Soy Homo

Thanks to my frieng Neil for pointing me to this article on the People for the American Way website, which links in turn to this bit of alarmist homophobia on WorldNetDaily, in which self-confessed "health-food guy" and "fanatic" Jim Rutz warns of the danger that soy will turn Good American Boys into girly men. To wit:

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

Apparently, before Jim Rutz discovered the dangers of soy, he thought homos were all just Big Gay Liars and falsely reporting on our own memories. Also, Rutz leaves us wondering: if soy only takes the "medical blame" then who or what gets the "socio-spiritual blame" for "today's rise in homosexuality"? It's a toss up between atheism, television, and the Liberal Media Elite, of course!

By the way, the title of Rutz's piece is "Soy is making kids 'gay'". Why the scare quotes, you ask? Well, because to Rutz, homosexuality is not an identity, it's a sin! So says the "church," and Rutz has to stay a good "Christian."

Notice that for Rutz, the most awful effects of estrogen on men are "a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality." Further on in the article, almost as an aside, he notes that it may also cause infertility and leukemia, but clearly neither of those things is as terrible as being gay.

I don't mean to downplay the negative effects of eating food that messes with the hormonal balance of one's body, but Rutz's misogynist and homophobic take on the effects of estrogen deserves some snark.

Homophobia aside, does estrogen correlate with or cause male same-sex desire?

There was a study that showed a correlation between sexuality of a child and hormone levels in the womb, except that gayness was not linked to higher levels of the dreaded Femme-erol (I mean, estrogen), but to higher levels of Manly Manly Testosterone. Which might explain why gay men have bigger dicks.

That's Not Nice

The English Are So Nice

The English are so nice
so awfully nice
they're the nicest people in the world.

And what's more, they're nice about being nice
about your being nice as well!
If you're not nice, they soon make you feel it.

Americans and French and Germans and so on
they're all very well
but they're not really nice, you know.
They're not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?

That's why one doesn't have to take them seriously,
We must be nice to them, of course,
of course, naturally.
But it doesn't really matter what you say to them,
they don't really understand -
you can say anything to them:
be nice, you know, just nice -
but you must never take them seriously, they wouldn't understand,
just be nice, you know! Oh, fairly nice,
not too nice of course, they take advantage -
but nice enough, just nice enough
to let them feel they're not quite as nice as they might be.

- D.H. Lawrence

On Saturday, while discussing the West Wing, a friend and I got onto the topic of proper respect for the office of the POTUS. I felt that the expectation that one would stand when the president entered the room was inappropriate, and smacked of monarchist sentiment. He thought that it was just "polite" since the president was the person who represented the interests of the American people.

I noted that shareholders don't stand when CEO's enter the room. If the president really was regarded (as I thought he should be) as the servant of the people, then no American should feel obligated to stand when he entered the room. In addition, I thought that any symbolic trappings of monarchy decreased the likelihood that the POTUS would be held properly accountable for his actions, and would become conflated with The People (as opposed to a servant of the people). My friend countered that the CEO just safeguards the shareholders' financial interests, while the President safeguards the lives and security of the American people, and thus deserves commensurate respect. He also said that the respect was for the office, and not the person occupying that office. I should note that my friend is not a supporter of the current POTUS, his foreign policy, or his domestic policy. He is, in fact, a San Francisco liberal. We agreed to disagree on the issue of respect for the office, though.

It turns out that our little argument was rather apropos, since on Wednesday, in response to a question from the current POTUS, Jim Webb had declined to discuss how his son (who was a Marine) was doing. He had also refused to pose for a photo with him. On Thursday, George Will wrote a circuitously snarky piece about how this demonstrated Webb's lack of "civility," since the President had asked "a civil and caring question, as one parent to another." Nora Ephram then responded with the observation that Bush's question wasn't caring so much as callous, being a product as it was of a political culture that seems to think you can send kids off to die in the morning and guiltlessly go on to hobnob at a fancy dinner in the evening. E&P quotes Peggy Noonan at the WSJ who noted that after Webb had told Bush that he wanted his son back from Iraq, Bush had said "That's not what I asked you. How's your son?" This, she thought, was rather insensitive, and reflected a public culture of increasingly common petty aggression.

Which reminds me of another incident of public rudeness a while back. In April of 2005, Eric Berndt stood up at a Q&A with Antonin Scalia in NYU and asked "Do you sodomize your wife?" This drew predictable calls for explanation from his fellow students. He responded with admirable clarity and conviction:

It should be clear that I intended to be offensive, obnoxious, and inflammatory. There is a time to discuss and there are times when acts and opposition are necessary. Debate is useless when one participant denies the full dignity of the other.

. . .

Although my question was legally relevant, as I explain below, an independent motivation for my speech-act was to simply subject a homophobic government official to the same indignity to which he would subject millions of gay Americans. It was partially a naked act of resistance and a refusal to be silenced. I wanted to make him and everyone in the room aware of the dehumanizing effect of trivializing such an important relationship. Justice Scalia has no pity for the millions of gay Americans on whom sodomy laws and official homophobia have such an effect, so it is difficult to sympathize with his brief moment of "humiliation," as some have called it. The fact that I am a law student and Scalia is a Supreme Court Justice does not require me to circumscribe my justified opposition and outrage within the bounds of jurisprudential discourse.

Brian Leiter has a good post about the incident and the administration's response over at Leiter Reports. Apparently the Dean of NYU's law school had written a public letter condemning Berndt for not being "mature" and had asserted that "a show of incivility to any individual invited to be a guest of the Law School, let alone to a Supreme Court Justice, has no place in our intellectual community."

Leiter notes that the Berndt's actions were certainly rude (by his own admission), but that such an act of political speech was in fact quite "mature." He also questions why a Supreme Court Justice deserves any more respect than any other visitor to a law school.


"Aren't you a nice fellow?"

Three Problems With Politeness

In my opinion politeness is a virtue, up to the point where it becomes a form of concealment akin to lying, a way of reinforcing social hierarchy, or a weapon wielded against others. It is a virtue when it signals respect for another person as a person. Between equals, friends, casual acquaintances, politeness is wonderful - it creates the kind of atmosphere where interpersonal morality can flourish, and where alienation, competition and hostility can be eased.

Politeness can be used to conceal one's true intentions and strong feelings, which reduces the likelihood of moral action. It treats another person as a means to an end, in Kantian terms, since you seek approval or respect by concealing your contempt or disgust at the other person.

Politeness used in the above manner often reinforces social hierarchy as well. It is more important for one with less social power to be polite, since the consequences of not doing so mean loss of favor with those with more power. There's a simple narrative that goes something like "The boss has a bad day and tells off the employee, who goes home and shouts at his wife, who then spanks the child, who kicks the dog." In the President Bush story above, for example, George Will conveniently ignores Bush's own rudeness to Webb in so casually brushing off his desire for his son's return.

Which brings me to my third caution about politeness - it can be used as a weapon. Like any system set up that exults too much in its own legitimacy, etiquette can become a way for its skillful manipulators to get what they want at the expense of others. Courtly intrigues are an example of a hyper-regulated etiquette being used by the strong (the sly) against the weak (that is, the less skilled). There is a double harm being done here - first is the harm of the strong bullying the weak, and second is the concealment of this harm under a legitimizing cloak of politeness. Scalia, by refusing to answer Berndt's question, was the one harming the discussion by avoiding defending his rather homophobic views. Yet it was Berndt who suffered immediate administrative censure.

As Christmas draws near, I feel I should end by quoting an amusing, if hypothetical, admonition to one of the rudest of prophets that I saw once in a comic strip. An angry member of the religious orthodoxy shouts at Jesus for his insolence, "What were you, born in a barn?"