Note: I am actually on-board with their dismay, here.  For one, it looks absurd when people who are not-white alter parts of their cosmetic appearance to ‘look white’.  But more importantly, it is sad to see so many different sorts of beauty be deliberately dismissed by those that have it in order to chase some illusion no-one will really buy anyway.  End of digression.

It got me thinking though.  What they find wrong specifically about having this procedure done relates to matters of race, standards of beauty and self-perceptions.  It isn’t the permanency, because such types are in principle generally very accepting of tattoos and other such permanent body-modifications (in point of fact, the boyfriend has quite his own collection of ink).  Indeed, thinking about how some would defend the right of self-expression of freaks like this to project whatever image of themselves that it pleases them to do but still protest that such a relatively minor change of hair or eye colour in this other case is somehow wrong or undesirable seems contradictory.  Evidently, such types plainly believe that one’s appearance, insofar as it is genotypically determined, is something that one ought to celebrate (and failing that, stoically accept, for the sake of others sharing your genetic make-up).

But there are obvious contradictions here for our average college-leftist.  For example, what if there is someone who is of mixed-race and at a very young age believed that his eyes were blue, like his father’s?  (I am, of course, speaking about someone I know.)  What if such a person were to grow up always feeling that his eyes ‘ought’ to be blue – would his getting the procedure be bad?  Think about the parallels here between this operation and sex-change operations - what significant difference should there be between accepting what you look like in racial terms and in terms of one’s sex (also genetically determined)?  If one believes that sex-changes are necessary and good because the outside doesn’t correspond to the inside, then one cannot accept that such a person as I have described ought not to have his eye-colour (or hair, or skin, or whatever else) changed.  Further, what is the operative distinction between ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ to have the outside match the inside?  Surely we cannot defend lizard man’s choices on the basis of his feeling like a reptile on the inside; I would tend to think that he only wants to look like a reptile.  Yet his bodily modifications are far and away more extreme than simply wanting to look like a different sort of human – he actually wants to look like another species!  How then can we condemn much less extreme alterations of appearance like the blueing of eyes, even if motivated by mere wanting to look different?

EDIT: Fixed a couple of links and spelling.

In other news, let’s see how (so-called) feminists and anti-racism activists jump to the defense of medieval barbarism.

In universities dominated by narrow technical, governmental, and industrial concerns and driven by extramural funding from corporate sources, environmental awareness is almost nonexistant, and liberal education has become progressively more narrow.  As Nobelist Isidore Rabi warned, this narrowness is paving the way for a repitition of what happened in Germany during the 1930s when the rise of militaristic nationalism, fueled by the dominance of narrow technical and professional trainning, eroded ethical values and liberal university education, thus laying the foundation for Hitler’s rise.  Given such a restrictive conception of the university and scholarship, it was no accident that in 1937 the Prussian Academy of Sciences condemned Albert Einstein because he criticized the violations of civil liberities in the Nazi regime [ed. - emphasis added].

You see why this is irritating, right?  I am supposed to believe that because more academics aren’t advocating green causes – so, math problems should make reference to the environment and English literature professors should try to read Gaiaism into Shakespear? – there will be more Nazis!  Watch out, zombie-Hitler will come to get your Jew-gold (because that’s what happened before)!  You know, because when German universities failed to put enough emphasis upon reading Plato and Aristotle you get Nazis.  God knows that science students can never be good little leftists and that liberal arts educations, like history, always keep one from becoming evil, nasty right-wingers, just like the Nazis(?).  Mmhmmm.  It takes someone really smart to say something quite so stupid.

Amusingly, in all of this there is the not-small irony of how social conservatives and feminists – two groups that usually go together like cesium and water - seem happy to climb into bed together and get down, dirty, and nasty when it comes to policing others’ sexual morality.  From porn to prostitution to taking home that cute girl/guy you just met at the bar, these two camps just can’t seem to stop meddling in other people’s business.  Not that they are inclined to meddle for the same reasons: of course not!  The social conservative camp is interested in meddling because they want to preserve the family structure from the malign influence of extramarital sex (also, they don’t want Jesus angry at us).  Meanwhile, the feminist camp wants to prohibit prostitution because they view prostitutes as incapable of giving consent – which must lead to some wicked cognitive dissonance given that, as far as I am aware, feminists also claim that women own their sexuality and that it is inconceivably oppressive for them to be told what to do with it.  I suppose that only holds if you’re not numbered one among the designated Spokespersons-For-Women (but I digress).

In any case, the law that is being cooked up aims to make it illegal to buy sex but not to sell it.  Of course, if the aim is to stamp out the practise, this is a transparently stupid way to go about it.  Where there is high but widely dispersed demand and low but narrowly concentrated supply, the most effective tack is to go after the supply (whether or not the demand is pursued).  That’s how it’s done in the War on Drugs - imagine how stupid you would think someone who said “we’re going to end marijuana use in this country by hunting down every single last Dorito-munching, Marley-listening, Towlie-quoting, giggling idiot, but we’re not going to touch the dealers or the grow ops.”  So why make an anti-prostitution statute that deliberately leaves alone the prostitutes?

Well, for starters, all those guys in the National Assembly probably figure that they’ll never get caught in a police john-dragnet as they get the priciest and most exclusive escorts – and even if they did, they have the connections to make it all go away.  No, this law is only going to hurt the average Joe (what’s the appropriate saying in french?) without impacting the dalliances of the powerful with their favourite call girls.  But the feminists also want the law this way, because the prostitutes themselves are actually victims, you see, buffeted about by intractable and irresistible societal forces that effectively negate their agentic capacities, eradicating the independence of their wills and therefore all responsibility for their decisions.  For their part, social conservatives, forgetting about original sin, view women as innately more virtuous than men and therefore, while still somewhat culpable for their decisions, also as victims of men’s evil desires, whether by trickery or coercion.

But so long as we are considering victims of desires and social forces, why not extend the status to the johns? – it’s not so ridiculous as it sounds.  First, why would you pay for something you can get for free?  Sure, there will be some johns who are adept at the game of seduction and perfectly capable of bringing home women but who just want to get their rocks off without having to go through the song-and-dance of seducing a stranger.  There will also be those that are hoping to get sex and to do so with maximum discretion (politicians come to mind).  But I suspect that the greater part of johns aren’t like that – they are probably unattractive to women, whether physically or in terms of their personalities.  It may well be that for some, prostitution is the only way that they are going to have their sexual needs met; otherwise, it is hard to understand why they would be paying hundreds of dollars a go for something they could get for cheaper elsewhere (not to mention that having someone go through the motions with you wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as having someone who wants you).

Secondly, johns are every bit as much victims of their desires as are the prostitutes.  If it weren’t for their desperate need to have sex, they wouldn’t be paying for it – and who can deny that people have sexual needs?  I am very thankful for the sexual openness that has come in the latter half of last century (granting that it has its downsides) if only because it is much easier to have bothersome sexual needs met and met without the shame and ostracism that would have accompanied their satisfaction in the past.  And what else are they to do but pay when no-one else will sleep with them?  If that’s not exploitative, I don’t know what is.

As for whether johns are victims of oppressive social forces – well, they are the ones that are being targeted with fines and jail for their moral failing to accept that women find them repulsive and won’t sleep with them without monetary compensation.  Yeah, a visit to a government anal-rape-camp is sure what they deserve!

Now, let’s leave aside the matter of whether or not it is, in some sense or other, morally wrong or morally right to dispense/withold such items – they are not what interest me here.  There is still this core idea that those that are unwilling to do what is socially defined as ‘their job’ either ought not to go into the line of work that they are in or ought to be required to fulfill their duties, as defined by the law, presumably because this job figures as a pretty important one in the grand scheme of things.  If an employee of a restaurant refuses to bus tables it is, at most, an inconvenience for the restaurant owner and merits at most dismissal - I think it safe to say that bringing police and courts into the matter would be somewhat excessive.  This is, afterall, what being ‘legally bound’ to do x means; if a person refuses to do x, this person deserves to have men armed with guns and batons and the license to use them (ie, the government) make his life miserable.

So, to break down what I perceive to be the argument: since

1. the pharmacists willingly went into this line of work; and
2. this line of work involves the provision of certain products or services about which a given pharmacist may harbour personal reservations; and
3. the provision of such products or services is of great importance to the well-being of the community, or at least of certain individuals among the community, regardless of any personal reservations held by yet other members of the community;
4. the community therefore has reason to demand and enforce the provision of these products or services by those competent to do so.

Again, leaving aside the matter of whether such things as the birth-control and the morning-after pill are morally acceptable, the argument seems right.  If there is any doubt, replace ‘pharmacist’ with ‘firefighters’ – we find that we would not want to allow a firefighter to opt out of running into a burning building* because he was afraid, or didn’t like the person trapped inside, or his wife was afraid for him or didn’t like the person trapped inside.

Now, what if we instead replaced ‘pharmacist’ with ‘US Soldier bound for Iraq’?  Suddenly, we have an argument that the lefty wants to use to impose her will on the pharmacists making it right and good for the US government to prosecute so-called ‘war resisters’, a group that (I am presuming now) she would adamantly insist ought not to be so treated.  Moreover, it would appear that the Canadian governnment would be doing nothing wrong in refusing ’Iraq war resisters’ asylum.  It would simply be another case of working with the US authorities in helping to enforce their reasonable domestic laws - we do so all the time when it’s murder, or the international drug-trade.

So, should she continue to use this argument?  I think not.

*This is not to endorse suicide, of course.  There will be situations where the danger is too great or the payoff too small (rescuing pets, for example) to require his endagerment.

In practical terms, however, there are a number of things that (could I wave my magic wand) I would change immediately:

First up, and least unpalatable, I would rescind the rights of prisoners to vote (anywhere, of course, but in Canada specifically).  Why should they be able to vote?!  “It takes away their human right to vote and that makes them saaaad.”  Boo-fucking-hoo.  Sorry, am I to understand that not being able to vote makes them more sad than being locked in a tiny concrete room with steel bars covering the windows and doors, or that voting is a more important fundamental right than not being locked in a tiny concrete room… etc.?*  They broke the rules (which is why they’re in time-out) so probably didn’t think those rules ought to have applied to them personally – so let’s give them what they were asking for.  All they’re likely to do is vote for the soft-on-crime candidates who’d like to put a frozen-yogurt machine in every cell.  Besides, no one can explain to me satisfactorily why, in making rules for society, I should be obligated to consult the opinion of those who have no intention of keeping the rules.

Next, instead of allowing kids to vote I would jump the voting age up to at least 25.  As I said before, kids aren’t competent to vote.  They haven’t any real understanding of the world, aside from the crap instruction they’ve received from the schools and whatever the adults surrounding them tell them, but they sure think they know everything about the world.  They might think they don’t, but they really do believe that money grows on trees.  They just aren’t competent or wise enough to vote; now of course age is no guarantee of either experience or wisdom, but it’s a close enough proxy for those two.  At the very least, by 25 most will have assumed some degree of independence, financial and otherwise, from their parents (learned the value of a dollar) and will have had the experience of dealing with going to work, day in, day out.  Maybe some will even have kids and understand what real responsibility is actually like.**

Also, I would remove the right to vote from any who are receiving a significant degree of ‘public assistance’.  Now, I’m not talking about those who get GST rebate cheques in the mail – being allowed to keep more of your own money is not the same thing as being given a handful of other people’s money – or those who have paid into EI and Medicare making use of those services, or even those who cannot work (the crippled, mentally deficient, etc.).  I’m talking about people who could work (or work more) that are getting benefits and payments from the state without contributing anything back.  The conflict of interest here is immense; it is simply inconceivable that someone whose livelihood is dependent upon state-transfers of other people’s money would ever vote for any candidate or measure that would reduce the flow of benefits.  Would you voluntarily reduce your paycheque if your boss said it would be better for the bottom line?  Probably only if you thought that the business would go under if you didn’t.  We don’t trust that politicians are working in the public interest when their own financial well-being is involved - why would we trust welfare recipients?  If it’s corruption for politicians to do it, then surely it’s corruption when voters do it?  Besides, shouldn’t those whose money is being taken have more of a say about how that money is being used than those receiving it?

That’s enough for today.

*Seriously, why are prisoners-rights/justice advocates wasting their time arguing about that one?  Shouldn’t they be, oh I dunno, working to get all sentences reduced?  Laws taken off the books?  Fronting money for lawyers to go to court and try to get convictions overturned?

**I do not have kids.  I know people who have them and they sure as hell look like a big ol’ burden that I’d like to avoid for the near future.