The biologists have done it again. Not so long ago it was cloning and embryonic stem cells that challenged moral imagination. These days all eyes are on a powerful new technique for engineering or “editing” DNA. Relatively easy to learn and to use, CRISPR has forced scientists, ethicists and policymakers to reconsider one of the few seeming red lines in experimental biology: the difference between genetically modifying an individual’s somatic cells and engineering the germline that will be transmitted to future generations. Instead of genetic engineering for one person why not eliminate that disease trait from all of her or his descendants?
This week, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the U.K. Royal Society are trying to find ways to redraw that red line. And redraw it in a way that allows the technology to help and not to hurt humanity. Perhaps the hardest but most critical part of the ethical challenge: doing that in a way that doesn’t go down a dark path of “improvements” to the human race.
‘Designer babies’ debate should start, scientists say-
Rapid progress in genetics is making “designer babies” more likely and society needs to be prepared, leading scientists have told the BBC. Dr Tony Perry, a pioneer in cloning, has announced precise DNA editing at the moment of conception in mice. He said huge advances in the past two years meant “designer babies” were no longer HG Wells territory. Other leading scientists and bioethicists argue it is time for a serious public debate on the issue. Designer babies - genetically modified for beauty, intelligence or to be free of disease - have long been a topic of science fiction. Dr Perry, who was part of the teams to clone the first mice and pigs, said the prospect was still fiction, but science was rapidly catching up to make elements of it possible. In the journal Scientific Reports, he details precisely editing the genome of mice at the point DNA from the sperm and egg come together. Dr Perry, who is based at the University of Bath, told the BBC: “We used a pair of molecular scissors and a molecular sat-nav that tells the scissors where to cut. “It is approaching 100% efficiency already, it’s a case of ‘you shoot you score’.”
Dave: “According to my interpretation of him [Graf/me], we can use is-statements to describe what rights are and to determine what is a violation of rights. The only ought-statement in the area of rights answers the simple question, ought we to fulfill the duties defined by property rights? (In case I am not being clear, note that Graf does not claim that this is the only ought question in the realm of morality, just the only ought-statement that pertains to this particular subject, property rights.)”
I think this is a good representation of one of the main points I was making, yes (although “rights” is problematic, as so much easy confusion is associated with the word, so I use NAP violations, as defined within, to be more specific).
I argue that the use of the word “ethics” in Rothbard’s and Hoppe’s works (right in the titles) has also helped cement confusion in this area. They were speaking almost entirely of property theory, which is within the domain of legal theory. “Ethics” has been used in Austrian circles to differentiate some “not economics” issues from economics; the problem being that there was more than one field that was “not economics” for these purposes and this fact was more profound than was generally recognized. I argue that ethics proper is one such field while property/legal theory is quite another (and, linked by praxeological, counterfactual method, relatively closer to (Misesian) economics than to ethics).
The simplest illustrative version is to say that property/legal theory tells what theft IS, while ethical theory can offer advice on whether or not one ought to engage in activities thereby defined as theft. Totally different issues. Ethical theory advises on action decisions; property/legal theory does the defining: “So now that you know what theft is (thanks to property/legal theory), what are you going to do about it? (consult ethics, etc.).”
By this point, legal positivism is irrelevant to understanding in terms of justice, and the Matrix has been exited. NAP violations are defined in the context of a specific field of knowledge with its own methods and validity criteria that are completely independent of the claims of any jurisdiction and indeed regardless of time or place. Specifics of time and place are addressed under interpretation (Mises’s “thymology”) and legal practice (which has/should have its own ethical principles!), as distinct from legal theory itself.
Imho the idea of ‘cruelty free’ products or food shouldn’t mean that nothing died to create it, but rather that anything and anyone involved in the creation process hasn’t been exploited or harmed.
Leather is good actually. Veganism isn’t the end all be all to morality and consumption. The issue isn’t that a chicken died for those nuggets, but that while the chicken was alive, it’s life fucking sucked. Vegan chocolate means little if the cocoa that made it was gathered by child slave labor.
Factory farms, abuses of the people who pick the fruit and vegetables we eat, the focus profit and productivity over all else - that’s the fucking issue here. It’s capitalism folks.
one of the billion things Hollywood / television needs to fucking stop doing that’s become a specific obsession at this point:
making loudly racist white male characters just to guilt trip the audience with “bbu..utt ;;thheeyy aae ggooo;;d peeoopple you,, juusT ddon'tt nueddrrsstand” and making the biggest idiots in viewing history go “oh my gosh I guess racists have feelingzuh we are wrong to hate themm do we not all bleed the same”
we literally don’t need anymore of this shit, especially considering the fact that VIOLENT WHITE RACISTS are treated more humanely by fandoms than actual minority characters (including mistreatment from their own writers)
isn’t it interesting how the people who go this is just like *insert piece of fiction* when faced with real world oppression always use media that’s filled with white bodies and tell white stories for their comparisons? like it’s honestly so disturbing that people gotta filter the actual suffering of poc thru a white fictional lens in order to feel any type of way. I don’t want these people to read another book I want them to realize what they’re doing and learn how to empathize with people who are different from them lol.
*parts a bead curtain as i enter the room, carrying a glass of lemonade*
hey….
nothing you ever read, watch, or participate in will be ideologically pure and without its problems. your quest to consume the most unproblematic material will be, in the end, fruitless. your enjoyment of anything will be sapped away, leaving you a husk starved for media.
it is okay to enjoy things that have problems to them, so long as you do it critically and with an open mind, and take care to consider others.
One of my long term fandom friends (back from ye olde message board days of yore) has been posting for weeks about how her teenage daughter is “out of control” and she just posted in the facebook group about how her daughter has ruined Christmas by deciding to be a lesbian and the whole group just went “Karen, you’ve been writing gay m/m slash fic for three decades” and she went “but that’s different, that’s not REAL” and I’ve never tried to actively set someone on fire with my brain before but
“I came to you guys for support not to be attacked”
That’s funny, that’s really funny, because that’s probably how your child feels. You fucking shitheel.
Two of the other mom’s in the group just offered to take M for Christmas and keep her with them when school restarts because she deserves to be loved. One of them actually said “deserves a real mother” and I just spat my tea everywhere.
We all just got banned from the group but for anyone concerned “Aunt” Bee (wonderful, great A+ person) just posted in her personal feed that M showed up at her house and is safe.
crash course in why anyone who implies liking slash makes you an ally is talking out of their ass
tbh the people i’ve met who really empathize with villains are people who have been villainized in their own lives and unjustly made to feel like they’re bad people by those around them. They doubt themselves and instinctively want to support disliked and obviously flawed characters, characters doomed to fail, and attempt to find the good in those characters that no one in their own lives see in them.
real evil people don’t relate to villains, they see themselves as the hero. :\
There’s also some interesting studies about how villains are portrayed as gender nonconforming (read: bad) - feminized men and powerful women. It’s meant to code the character as off-putting because they don’t fit the social code, but being queer, you might just see an ally.
not only that (adding onto the previous point, not disputing or derailing bc it’s absolutely true), but a lot of villains are also:
1) mentally ill / neuroatypical and for ages have been almost the only kind of characters you could look to for that even if nearly all of them are portrayed violently or inevitably become victims of their own minds,
2) abuse/assault survivors, usually as children
3) disenfranchised by other means which drives them to their villainy (living in or have previously lived in poverty, exploited by employers/had their work stolen, experimented on, etc.) which parallels in a way how poverty/racism/institutionalized violence can lead to crime for survival. villains have their initial anger invalidated and further villainized by story narratives, so seeing them fight back against it and come back again and again to keep fighting tbh can be satisying!
I’m putting it out there that using round wide eyes to implicitly state innocence and purity in a character; and small “slanty” eyes to convey dishonesty and deceit in your antagonist is actually racist lmfao.
I see some of you bring out this concept in you character designs over and over and yeah it’s not a conscious thought process but thinking “this is the evil character who is morally decrepit - how should I really bring that out in their image?” And then linking that immediately to drawing smaller eyes is racist yellow peril derived stereotyping.
I’m sure most of us have been guilty of this at some stage including myself so can we all just grow up and leave this bullshit behind in this year? 谢谢
Other “evil” looks based in bigotry:
- dark/heavy/thick eyebrows (racism/antisemitism)
- hooked noses vs “cute”/button/patrician (ditto)
- faces described as angular (as opposed to like strong-boned or whatever)
- “swarthy” complexion (thanks tolkien)
- blonde hair/blue eyes = hero/ine
- accents.
- “shifty eyes” iirc, I remember learning they just indicate a lot of thinking, which could be lying, yes, orrr dealing with a second language/unfamiliar dialect, or dealing with NTs as someone who’s not, or trying to figure out if the authority figure is trying to get you to agree to something they can use against you, or…
Bigotry around disability that often intersects with racism includes making villains or “shifty” characters dramatically scarred and/or having acne/acne scars, missing eyes or limbs/digits, walking with a limp and/or cane, missing and/or crooked teeth (this one can also be pretty classist, and “buck teeth” and a gap between the front teeth have a history of anti-Asian and anti-Black caricature behind them, respectively), overweight in a way that’s portrayed as “disgusting” proof of their “greed” or like moral decay or whatever, etc!
These visual markers often get layered on top of the above racist stereotypes to make a character’s design seem more “untrustworthy” or “creepy” or “unsettling,” hypersexualized/fetishized/desexualized, “aggressive” or “passive”, “mean and “scary” or “cowardly and despicable”, and so on and so on - always ask yourself and your subconscious WHY they do these things! And ABSOLUTELY hold yourself accountable for this, (my fellow white artists especially!!!)! Fighting the racist messages we’ve taken in our entire lives takes work, and it takes time, and it’s always worth doing.
I’d like to point out that actual studies have linked trans suicides to constant misgendering as a cause (one of, I should add), whereas affirmation of gender is known to do the opposite. So intentionally misgendering trans people is pretty much legit trying to kill them.
In other news, water is wet.
Where the study/source?
I’m uber busy at work and I don’t have the time to pull up the specific spot it’s discussed. But, look up the work of Dr. Ry Testa. He’s a trans man tackling these issues.
Someone who knows how to navigate resources and has the spoons and time try and find the paper, save trans momma the trouble.
Sounds super legit though. Being misgendered almost always causes some dissociation and social withdrawal form me since it belittles my identity. I don’t get suicidal thoughts but I could sure as hell see how someone who does would be affected by that.
Misgendering a trans person is a violent act. It’s an emotional abuse that cuts deep into who we feel we are at our core. We have enough to deal with internally, adding external voices to that can destroy us.
GBV was associated with both a history of suicide attempts and numbers of suicide attempts in this study. Participants who had been exposed to victimization were almost four times more likely to attempt suicide than those who had not experienced victimization. In addition, over three-quarters of those who had a history of suicide attempt had attempted multiple times. Trans men exposed to GBV were 2.1 times more likely than trans women to have a history of a single suicide attempt and were 3.2 times as likely to have made multiple suicide attempts. A history of suicide attempts was significantly more common among multiracial individuals, and significantly less common among those of higher SES.
From the last article linked to.
Even more relevant is actually The Gender Minority Stress and Resilience Measure article…
In addition to the violence, rejection, and discrimination experienced by both LGB and TGNC people, TGNC individuals may experience an additional distal stressor, which this study has labeled nonaffirmation. Nonaffirmation occurs when one’s internal sense of gender identity is not affirmed by others. For instance, a trans woman may be addressed as “sir” when making a purchase or answering the phone, or might be referred to with her former male name by an individual not yet fully comfortable with her gender identity. TGNC individuals who do not identify as either male or female (e.g., individuals who identify as genderqueer) may also experience a sense of nonaffirmation as people in their life are unable to refer to them in gender neutral ways. Nonaffirmation of one’s gender identity may occur more or less often for any TGNC individual, based on how their gender expression is interpreted by their social context at that particular time (Beemyn & Rankin, 2011; Bockting & Coleman, 2007; Nuttbrock, Rosenblum, & Blumenstein, 2002). In sum, the literature suggests that TGNC and LGB populations experience both common and also unique distal minority stressors.
It also cites these works in relation to the concept:
Beemyn, G., & Rankin, S. R. (2011). The lives of transgender people. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Grant, J. M., Mottet, L. A., Tanis, J., Herman, J. L., Harrison, J., & Keisling, M. (2010). National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Report on health and health care (pp. 1–23). Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Hey, thanks. I haven’t had a good mental headspace for reading recently, so this is helpful.
…And when it comes to activism and relations within a marginalized group, it’s important to note that it’s never appropriate to throw people who fit stereotypes under the bus (because this is usually in order to clean up their appearance as a whole to cater to the oppressor).
People who fit stereotypes are just living, breathing, and being. They never asked for their identity and characteristics (that may or may not be a source of pride for said group) to be weaponized by the oppressor and used to dehumanize their entire group.
Usually an attempt to distance yourself from those who fit your group’s stereotypes is rooted in you wanting approval from the oppressor. That’s not activism.
“a writer’s character’s viewpoints don’t reflect the writer’s viewpoints!!!” actually, they do.
that doesnt mean having a, for instance, homophobic character means the author is homophobic. but how is the homophobia treated? is it criticized? is it excused, idealized? is it framed so that the homophobia is clearly wrong? does the inclusion of homophobia in the narrative serve a point?
writers, especially professional published writers, know that their writing has an impact, and the morals they put forward in their work reflect deeply on themselves. they know how they frame and present their work can completely change the result and effect it has.
so maybe the character’s viewpoints don’t say much about the writer, but how the writer presents this character and its viewpoints says a hell of a fuckin lot about the writer.
don’t worship people. i’m serious. no matter how good they sound, how popular they are, how stinging their comebacks are, how moral they seem—do not worship people.
this is something that tumblr does constantly, and whether it starts as a joke or not it ends with many people taking it quite seriously
do not hold anyone above criticism, do not make a person synonymous with an idea. every human has feet of clay, and making yourself loyal to those flaws will only make more trouble for you
how often have you seen posts gushing about how amazing and perfect someone is, only for there to be a condemnation of their problematic history ten posts later? rebel wilson, jennifer lawrence, there’s even an entire blog dedicated to pointing out how your fav is problematic. most recently there was conchita wurst, who was worshiped for being a drag queen persona and turned on when people finished reading the wikipedia article and found out about the exploitative reality show she was on.
people can be important, people can say wise things, feel free to value them for that—but don’t elevate them to a position of godliness. nobody can live up to it.
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