Gender and Sex

Ethics Hero: Ashley Judd

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Actress Ashley Judd (Full Disclosure: I am a long-time fan) finally has had it with snarky and degrading public speculation about her face, her weight, her appearance, and whether the star of TV’s “Missing” has “had work done,” and properly slams the celebrity media and those journalists who either write about her like she’s a competitor in a dog show or question her conduct and character based on their assessment of what she “should” look like.  Her verdict: it’s misogyny. The acting member of the Judd family has written a passionate, perceptive, articulate (if you forgive occasional lapses into feminist jargon, like objectification otheration, and (yuck)  heteronormative) and courageous essay over at the Daily Beast. If you have a daughter, have her read it. If you have a son, have him read it too. Heck, everybody should read it….here.

I wonder if the Daily Beast editors read it.  Here is Ashley Judd, eloquently pleading that women should be assessed base on how they do their job rather than on their perceived sex appeal, and where does the website post it?

On the page called “The Sexy Beast.”

You have a lot of work to do, Ashley, but you’re fighting the right fight.

Brava.

Diversity Ethics: “The Ethicist” vs. The Diversity Bullies

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Here you are, Ariel—the perfect, diverse, five-person panel!

Ariel Kaminer, the New York Times’ author of “The Ethicist” column, is being pummeled by criticism by people other than me, for a change. Her offense? Let one of the critics, Kathleen Geier of the Washington Monthly, speak for herself:

“Ethicist columnist Ariel Kaminer has announced a contest inviting omnivores to write essays about why it is ethical to eat meat. The problem? The panel of luminaries she’s selected to judge the contest are ethicists Peter Singer and Andrew Light, food writers Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, and novelist Jonathan Safer Foer. All, as you may notice, white dudes…for heaven’s sake, by now it should be second nature for every single person who’s in the position of hiring someone, or putting together a panel or committee, to make an effort to include women and people of color whenever possible. That’s just basic human decency.”

Then we have bioethicist Francis Keisling, who weighed in with an indignant protest to the Times ombudsman, writing in part,

“…Finally, what would we expect from the Times and its columnists and editors when a mistake is pointed out in plenty of time for it to be corrected? Does having a column in the Times mean never having to say you are sorry? Ms Kaminer knew no women of comparable stature to the men she chose. She has been clearly shown she was wrong and names provided. All she needed to do was to say woops, let me add three of four women, people of color etc. It would also seem something editors should step in and make happen.”

Welcome, Ariel, to the world of the diversity bullies! Continue reading →

Sexual Predator Teachers: 1) Not Funny 2) Epidemic 3) Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Child rapist teachers! LOL!

Two nights ago, Tonight Show host Jay Leno included in his monologue a joke about Christine McCallum, the Brockton, Mass. teacher convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old boy over 300 times. Jay can make jokes about whatever he wants, but the fact that we are laughing about this kind of conduct by teachers rather than asking hard questions and insisting on some accountability for the schools shows how tolerant our society is of a supposedly essential institution and a once respectable profession that have both fallen into rot and ruin.

In 1996, when Mary Kay LeTourneau was revealed to have made an undereage student her lover and fathered a child by him, it was national news. For me, it was the first I had ever heard of a teacher abusing her power and profession to that extent. This month alone, March 2012, I have counted thirteen such cases making the local news across the country, including McCallum, and I’m sure I missed some. I’m also reasonably sure that for every one of these cases that get prosecuted, many more are covered up or never discovered at all. Continue reading →

The Principal Who Helped Gaby Rodriguez Fake Her Pregnancy Just Won “Principal of the Year.” The Frightening Thing Is, He Might Have Deserved It.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Note that it says "Principal." It doesn't say anything about "principles."

I received this news from Ethics Hero Harris Meyer, the journalist who has been trying to preserve some semblance of integrity in his profession by reminding it what ethical investigative journalism is not, through his efforts to rebut the praise for Gaby Rodriguez, the high school student who deceived her family and classmates by pretending to be pregnant as her senior project. The news: Trevor Greene, the principal who helped devise Gaby’s unethical stunt and assisted her in lying to the rest of the school, has been named the state’s top high school principal by the Association of Washington School Principals.

He received this  honor, the release says, by virtue of his organizing a system of student-teacher mentorships, and guiding the school’s effort to expand and improve its science, technology, engineering and math curriculum. The fact that he also mentored a student in a blatantly unethical exercise that was, as I wrote in my original post about Gaby’s scam, Continue reading →

Our Untrusted Professions: Another One Bites The Dust…Or Should.

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Come to think of it, Mr. Gower would have put poison in a boy's medicine if it hadn't been for George Bailey...

America’s trust crisis, which has seen virtually all its institutions decline precipitously in public trust, hasn’t left the professions unscathed. Far from it: Gallups’ annual poll of the public’s regard for the professions, the most recent of which was released last December, showed accountants trusted by only 43% of the public (abysmal for a profession whose only mission is to accurately determine the truth and to relay it—funeral directors are trusted more), journalists at just 26% (which is more than they deserve), bankers at 25%, lawyers at an insulting 19% (for a profession that includes honesty as a core ethical requirement), business executives slightly less at 18% (but no lower than those champions of the 99%, labor leaders, also at 18%). Stockbrokers, who figure to have fallen even lower after Greg Smith’s anti-Goldman Sachs diatribe, came in at a “can’t be trusted to deliver the water bill payment” 12%, and then we’re really in the pits of utter distrust, with lobbyists, used car salesmen, and members of Congress, all tied for last place at 7%.

In contrast, one of the professions that always is on top of the list or near it is pharmacists. In 2011, the friendly neighborhood druggist scored a trust rate of 73%, better than doctors and second only to the perennial champs of the last decade, nurses.

Well, all that trust in pharmacists appears to be misplaced. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Belvedere Vodka and Arnell

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Ethics Dunces” doesn’t really do these two organizations justice. Try “too dumb to live” and “too unethical to be trusted with sharp objects.”

Or vice-versa.

Marketing whizzes Arnell devised this hysterically funny vodka ad for Belvedere Vodka, showing a happily horny man sexually assaulting a terrified female victim. What fun! And such a witty tag line: “Unlike Some People, Belvedere Always Goes Down Smoothly.”

Goes down, get it?

It took about an hour after this juvenile, rape-friendly offal was posted on Twitter and Facebook for there to be such a negative reaction that even the bombed cretins at the vodka company were able to figure out something was wrong. So they pulled the ad, and apologized, kind of, tweeting,

“We apologize to any of our fans who were offended by our recent tweet. We continue to be an advocate of safe and responsible drinking.”

Uhhhhhh…no. “We apologize to those who were offended”–a non-apology apology. Ethics strike two. “We continue to be an advocate of safe and responsible drinking”—what? These idiots still didn’t understand what they were supposed to be apologizing for!!!   Ethics Strike THREE! Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: What if the Westboro Baptist Church Is Just Kidding?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I know just how you feel, Homer.

This is a unique Ethics Alarms quiz, because I am offering it while having absolutely no idea what the answer is, or even, perhaps, what the right question should be.

The story you can read here describes the Westboro Baptist Church’s interactions with an openly gay DJ. You will recall that the church’s followers have achieved infamy by loudly protesting on the scene of private funerals for military personnel killed in combat, with “God Hates Gays” being one of their signature protest signs. Yet the DJ, when he visited the group, found them to be friendly, unthreatening, civil and kind. They hugged him. The asked him over for dinner.  The surprised and puzzled writer suggests that the Fred Phelps followers’ act may be a form of First Amendment-testing performance art, sort of like Bill Maher. Maybe they aren’t really hateful after all. Maybe they just act that way!

My Ethics Quiz question for you to consider:

Does the fact that they can be kind, tolerant and accepting in the privacy of their abode make the Westboro Baptist Church protesters less unethical, more unethical, or does it make no difference at all? Continue reading →

Fairness and the Transgendered Miss Universe Contestant

/ Jack Marshall / 128 Comments

Changing mores, technology, laws and science create the damnedest ethical problems.

Jenna: too masculine for Miss Universe?

The Miss Universe Canada organizers have kicked contestant Jenna Talackova out of their beauty pageant because she was born male.  Fair? Well, the qualifications for the pageant require that an entrant be a “naturally born female.” I’m sure that was seen as a clear and reasonable restriction when it was devised, but let a few lawyers at it today. Jenna says she was always female, but just trapped in a male body. She was also “naturally born.” Hmmmm.

[UPDATE: (4/10/12) On April 5, the pageant announced that Talackova would be allowed to compete after all, and announced a rules change that will allow transgendered competitors next year.]

Jenna falsely stated on her entrant forms that she was “born female.” Since she has told officials that this wasn’t true, she is obviously no lawyer, but really: why shouldn’t a transexual be able to compete? The issue should be whether she’s a female now, right? The pageant might as well require that all contestants must be born gorgeous. Miss Universe Canada could, I suppose, duck the problem by requiring that no entrant can have appearance-enhancing surgery. Of course, then the pageant would have no contestants at all. Continue reading →

Integrity Test For The Left

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

So...how many progressives and Democrats agree with Voltaire? I wonder.

It should be obvious by now that the furious indignation leveled at Rush Limbaugh for his denigrating rhetoric against activist Sandra Fluke has been expropriated by those who want to limit free speech to their own standards of what constitutes acceptable discourse….and opinion. This has made itself evident both by the strained efforts of eager Limbaugh boycotters to distinguish his use of misogynistic words and the same or worse language used by friendly boors and misogynists against conservative targets. There is a distinction: Rush was engaging in illogical below-the-belt bullying of a barely-public figure for the offense of disagreeing with him, while Bill Maher, for example, was just showing his contempt and disrespect for women generally, which is what anyone who uses the terms “twat” and “cunt,” as he did, is doing. The argument that this ethical divide is so great that it justifies boycotts on one side and complete apathy—or even appreciation!—on the other is unsustainable, which is why Limbaugh’s statement that the organized campaign to take him off the air is not based on the Fluke affair at all. “They’re not even really offended by what happened,” he said. “This is just an opportunity to execute a plan they’ve had in their drawer since 2009.” Continue reading →

The Process Can Be Ugly, And Sure Was This Time, But This Is How Cultural Ethics Standards Change

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Greta was the tipping point.

The Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke Ethics Train Wreck is over at last, but unlike with many such debacles, something positive occurred. I believe that an emphatic cultural standard was established that calling a woman—any woman, famous or not, liberal or conservative—a derogatory term designed purely to denigrate her by denigrating her gender will not be considered acceptable in political, quasi-political or arguably-political commentary henceforward. If such rhetoric occurs in a comic or entertainment context, no politician or elected official can appear to endorse the individual who utters the offensive words.

I’m not arguing right now whether this is a good or a bad development, but merely that it happened, and that it is a real change. For this to happen, a conservative radio talk show host had to use the terms “slut’ and “prostitute” to make the botched satirical point that a feminist law student activist who argued that free contraceptives were a woman’s right was the equivalent of women who wanted to be “paid for sex.” If pundits and bloggers had merely declared this statement uncivil and cruel, nothing more would have happened, and the incident would have been quickly forgotten. But sensing political points to be scored in an election year, and with the added incentive of being handed what was seen as powerful ammunition to attempt a frontal attack against a detested partisan critic, Democrats,  progressives, feminists, activists, Obama strategists and left-biased journalists decided to cast the Limbaugh’s poor judgment in extreme terms. Continue reading →