Gender and Sex

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Allahpundit

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"Hide! The Vice-President says that if the jobs bill doesn't pass, we might be raped!!!"

“The very first question at the next Solyndra hearing should be, “How many rapes could Democrats have prevented by giving that $535 million to cops instead?”

—“Hot Air” blogger Allahpundit, marking the below-the-belt tactics of Vice President Joe Biden, who angrily suggested that Republicans who voted against the President’s jobs bill would be responsible for rapes and murders because of the resulting inadequate numbers of police.

Biden’s fear-mongering is beyond demogoguery, whatever the virtues of the President’s bill. States make budgetary decisions, and if a state’s priorities in funding didn’t include sufficient police personnel to prevent rapes and murders, the state is accountable, not Congressional Republicans (and Democrats) who don’t like the President’s bill. Meanwhile, the jobs bill seeks $5 billion for cops (and firefighters) and $30 billion for teachers. Is Obama willing to risk more rapes by not putting more money into law enforcement and less into teacher’s unions?  Continue reading →

Herman Cain’s Unethical Abortion Doubletalk

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Republican presidential contender Herman Cain’s explanation of his position on abortion while chatting with CNN’s Piers Morgan is causing his growing legion of fans and supporters discomfort, and with good reason. It was ethically incoherent at best, unethical at worst. In either case, his comments show that he hasn’t devoted sufficient serious analysis to the issue to allow him to have a responsible and consistent approach. That is status quo for most Americans. It is not acceptable for a President of the United States.

Here is the relevant section of the interview (emphasis mine):

PIERS MORGAN: Abortion. What’s your view of abortion?

CAIN: I believe that life begins at conception. And abortion under no circumstances. And here’s why —

MORGAN: No circumstances?

CAIN: No circumstances. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Is There An Ethical Obligation To Help An Actress Lie About Her Age?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

An actress who is, so far, unidentified is suing Amazon.com in federal court for over $1 million in damages for disclosing her age on its Internet Movie Database website, and refusing to remove the reference when she requested, then demanded, that it do so.

She says that IMDb misused her personal information after she signed up for the “industry insider” IMDb Pro service in 2008. Soon she saw that her legal date of birth had appeared on her online acting profile. IMDb refused to remove it.

Now, she says, she is being discriminated against in Hollywood for her age (40), as is its custom. Producers won’t hire her for younger roles, because she’s now regarded as “too old.” Yet she can’t get older roles either, because she still looks much younger. The lawsuit seeks $75,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.

Your Ethics Quiz question of the day:

Did the Internet Movie Data Base do anything unethical by publishing the actress’s real age without her permission? Continue reading →

Stacy Crim, Ethics Hero…and the Hardest Choice

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Last week in Oklahoma, Ray Phillips fulfilled a promise to his sister Stacy, taking home from the hospital 5-pound Dottie Phillips, born prematurely in September, to become the newest member of his family.  Stacy died last month of brain cancer, just three days after holding her infant daughter for the first and only time. Dottie was able to come into the world only because Stacy, 41, had made the choice to reject chemotherapy for her rapidly spreading cancer that was diagnosed after she learned that she was pregnant.

When life places one of us in a “Sophie’s Choice” dilemma like Stacy’s, no one has standing to question or challenge whether the ultimate choice is “right.” There is no right choice. Stacy was faced with deciding whether to sacrifice the unborn child she had never met, a child whom many in America choose to regard as a neither a life or a being with any individual rights, but rather only as an ephemeral potentiality made of cells, similar to a pay-off at the races or a stock dividend. Even those who take the opposite view, that Dottie was a human life even at the earliest stages of her development in the womb, would never assert that a mother would be wrong to choose life-saving cancer treatments for herself at the risk of the unborn child. In such a case the right to choose is nearly unanimously accepted, and it is the hardest choice of all. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Website—and Readers— of the Month: The Spearhead”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Bill Price, who operates the website I criticized in the post “Unethical Website—and Readers— of the Month: The Spearhead,” offers this response in the Comment of the Day. Among other things, he mentions some new revelations about Victoria Liss (whose story I wrote about here) , the Seattle bartender whose inept and excessive web-shaming brought infamy and abuse down on the head of the wrong man. It seems that she has wrongly accused men before. It’s not exactly a surprise. Bill post raises many issues, and I’ll have some responses at the end. Here is his Comment of the Day:

“Hi Jack, noticed the post, and have to say I’m a little disappointed.

“Your article on Amanpour was indeed quite good, and much appreciated. But I’d like to point out that The Spearhead is very lightly moderated, and therefore many of the comments are indeed very radical. Additionally, those who comment and rate the comments are the most radical of all — less than 5% of readers are regular commenters. This always happens on any politically oriented board with a large readership, so it should be no surprise. Continue reading →

Unethical Website—and Readers— of the Month: The Spearhead

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ironically, the site's typical reader is better described as "The Cement Head"

I don’t want to seem ungrateful: it is usually a welcome discovery when I find a popular website sending readers to Ethics Alarms, as has been the case the last two days with a site called The Spearhead. Nor do I have any ethical objections to The Spearhead’s theoretical mission, which is to stand against “misandry,” the mistreatment, cultural denigration of and discrimination against men. The phenomenon The Spearhead and its various bloggers rail against certainly exists in the U.S., as Ethics Alarms most forcefully pointed out after ABC’s Christiane Amanpour led a male-bashing roundtable on her Sunday show and did so as if she was having her guests name the state Capitals.

Unfortunately, the tone of most of the articles on The Spearhead is decidedly paranoid, misogynist or worse, echoing the dialogue in old movies and TV comedies in which rejected (and often repulsive) men would band together in a “Woman-Hater’s Club.” Its article (“Waitress Reacts to Insult With Online Lynch Mob”) that linked to Ethics Alarms, for example, weighing in on the Victoria Liss affair in which an aggrieved waitress used Facebook to invite Internet Avengers to heap abuse on a cheap and insulting customer but carelessly fingered the wrong man, took this from the episode:

“How many men would be so petty, so vindictive, and so morally depraved that they would launch a personal vendetta over a minor slight suffered in the course of a day’s work? Very few, obviously — such men would be instantly fired, and likely castigated by the courts (if not jailed) for harassment.”

Thus Victoria, in the view of the author, isn’t merely one inept Facebook user and an unusually vindictive waitress, but a typical representative of her gender and proof of the fairer sex’s inadequacies when compared to men. This is bigotry.  But the real ugliness arrived in the comments to the article, most of which heaped abuse on Liss and hatred on women generally, condemning the waitress not only for what she did, but for her appearance. Thanks to the site’s like/dislike feature, it was  possible to gauge which of the comments were representative of the majority. The verdict does not speak well for The Spearhead. Here is a representative sample:

  • “In today’s America, it is assured one will get undeserved shit, for speaking Truth.The customer spoke truth about her fatness, and now, the fat one is the one indignant…with a crowd of supporters defending her uncontrolled behavior. America = truth avoidance”

This endorsement of gratuitous rudeness and cruelty was approved of by the readership by a margin of 56 to 9. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: “The Video Vigilante” of Oklahoma City

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

The Video Vigilante

Brian Bates, or “The Video Vigilante,” has spent 15 years exposing and documenting street prostitution in Oklahoma City. He lurks around an area of south Oklahoma City known for frequent prostitution, waits for a prostitute to get into the car of a customer and follows it to their destination. Then, videotape engaged, he opens the driver’s side door and shouts, “You’re busted, buddy!”

Then he places the video on YouTube’s John TV channel, Bates’ website, JohnTV.com, or his Facebook page or Twitter feed. He sometimes send the links to the guilty men’s spouses. Sometimes, knowing this, his prey beg for mercy, which is never forthcoming.

A two-part Ethics Quiz:

1. Is this admirable behavior? Ethical behavior? Continue reading →

1. Now THAT’s Unethical 2.Yuck! 3. Is There Hollandaise With That?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

From his pants to your mouth

Details of a hostile work environment law suit from the Courthouse News service:

“A sous-chef at Morton’s of Chicago in Boca Raton claims managers encouraged employees to sexually harass one another, and that the kitchen high-jinks endangered the public, as one worker would “place stalks of asparagus inside his underwear, next to his anal/genital area in order to simulate his penis,” then would “serve that asparagus to Morton’s unsuspecting paying customers.”

If the plaintiff is making that up, he is spectacularly malicious, and also has a future writing Farrelly Brothers screenplays. If he is not making it up, I may never eat asparagus again.

Comment of the Day: “America’s Untouchables, Continued…”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Commenter Shelly Stow has the Comment of the Day, with some useful calculations inspired by the post “America’s Untouchables, Continued…”:

“Every time I read about the creation of “child-safe” zones, I just shake my head. According to the latest statistics from the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Division of the DOJ about who child molesters are, for victims age 6 and below, 58.7% are family members, 39.7% family acquaintances, and 1.8% strangers (and not all of the stranger group are registered offenders; in fact, few are); for victims age 7-11: 50.5% family; 46.7% acquaintances; 2.7% strangers; and for victims age 12-17: 21.7% family; 72.9% acquaintances; 5.7% strangers–keeping in mind that only a tiny percentage of the stranger groups are registered offenders.

“Based on this, the only “zone” that would keep children out of the reach of potential molesters and therefore safe from sexual abuse is a zone that would exclude their parents, siblings, grandparents, entire extended family, baby sitters, neighbors, teachers, playmates’ parents, siblings…..everyone in their lives.”

America’s Untouchables, Continued: Persecution in Huachuca City, Arizona

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Wait! I've got a great solution! Why not a YELLOW STAR for registered sex offenders?

Huachuca City, Arizona has approved an ordinance banning registered sex offenders from all public facilities, including schools, parks, libraries, pools, gymnasiums and sports facilities. As discussed in an earlier post, the willingness of municipalities to continue to oppress and stigmatize law-abiding citizens who the justice system has deemed fit to re-enter society is ignorant, cruel, and unconscionable. And it is getting worse.

Mayor Byron Robertson is mouthing the same rationalization that others in his position have: it’s all for the children. “As a town and as a community, we have to protect our children. As a council, we have to make the right calls. Our police chief indicated that we were having a serious problem with some pedophiles that were being a nuisance and we took steps to overcome that.” The “steps” involve forcing innocent American citizens to move out of town, because “some” individuals, who are not necessarily registered sex offenders, are posing problems.This isn’t good for the children, because it isn’t good for children to grow up in a community that engages in cruel and invidious discrimination based on presumed criminal tendencies. Continue reading →