News of Note

The Unwelcome Mat

(También en Español)

News of Note: The Unwelcome Mat: How America Scares Away Tourists

Imagine that you’re the citizen of a prosperous, democratic ally like Britain, Spain or Japan, and you’d like to visit America. Before traveling, you must pay $14 to complete an online United States government form called ESTA, short for Electronic System for Travel Authorization.

ESTA asks for basic personal data, like your name and birth date. It also asks whether you are guilty of “moral turpitude,” whether you’re planning crimes or “immoral activities” and whether you suffer from “lymphogranuloma venereum” (don’t ask). If you’re involved in terrorism or genocide — and for some reason you’ve decided to take this opportunity to inform the United States government — there’s a box for that. And if you’re a spy — a particularly artless one — please let us know.

Naturally, no one with anything to hide will answer honestly. Such purposeless questions recall Thoreau — “I saw that the State was half-witted” — and should astonish Americans, who know better than their government how to welcome guests.

I’m trying to rationalize why the US Government exposes foreign visitors to all this arbitrary intimidation. It’s embarrassing, xenophobic, and only manages to make America look bad to the rest of the world.

I’m not suggesting less security, only practicality. America’s anti-social attitude is bursting out through the bureaucracy and doing more harm than good. How can we eradicate policies like this one, born of the same tendencies that lead to discrimination within our own country?

White House Proposes Online Privacy Bill of Rights

(También en Español)

News of Note: White House Proposes Online Privacy Bill of Rights

the Obama Administration released a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights for online users, including the ability for browser users to opt out of being tracked by advertisers and others.

The proposed document was described by the White House as “part of a comprehensive blueprint to improve consumers’ privacy protections,” while maintaining the Internet’s growth and innovation. The Administration said the intent is to give users “more control over how their personal information is used on the Internet,” and to help businesses grow while maintaining consumer trust.

In the wake of SOPA, PIPA and other bills, I’m immediately suspicious of an online “Bill of Rights.” The proposal focuses on data collection and online privacy. I am totally in support of increased privacy online but I’m totally against enacting new laws to enforce that privacy. This “Bill of Rights” does not protect us from the government, it protects us from commercial websites. Giving the government any more reasons to police the internet, even if under the guise of enforcing privacy, is not welcome or necessary. If you want to browse the internet privately you already can. People everywhere (and in countries like China) use Tor to anonymize their online activity and social networks like Diaspora address privacy concerns related to centralized social networks.

The US Government recently labeled anyone that cares about online privacy suspicious of terrorism. I have no reason to believe this new Bill of Rights is anything but a loss of freedom.

What purpose do you believe this internet Bill of Rights may serve? Would you rather have the government step in and police the Internet for you, or are comfortable protecting yourself with the tools already at your disposal?

Major Transhumanist Event in Second Life—July 20

TERASEM ISLAND CONFERENCE CENTER, SECOND LIFE

JULY 20, 2012           1PM – 4PM EDT

This year’s workshop theme:

PRINCIPLES OF GEOETHICS & THEIR APPLICATION TO LIFE-SAVING NANOTECHNOLOGY

WHAT: The workshop is an exchange of scholarly views regarding the varied applications to life-
saving nanotechnologies, including the impact of its use on others, the accessibility of it to all, and
independent means of monitoring its compliance with widely agreed-upon norms.

WHEN: On the 43rd anniversary of the first lunar launch, July 20, 2012, 1PM – 4PM EDT.

WHERE: Terasem Island Conference Center in Second Life (coordinates: 129.195.34). The
workshop proceedings are open to the general, virtual public and are subsequently archived online
for free public access.

WHY: To exchange scholarly views regarding the varied applications to life-saving
nanotechnologies, including the impact of its use on others, the accessibility of it to all, and
independent means of monitoring its compliance with widely agreed-upon norms.

If you are new to Second Life, you may want to familiarize yourself with the meeting environment and the way an SL viewer is used to control your avatar and to interact, through speech and text, with other avatars. We highly recommend that you experiment with SL before attempting to attend the conference. Some very helpful pointers have been provided by our good friend, Khannea Suntzu, via her personal web site. Here is the key information, in Khannea’s own inimitable words:

What is a SLURL?
A SLURL is a Second Life Universal Resource Location. This is the SLURL for this event. It does not get any easier.

What is a Second Life “Event?

How to attend this event? How do I get inside Second Life?
You need a client, of which I recommend Firestorm, and you need to create an account. Then you may need to enable access to mature sims in advance. You need to test if access works – dozens of dumb-asses discover on the day of such conferences they can’t enter specific sims with big meetings/gatherings because they still need to figure out what this whole business with “maturity ratings” is. They are invariably the ones complaining “SL Is Too Complex.”Guess what? so is a bike the first day. Effectively you also need some expertise to work with Second Life. Proper (or even minimal) SL expertise is actually more difficult than learning to operate a smart phone. Don’t prepare means fail. Tolerance towards shambling/clueless SL virgins is diminishing sharply these days, so you will receive very little sympathy when you waste 30 minutes unable to walk. My best suggestion is to train up using Second Life in advance. Getting your bearings will take 4-8 hours of “playful” advance exploration. It will take you about 12 hours to get full situational awareness going in SL. I can reduce this time by tutoring you, and for this tutoring process (which comes with a well-styled avatar) I charge 25,000 Lindens. Actually that’s low. It is a lot of work, and requires a lot of patience on my part.

What is required to follow events in SL?
You need to test your sound functionality inside Second Life. Very few people will actually like explaining anything to you under stressful conditions, how to use a mike, how to set your sound, and how to fine-tune these interface aspects. If you like attending an event in Second Life make sure you know at least several days in advance how to hear sound, how to produce sound, how to NOT produce sound. (There are always clueless people around that leave their mike open, so half the conference can actually hear them devour spaghetti or use angered patriarchal blasphemy to their wife and children. Seriously – this kind of stuff happens.) And, most important, how to not produce reverberation (loud screaming mike echo) while doing so. The best way to do so is in advance, at your leisure. Get a headset. Switch off your mike by default, and understand when (how) it is switched on (and off again).

Hosts

Avatar Presentation and Code of Conduct
Terasem maintains a strict morality code. This reflects in use of PG styled avatars, sophisticated discourse and interaction, and a zero tolerance to sexually explicit content. If you’d get arrested for it in front of the White House, don’t do it at the Terasem sim, ok?

 

 

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Going Live: espanol.venusplusx.org and venusmasx.org

También en español Having been a bilingual site since last fall, VenusPlusX is now gradually rolling out its new all-Spanish site, espanol.venusplusx.org (o, en español, venusmasx.org) — our continuing gift to the worldwide Spanish-speaking community, side by side with our now all-English site, venusplusx.org.

Our round seal, in English and Spanish, portrays “Columbia,” The Statue of Freedom atop the U.S. Capitol. The original sculptor chose a two-spirit (transgender) First People model to create his ideal of freedom. In both English (Sexual Freedom  . . . You Are Born With It) and now on our Spanish site, it has become our ideal symbol of a peaceful post-gender world.

We call for a New Age of Sexual Freedom, asking sincere people to devote themselves to sustainable changes that guarantee everyone’s inalienable personal sovereignty, and freedom to love as they see fit, without fear of being overridden and perverted by presumptuous governments, religious hierarchies, greedy corporations, and blind social custom.

We also want to urge our sister organizations and websites to consider making some of their resources available to the greater community in languages other than English in demonstration of our shared dedication to worldwide change. This enhances the global celebration of common ideals, and demonstrates to everyone  what is important (of love) and what must be left behind as no longer useful to people’s health and well-being.

To be any sort of movement, we must advocate first and foremost for the most vulnerable in any community, the sexual and gender minorities. In the U.S., this especially includes those people whose skin color, origins, and/or or economic and  immigration status further diminish their fair access and happiness, and expose them to extreme social violence. In most of Latin America, the rate of murders and assaults is far higher, social tolerance of sex and gender nonconformity far lower, and the vulnerable population far larger, for reasons beyond the concerns of race and immigration.

The very integrity of  any movement depends on addressing global evils wherever they appear. From our point of view, the voiceless and least able are our “boss,” the people whose stories stir us, who fuel our passion to get up each morning and work hard on their behalf. Because when we direct our educational efforts, advocacy, and activism to those who need our help the most, we sleep better at night knowing we have have done everything that day, the very best we can do, for the largest possible number of people.

We hope you will take a look at both our sites and let us know what you think. And, please follow us on Twitter (Lady Gaga does!) and Like us on Facebook.

Creative Common image (modern Furoshiki gift wrapping, from 6th Century Japan) by: Wolfgang

Follow up: Adolescent Sexual Health: To Improve or Not to Improve? That is the Question…

También en español After initially postponing the decision to adopt either abstinence-only or abstinence-plus sex education curriculum, the Natchez-Adams School Board in Jackson, Mississippi chooses “both.”

The Board voted to adopt the abstinence-only program, but also voted to require all 12 modules of the “Rise to Your Dreams” curriculum . . . the same curriculum mandatory in abstinence-plus. We wanted to know why.

For one, Board Member David Troutman thought that the topics covered in abstinence-plus were too explicit for sixth graders, believing incorrectly that middle-schoolers don’t have sex until high school. Second, Board President Wayne Barnett believes that the abstinence-only plan allowed for local flexibility, wrongly thinking that their local people know more about the subject of youth sexual health, disregarding years of scientific research and data about what sex education curriculum works. Finally, sometimes it is just easier to choose abstinence-only over other forms of sex education in communities that are more hostile to teen sexuality and anything other than abstinence in the classroom, which is merely an excuse for cowardice and reluctance to stand up and fight for the sexual rights of youth. As Mississippi is full of communities like this, the mixture appears to serve as “middle ground” between the two.

But why was Natchez-Adams’ School Board pressured into making a decision?

In 2011, Governor Haley Barbour signed the House Bill 999, a law that requires all Mississippi school districts to teach either abstinence-only or abstinence-plus. Both curriculums are approved by the state Department of Education (DE), even though they both have drastically different implications for the sexual health of youth as discussed previously. All districts had until June 30 to decide which curriculum to adopt for the 2012-2013 school year.

This law was implemented in response to the fact that Mississippi has the highest teen birth rate in the nation and one of the highest AIDS statistics. In fact, the teen birth rate in Quitman County alone far exceeds the national average. In 2009, teen childbearing cost taxpayers $155,000,000. Sounds shocking? Not really, considering that Mississippi did not require sex education to be taught in schools until House Bill 999. Before this law, only a fraction of teens received formal sex education, with these programs varying widely in approach and accuracy. It’s no wonder why Mississippi is in this atrocious state.

Abstinence-Only

Abstinence-Plus

Tupelo County School District

Houston County School District

Lee Country School District

Natchez-Adams County School District

Corinth County School District

Leflore County School District

Neshoba County School District

Starkville Country School District

Amory County School District

Greenwood County School District

Hattiesburg County School District

Oxford County School District (Initial Abstinence-only decision reversed)

West Point County School District (Unofficial)

Ocean Springs County School District

Jackson County School District

Pascagoula County School District

George County School District

Moss Point County School District

Table: A list of some of the County School Districts and their decisions regarding House Bill 999. (Not a full list)

Although an obvious disadvantage to students who will be subjected to abstinence-only curriculum, let’s hope that the Department of Education will notice the huge disparities between the sexual health of students who were placed in abstinence-only versus abstinence-plus. Maybe then they will enforce universal abstinence-plus sex education for all public schools in Mississippi, as this bill should have mandated. And as time goes on, maybe they will upgrade to comprehensive sex education, cultivating positive sexual behavior and decision-making of Mississippians in ways they could not have even fathomed before.

Creative Commons Image by: Ken Lund

Adolescent Sexual Health: To Improve or Not to Improve? That is the Question…

(También en Español)

The Natchez-Adams School Board in Jackson, Mississippi, is currently deciding whether to adopt abstinence-only or abstinence-plus curriculum. This decision for Mississippi schools, to implement either abstinence-only or abstinence-plus curriculum, is the same as deciding whether or not to improve adolescent sexual health.

Hopefully, Natchez-Adams School Board’s decision will foster homes full of sexually health youth instead of homes crowded with unintended pregnancies and STD/STIs.

The former, abstinence-only education, will be laden with religious ideologies, teach students about the importance of abstinence as the expected standard, and only mention contraceptives in terms of failure rates that are wrong and unscientific. The latter will teach the benefits of abstinence, but also will give comprehensive information about condoms, contraception, and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections and diseases. When you put the two side by side, it seems like a clear-cut decision: abstinence-only curriculum will only further diminish the sexual health of adolescents, while abstinence-plus curriculum has the potential to improve sexual health outcomes. Yet, other schools boards in Jackson and George counties recently adopted abstinence-only models.

But why would any school board adopt such an obviously flawed sex education program?

For one, American society has an extensive history of supporting abstinence-only-until-marriage  (AOUM) programming. This is the result of many factors, such as negative stereotypes associated with adolescent sexuality, an incorrect belief that teaching teens about sex is encouraging them to have premarital sex, AIDS fear, homophobia, heterosexism, sexism, and religious doctrine that dictates premarital sex is a sin.

Second, the American government has bolstered this attitude by providing financial support for schools that teach abstinence-only: the federal government has spent $1.5 billion funding AOUM programs over the last 15 years. This abundance of federal funds lead directly to the proliferation of these unsound programs across America, and why some school boards today still choose abstinence-only education in their schools, despite research proving their ineffectiveness to postpone teenage sexual activities.

In fact, there is overwhelming research that has found multiple issues with AOUM education: censoring vital health care information, jeopardizing adolescent sexual health, stigmatizing the LGBTQ community, purporting harmful gender stereotypes and one religious perspective, and withholding information teens need to make healthy and responsible life decisions. Yet, schools still adopt these programs despite this astounding evidence because they can take advantage of this federal funding.

Sexuality is a part of everyone’s life, no matter what race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, or age a person is. Everyone has the basic human right to access comprehensive sexuality information that is not bias, is scientifically correct, and applicable to their sexuality. Let’s hope that the Natchez-Adams School Board recognizes this and accounts for these proven sexual health benefits of comprehensive sex education when making their final decision on June 30, and students of this district get the comprehensive sex information they need and deserve.

UPDATE: After initially postponing the decision to adopt either abstinence-only or abstinence-plus sex education curriculum, the Natchez-Adams School Board in Jackson, Mississippi chooses “both.” Check next week for a follow up post explaining why the school board was forced to find this middle ground.

U.S. Teen Birthrates Are Down, But Still High in Bible Belt

(También en Español)
News of Note: U.S. Teen Birthrates Are Down, But Still High in These States

In 2009, a landmark study found a strong correlation between religion and teen pregnancy. The CDC’s newest data suggests not much has changed. Teen pregnancy closely follows the contours of America’s Bible belt, according to the map (above) from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

It’s quite clear that teenagers want to have sex and no amount of discouragement or abstinence-only sex education is going to stop them.

The religious idea that sex should only exist for procreation has no business denying teenagers access to valuable health information (about birth control). Take a look at divorce rates in the bible belt, they are equally embarrassing. How much longer do you think this hypocrisy will last before everyone realizes it’s okay to enjoy sex?

Female Genital Mutilation in the UK

(También en Español)

News of Note: Medics Offered Genital Mutilation, Report Says

As many as 100,000 women in Britain may have been mutilated in the name of culture and religion, a report claims.

Refuges from other countries, particularly from Africa, perpetuate this “procedure” illegally, while practitioners charge more than $1000 to have the clitoris cut and the wound and vagina stitched.

It’s hard to think of anything that better exemplifies the depth of our world’s sexual repression than the serial genital mutilation practiced all over our planet.

There is absolutely no excuse for this practice, and I can only hope that any culture or religion that embraces such immorality is adequately and rapidly purged from this planet. Global sexual freedom activists unite!

Image source

Afghan schoolgirls poisoned in anti-education attack

(También en Español)

News of Note: Afghan schoolgirls poisoned in anti-education attack

Conservative radicals are suspects in the recent poisoning of about 150 Afghan high school girls who drank contaminated water at their high school, and other similar attacks on female students, teachers, and their buildings.

It may be hard to believe that anyone would literally poison school girls to discourage them (and all girls and women) from having an education, but this type of violence is all too common. These conservative groups have forced women to live in constant fear of physical harm, even acid throwing for something as simple as attending school.

I believe it is necessary to identify these violent and sexist teachings, and to actively speak out against them, irrespective of any religious connections. What else can be done to expunge these deeply sexist ideologies?

Anti-gay adverts pulled from bus campaign in London

(También en Español)

News of Note: Anti-gay adverts pulled from bus campaign by Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, has stopped a Christian advertising campaign by the “christian” group Core Issues Trust that promotes the idea that gay people can be converted to heterosexuality and whose leader, Mike Davidson, said “homoerotic behavior is sinful” and that “reparative therapy” will help queer people  “develop their heterosexual potential.”

In the US,  reparative therapy has been deemed “junk science” by the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association. And, this month, California is introducing a bill that would outlaw it for all children and require those over 18 must sign a severe consent form to obtain it.

Unfortunately, the world doesn’t have a shortage of hate groups like Core Issues Trust and PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays) and they are clearly not limited to the United States.

As always, we need to identify and label religiously-motivated discrimination and not let it masquerade as anything else.

Creative Commons image by: Jon Bennett