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“Treating” homosexuality in minors: Protected free speech or child abuse?
Should mental health providers be allowed to try to “cure” minors of their homosexuality?
Read More »“Treating” homosexuality in minors: Protected free speech or child abuse?
On Wednesday last week, Professor Janet Radcliffe Richards gave the last of her three Uehiro lectures on ‘Sex in a Shifting Landscape’. (Here you can find recordings of all three lectures: 1st audio, 1st video, 2nd audio, 2nd video, 3rd audio, 3rd video.)
She emphasised the goal she pursued with these lectures, namely, to demonstrate methods of philosophical reasoning in practice and to show how they can help in coming to useful conclusions. Recapitulating aspects of her first and second lecture, Radcliffe Richards illustrated the methodological approach John Steward Mill used in the dispute about women’s rights in the 19th century to show the weakness of his opponents’ arguments by proving their incoherence.
Read More »Janet Radcliffe Richards on the past, present and future of sex: Part 3
In the second of her Uehiro lectures on the topic of feminism in the 21st century (which you can listen to here), Professor Janet Radcliffe Richards addresses the question of how the sexes may be said to differ in the light of a shift in our metaphysical understanding of the world. Read More »Janet Radcliffe Richards on the past, present and future of sex: Part 2
In the last two centuries, there has been a massive shift in the legal, social and institutional norms surrounding sex – both in terms of women’s rights and regulation of sexual activity. And, undoubtedly, there will be more such shifts in the future – the sexual norms that emerge in the future may well make even the most strident liberals of today blush. What to make of this complex and sometimes confusing landscape? This is the subject of the 2012 Annual Uehiro Lecture Series, entitled ‘Sex in a Shifting Landscape’ and delivered over the next three weeks by Professor Janet Radcliffe Richards. The first lecture occurred on November 14 (you can listen to the podcast here and here), with two more to follow on November 21 and 28. Read More »Janet Radcliffe Richards on the past, present and future of sex
A BBC Panorama Report to be broadcast later tonight, follows several patients in persistent vegetative state. It highlights the cases of two Canadian patients, Scott Routley and Steven Graham, who, whilst appearing to be in persistent vegetative state (PVS) have been able to answer questions, and even to show that they have laid down new memories.… Read More »PVS Patients Communicate: BBC Report
Anyone who doubts the ability of philosophy to influence ‘real world’ politics should study the text of Obama’s victory address. They should then read John Rawls’s Political Liberalism. (That’s if they haven’t done so already, of course.) There are points in the speech at which Obama’s remarks parallel certain key Rawlsian theses in such a striking way that one has to ask oneself if the resemblance could be more than accidental.
Let me give a couple of examples:Read More »Obama’s debt to Rawls?
“BDSM [Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism] might be mainstream now, but it has a new PR problem. I blame Christian Grey.” writes ‘sexual submissive’ Sophie Morgan in an article in the Guardian.
I started reading E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey but didn’t get very far. It’s very badly written (guess that’s no longer a secret) and, well, I found it incredibly boring (Pride and Prejudice is more exciting, I think). In any case, the book is just a starting point for something I began thinking about after a recent conversation with a friend who is part of the ‘BDSM community’.
The legal status of BDSM varies from country to country. In the UK, it is illegal if it results in any injury which is more than “transient or trifling”. Possessing extreme pornography is a criminal offence, which, for obvious reasons, may be problematic for those who are into SM. Moreover, those who engage in any kind of BDSM are not legally protected against discrimination on the basis of their sexual preferences (for example, they can be, and have been, fired for that reason).
I haven’t studied the issue in depth, but it seems to me that BDSM should be legal, the main reason being that it concerns a consensual sexual act by adults that doesn’t cause harm to third parties. (There’s an interesting paper by Nafsika Athanassoulis arguing why SM can be considered a consensual sexual act). But I was thinking about a further question. Should we put more effort into breaking the BDSM taboo? For example, in countries where BDSM is legal, should it be part of general sexual education?
Read More »Fifty shades: should BDSM become part of general sexual education?
Due to a server upgrade, the blog will be unavailable between 11am and 12pm GMT today. Server is now back up. Please report any issues in the comments.
Last week, Steven Farrow was convicted of murdering a grandmother and a vicar. 77 year old Betty Yates was stabbed in the face. He had planned to crucify the vicar but had left behind his hammer an nails, instead covering his dead body in pornographic DVDs, party poppers and condoms. Though Farrow is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail, the family members questioned why he had been free in the first place.
Read More »Could there be a Third Way for Criminal Psychopaths?
Imagine that the Teetotaler party came to power. They stood for family, safety and old fashioned values. Their first target was the car and the speeding culture. They wanted driving to be as safe as possible. Indeed, they would have preferred it if there were no driving cars at all and people returned to bicycles or horsedrawn carts. But they knew that was impossible. People were used to driving cars.
So they slashed the speed limits from 100km/hr to 50 on open roads, and 60km/hr to 20 in built up areas. This, it was proven, was a safer speed to drive at.
Nearly everyone, however, sped. It was just more convenient – you could do so much more. And it cut down travelling times for work, so people could get a competitive advantage by getting to work earlier and leaving later.
Some professions involved speeding. Couriers, truck drivers, and salesmen all sped. There were a few speed cameras but they picked up people only rarely and many had camera detectors installed in their cars. People continued to drive at 100km/hr, just as they always had. Those who were caught were punished heavily – banned for a couple of years.
However, the benefits of speeding, or going at what was the previous limit, vastly outweighed the punishments.
One particularly successful courier was Prance Legstrong. He used to speed and deliver packages quicker than any other service. He established DEEHL, a courier service that became more successful than US postal. Pretty soon, he was a multimillionaire.
