Gender and Sex

Ethics Dunces: The United Nations, and the U.S. for Supporting Such an Unethical Organization

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

If you thought U.N. staff in Gaza assisting in the Hamas terror attack wasn’t a sufficient sign of ethics rot, how about this: Abdulaziz Alwasil, Saudi Arabia’s envoy to the UN, was elected as chair of the….wait for it!— Commission on the Status of Women. He ran unopposed at the group’s annual meeting in New York this week. None of the 45 members present at the meeting dissented when the representative of that paragon of women’s rights and feminism—you can see typical happy, liberated Saudi women enjoying their status in the enlightened nation above—was elevated to the two year post. The U.S. is not a member; it just hosts the meeting and pays for the lion’s share of all U.N. activities.

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Fixing This Problem Requires Leaping Onto a Slippery Slope: Should We?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Nicholas Kristof has sounded the alarm on the growing problem of artificial intelligence deepfakes on line. I must admit, I was unaware of the extent of the phenomenon, which is atrocious. He writes in part,

[D]eepfake nude videos and photos …humiliate celebrities and unknown children alike. One recent study found that 98 percent of deepfake videos online were pornographic and that 99 percent of those targeted were women or girls…Companies make money by selling advertising and premium subscriptions for websites hosting fake sex videos of famous female actresses, singers, influencers, princesses and politicians. Google directs traffic to these graphic videos, and victims have little recourse.

Sometimes the victims are underage girls….While there have always been doctored images, artificial intelligence makes the process much easier. With just a single good image of a person’s face, it is now possible in just half an hour to make a 60-second sex video of that person. Those videos can then be posted on general pornographic websites for anyone to see, or on specialized sites for deepfakes.

The videos there are graphic and sometimes sadistic, depicting women tied up as they are raped or urinated on, for example. One site offers categories including “rape” (472 items), “crying” (655) and “degradation” (822)….In addition, there are the “nudify” or “undressing” websites and apps …“Undress on a click!” one urges. These overwhelmingly target women and girls; some are not even capable of generating a naked male. A British study of child sexual images produced by artificial intelligence reported that 99.6 percent were of girls, most commonly between 7 and 13 years old.

Yikes. These images don’t qualify as child porn, because the laws against that are based on the actual abuse of the children in the photos. With the deepfakes, no children have been physically harmed. Right now, there are no laws directed at what Kristof is describing. He also links to two websites on the topic started by young women victimized with altered photos and deepfaked videos of them being spread on line: My image My choice, and AI Heeelp!

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Ethics Quiz: The RBG Awards

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

This quiz could be fairly paraphrased, if in vulgar fashion, as “Who’s the asshole?“

Established in 2019, the RBG Leadership Award is supposed to honor “trailblazing” men and women of distinction, with “distinction” having a rather broad and vaguely defined meaning, as the pronouncements of officials connected with the awards made clear. “Justice Ginsburg became an icon by bravely pursuing her own path and prevailing against the odds,” said Brendan V. Sullivan, Jr., chair of the RBG Award. “The honorees reflect the integrity and achievement that defined Justice Ginsburg’s career and legend.” “Justice Ginsburg was a legal entrepreneur who innovated and took risks in ways that rewarded us all,” said Matthew Umhofer, president of the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation, which administers the awards. “In a world that sought to define and limit her, she found ways to challenge and change the system, armed with nothing more than a brilliant mind and a powerful pen. Her impact transcended the law, and society is better off for it.” “Such is the spirit that defines the honorees of the RBG Award,” adds the award’s website.

This year, it was decided that the awards, which were originally limited to women of distinction (because Ginsburg was an iconic feminist and women’s rights advocate), should be awarded to men as well. “Justice Ginsburg fought not only for women but for everyone,” said Julie Opperman, Chair of the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation. “Going forward, to embrace the fullness of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy, we honor both women and men who have changed the world by doing what they do best.” 

[Can you see what’s coming? Diversity-obsessed progressives were set up to be hoisted on their own petard!]

When this years’ honorees were announced, it is fair to say that the late Justice Ginsburg’s family flipped out. The awards went to…

ELON MUSK – Entrepreneurship
SYLVESTER STALLONE – Cultural Icon
MARTHA STEWART – Industry Leadership 
MICHAEL MILKEN – Philanthropy
RUPERT MURDOCH – Media Mogul

…and the family’s and assorted Ginsburg admirers’ collective heads exploded. Jane C. Ginsburg, a law professor at Columbia University, said the choice of winners this year was “an affront to the memory of our mother.” “The justice’s family wish to make clear that they do not support using their mother’s name to celebrate this year’s slate of awardees, and that the justice’s family has no affiliation with and does not endorse these awards,” she said.

Trevor W. Morrison, a former dean of New York University School of Law and one of the justice’s former law clerks, condemned the choices in a letter addressed to the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation. “Justice Ginsburg had an abiding commitment to careful, rigorous analysis and to fair-minded engagement with people of opposing views,” he said “It is difficult to see how the decision to bestow the R.B.G. Award on this year’s slate reflects any appreciation for — or even awareness of — these dimensions of the justice’s legacy.” Shana Knizhnik, an author of “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ” spat out, “Honoring Elon Musk, who uses his platform to promote anti-feminist and anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiments, and Rupert Murdoch, who has used his immense power to undermine democracy, dishonors what Justice Ginsburg spent her career standing for.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Who is being unethical (unfair, disrespectful, incompetent irresponsible and/or breaching trust), the administrators of the awards, the critics of the awards, neither, or both?

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Fani Wallis Scandal Footnote: A ‘Bias Makes Legal Ethicists Stupid’ Moment

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This is disheartening, though not unexpected.

I have written about how thoroughly my colleagues in the legal ethics field are politicized, biased and frequently rendered unable to see the ethical issues through the fog of their peer-reinforced distortions. Yesterday, as my legal ethics expert listserv was buzzing with commentary on the judge’s “split the baby” response to Fulton County Fani Willis’s screaming conflict of interest, prosecutorial misconduct, race-baiting and stunning arrogance. One prominent lawyer in the field, a woman whose commentary is usually perceptive, wrote this in part…

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Ethics Alarms Points Out How Terrible RFK Jr.’s VP “Short List” is; Kamala Harris says “Hold My Beer!”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

What a shameless demagogue.

I am immediately torn, because every Kamala Harris head-exploding utterance raises a Julie Principle issue: OK, an elected official who has conclusively proven herself to be dumb, irresponsible and ethically inert says something that is dumb, irresponsible and ethically alert. Why is that worth complaining about or criticizing? Nevertheless, some of Harris’s outbursts are just too despicable to be ignored. Like this one, today, as she visited abortion providers and staff members at a clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota to cheer on women putting the unborn to death for the crime of complicating their mothers’ lives:

“These attacks against an individual’s right to make decisions about their own body are outrageous and, in many instances, just plain old immoral,” she thundered. “How dare these elected leaders believe they are in a better position to tell women what they need, to tell women what is in their best interest. We have to be a nation that trusts women.”

Nice. Kamala had previously used the “How dare they!” stunt to condemn the U.S. Supreme Court for daring to do their jobs, which includes striking down bad decisions that made up constitutional rights that didn’t exist. The abortion-fanatic’s dishonest defense has always relied on pretending that only one life is involved in an abortion, though the state has a valid interest in protecting all lives, including unborn humans who their mothers want to kill. When does an abortion in Harris’s world suddenly involve more than just the woman’s body? Six weeks? 15 weeks? 9 months? Never, if her words mean what they appear to mean. “Plain old immoral” has always included “Thou shalt not kill”: what weird definition of “immoral” is Harris alluding to? It must be really old; Sumarian, maybe? Ancient Aztec?

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If George Costanza Was in a Rock Band…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I’m assuming there is nobody reading this post who believes the following conduct is ethical, or that it isn’t justification for being fired.

The Nashville-based hardcore band Llorona ( named after a ghost in Mexican folklore who is said to roam near bodies of water mourning the children she drowned in a jealous rage) announced that it had fired its lead singer Diego after he admitted putting estrogen in the protein powder used by the band’s bass-player Sixx before his work-outs. This caused him to begin suffering various physical problems such as stomach ulcers, weight loss, muscle weakness and fatigue, as well as “notable mental changes” and other developments that Sixx described as too disgusting to describe. Worst of all, he began annoying his band mates by describing himself as “they.”

Okay, I made up that last part. Actually, the band members already used “they” to describe the bassplayer.

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Just In Time For the 2024 Campaign, George Stephanopoulos Reminds Us Just How Partisan, Biased and Unethical He Is

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Thanks, George!

George Stephanopoulos has been polluting broadcast journalism with the unconscionable conflicts of interest he brings to his prominent news show hosting roles for so long that a lot of viewers probably don’t realize just how outrageous it was for ABC to give such a huge megaphone to one of the most prominent Clinton henchmen. Yesterday on ABC’s “This Week,” George was interviewing Republican Representative for South Carolina’s 1st congressional district Nancy Mace. She’s a Trump supporter, so George felt a cheap shot was justified. Though she was on his show to talk about the election, Stephanopoulos blindsided her by referencing Mace’s past rape, and using it against her. To her credit, Mace called his tactic out immediately:

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A Note on Civic Competence, Respect, and Responsibility

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Sigh.

I’m trying to find out the name of the guy (it is a guy) above, but not too hard, because his name doesn’t really matter. Like a good and concerned citizen, he signed up and testified before the Missouri House against HB1650, a bill that would ban drag shows for audiences of children. The worth of the bill isn’t what I’m interested in right now, nor are the arguments for or against it. My concern is the demeanor of the testifying citizen, who was, I’m sure you will not be shocked to learn, on hand to show his opposition to the bill. As far as that goes, good for him. He is participating in the democratic process. He is civically engaged. I listened to some of his remarks; they seemed sincere, articulate, and thought out, if, in my view, misguided, but again, that’s not the issue.

The issue, an ethics one, is this: what THE HELL did he think he was doing showing up to testify dressed like that?

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Holly Mathnerd

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Dishonesty is so normalized that this kind of performative fragmentation—signaling that one believes certain things while acting as if one believes other things—may eventually be recognized as a marker of intelligence and proper preparation for class climbing (or class maintenance, if one starts off in that class).”

—Substacker “Holly Mathnerd,” reviewing a book I haven’t read (“Troubled”) by a writer I never heard of (Rob Henderson), but gleaning from it wisdom that sorely temps me change both conditions.

It is pure coincidence that so soon after this post and this one —and even this one—another dishonesty and hypocrisy assessment presented itself. Something is in the air.

This is a phenomenon that Ethics Alarms has discussed frequently. The “elite classes,” like those who sent my college classmates to a series of prestigious schools, pushed for the legalization and cultural approval of regular pot use which they insisted was harmless. The resulting new social norm has devastated the lower socio-economic reaches that are more likely to abuse the privilege without the means to cope with the results. Support for “illegals”—Joe’s accurate word—via sanctuary cities and bleeding heart rhetoric was adamant until the progressive virtue-signalers in “sanctuary cities” had to deal with the real consequences of an open border policy.

More from Holly:

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Regarding Sen. Britt’s Incompetent SOTU “Response”

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

Ugh. Distinguished EA commenter valkygrrl gets the pointer and my gratitude for this one: she flagged Senator Britt’s performance in an email late last night, and I might never have seen it otherwise. Here, if you were fortunate enough not to see this thing without a trigger warning, it is…

I already said “Ugh,” now I’ll say, “Yecchh!”

To begin with, the whole concept of the opposition “response” is built on a lie. Although the speech is always presented as a reaction to what America just heard and saw, it is always (has there been an exception?) a pre-written and prepared speech often based on the transcript of the President’s speech released before he delivers it, but sometimes just based on what the opposing party assumes the President will say. So it is always fake: the speaker refers to the speech, but the speaker seldom (ever?) has the wit to go off script and comment on what just happened.

Britt definitely didn’t, and, presumably, couldn’t. Biden was shouting and acting like he was on speed. The State of the Union is supposed to be a Presidential address on the state of the nation itself, not a campaign speech. Biden made numerous false statements. He called illegal immigrants “illegals”—which they are—instead of the benign “migrants” the Axis uses to blur the issue. He mangled rape and murder victim Laken Riley’s name on the same day his party overwhelmingly voted against a House bill that established the outrageous requirement—in the democratic Party’s view— that illegal immigrants arrested for crimes should be detained by ICE. Surely the GOP must have some prominent party member quick and articulate enough to give a genuine response to a State of the Union based on what the speech performance really was. Ted Cruz could do it. Rand Paul. Heck, get a right wing radio talk-show host for the job.

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