Tom Morris

The latest Philosophy Bites is on Wittgenstein. I started listening last night but fell asleep immediately. No reflection on subject matter. Anyway, today I’ll listen to it again properly without falling asleep (one hopes).

The Philosopher’s Carnival is hosted this week by the University of Newcastle’s philosophy society and they are talking about an important philosophical topic: death.

Ophelia has two great posts today on subjects I care about - on ‘family rights’ and also on the Goddess myth. The first is a bullshit idea by religious nuts designed to prevent uppity young people and women from using the protections of human rights when they are within the ‘sanctity’ of marriage or the family. The latter is an idea thought up by the nutty wing of feminists that tries to put forward the idea that if you go back far enough all religions transition from masculine visions of God to feminine ones of the Goddess, and shouldn’t we be so proud of that non-existent history etc. The former is a dangerous myth that - if accepted - could seriously undermine our notions of human rights, and the latter is a stupid myth that is potentially dangerous if it stops feminists from working on the real, actual pressing issues of gender equality.

We’re going to burn you naked or put a bullet in your mouth. This is what the God-fearing call love of the highest kind. Proves that we don’t need a religious hatred law - in Holland for fuck’s sake! - because the nuts don’t need any kind of license at all to enforce their bigoted, idiotic views of aesthetics on the world around them.

Treat us as humans

All that ‘markets are conversations’ stuff that bloggers talk about - Kent Newsome has a sad story of it going wrong. I don’t get why it’s taking so long for businesspeople to understand that they need to talk to us as human beings rather than as consumers. It’s really not that complicated. I got a really nice e-mail this morning from a software vendor in response to something I’d written trying to solve a problem I’m having. I’m more likely to recommend this product to people now (in fact, I will: oXygen - it’s a great tool for programmers who deal with XML frequently!).

If, in this case, PetSmart had dealt with this situation like human beings, would there be blog posts about them now circulating? I don’t think so. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that a family dog dying is not something you can solve with a cheque. You need to show some understanding and compassion, which are intrinsically human characteristics.

danbri has a really important story, and a very good motivation for those of us working on technologies like FOAF, microformats, DataPortability and other truly open social technologies (rather than self-proclaimed open) - ISPs in Iran are now being blocked from blogs and social networking tools. I’m not a pragmatist in anything but the most general sense, and this is why - I think we need to protect free expression, and work on technologies that actively promote interconnectedness and free expression. Every time a kid breaks through some crappy censorship product or filter wall, I feel quite proud. Kids, as a whole, do a pretty good job of figuring out what information they want to see - and don’t generally get too fucked up by it. Already, RSS and Atom feeds are being used to get around filters that are setup to understand HTML but not other XML variants. So, some renegade links to help our censorship-afflicted brothers and sisters: Foxyproxy, evading censorship, Tor, SSH tunnelling.

Manu Sporny has published a video tutorial on RDFa. Go, watch! It’s simple and pretty!

Male genital mutilation: government says it’s harm prevention

The Government have responded to the anti-circumcision petition. And, of course, they support circumcision. A small subset of the already small number of practicing religious believers have obviously bent their ears on the subject.

What is more interesting is how the government defend what is almost completely indefensible. Let us remind ourselves what circumcision is: a procedure that is medically unnecessary for the vast majority of people, which has a small amount of health benefit but for which the benefits are far outweighed by the costs (increased risk of infection in surgery). The vast majority of procedures are carried out for cultural or religious reasons rather than medical ones. Generally, surgery that is medically unnecessary is something that we ethically frown upon if it’s done without consent. It is a fair conclusion that the reason circumcision remains legal in Britain is due to pressure from the religious lobby. Their reason for slicing off the foreskins of newborns? Well, God says so! A perfectly rational reason, I’m sure you’ll agree.

What is more interesting is the government’s response, and I quote: There can also be health and safety reasons for carrying out a circumcision on non-therapeutic grounds, including an identified risk from operations performed outside the NHS. And later in the passage: some doctors perform circumcision to prevent families going to lay circumcisers who may not be appropriately trained, or may operate out of premises that are not sterile.

The government here is justifying circumcision’s legality out of harm reduction. Now, medicine has a place for harm reduction. In fact, I think harm reduction is a very good reason to legalise drugs. Much rather people were buying their cocaine and weed from Boots and for the drug equivalent of Which? magazine and Watchdog keep an eye on the quality than having to buy it from some scumbag who has cut it with drain cleaner (or worse). Anyway, I digress. Circumcision as harm reduction. Sorry, but if it’s wrong - and, well, it quite plainly is for the reasons I’ve given above - it isn’t a matter of harm reduction. I mean, why don’t we just admit that rape is inevitable, and have rapist outreach where we give them condoms and lubricant and teach them about the birds and bees in order to reduce harm. I mean, they are going to rape people anyway, so we may as well reduce the harm. Why do we feel sick at the idea? Because harm reduction is about voluntary action by consenting adults to a greater or lesser degree. If someone has gender identity disorder, we consider it a greater harm to them to leave them at risk of suicide, self-harm and other negative effects of feeling a disconnection from their gender identity than we do the harm of putting their genitals under the knife. If we had people who were performing sex changes on newborns just because, oh, they want to be part of the tribe or do what God wants, we’d consider them delusional and their actions highly immoral.

I think we should do similarly for circumcision. That the government thinks that circumcision is something to tolerate and try and reduce the harm of by preventing unclean circumcisions rather than preventing all non-voluntary circumcisions, something is deeply wrong. No parent should be allowed to perform this kind of act on their child.

If a religion came along and told parents that they must castrate newborns, what reason do we have to tell them not to? It’s their religion, their cultural heritage after all. Sorry, but human rights must trump religion and ‘culture’. Anyway, there’s plenty of time for them when they are grown up to do silly things with their genitals and sharp objects. If they do really well, they can get a Darwin Award!