardless of how well or poorly informed the namer of the restaurant might be.)
No, my problem is that the person who named this costume almost certainly didn't do any of this thinking. He or she (or maybe it was a committee?) clearly either had no knowledge of the cultures referenced, or worse, didn't care. It makes little sense to be offended by someone else's ignorance, but what's offensive here is that they unironically invite the audience to recognize as cute or clever something which is devoid of wit. (Unless it's actually a very sophisticated musing on what a sexy Chinese geisha would look like as distinct from a traditional Japanese one, in which case I'm afraid it's far too subtle for me. Is that supposed to be a corset?)
I realize I'm speaking from my privileged position as a white male here, but it seems to me that it shouldn't be the ethnic inspiration of a costume per se that we object to, but the execution. A clumsy, ignorant and lazy stereotype is of course insulting. But on those rare instances when someone takes the time to get it right, to invest time and effort in learning enough about the culture to produce (and correctly wear) an authentic costume, I think it's probably wrong to feel disrespected.
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