Sunday, September 2, 2012

"If you hit a girl with your hat and she doesn’t fall over, it’s time to marry her.”[1]


I came across this saying while reading about women in Afghanistan. I smiled and understood this “quaint” idiom to mean that once a young woman can stand up for herself and is not easily swayed, she is mature enough for the rite of passage into marriage. A quick look at the footnote informed me that I was very wrong.

This Afghan quip is referring to child marriage.

One of Afghanistan’s most destructive practices is that of marrying off their daughters at 16 years old or younger (the technical definition of child marriage) to a man who is often much older. Child marriages are part of a tangled web that keeps females subservient in many ways:

  • A woman who was married when still a child, to a man will always be treated as a little girl. She can never catch up to her husband’s status as the older, wiser spouse, and therefore, she will not be included in decision-making.
  • All child marriage is forced marriage as children are usually not consulted and even when they are, they lack the experience and knowledge necessary for such an important decision (similar to statutory rape).
  • AIDS spreads quickly to young girls because their bodies are still too small for intercourse, causing them to bleed.
  • Many girls suffer from fistula because their bodies are not developed enough for child birth, contributing to the world’s highest maternal mortality rate (that of Afghanistan).[2]
  • As girls discontinue their schooling once they are married, child marriage keeps females uneducated.[3]

Marrying off a daughter at the age of 10 sounds awfully barbaric to westerners. Why would anyone swap precious childhood for premature sexual activity and servitude to a much older husband?

Well-documented answers include poverty and illiteracy.            

The poorest countries in the world have the highest child marriage rates—one suggested correlation being that parents of boys have to come up with thousands of dollars to pay the bride price for their sons’ brides-to-be. In order to come up with the exorbitant amount, many parents sell their younger daughters into marriage to an older man who can pay a handsome bride price for her. 
Likewise, illiteracy is perpetuated within the cycle. Studies show that most parents who arrange underage marriages for their daughters are illiterate.[4] Being thus cut off from the world of education and power, such families are easily trapped in this tradition.

More complicated answers surface when we reflect our own society. In the US we revere childhood so much that our elementary schools average far less rigorous than those in other developed countries. We tell ourselves that “they’re just kids,” let them believe in Santa Clause; Make it illegal for them to work. But in reality are we protecting the childhood of our little girls?

What about the legalization of viewing child pornography in New York?[5] What about Toddlers and Tiaras? What about putting little girls in dance classes where they learn to dress and dance sensually like adults? From what moral high ground can we point our fingers at Afghanistan? And what accusation are we justified to utter? That their society is overly conservative while ours is…not overly sexualized? It becomes obvious that neither extreme empowers women. 

To all things there is a season…and when you hit a girl with your hat and she does not fall down, it is not yet her season for sexuality.





[1] UNAMA, “Harmful Traditional Practices and Implementation of the Law on Elimination of Violence against Women in Afghanistan,” 9 Dec. 2010: 18.
[2] UNAMA 40.
[3] UNAMA 44.
[4] UNAMA 44.

[5]Child Pornography Legal To View Online In New York; Court Rules Looking At Porn Doesn't Mean Possession,” The Huff Post, 10 June 2012 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/10/child-pornography-legal-new-york-porn-possession-james-kent_n_1505916.html>.

Friday, June 1, 2012

The Ignorance Surrounding Bicycle Helmet Advocacy


Disclaimer: I do not believe that helmets are bad. This entry is not meant to attack helmet use nor helmet users. I don't intend to persuade anyone not to wear a helmet. 

Trust me when I say that the effectiveness of bicycle helmets in mitigating brain injuries is heavily contested among peer-reviewed research. I will not get into the details of this claim right now but if you are skeptical or curious about it then please do some reading before you cite Thompson, Rivara and Thompson, 1989; www.cyclehelmets.org is a good place to start. Many of my arguments will be based on this assumption. However, many still will hold sound even while assuming that bicycle helmets can mitigate brain injury.

The first thing I want to make clear is that a lot of people severely misunderstand how a bicycle helmet is designed to protect its wearer. Helmets are meant to prevent brain injury, or a rotational head injury. This happens when the brain moves in relation to the skull of the cyclist and is the cause of most brain trauma.

Bicycle helmets are tested most commonly with a ‘drop test’. The helmet is weighted and dropped crown first onto an anvil, the test is usually at around 100 joules though some helmets have been tested at up to 110 joules per impact (FYI a 3500 lb. car traveling at 25 mph carries about 200,000 joules).

The effectiveness of a helmet is dependent upon its ability to slow the rate at which your head stops moving on impact, much like the crunch zone of a car. So, just like the crunch zone of a car prevents your heart from splattering on the inside of your rib cage, a bicycle helmet prevents your brain from slamming against the inside of your skull. That being said, a bicycle helmet is meant to crunch or flatten. This means that every time you hear a story about a helmet cracking into pieces and therefor saving somebody’s life you can assume that it probably saved no one from any serious brain injury. A helmet does its job when it crushes, not cracks.

People consistently overestimate the benefit of helmets. I once read a news story about a drunken man who walked his bike in front of an oncoming train. He died. The take home message in the report was “that’s why you should wear a helmet!”

“This helmet saved my life. Had I not been wearing it, I wouldn’t be here today”

“You don’t wear a helmet, you smash your face”

Am I taking crazy pills!? A quick news search on Google for ‘bike helmet car’ produces daily stories of cyclists dead or injured due to spinal injuries, internal bleeding and other broken extremities along with the doctrine, “always wear your helmet.” It’s as if people believe that helmets will protect you regardless of the situation. It’s superstition, not safety.

I’m not convinced that this boy’s life was saved by a helmet. Are you?

I am grateful that the police and the reporter here mention not only helmet but also the importance of operating bicycles in accordance with traffic laws. Though, I am still not sure what a helmet has to do with his broken arm and total disregard for safety (crossing on a Red light with headphones). Those seem to be the cause of the accident and that’s because they are.

A child is hit by a car while riding his bike. He dies. Why did he die? Because he wasn’t wearing a helmet? No. He was hit by a car!

Traffic. Collision with motor vehicles is almost always the cause of death or serious injury among cyclists. And this is my biggest issue with helmet advocacy. The absence of a helmet has never killed a cyclist, but collision with motor vehicles has killed thousands. Yet, I have met plenty of cyclists who think that wearing a helmet is the most important thing anyone on a bike can do to ensure their safety. This is false and I believe dangerous, even if helmets made cyclists safer.

It seems a common paradigm that cyclists’ responsibility to wear helmets exceeds motorist responsibility not to kill them—for every ad that promotes the use of helmets I wish I saw one that said “Don’t kill anyone with your car today,” and I’ll never forget the night that I passed a cyclist riding on the wrong side of the road without lights who yelled “Where is your helmet?” as I dodged him. There are many things more important than bicycle helmets, in fact, anything that could prevent or decrease collisions with motor vehicles. This applies to policy makers, traffic engineers, motorists and especially cyclists.

If you are wondering what a cyclist can do to not get killed please visit www.bicyclesafe.com for an article titled “How to Not Get Hit by Cars.” Also, learn how to ride legally. I personally don’t believe that a bicycle helmet is likely to save me when getting hit by that 3500 lb. car traveling at 25 mph, carrying 200,000 joules (199,900 joules greater than the 100 joules used to test the helmet). Instead I ride my bike in a way that lowers the likelihood of getting nailed by a motorist talking on his cell phone. 

If you are wondering what a community can do—Bike lanes—Real ones too. I keep forgetting to take a picture of this bike lane on my commute. It is a fog line and 3/4ths of a bike stencil that drops into a gutter. There is another bike lane further west that directs cyclists to the right side of a right turn lane. Also, try to educate drivers.

Motorists, educate yourselves. Look up traffic laws related to bicycles. For example: it is illegal to pass a cyclist within 3ft. And it’s okay (and legal) if my taking the lane through an intersection slows you down by a few seconds. I’m doing it to stay visible, not to bother you. Things are getting better around here though.

O be wise, what can I say more?


Wednesday, April 25, 2012

This is not an essay on abortion.


I've done some poking around to gain a better understanding of both the legal statutes and social position on abortion in America. Personally I'm a little tired of hearing about it. To me it's just part of that endless bickering that keeps us in perpetual agnosis while we watch our representatives bankrupt our children and play rent-a-cop for anyone with enough cash to finance the swelling burden of campaign fund raising. Abortion is legal in all 50 states and in most of those the line is drawn at viability. That is, the ability of the fetus to survive outside the womb, which usually begins in the third trimester. Socially we generally accept it, though no one talks about it lightly. I don't think there are many, if any, who would think that the decision to abort is easy. 

Consider it principally, excluding the extreme circumstances of rape and incest; abortion is kind of like killing. I'll acquiesce for sake of this exercise that it isn’t exactly killing. Lets assume that it’s maybe killing--that is, that we aren't totally sure either way. In allowing or accepting abortion are we not (at least legally) erring on the side of killing? Why are we not erring on the side of not killing? Doesn't that seem like the better decision? How did we come to this decision? I don't intend on making an argument against abortion, but it does demonstrate the argument that I do wish to make: It is not so difficult to justify our decisions. We do it all the time. 

Commitment to an externally developed or even traditional or religious ideology can be valuable. Ross Douthat (from what I hear) is making this claim in his book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. NPR has been giving the book some coverage and it's been a key ingredient in my most recent syntheses, part of which you are reading now. In an interview on the Diane Ream show Douthat asked that if God is an internal god (see: Eat, Pray, Love) what stops us from just doing what feels good? How do we completely separate our own selfish desires from an internal god or source of truth? As a Mormon, I believe that we can't. 

It is tempting to believe that we humans are capable of objective decisions. I think we can get relatively close when those decisions or ideas do not directly effect us, but enter a conflict of interest and undoubtedly therein is the perfect storm of cloudy thoughts and decisions. In making decisions about our individual lives we encounter countless conflicts of interest. Any internal god will be insufficient in resolving these. 

Religious theology has developed a variety of means for overcoming this problem of discernment. Even Buddhism, which theologically lacks deity, can resolve this conflict. Example: Zen meditation is about forgetting oneself and restoring true thoughts. It aims to see things as they really are. Sikhism and Hinduism have the notion of guru. "Islam" literally means "submission" to Allah. In my religion the use of scriptural canon and the adherence to living prophets is fundamental in discerning the truth from my personal desires.

Religious absolutism, the idea that truth exists externally, is an important anchor for personal decision making. I admit that these absolutes can be dangerous also. Racism, inequality and war are just a few manifestations of dangerous dogma. It is not my claim that traditions should stand wholly unquestioned, but I do believe that it is foolish to abandon them categorically. It seems to me that sometimes we label an ideology as "outdated" and trash it without an honest look at its value. 

It will serve us well if we choose to discern truth based on quality rather than by age or novelty. Isn't that the difference between conservatism and liberalism? Whether truth is sought in tradition or innovation? This dichotomy is harmful. Don't bad ideas occur on both sides of this artificial battle front?

Monday, April 16, 2012

What I Get Paid to Learn About


Once upon a time I was reading the Iraqi Freedom House report for my job. I was assigned to collect information about the laws and practices concerning women in that country and prepare that information for the WomanStats.org database. That's when I stumbled upon some startling Iraqi laws...enjoy.

...and be forewarned that the following is not so much butterflies and bunnies.

The Honor of a Man Lies between the Legs of a Woman
Why do parents in some societies marry off their prepubescent daughters? Why are the practices of Female Genital Mutilation and the wearing of chastity belts common among some cultures? Why are girls of certain peoples punished for being raped? The answers to these questions are summed up in this Ecuadorian saying: “The honor of a man lies between the legs of a woman.”[1] Each of the above practices aims at ensuring the chastity of women. In “honor/shame” societies (many of which are in the Middle East and North Africa), the masculine honor of a man is directly correlated with the chastity of his female relatives. If he fails to control or protect his wife’s sexual virtue, and she is consequently unfaithful or raped, he cannot guarantee that her offspring is his own and he is completely stripped of manly honor.
The 2010 Iraq Freedom House report provides tragically pertinent example of such honor/shame ideology. If we judge the seriousness of a crime based on how severe the punishment is, then Iraqi society deems rape (worthy of 5-15 years in prison) a much worse crime than murder (for which the perpetrator will only serve 6 months-3 years).[2] At first glance, a Western thinker may find this utterly absurd. The system begins to make sense, however, when put into the context of an honor/shame society.
The first step of contextualizing these laws is to realize that what Westerners would consider murder, Iraqis see as rather acceptable “honor killings.” (“Honor killing” is distinguished by the victim being a female who has brought shame upon her kin.) According to the Iraqi penal code, “a man who kills his wife or close female relative and her partner after catching them in an act of adultery” can only receive 6 months to 3 years in prison if he is in fact tried and found guilty.[3] In that situation, neither the unfaithful woman, nor her lover is legally allowed to use self-defense and acts of revenge against the killer are prohibited. Condoning honor killings even more, the same short prison sentence (6 months-3 years) also applies to the killing of any person who makes reference to the dead woman’s sin, thus causing the husband to lose face.[4] These laws communicate that destroying an unfaithful woman and all reminders of her disloyalty is an acceptable way for her male relatives to reclaim their honor.
Iraqi laws on rape clarify even more cultural attitudes about how men’s honor coincides with their women’s chastity. If tried and found guilty, rapists are sentenced to 5-15 years in prison (a much longer time than the punishment for honor killing). However, if the guilty man marries his victim, his crime is completely forgotten and honor is restored to the victim’s male relatives. When the woman or girl was raped, her father, brothers, and uncles were horribly shamed because they failed to protect her chastity. The provision that marriage to her rapist will clear all shame indicates that the Iraqi culture values men’s honor above women’s happiness and safety.
Not only do honor/shame societies value men’s honor above women’s happiness and safety, Iraqi law shows that male honor is more important than female life. This ideology is foundational for much of the harm women face in the world. It is left for us not to idly point fingers at Iraq but to examine our own countries’ ideologies for the harm or security they provide their female inhabitants.
One of the most harmful ideologies in my own culture teaches that a female’s worth is based on her sex appeal. This is why old women are not revered for their wisdom. Young girls are dressed like teenagers instead of the children that they are. Advertising agencies uses sexualized images of young adult women to promote any product from beer to furniture to car repair. A female politician cannot run for office without being publically critiqued as if they were a fashion model. Media images are digitally altered to create an impossible standard for how every female should look.
My society may not fit the honor/shame mold, but its ideology about women causes outrageous harm nonetheless: increasing mental illness, sex-based crime, and fallacious beliefs, held by both males and females, about woman’s intellectual and professional potential.


[1] Valerie M. HudsonBonnie Ballif-SpanvillMary CaprioliChad F. Emmett, Sex and World Peace (NY: Columbia Press University, 2012), 8.
[2] Huda Ahmed, “Iraq,” In Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance, edited by Sanja Kelly and Julia Breslin (NY:Freedom House; Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 15 & 7.
[3] Ahmed, “Iraq,” 7.
[4] Ahmed, “Iraq,” 7.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Life changed today? Check

Karin here.


I just spent a most delightful morning on our sunny couch reading a book that makes me want to be a better person. It makes me excited for student teaching and continued learning instead of dreading all that work. I feel like I have the energy to do all those great things I've dreamed of doing like going to the gym and being a good dance teacher and being friendly to the fridge repairman and everyone else I run into. I'm even starting to grasp the feeling that life will keep on changing and I can learn and grow and adapt right along with it. My happily ever after wedding is not the climax or end of my life.

And the book? It's about polygamy. A Mormon Mother by Annie Clark Tanner is the autobiography about a Mormon girl who grew up as the daughter of a second wife in late 19th century Utah and then practiced it as an adult. If that's not fascinating enough, she was married to one of the early presidents of Brigham Young College only a few years before the manifesto came out. Her insightful perspective is surprisingly progressive as she examines parent and husband-wife roles, changing church teachings, and obedience as a virtue through her own experiences.


Also, lest you think I lie around all day reading such high literature, let me explain that I read it for a class on Utah History, which I need to head to...right now. It's taught by Professor Spencer Fluhman and like the book, I highly recommend it. Who knew Utah history was so crazy? And amazing. And crazy.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Dear Mr. Simmonds

Today I submitted a response to an editorial published in The Student Review on the need to abolish or wage war against "corrupt" English. The author seemed very agitated at the use of fail as a noun. Poor guy. Here is my response, which I hope is included in the next issue.

Dear Mr. Simmonds,

A return to the noblest of English indeed! Unfortunately such linguistic corruption is nothing new and part-of-speech conversion is but a small fraction of the issue though I will keep this discussion limited to the issue of part-of-speech conversion for sake of length. We language prescriptivists have a great share of work cut out for us in such an endeavor.

You would not believe the number of occasions that I have heard the nouns access, host, mail, dress and even switch used as verbs. This verbification, it seems, will not cease! Is it really too difficult to say, “I do not have access” instead of “I can not access” or even worse “I can’t access”? For heaven sakes! This is English! We do not affix our negative particles! There is little as dreadful as agglutination (though this is a separate issue). Is it so difficult to let our nouns and verbs remain separate? Is it too difficult to remember that mail is something we send, not something that we do? It is not! I assert that this is not a function of difficulty but rather laziness and lack of intellect. Sloppy speech is among the vilest of sins and is used among the vilest of people.

I am, however, running into some personal difficulty in the matter. I recently learned that sleep was not originally a verb but a noun and since I do enjoy using it as a verb I fear this makes me a hypocrite. I am unsure of how to resolve this. If you have any advice in the matter I gratefully welcome your response.

Sincerely,

Justin Stark
BYU Linguistics Major

Monday, March 12, 2012

ONE|UNO|ОДИН|BIR

Dear Everyone,

This is a blog by Justin and Karin. Mainly we thought it would be a good way to keep in touch with our family members and friends who we don't get to see a lot.

It’s been two months since the beginning of perhaps the most significant union since the yankees shot up all those racists or slave owners or whatever. I guess to be more specific, a reunion seeing as how this union has a history of separation also. Never again though. We promised.

We've settled into our home at the foot of BYU. This is official today I guess because we finished making our curtains—kind of. That’s what we're saying but the kitchen doesn't have any... yet. We like our house a lot—well really we only have a basement, but we sure do like it. Except that it's always cold...and that the kitchen smells some kind of funky.

More significantly, Justin is still saving the world one delinquent at a time, at the treatment center where we met almost two years ago. I (Karin now) am working for an organization that is affiliated with BYU and only The Largest database about the status of women. It's called WomanStats (womanstats.org). My job is to get pumped up with feminist angst and appalling trivia via reading government documents and news articles. I pull out important information and then categorize it into one of 300+ categories so that researchers can go onto the database and type in a country and a category (such as domestic violence or voting rights) and retrieve a ton of cited information on that topic. Pretty sweet.

Justin still gets his rant on about the vices of two party systems, the IRB, racism, sucrose, motion control running shoes, and linguistic prescriptivism (how dumb is it that database is one word whereas a lot isn’t. When was the last time you used the word lot. You didn’t). He is working on some research, which he received a grant for. Something about words and side effects, he thinks it’s important and hopes to get published. Wouldn’t that be special?

Karin is trying to find a high school who will pay her to practice teaching on their students (also known as an internship) so that she can finally be done being a student herself. She is also getting a bunch of 10-year-old girls ready for their dance recital in April. Please cross every appendage you have for me! (Woops I broke character—now you all know whose writing this vaguely 3rd person paragraph.) It’s a good day when we get through dance class and no one has cried or gotten hurt…Our show is the first weekend in April and it’s gonna be big. I’ll be playing a mime who provides comic relief between dances. Note: I said mime. Not sideshow.

Don’t forget to spay and neuter your pets.