Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Society

  • The Power of Language

    I’ve remarked before how language can be used to shape and direct our attitudes and feelings. Jim Burroway in Box Turtle Bulletin has a particularly interesting entry on how language is used by anti-gay groups in the US. Well worth reading and thinking about. As Burroway says:
    For me, attending the Love Won Out ex-gay conference in Phoenix was very much like being an anthropologist from Mars, as Oliver Saks [sic] once put it. I observed a culture with its own vaguely familiar language and customs. And learning its language was key to understanding the framework and worldview from which Love Won Out operated. But as is true with many cultures, it almost requires a total immersion inside the culture of Love Won Out to pick up on the nuances of those terms and customs. 
    I tend to feel like that Sacksian anthropologist (actually ‘on’ Mars, rather than ‘from’ Mars, as Burroway writes) when I look at much of what emanates from the US, and doubtless the feeling is mutual. The contrast with things that are taken for granted here in The Netherlands is sometimes startling. Yesterday, for example, the Dutch "queen of the afternoon chat-shows", Catherine Keyl, had as her main guests Albert Verlinde and Onno Hoes, a same-sex couple who have been married for five years. Verlinde works in television and produces musicals, while Hoes is a politician; a member of the Executive for the province of Noord-Brabant. While the focus of the interview was on how do this couple juggle their busy professional careers to have enough time together, the underlying language and feeling of the interview was how "gewoon" (commonplace, ordinary) their situation was.
     
    The interview served to point up that their experience was part of family life, whereas in Burroway’s example of the Love Won Out conference, the language used serves to drive a wedge between a person and their sexuality:
    Their language is specially designed to treat people and their sexuality as if they were two completely separate entities, as if sexuality were a separate thing outside of the person. As Melissa Fryrear put it in a breakout session, they constantly work to “separate the ‘who’ from the ‘do’,” or, as others have put it more crudely in Mike Haley’s example, “the sinner” from “the sin”. 

  • International Women’s Day

    Tomorrow is the annual marking of International Women’s Day. It continues to be necessary, although as Zoe Williams points out in today’s Guardian, it appears to be in danger of drowning in trivia. Just one minor quibble with Ms. Williams’ article, I think she was having a Freudian slip when she reffered to "Agassi kitchen utensils" in place of "Alessi kitchen utensils"…

  • Is Your Baby Gay?

    Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, dreams of the day when he can carry out a final solution for gays…
    If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin. 
    (hat tip to Unscrewing the Inscrutable for the link)

  • The Trap

    Via Not Saussure comes news that BBC2 starts a new three-part series next week. It’s The Trap – What Happened To Our Dream of Freedom. As it’s made by Adam Curtis, the man who made the absolutely riveting Power of Nightmares, I can see that I’ll be screwed to the sofa watching this.

  • God Is A Spandrel

    Darwin’s God is the title of an interesting article* in the New York Times magazine about exploring the basics of the two major camps in the scientists studying the evolution of religious belief: the byproduct theorists and the adaptionists. The former posit theories that religion is a byproduct of some other cognitive processes. That’s the "God is a spandrel" camp. The adaptionists, on the other hand, posit theories that religion of itself is a succesful evolutionary strategy. The article opens with the author (Robin Marantz Henig) introducing the person and the work of the anthropologist Scott Atran. He’s an interesting character, and I’m in the middle of his book In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. However, I’m not convinced by his explanation of the "African Relic" anecdote related in the NYT article. It seems to me to be much more reasonable that, rather than the subjects’ reluctance being powered by superstition, as he claims, it’s powered by suspicion.
     
    I need to explore both sides of the byproduct versus adaptionist arguments some more. My natural tendency is to plump for the "God is a spandrel" explanation, but I’m quite willing to accept evidence that religion might have once solved problems of survival and reproduction of our early ancestors. I’m far less convinced that it continues to do so today.
     
    *This link goes to the opening section of the article reproduced on the Richard Dawkins web site. The full article is currently to be found here, but the NYT has a habit of placing archive material behind a subscription wall. Get it while it’s hot.

  • Coulrophobia

    I’ve often suspected that I suffer from a mild form of coulrophobia – I find clowns somewhat disturbing. But I think that when I end up in a nursing home, the last thing I want to invade my space is a posse of clowns, particularly Christian Clowns…
     
     
     
     
    (hat tip, I think, to Orac)

  • Life Was Simpler Then…

    …and Health and Safety issues were a thing of the future. Still, I’m sure a barrel with a pipe stuck through it worked out a good deal cheaper than the Playstations, Nintendos and Xboxes that today’s children have come to demand.

  • The Land of the Free?

    Well, not if you happen to be a transsexual, it would appear. A friend of ours has emailed me news of what has just happened in Largo, in Florida, where she lives. The City Manager, Steve Stanton, has been removed from his post. His crime? He is a transsexual who wishes to proceed to become female. And for that, the bigots in Largo have been out in force. People such as Peggy Schaefer and Ron Sanders. Over to Peggy:
    "I don’t want that man in office," she said. "I don’t think we should be paying him $150,000 a year when he’s not been truthful. We have to speak up. Of course, we don’t believe in sex changes or lesbianism. They have their rights, but we do, too." 
    And Ron:
    "Mr. Stanton is not a role model. He’s proven that. I think for the sake of our young people today, you need to do what’s right, and that’s terminate him. … If Jesus was here tonight, I can guarantee you he’d want him terminated. Make no mistake about it." 
    While there have been voices of moderation – such as the Reverend Abhi Janamanchi:
    "Do not give in to extreme pressure, because there is such a thing as the tyranny of the majority. … Make this judgment based on sound ethics, compassion, humanity, and truly show commitment to diversity."
    – the end result is that the City Commissioners voted 5-2 to remove Stanton from his post. Another victory for bigotry and intolerance. God bless America?

  • Reflections on a Mote of Dust

    Carl Sagan wrote Reflections on a Mote of Dust in 1996. His words remain as true today as they were then.
    Icecorescientist has set the words to images and music…
     
     
     
    (hat tip to the Bad Astronomer for the link)

  • Hell On Earth

    Hilzoy, over at Obsidian Wings, draws our attention to the situation in Northern Uganda. Heartrending.

  • Another Two Data Points

     
     
    An open and shut case – ineffably sad and a terrible waste of human potential of all concerned.

  • Voices From Nigeria

    That’s the title of a new report from the IGLHRC (International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission). It documents some of the stories of LGBT Nigerians who are attempting to speak out against proposals for a new law prohibiting same-sex marriage in Nigeria. It makes for heart-rending reading. Meanwhile, the flames of hate are being assiduously fanned by the vile Peter Akinola and others of his ilk.

  • Who Do You Think You Are?

    My brother has been trying to piece together our family history for some time now. He started long before it became fashionable. Unfortunately, the trail back through time peters out fairly quickly – the curse of having common family names, I suppose. We would like to know more about our mother’s side of the family in particular, because we have Indian ancestry via our great-great grandmother.

    The story goes that our great-great-great grandfather was serving in the British Army in India in the 1820s-1830s. We’re not even sure of his name and rank – family folklore calls him Colonel Murray Holmes, but we’ve drawn a blank on that name in the army records so far. Apparently he married an Indian, but after the birth of a daughter in 1833(?) (our great-great-grandmother) she died. The child was brought back to England by a Major Penrice, who became her guardian. What happened to Colonel Holmes, we don’t know. Did he go mad with grief over the death of his wife? Did he get killed? Did he go AWOL? We are unlikely to find out. In any event, the child grew up and in due course married into a farming family – the Johnsons – in Cumbria. The only photograph we have of her was taken in about 1900, we think. Our mother remembered her visiting the family in about 1910 – as an imposing old lady who arrived in a pony and trap. Our mother would have been about six years old at the time. This is the photograph.

    g-g-Grandmother Johnson, 1900

    The photographs that we have of our great-aunts (Corra, Annie, Ethel and Emily) and our great-uncle George are even more striking, as they clearly show our Indian roots. These were taken in 1915.

    G-Aunts Cora, Annie, Ethel, Emily, G Uncle George Johnson circa 1915
    G Aunts Cora & Annie, G uncle George Johnson circa 1915

    Of course, by the time you get to our generation, mongrelisation has well and truly taken over, and I suppose that all that’s left is my Lamarckian fondness for curry… My Desi roots are all but lost.

    Update 16 December 2007: Well thanks to Shelly, we’ve now gleaned a little more of the family history. It turns out that we didn’t have the correct name for our great-great-great grandfather. He turns out to have been Lieutenant Colonel George Home Murray in the 16th Lancers. He died in Cawnpore, India on the 15th December 1833 after a few days illness. It was possibly cholera, since in August of that year there was a cholera epidemic in the Regiment. 364 men out of a total strength of 580 were admitted to hospital during the period of 22nd August to 24th September, and 60 men died of the disease. Colonel Murray was buried in the Cawnpore cemetary, where a monument was erected to his memory by the officers of the Regiment. I wonder whether it still stands?

    My brother has also been busy. He’s engaged a genealogist, who, amongst other things, has turned up the last will and testament of Colonel Murray. It turns out that while he acknowledges our great-great grandmother as an heir, she is named in the will as “the daughter of an Asian woman”. Whether she was his flesh and blood or not (and the probability seems high that she was), she took the name of Corra Home. Another piece of the jigsaw fell into place when we saw that the executor of Colonel Murray’s will was a Thomas Penrice. Could this be the “Major Penrice” who became Corra’s guardian? In any case, we now know that Corra was apparently born in 1827 (not 1833) in Calcutta, and she married John Johnson, a soldier in the 2nd Life Guards. He was born in about 1821 in Macclesfield. Further digging is afoot…

    Update 17 December 2007: Shelly turned up trumps again – she’s found a photo of the monument to Colonel Murray. The internet is amazing…

  • Still Missing

    I see that Jim Gray is still missing. I’m afraid I fear the worst, although it seems that his family has not yet given up hope.

  • Friends and Enemies

    I’ve mentioned the ding-dong between Pascal Bruckner, Timothy Garton-Ash and Ian Buruma before. Other voices are joining in, but can I just refer you (at the risk of seeming a trifle immodest) to the excellent commentary on the whole affair by J. Carter-Wood over at Obscene Desserts…

  • The Book Of Rules

    The Taliban’s Book of Rules contains some breath-taking precepts:
    24) It is forbidden to work as a teacher under the current puppet regime, because this strengthens the system of the infidels. True Muslims should apply to study with a religiously trained teacher and study in a Mosque or similar institution. Textbooks must come from the period of the Jihad or from the Taliban regime.
     
    25) Anyone who works as a teacher for the current puppet regime must recieve a warning. If he nevertheless refuses to give up his job, he must be beaten. If the teacher still continues to instruct contrary to the principles of Islam, the district commander or a group leader must kill him.
     
    26) Those NGOs that come to the country under the rule of the infidels must be treated as the government is treated. They have come under the guise of helping people but in fact are part of the regime. Thus we tolerate none of their activities, whether it be building of streets, bridges, clinics, schools, madrases (schools for Koran study) or other works. If a school fails to heed a warning to close, it must be burned. But all religious books must be secured beforehand.  
    And while I’m reeling from this I come across:
    19) Mujahideen are not allowed to take young boys with no facial hair onto the battlefield or into their private quarters.
    Er, what?
     
    (hat tip to Norm) 

  • Jaw Drops…

    …I’m sorry, but this makes me want to scream. "Their money"? So that makes it OK then? With financial advisers like this, who needs people slitting your veins?

  • Punks In Niqabs

    Not Saussure illustrates his post on the recent Policy Exchange report on Islamism with a wonderful photograph – you must go and look at it. Punk rockers for the multicultural age. And while you’re there, read the rest of the post. As he says, the best thing to do is to keep a sense of perspective.

  • Ayaan Hirsi Ali

    There’s an interview with Hirsi Ali in today’s Observer. It’s worth reading.

  • Pomposity Pricked

    I mentioned a few days ago that I had read an attack by Pascal Bruckner on Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, whom he accused in turn of attacking Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I said at the time that I found Bruckner’s piece shrill and over the top.
     
    Well, via the editor of the New Humanist’s blog, I learn that Buruma and Garton Ash have both replied. And frankly, their replies confirm my original impression that Bruckner is a bit of a wanker. Well, quelle surprise…