The Case Against Women's Rights?

With recent elections in the U.S. once again pulling out the rug from underneath abortion rights, with the low priority given to teaching young women math and science, with Hollywood actresses and musicians only as in-demand as their youth or hacked iPhones permit, with Gamergate exposing details of a female gamer’s private life, with pornography a multibillion dollar industry in the U.S. alone, with catcalls par-for-the-course on city streets, with monotheism’s long-standing tradition that treats woman across the globe like cattle, it seems as though being a woman is as tough as ever. Certainly one might be inclined to think that given the right to vote in democratic countries such as the U.S. that women would vote for candidates who espouse women’s rights, but many women – indoctrinated into a male worldview – can’t seem to stand the idea of too much freedom. The consequence is that they get dominated for it.

I’ve long tried to understand mankind’s continued attempts to subjugate or otherwise dominate women. For every person who thinks we are an evolving species – where ‘evolving’ means the species is growing smarter, wiser or more fair – there is every evidence to the contrary, especially if you are a woman. Could it be just a matter of perspective as news agencies are now more often reporting that which has always been taking place? Or, is the world really getting worse for women despite all the progress made in the arena of women’s rights since the turn of the century? Sure, everyone is running for the cure these days, but as everyone knows, if testicular cancer were as common as breast cancer, testicular cancer would have been cured by now. Why is being a woman such a curse? [Yes, I do say ‘curse’ being a male, though I do think I am more of an impartial observer than the next guy. There is also the fact that at least half of all the women I have ever known have said at some point in their lives that they would rather be a man.]

I’ve thought about this at less than great length, I admit. Nonetheless, I imagine what I am about to say is going to yank some chains. (Sorry, poor choice of words there.) Why does the worldwide male population (generally) treat the worldwide female population so poorly? I could think of only one single answer – it’s good for the species. Before I continue with that thought, let me say that I personally have little at stake in the human species; I have no children and have no plans to have children primarily due to my misanthropic tendencies. So when I say the subjugation or dominance of women is good for the species, that doesn’t mean I like it or that I think this is the way it should be. However, there is a reality to be faced here. From an evolutionary standpoint, I’m inclined to wonder if it makes sense for one gender to be under the thumb of the other gender. In this case, among Homo sapiens, it happens to be the case that men dominate women. Why? Reproductive advantage.

Men have taken an ‘is’ and turned it into an ‘ought.’ What I mean is that due to the physical differences between men and women (men have more muscle mass and invest less energy in creating a child) that men have become the dominate gender, and gladly so. Because men can overpower women, both figuratively and literally, they do. Because men can spread their genes farther and faster than women, they do. And what is the effect? More children, which is exactly what our genes want, to be passed on into the next generation. Remember, our genes don’t care how. It is biologically advantageous (in terms of reproduction) that men subjugate women. What would happen if the situation were reversed? Existing societies may clue us in.

If you think about societies in which woman are on more equal ground as men in terms of rights, women tend to have children later in life and fewer of them, or even not at all. The most industrial countries, which as a consequence tend to be more socially liberal, generally have lower birth rates than those that are not industrialized. (At the same time, many Third World nations have higher infant mortality rates but their higher birth rates see more children survive per mother than not.) Women understandably express an interest in freedom as the biological cost of having a child is high, especially in a world where it seems there is less and less involvement from fathers in raising children. The continued and focused degradation of women across the globe is a stand against women’s rights, as women’s rights infringe upon the rights supposed by males who believe they should have easy access to women for sex, that is, for reproductive purposes. But there is a mistake made by the global community of men; it’s their unconscious belief that their genes are any more important than a woman’s.

This belief is usually reinforced by religion but it is there even without it. I could be wrong, but I lean towards thinking men hold their belief due to the fact that they are more physically imposing than women; the differences between the physiques of the two genders is hard to ignore. That and recent experiments aside that are ready to combine the DNA of three people, the fact remains that traditionally, it takes a set of genes from both a male and female to make a child. Granted, if there isn’t anything biologically special about either parent, the offspring stands to be unremarkable as well. This is where the belief held by men that women should be subjugated falls apart.

If biology has taught us anything, it’s that life is the rule on Earth, not the exception. As this rule relates to human beings, realize that all the people on Earth – now almost 9 billion – are the offspring of whomever the first Homo sapiens were. Interestingly, for all the shaming of sex that societies around the world have engaged in over the past few thousand years, there’s still a whole lotta sex going around which is producing a whole lotta unremarkable people. (This is why I find it annoying when parents talk about the miracle of birth; I don’t think that which is common constitutes a miracle.) If you’ll notice, the only people who bat an eyelash when a passenger jet crashes, for instance, are the family and friends of the victims. This is mainly because the rest of us recognize that there really are enough people on the planet. Granted, recognizing this fact, whether consciously or unconsciously, doesn’t turn off our sex drive and for a good reason: If some catastrophe were to befall the entirety of the human race, there would no doubt be survivors and those survivors would need to procreate (or be driven to by our genes). It’s right about now you’re wondering what this has to do with the subjugation of women…

In order to survive catastrophes, it is not merely the drive to reproduce that can save the human population; the ingenuity of people is required as well. While men like to think of themselves as the leaders of the world, think for a moment if women had never been allowed to contribute to our understanding of the world:

·                  American molecular biologist Carol M. Greider. On Christmas Day 1984, she discovered an enzyme -- telomerase -- that maintains and builds up telomeres.

·                  Mary-Claire King, a geneticist at the University of Washington, discovered the gene that predisposes women to breast cancer.

·                  Marie Curie wins the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for her theory of radioactivity and the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for finding the elements.

·                  Curie’s daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating man-made radioactive particles.

·                  Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, a French virologist, performed much of the fundamental work that led the discovery of HIV. Barre-Sinoussi’s work won her the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

·                  Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring drew from government reports and scientific studies to describe the destruction that pesticides were wreaking on our environment and our health. Carson was a trained marine biologist and zoologist.

·                  Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees was groundbreaking and offered a glimpse into our own evolutionary roots.

·                  Circa 370 CE, Hypatia of Alexandria was an early scientist who wrote on the physical world and astronomy. Naturally, she was murdered by a gang of Christians.

·                  For more important women of science, click here.

This really is the tip of the iceberg and we haven’t even begun to mention the contribution of women to the various arts. Men, in their collective assholishness, might argue that men would have made these discoveries anyway. Of course, women could just as easily argue that given the chance, women would have all of the discoveries that men have.

The need for women’s rights is important insofar as people of various perspectives are needed to solve problems and/or contribute to problem solving. Women should not be regulated to mere breeding stock because they have more to contribute to societies than their genes. Women’s rights, their equality under the law, is for the sake of humanity’s long-term survival and for the flourishing of culture (if we’re to care about that as well). We can already see where the shortsightedness of a male-ruled world has led us and where male-dominated societies such as the one ISIS has in mind would lead us. How much longer will we accept teetering on the edge just so men can have their orgasms?  

Neil DeGrasse Tyson and the GMO Debate

After seeing the alarmist yet withering documentary GMO OMG a few weeks ago and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s remarks on GMO’s last week, I am compelled to write on a topic I admit I have not done enough research into until now. Initially I did not feel as though I did not need to do much research for my particular concerns about GMO’s since my beef with BigAg is focused more on the consequences of consuming GMO’s while many of those opposed to GMO’s oppose them on other grounds, such as the patenting of life forms and the business practices of BigAg. 

I want to address Tyson’s defense of GMO’s and how miserably it fails. In Tyson’s own words in which he lambastes the anti-GMO brigade, he says, “If your objection to GMOs is the morality of selling nonprerennial [sic] seed stocks, then focus on that. If your objection to GMOs is the monopolistic conduct of agribusiness, then focus on that. But to paint the entire

I beg your forgiveness!

concept of GMO with these particular issues is to blind yourself to the underlying truth of what humans have been doing—and will continue to do—to nature so that it best serves our survival. That's what all organisms do when they can, or would do, if they could. Those that didn't, have gone extinct extinct [sic].” Tyson’s defense of GMO’s seems ignore key issues and rests on the premise that we have a long history of manipulating plant and animal DNA in our favor. He’s correct until the point in history that we started splicing in segment of DNA from one plant or animal into another plant or animal; essentially crossbreeding organisms that we couldn’t possibly crossbreed before the advent of gene manipulation. In other words, there was a point in which agricultural science went beyond what were already possibilities in the natural world.

I have to grant that this alone does not make GMO’s dangerous to eat (they may be dangerous to eat, but not necessarily on this particular account). The problem comes in when it becomes obvious that the long term effects of gene manipulation on the eco-system go unstudied before the technology is implemented. (Granted, this happens all the time, with mixed results at best.) There are no studies – at least not that I can find – that go beyond three months in length that focus solely on the consumption of the GMO product itself (very important to note that) that indicates the GMO product is harmful to humans. Although, many of the three month studies I could find were conducted by the business creating the GMO product. Shades of Big Tobacco, no? However, when studies – even ones as short as three months in duration – focus on the chemicals used to fertilize GMO crops and control pests (insects and weeds), the results are clear; the GMO product is contaminated with these chemicals and they show up in the bloodstream of people who consume GMO crops. As alluded to a few moments ago, we now all know how the effects of the chemicals used in Big Tobacco products ultimately turned out. The presence of the toxins associated with growing GMO’s is my main reason for trying to avoid such crops. Not only are the chemicals toxic to humans, runoff of the chemicals into the eco-system at large appears to have dire consequences, such as the number of ‘dead-zones’ appearing in our oceans. [As reported on the major news outlets this morning, the dead-zone in the Gulf of Mexico,”…is formed by nutrients that wash into the Gulf's waters; largely agriculture fertilizer and wastewater coming down the Mississippi River. These boost algae blooms that suck up the oxygen in deep water, according to NOAA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Marine life struggles to find enough oxygen to survive within the zone. Fish and shrimp can migrate to areas with oxygen-rich water, but some life forms in the deep water and ocean floor, including those that serve as food for the fish and shrimp, can't get out of the zone and eventually die.” The article doesn’t point out what’s in the fertilizer and wastewater, but we can make an educated guess. My guess is that the chemicals entering the oceans are probably not good for our long term health. But, that’s just a hypothesis at this point.] 

My second reason for trying to avoid GMO’s goes back to the point I got away from at the start of my previous paragraph, namely, that we don’t know the long-term effects of GMO’s on our health or the eco-system and I’m rather stunned that a prominent scientist such as Tyson completely ignores this point. After all, I just pointed out one of the short-term problems on human health and the eco-system, but what happens if we ignore these short-term problems well into the future? Again, the implementation of science will always be advanced before being morally analyzed (think nuclear energy, surveillance technology, etc.), though I suppose that those of us with lesser influence should expect nothing less from those who operate according to a different morality altogether. But I digress; what are the long-term consequences of, say, engineering salmon to grow faster and larger? (Well, of course they’re under tight security, except when one escapes into the wild.) Or, what are the consequences of weeds quickly adapting and becoming resistant to Monsanto’s Round-Up herbicide? Or, what happens when a GMO doesn’t operate according to plan? No one knows. Few seem to care though in my world a scientist would. #NeilDeGrasseTysonFail

When we focus on the scientific issues surrounding GMO’s and ignore momentarily the social and political issues, we should be inclined to worry – at least a little bit – about GMO crops. Scientifically, we should be concerned that the toxic chemicals used to assist the growth of GMO’s are winding up inside of our bodies. Scientifically, we should be concerned about the long-term effects of GMO’s (Heck, and I haven’t even spoken about how vulnerable mono-cropping makes us. The great Irish potato famine anyone? Beuller?) We should also be a little concerned that scientific experimentation by the University of Wisconsin and Washington State University, among others, have shown GMO crop yields to be no better than organic farming. So, why are GMO’s so deeply entrenched in our food culture? Ah, but now we’re getting political… 

Neil DeGrasse Tyson gets credit for being clever most of the time, but hey, no one is perfect. Still, his defense of GMO's rested on a spurious argument. I expect more from America's Scientist Laureate. Better luck next time, Neil.