Gender and Sex

Abuse Is Abuse, And Gender Is Irrelevant

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
"Oh, man up! What are you afraid of? "

“Oh, man up! What are you afraid of? “

28-year-old Ivan Brannan Jr. has filed battery charges against his former girlfriend, perpetually troubled ex-tennis prodigy Jennifer Capriati, who is now 36. He claims she has been stalking him, and that she recently punched him several times in the chest.

What is notable, though not surprising, is how many commenters on sites covering the news item have reacted by pronouncing Capriati’s alleged victim a wimp and a weenie. “He should turn in his man card,” sniffed one.

Wrong.

Female on male spousal and companion abuse is neither rare nor harmless, but it is one of the most unreported crimes. That sexist, ignorant attitude is why. Society’s justified concern for violence against women leaves men with the presumed physical superiority and monopoly on aggression. As a result, shame, fear of ridicule and self-doubt cause many, and probably most abused men to tolerate without reporting levels of physical punishment that would be regarded as serious and criminal if the genders were reversed. The unsympathetic reaction of Brannan’s crtitics leaves him with the bad choice of accepting the violence and the worse one of escalating it and fighting back.

We don’t know Capriati’s side of the story yet, but if she did punch Brannan, she is capable of doing some real damage. Strength and muscularity were her trademarks on the tennis court. Whatever the physical abilities involved, however, female on male violence should be treated exactly like the reverse, and if his complaint is valid, Brannan deserves thanks and credit for bringing this unfair double standard into the spotlight.  He does not deserve to be insulted.

____________________________

Source: CNN

Graphic: Girls With Muscle

In Connecticut, A Surrogate Mother Triggers An Epic Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
Crystal Kelley and...somebody's baby

Crystal Kelley and…somebody’s baby

There is no field of ethics more murky or subject to conflicting interpretations than bioethics, and few issues in bioethics are as confusing as those involving surrogate mothers who decide that they should have some say regarding the fate of the child that grows in their bodies. CNN has reported on the most perplexing such scenario I’ve every encountered, so perplexing that I can’t unravel the ethical rights and wrongs of it.  I wonder if anyone can with confidence. I’ll just summarize the main features and some of the issues raised; you will need to read the whole, stunning story to fully appreciate this train wreck’s sweep and carnage.

I. Crystal Kelley, a single mother who had endured two miscarriages, wanted to help another couple conceive, but mostly wanted the $22,000 fee since she was out of a job. She contracted with a couple seeking their fourth child, and was implanted with two previously frozen embryos. One survived. Ethics issue: Did Kelley tell the parents about her miscarriages?

2. Five months into her pregnancy, tests showed the baby Kelley was carrying had serious medical problems, though the child had a chance at survival. The couple said that they wanted Kelley’s pregnancy terminated because they didn’t want the baby to suffer. Ethics issues: Is that a valid reason to take an unborn child’s life? Was it the real reason? Was the real reason that they were unwilling to pay for and endure all the necessary medical treatmenst, or that they wanted nothing less than a “perfect” baby? Does it matter what the real reason was? Continue reading →

Coming To A Ballot Box Near You: “The Naked Senator Principle”?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

 

Go Ashley!

Go Ashley!

Ashley Judd, the accomplished Hollywood actress-feminist (and the non-singing sister in the singing Judd family), is seriously contemplating a run for the Kentucky Senate as a Democrat against Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. There is a potential problem, however, implies the conservative “Daily Caller.” Judd will become the first serious contender for high national office who has appeared on screen numerous times in various degrees of nudity. The blog’s entertainment editor has done her research with no less an authority than MrSkin.com, and reports that Judd went topless for 1996′s “Normal Life” and went topless and bottomless in 1999′s “Double Jeopardy.” Meanwhile, in both 1996′s “Norma Jean and Marilyn” and 1999′s “Eye of the Beholder,” Judd went full frontal while also baring her comely tush. Ashley had a lesbian sex scene in 2002′s Oscar-nominated “Frida,” and “Mr. Skin”  categorized nine other scenes as “sexy,” and if you can’t trust him on such matters, whom can you trust?

We have learned that former porn stars can’t be middle school teachers or beauty queens, that art teachers can’t be seen painting pictures with their butts (even with paper bags over their heads) and that “the Naked Teacher Principle” decrees that those we entrust with the the shaping of young minds cannot be trusted to do the job if their naughty bits are just a mouse click away. Doesn’t it follow that there is a “Naked Senator Principle”? Surely internet nudity that was previously available at the Multiplex is a disqualification for Congress. Isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be? Continue reading →

Not Jackie Robinson, Not Even Shannon Faukner: Lauren Silberman Flunks The Traiblazer Test

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
"Okay, now I kick this funny-shaped brown thingee where, again?"

“Okay, now I kick this funny-shaped brown thingee where, again?”

Call it the trailblazer’s duty. If your objective is to be a trailblazer and break through the obstacle of prejudice in an elite field, your efforts, even if not successful, had better not make the obstacle greater. The epitome of trailblazing excellence is Jackie Robinson, shattering major league baseball’s apartheid  by simultaneously becoming the game’s first black player in decades, and also one of its greatest players of all time. The bottom of the barrel in the trailblazing pantheon is probably Shannon Faulkner, who waged a high-profile legal battle to become the first female cadet at the Citadel, only to enter the school physically and mentally unprepared for the challenge, resulting in an embarrassing failure and rapid withdrawal.

Lauren Silberman, the first female to try out for the National Football League made Faulkner look good. Continue reading →

From Connecticut State Rep. Ernest Hewett (D): The Most Inappropriate Public Utterance By An Elected Official Ever?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Wow.

Just…wow.

"Hi...I'm a friend of Rep Hewett? He invited me to attend the hearing...could you direct me to his desk, please?"

“Hi…I’m a friend of Rep Hewett.  He invited me to attend the hearing…could you direct me to his desk, please?”

The late Donald Shaefer, former governor of Maryland and mayor of Baltimore, certainly had his moments of outrageous, and often sexist, candor, and foot-in-mouth disease has certainly marred the legacies of many a politician, but this seems like a scene out of a Will Farrell movie. An unbelievable scene.

On February 21, a 17-year-old female intern at the Connecticut Science Center was testifying before the Connecticut legislature. Among those questioning her about her work was Hewett, the deputy speaker and a former mayor of New London in his fifth term in the House. The intern was discussing the benefits of her work, and told the lawmakers, “I am usually a very shy person, and now I am more outgoing. I was able to teach those children about certain things like snakes that we have and the turtles that we have… ,” she said. “I want to do something toward that, working with children when I get older.”

Hewett responded—and I’m not making this up…

“If you’re bashful I got a snake sitting under my desk here!” Continue reading →

The Washington Post Gives Up On Independent Ombudsmen: 1) Too Bad, Because It Needs One Desperately and 2) No Wonder, Since Its Last One Was A Bozo

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Agreed: He's an improvement over the last ombudsman. But the Washington Post readers deserve better.

Agreed: He’s an improvement over the last ombudsman. But the Washington Post readers deserve better.

The Washington Post, which in 1970 became the first newspaper to employ a full-time “independent ombudsman” to explore reader complaints and exercise ethical oversight, has given up on the concept, pronouncing it a device “created decades ago for a different era.” You know–that era when people trusted the news media, and occasionally were given good cause to do so. Now the Post will rely on a “reader representative” named from the newspaper’s staff.

So much for “independence.”

Giving up on ombudsmen after having Patrick B. Pexton filling the role for the last two years is a little like giving up eating after Thanksgiving at my late Aunt Anna’s house. Her green, slimy, Wonder Bread turkey stuffing had to be tasted (but, oh God, never swallowed!) to be believed. Similarly, Pexton was an utter disgrace as an ombudsman, making excuses for unethical Post excursions into partisan hackery, and apparently completely unaware that his own biases mirrored those of his paper, which supposedly placed him in his job to offer perspective, not cover. And just as I seriously considered never again taking the risk of putting food in my mouth after that memorable holiday dinner in 1966, I can understand the Post thinking, as Pexton’s two year contract mercifully expired last week, thinking, “If we can’t do better than this clown, why have the position at all?” Continue reading →

Seth MacFarlane’s Outrageous Oscar Mistake (At Least, I Hope It Was A Mistake)

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments
"The Family Guy" in a typical moment of sensitivity.

“The Family Guy” in a typical moment of sensitivity.

The viewing public was severely divided regarding “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane’s performance as Oscar host, with approximately half appreciating his trademark juvenile and politically incorrect schtick (and being impressed that the guy can sing and dance rather well too), and the rest, including the majority of TV critics, finding him boorish, amateurish and unfunny. Personally, I thought he did a reasonably competent job in an impossible assignment (unless, it seems, you are Johnny Carson or Bob Hope, who are long gone, or Billy Crystal, who is seriously past his pull date), made more so by the misconceived show he had to host.

Then I read Katie McDonough’s essay in Salon. Continue reading →

Is There A “Naked Beauty Pageant Queen” Principle?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
Beauty queen above, secret twin below?

Beauty queen above, secret twin below?

We know that teachers who have performed in porn movies are toast, once their performances surface online, and that teachers whose images, showing them in their birthday suits, are easily accessible by post-pubescent students are not going to stay secondary school faculty members for long. But do similar rules apply for beauty pageant winners, whose physical assets are not only barely hidden anyway, but the primary, if not sole reasons for their “titles”? Should they?

Let’s look at the dilemma facing Melissa King, the newly crowned Miss Delaware Teen USA. A porn site featured a video with a, er, key performer that both looked and sounded exactly like her, apparently showing Miss Delaware Teen USA doing all sorts of fascinating things on, over, and around an unclothed male actor. King denied that she was the performer (who references her participation in beauty pageants on the video), but gave up her crown anyway. Looking at the photos, either she has also triggered the Lying Beauty Queen Principle, or has a twin sister in the porn trade.

One website covering the story polled its readers regarding whether it should matter if a beauty queen has done porn. Stated in that way, it is a reasonable question. If  beauty pageants were like dog shows, and all that was being awarded was a prize for the most perfect physical specimen, it shouldn’t matter if the winner is a Nazi, a terrorist, a serial killer or a werewolf. The problem arises because these pageants include titles. Continue reading →

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Tales From The “Ick!” Files: If Luke Married Leia…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Luke and Leia

Emily Yoffe, who is not Ethics Alarms’ favorite advice columnist, gets one right at Slate—a weird one, but then, that’s the only kind of question she usually chooses to answer. If I had to bet, I’d place my money on this question being a fake. Emily acknowledges that possibility, but couldn’t pass this one up, and neither can I.

A loving husband who already knew that both he and his wife (it was virtually love at first sight when they met in college) were raised by lesbian parent couples who conceived via sperm donors found out that they both have the same donor to thank for their conception. Now he thinks “sister” every time he sees his spouse, and ask 1) what should he do? and 2) should he tell his wife that he has learned that they are half-siblings? Yoffe tells this poor guy to stop feeling guilty, and that he hasn’t done anything wrong. She also advises him to get some counseling, and to suck it up and tell sis about their dilemma….but not to reveal the secret to their kids, Anteater Boy and Tilly the Boneless. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Any South Carolinian Who Votes For Disgraced Ex-Governor Mark Sanford

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments
You'll never know if this movie is still playing in the Mark Sanford Head Multiplex...

You’ll never know if this movie is still playing in the Mark Sanford Head Multiplex…

When Mark Sanford was last entrusted with high elected office in South Carolina, he…

  • Carried on a clandestine adulterous affair with a South American “soul mate” when he was supposed to be serving as the governor of the state,
  • Went AWOL from the state and his duties, telling aides that he was “hiking” in South America when he was really doing something very different in Argentina,
  • Used official funds to pay for his personal affair,
  • Lied about it,
  • Humiliated his wife and family while embarrassing South Carolina and his party, and
  • Was censored by the state legislature.

Now, displaying a level of gall only politicians and Hollywood actors can achieve, Sanford is back seeking office in South Carolina, running for the open seat in its 1st Congressional District. His strategy appears to be that old stand-by of the habitual miscreant, evoking the virtue of forgiveness and redemption, as well as suggesting that God wouldn’t rule out voting for him. In his first TV ad, Sanford says that he has learned about a “God of second chances.” Continue reading →