I don’t care if this makes me unpopular. Unlike SOME in our country, I am FIRMLY against burning kittens.

I think we all have a soft spot for the moral panics of our youth. For me, that’s the Satanic Panics of the eighties. My small Indiana town was not at all unique in having a rumored Devil’s House somewhere out in the country. A kid heard from another kid whose aunt knew somebody who said that’s where Satanists worshiped the Devil. Back in the day, news outlets ran with lurid stories of sexual abuse and torture of children in the name of Lucifer. The evidence was always sketchy — recovered memories and so forth — but what a great story. As Fred Clark has discussed, there is a need among some in this country to believe that there are lurking hordes of would-be kitten burners in our midst.

A few years ago there was a particularly horrifying kitten-burning incident involving a barbecue grill and, astonishingly, a video camera. That sordid episode took place far from the place where I work, yet the paper’s editorial board nonetheless felt compelled to editorialize on the subject. They were, happily, against it. Unambiguously so.

I agreed with that stance, of course. Who doesn’t? But despite agreeing with the side they took, I couldn’t help but be amused by the editorial’s inordinately proud pose of courageous truth-telling. The lowest common denominator of minimal morality was being held up as though it were a prophetic example of speaking truth to power.

…

But here was the weird part: Most of the commenters and letter-writers didn’t seem to notice that they were expressing a unanimous and noncontroversial sentiment. Their comments and letters were contentious and sort of aggressively defensive. Or maybe defensively aggressive. They were angry, and that anger didn’t seem to be directed only at the kitten-burners, but also at some larger group of others whom they imagined must condone this sort of thing.

So, maybe you’re too young for the Satanic Panics. Maybe your first moral panic has to do with an extensive but elusive network of the nation’s elite kidnapping, raping, and torturing kids in the Comet Ping Pong basement and elsewhere to get their adrenochrome fix. The specifics probably don’t matter that much, but some common ingredients seem to be sex, kids, abuse, and a poorly defined but surely very large group of people who derive profit and/or pleasure from such bad behavior.

Enter the gender affirming care debate. This one is a little weird because on the surface, there is the knotty issue of what kind of care is best for transgender kids. Puberty blockers and hormone therapy aren’t risk free propositions. But then, depriving kids with gender dysmorphia of such treatments is not risk free either. When do the risks of one justify the risks of the other? That seems like the kind of things you let kids, their parents, and their physicians sort out. The Indiana General Assembly has stepped in and forbidden families from getting this kind of treatment. SB 480-2023 is cruel. It helps no one and makes many people’s lives harder.

But the way the debate was framed was perplexing. Elective sex reassignment surgery for kids just wasn’t happening in Indiana. Indiana physicians and medical providers testified to as much before the General Assembly. (Nationwide: “56 youth between the ages of 13 and 17 had genital surgeries over the course of three years. Testimony has affirmed that surgeries on minors don’t occur in Indiana.”) And yet, legislators and even Gov. Holcomb fixated on this non-existent kind of surgery when justifying their actions.

Recently I was reading a message board (not focused on Indiana) where there was a discussion about treatment for transgender children. And, I have to say, the intensity of the focus on “genital mutilation” caught me off guard. That’s what triggered my memory of the Satanic Panic and the QAnon adrenochrome conspiracy, and I realized that I should not have been surprised. History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. People want to believe that they are righteously standing up to the shadowy forces of liberals, atheists, communists, and other undesirables who are mutilating kids’ genitals when they get a break from comic books, reefer, Dungeons & Dragons, the knock out game, Tide pods, kitten burning and jazz music.

I don’t want to suggest that the right course of action for helping a transgender kid or a kid who thinks they might be transgender is necessarily straight forward. I think there are plenty of people who are legitimately concerned about the well being of children. But those kinds of concerns would presumably lead a person to support better funding for studying treatments. Maybe more robust supports for families striving to do their best for kids. Possibly even some additional regulatory hoops to jump through depending on the risks of the treatment being sought.

Something else is at work with the intensity of feeling among people eager to eliminate access to puberty blockers under the rhetoric of banning non-existent elective surgeries. It has a very Anti-Kitten Burning Coalition feel to it.

Reading is Fundamental: Pick up a copy today!

I just finished a good book (From Property to Partner: Women’s Progress and Political Resistance) on feminist history, economics, and future challenges. The authors are two of Indiana’s best scholars and academic voices: Sheila Kennedy and Morton Marcus. I’d urge folks not to shut down at the mention of “feminism” or “academics.”

The book is not an inaccessible meditation on postmodern alienation, performative social constructs, symbolic discourse, or whatever the kids are going on about these days. It’s a plain English discussion of social, legal, economic, and technological trends describing women’s progress from subordinates to (increasingly) equal members of society. It also describes the backlash we’re seeing to those developments.

I’m honestly a little late to the game on feminism. I never doubted women’s right to equal status. But, as a white male born in the seventies, I tended to regard descriptions of male privilege and female disadvantages as overstated. Those things were in the past. Looking around me anecdotally while I was an adolescent in the late 80s, early 90s, there wasn’t (from my limited perspective) a ton of evidence of either. Similarly, I regarded talk of the forces of patriarchy as something like conspiracy theory.

As I got older, the privileges of being a male started to accrue and my horizons broadened. I was better able to see the disparate treatment of men and women. And, of late, the forces of patriarchy have been frantically active and more difficult to ignore.

With that as background, this book was a good primer. It’s a plain-English read and not too long. While the social and legal efforts to obtain more equality for women shouldn’t be discounted, I particularly appreciated the discussion of the various ways in which technology has contributed to progress for women.

Industrialization meant brute strength was no longer as significant a factor for earning a living. The birth control pill allowed women greater control over their bodies and over whether and when to become pregnant. The knock-on effects of that control are difficult to overstate. Unexpected and unwanted pregnancies and the responsibilities of child care (which disproportionately fall on women) have a huge impact on a woman’s autonomy and her equal participation in society. Additionally, advances in household technologies (where women have traditionally been expected to do most of the labor) opened up time for women to make a living outside the home. The authors take a two-pronged approach. They alternate chapters and focus on their respective areas of expertise. Sheila Kennedy’s background is as a lawyer and professor of law and public policy. Morton Marcus is an economist. Together they’re able to cover a lot of ground.

The political backlash to women’s progress has become more pronounced in recent years. A lot of the red/blue, rural/urban divide, particularly on culture war issues, can be viewed as a fight over gender roles. State level gerrymandering, the electoral college, and the Senate’s arbitrary filibuster rules give the forces of tradition that favor a subordinate role for women more leverage.

Also, until recently, the political incentives surrounding abortion favored the political right. The issue galvanized white evangelicals while those on the left mostly ignored the issue in favor of other issues. Despite dire warnings to the contrary, the assumption was that Roe would continue to protect women’s right to bodily autonomy. After all, political activists had warned that Roe’s demise was imminent for decades. With the Dobbs decision and state legislatures (including Indiana’s) rolling back women’s reproductive rights, those political incentives may have shifted. Even in red states, abortion bans appear to be deeply unpopular.

The authors differ on how decisively they have shifted. Neither pretends anything like certainty. Kennedy tends to think that Dobbs may have awakened a sleeping giant in the form of women who, as it happens, enjoy having rights and who vote. Marcus seems less optimistic about whether the shift will have the longevity and the numbers necessary to restore what was lost.

In any event, it was a good read, and I can recommend it.

Richmond had a big fire yesterday at 358 NW F Street that has required evacuation orders as various kinds of plastic are burning.

I don’t pretend to know a lot about the situation, but I’m looking at the transcript of a 2019 unsafe building hearing, and it looks like they saw a lot of the risk. My understanding is that, in the interim, the property was sold at tax sale and the City acquired the property from the County. The City or the previous owner may have done work to mitigate some of the hazards since 2019, but clearly some (or all) of the risk remained!

From the 2019 transcript:

MR. GARDNER: So on the properties that’s listed (inaudible) today, they’ve done an incident pre-plan from the fire department’s perspective on resources needed.· Some of our concerns on these is access in and around the structures.· Let me back up here so you understand what I’m talking about. So in getting access around to the rear parts of the structure, this right here is a railroad track, which renders it impossible just about to come in the backside here.· This is Northwest F Street.· From this aerial photograph, there’s no access to the sides of the building.· And this is continued through all the properties. We look at fire flow, fully involved, gallons per minute needed, resources needed, water available, evacuation areas, depending on wind direction.· It’s a multi-agency possibility with, you know, the health department, emergency management, local departments outside the City of Richmond.· Looking at toxins and stuff like that. And the way we do this is by this and also in recent history of incidents throughout the country or around the world.· And in the  recent years — the past couple years, there’s been a fire at a storage recycling facility in Australia that had a lengthy fire ground operation upwards to close to two weeks of that. There was one in Parkersburg, West Virginia, that lasted for over eight days.· The one in Australia was June this year. We look at the after-effects and we look at runoff of contaminated water from the suppression efforts.· And then we also look at the lack of fire protection and fire detection.

In a situation like this with the 358 building, it was designed and intended with a suppression system and a detection system.· Those work to get ahead of the game if a fire did occur. With no detection system, that’s a delay in notification, meaning that it could possibly be through the roof, through the windows, or whatever before somebody called it in.· A suppression system is designed to suppress the fire and slow the spread of fire once detected.· So, therefore, with no detection system, we don’t have that or fire protection system and it allows that fire to grow more rapidly than (inaudible).

MR. HEETER:· So there’s nothing to contain it and then you don’t find out about it  very quickly, it sounds like?

MR. GARDNER:· Right.·

…

·MR. HEETER:· Are there other properties that are around it that you would consider in danger in that case?· I mean, it’s spreading, you know, to businesses or other properties?

MR. GARDNER:· Anything in the immediate area.· It’s weather-dependent, also.· You know, wind travel, wind speed, you know, that plays into it.· If it’s contained in the building or it’s on the lot, you know, all of that, it’s all taken into effect.· And depending on the size of the fire (inaudible) then would determine what we determine would be an immediate threat.

…

MR. JORDAN:· 358 is a Type 1 structure that’s been used as a business without any utilities.· I mean, the sprinkler system is down.· I mean, it’s got —

MR. HEETER:· That’s the one with the fire suppression system — that’s been gutted?

MR. JORDAN:· It has.· And, you know, by the rules of the commission, you know, for him to occupy that building, he should have electric power.

MR. HEETER:· It doesn’t have power at all?

MR. JORDAN:· It doesn’t have — any electric.· The sprinkler system should be up and running.· All the emergency — lighting should be on.

MR. HEETER:· It’s a safety issue for  the community, not just the neighborhood,

Again, that’s all from a hearing on September 24, 2019. (It was later filed as an exhibit in a 2019 case challenging the orders of the City’s Unsafe Building Commission.) My understanding is that the owner of the recycling operations had maybe acquired the property from an outfit called Hoffco Comet, which made lawn and garden equipment. Back in 2009-2010, they lost John Deere as a customer and shut their doors. According to information in the hearing transcript, they (or whoever owned the building at the time) had salvaged the copper in the building, including the sprinkler systems before abandoning the structure.

I wrote the following in the course of a conversation on the WELL in a climate change thread. It seemed worth porting over here.

There’s a sense that nothing we do [not just with respect to climate change – in all aspects of life] ever makes anything better. So, why bother? No matter what we try, headlines and social media posts persist around the theme that we live in uniquely awful times. It’s bullshit. We don’t. But cynicism masquerades as wisdom, so try observing that we live in historically pretty good times. You’ll quickly get hit with a straw man to the effect of, “oh, just because things were shitty 200 years ago, we should pretend that everything is perfect now.” As if those are the only choices.

If any of the cynicism and nihilism is justified, it might well be in the context of climate change. But I think the flood of learned helplessness in other areas of life makes it tough for us to feel like we can deal with climate change in any meaningful sense.

Today the weather in my neck of the woods was very pleasant. Sunny, 45, and low wind. I don’t trust that Spring is truly here, but that was a taste. I took the dogs for a nice long walk. (And, incidentally – do not underestimate how much good the simple act of going for a walk can do for mind and body.) As I walked, I was listening to an audio book of Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley,” written based on a journey Steinbeck took in 1960, and this passage amused me:

We have inherited many attitudes from our recent ancestors who wrestled this continent as Jacob wrestled the angel, and the pioneers won. From them we take a belief that every American is a natural-born hunter. And every fall a great number of men set out to prove that without talent, training, knowledge, or practice they are dead shots with rifle or shotgun. The results are horrid. From the moment I left Sag Harbor the guns were booming at the migrating ducks, and as I drove in Maine the rifle shots in the forests would have frightened off any number of redcoats so long as they didn’t know what was happening. This is bound to get me a bad name as a sportsman, but let me say at once that I have nothing against the killing of animals. Something has to kill them, I suppose. In my youth I often crawled miles on my belly through freezing wind for the pure glory of blasting a mudhen which even soaked in salt water made poor eating. I don’t greatly care for venison or bear or moose or elk except for the livers. The recipes, the herbs, the wine, the preparation that goes into a good venison dish would make an old shoe a gourmet’s delight. If I were hungry, I would happily hunt anything that runs or crawls or flies, even relatives, and tear them down with my teeth. But it isn’t hunger that drives millions of armed American males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove. Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I don’t quite know how. I know there are any number of good and efficient hunters who know what they are doing; but many more are overweight gentlemen, primed with whisky and armed with high-powered rifles. They shoot at anything that moves or looks as though it might, and their success in killing one another may well prevent a population explosion. If the casualties were limited to their own kind there would be no problem, but the slaughter of cows, pigs, farmers, dogs, and highway signs makes autumn a dangerous season in which to travel.

Somehow it’s refreshing to know that skepticism of hunting as a masculine endeavor was held by one of our greatest writers 60 years ago. Like Steinbeck, the killing of animals isn’t something to which I object in particular. And I don’t even have any specific problem with hunting. My grandfather was an avid hunter – I suppose I imagine he was one of the capable people. I think it’s the unearned condescension I’ve seen from hunters toward non-hunters which make me raise an eyebrow.

I have this notion that, if I’m going to throw my idle musings online, should try to do more of it here on a site that I own rather than onto one of the social media conglomerates with their fussy algorithms. We’ll see how that goes. Also, I’m trying out a plug-in that should auto-post to Mastodon for me.

I made the mistake of reading the newspaper comment section, and it brought to mind a couple of themes. First is how nostalgia distorts things. The tragedies of today resonate way more than the statistics of yesterday. So, you have people who compare the slings and arrows they are currently experiencing or the fire hose of Bad News from around he world on the one hand with the sepia toned memories of yesteryear, relieved of the clutter, chaos, anxiety, and other negativity that accompanied yesteryear as it was actually happening. It’s like thinking that the music of [pick decade] was so much better than today’s music. You’re comparing every song you’re hearing today against only those songs from the 70s or 80s that survived. Sure, “Billie Jean” was pretty catchy, but 40 years later, it’s not all mixed in with Vandenberg’s “Burning Heart.” The latest murder or robbery is pretty disturbing, especially if it happened in town. And it doesn’t really become less disturbing if I quote statistics telling you that violent crime in the U.S. is about half as prevalent now as it was 30 years ago. Things can *feel* worse even when they are objectively better.

The second was what I call cynicism masquerading as wisdom. Culturally, I think we just regard people who perceive or predict gloom and doom as being more serious than people who point out the good or even the stable and mundane. If you predict dangers that don’t materialize, people mostly don’t remember or care. Better safe than sorry, I guess. If you predict sunshine and rainbows prior to a disaster, people will roast you for it. Also, there’s a certain dog-bites-man quality to things working. It’s just not news. Man-bites-dog, on the other hand, deserves a headline. Given that bias for novelty, it’s easy to get the sense that everything is collapsing.

I don’t know that there’s a lot of help for these things. But, the anxiety associated with thinking you live in Fallen Times compared to the good old days isn’t healthy for us. I think the best we can do is probably to be aware of these dynamics, calibrate for them, and adjust our filters accordingly. Also, take a walk and talk to your friends, family, and other real people.