Month: December 2013

It is one thing not to prosecute war crimes – even though failure to do so violates the core of the Geneva Conventions. It is another not even to allow the public airing of what actually happened in America during the Bush-Cheney era, even though the findings have been reached exhaustively, at vast public expense and under bipartisan auspices. What on earth is Obama afraid of? That the CIA will revolt and refuse to do its job? That John Brennan’s friends will squirm uncomfortably in the face of their own complicity in barbarism? W. Paul Smith calls on the administration to release the damn report already:

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s adoption of a sweeping 6,300-page study detailing the CIA’s post-9/11 detention, rendition, torture and interrogation program. But the public has yet to see one word of it. That’s because, even though it deals with some of the most important and contentious issues this country has grappled with in recent years, the entire report remains classified.

Here’s what we do know about the report:

First, it is almost certainly the most exhaustive, detailed investigation of the CIA torture program to date. The committee spent more than three years researching the program, including reviewing six million pages of documents.

Second, according to senators who have seen it, the report includes a damning indictment and repudiation of the longstanding claims that torture and ill treatment led to accurate and actionable intelligence.

Conor chimes in:

[T]he Obama Administration, which promised voters that it would be the most transparent in history, has bowed to pressure from a faction within the CIA to keep secret the most thorough accounting we have of the agency’s lawless, immoral behavior during the Bush years. In doing so, Team Obama makes it less likely that we learn the lessons of CIA torture, and more likely that America tortures again one day.

@sullydish NEVER again!? so it’s only in the untimely event of Tom Daley’s death that one of us can cash in?

— ann friedman (@annfriedman) December 10, 2013

A reader quotes me:

Let me place a bet with Friedman: Daley will never have a sexual relationship with a woman again, because his assertion that he still fancies girls is a classic bridging mechanism to ease the transition to his real sexual identity. I know this because I did it too.

Wow, Andrew, that’s strikingly arrogant of you. After all the conversations you’ve hosted on bisexuality, I’m amazed you would be so black-and-white and presumptuous about it. There’s no call to be so instantly dismissive of others’ own declarations of their sexual preferences. If and when Daley admits he’s in it for the cock only, then you can trumpet your own theories about bridges and men’s simpler sexuality.

Let me rephrase my bet with Friedman. Check in in ten years’ time. As for airing discussions in which male bisexuality is regarded as widespread as female bisexuality, of course we air such threads. Part of the point of this blog is to push back against my own views with those of readers and other writers, studies and stories and the irreplaceable role of human narrative. But it doesn’t mean I am totally persuaded. I absolutely believe in male bisexuality, its integrity as an identity, its total validity as a sexual orientation. I just believe it’s much less common than female bisexuality, for reasons to do with nature, rather than nurture. I know this enrages some liberals, just as other views of mine enrage conservatives. I didn’t mean to constrain Tom Daley’s future life in any way, and perhaps I was too glib in writing what I wrote. But it remains what I think. Another reader:

“I know this because I did it too.” That’s precisely the problem, Andrew. What you think of as a point of argumentative strength is actually analytical weakness. You’re extrapolating from your own experience, with no actual ability to live Tom Daley’s experience. Now I think that is a very natural response, as you came of age in a time when homosexuality was something to be ashamed of. The pain and frustration of that, I’m sure, colors your perception of any man who claims to have sexual attraction to both sexes. I have no doubt there have been many men who have claimed to be bisexual out of a desire to avoid the stigma of being gay. But insisting that any individual must necessarily be an example of that is a cruel thing – even if you turn out to be right.

I don’t think my overall response to Tom Daley could be fairly called cruel. Another:

You snappily respond to Ann Friedman: “Not much evidence of fluid sexuality among men there, is there?” Hmmm, why would that be?  After all, it’s not as if there’s any real COST to men admitting to fluid sexuality, is there?

And another:

Let me say first off that I appreciate the amount of coverage you’re giving to bisexuality, and that I’ve really enjoyed reading the “What’s A Bisexual Anyway?” thread. I know you get this a lot, but your willingness to have an ongoing discussion about a subject like bisexuality is why I’m a subscriber. But your latest post on Daley made me see red! In response, I’d like to quote from the chapter on bisexuality in Dan Savage’s most recent book, American Savage.

Savage has long been accused of biphobia because of his past statements that male bisexuality doesn’t exist, a belief he admits was based on a now-discredited study. (Discredited, I should add, by the same researcher who led the initial study). In a chapter called “Mistakes Were Made,” Savage makes the point that yes, “many gay men briefly identify as bisexual during their coming-out processes” but that “bisexuality is not a phase for bisexuals” (emphasis in original):

I can see now why this is all so enormously frustrating for bisexual men. Many gay men think all bisexual guys are lying because a lot of men who claim to be bisexual are lying. But it’s not bisexual guys who lie about being bisexual. It’s gay men like me … who lie about being bi. And what do we do after we stop lying about being bi? We insist that all bisexual guys are liars because we were liars.

I know you’re not accusing Daley of lying; I’m sure you think that he genuinely believes that he still fancies girls. But if you add “to themselves” to “lying,” the point still stands.

By the way, the reason that new study got different results? They made the participation criteria more stringent by restricting the sample only to men who actually exhibited bisexual behavior, i.e. excluding gay men, like you and Dan Savage, who were in a “transitional” phase.

Lastly, I’d like to add my perspective as an out bisexual woman in the LGBT community: I’ve encountered so much prejudice and disbelief surrounding bisexuality that I’m not surprised when bisexuals who are actually in same-sex relationships don’t feel safe identifying as bi, and prefer to allow everyone to assume they’re gay. Although this contributes to our invisibility, for some it might seem a better option than being rejected by the very community that is supposed to support us, especially if you’ve already been rejected by your family and straight friends. Also, I think this situation is probably worse for bisexual men, because while bi women may be accused of “experimenting,” bi men are actually accused of being cowards or liars.

By the way, Dan discussed that study and bisexuality in general for one of our Ask Anything videos. Another reader:

I love you, Andrew, but: bullshit. Daley is in love with this man, and there is a chance – a small chance, but a chance nonetheless – that he will spend the rest of his life with him. If that happens, and he does not ever have sex with another woman, and he still says he is bi, he is still bi. Likewise if he just never meets another woman he wants to have sex with before he finds the right person (who happens to be a man) to settle down with, which is also possible. Likewise if he is sexually bi but romantically oriented towards men and doesn’t enjoy casual sex outside of a committed relationship.

I could keep going, but my point is this: sexual orientation is not defined by behavior. There are straight men who have the occasional homosexual or even homoromantic experience. Those men aren’t straight, but they aren’t gay either. There are gay men who remain closeted their whole lives and sleep with and even marry women. Those men are still gay. There are straight and gay and bi men who remain celibate for whatever reasons. They are still who they are.

One more:

I’m a 37-year-old man, and in the past year, I’ve come out to many family members and friends as bisexual. I started incorporating men into my fantasies when I was 12 or 13, and they’ve been present there ever since. And sometimes, indeed, I feel such a strong desire for sex with another man that I do wonder if I’m just fooling myself; I’ve certainly still got some latent shame and self-directed homophobia. But other times, the urge to be with a man recedes considerably.

On the other hand, I almost always want to have sex with women, and my fantasies usually specifically focus on me going down on them. My sense is that eating pussy is about the least gay thing I could be jerking off about.

Of course, that’s just me. What’s more interesting to me is that in the past couple months, I’ve had conversations with two different guys around my age who are openly gay. Both expressed interest in having sex with a woman, especially as part of a three-way with another guy. One said most of the porn he watches is of straight sex. These are not men who are figuring out their orientation; these are guys who’ve been dating and in relationships consistently with other men for years. So their sexuality seems kinda surprisingly fluid to me.

I’m betting against your confident prediction. I think homophobia has done a far more pervasive and pernicious job of repressing a lot of men’s desires than even you give it credit for. In fact, I think that because male sexuality is, as you put it, “much cruder, simpler and more binary,” we could see a small explosion in the popularity of same-sex hookups among men in the not-that-far-out future. Not all men, of course. But dudes wanna get off, and as it increasingly becomes OK for them to get each other off, I think they’ll take advantage of that.

Finally, I’d be interested in seeing whether women’s reported reactions to man-on-man sex have changed at all. Whereas twenty years ago it seemed like women had no interest in such a thing, I’ve met a number of them lately with “watch two dudes getting it on” on their sexual bucket list. And I think for a lot of bi or curious guys, that sort of “permission” is also a big deal.

I’ll be as fascinated as my reader in seeing how things shake out. Or don’t.

Joshua Gans cites research supporting the idea that ordering food on the Internet increases sales by reducing customers’ embarrassment:

A group of four management professors—Avi Goldfarb, Ryan McDevitt, Sampsa Samila, and Brian Silverman—has undertaken a project to measure the effects of social embarrassment in retailing. In a paper—which they weren’t too embarrassed to subtitle “An Embarrassment of Niches?”—they examined situations in which a shift in retail practice reduced human interaction and observed consequent changes in purchasing behavior. Their findings are surprising: Even in situations where the potential for social embarrassment would appear to be low, fear of embarrassment led consumers to sublimate their true desires, whether for a rarefied French wine or a pizza with extra bacon. The first case the authors document was a late 1980s change in Swedish liquor retailing that led to stores being moved from an “ask a clerk to retrieve a bottle” model to a “self-service” format. It turned out that, not only did removing a layer of human interaction spike sales (by 20 percent) but it also led to a shift in those sales toward a large number of difficult-to-pronounce drinks…

Was this fear of embarrassment or just a matter of convenience in communication?

It is hard to know for sure in the Sweden example. But two decades later, when an undisclosed pizza chain (similar to Domino’s, but with a regional focus) offered a new way of ordering online, embarrassment was more clearly in play. Order online and you remove the need to talk to a human over the phone or at a counter. You might think that this change would merely be more convenient, but wouldn’t materially affect the food you order. Then I thought about what my typical “conversation” with a pizza website might sound like:

“Umm, ok I’d like one Margarita pizza and a BBQ Chicken with pineapple. Oh no scratch that, can I have half the BBQ Chicken with pineapple and the other half with peppers. And I’d like the Margarita pizza to have a thin crust and, wow, what is a four cheese mushroom pizza? I’ll have one of those but can you remove the goat’s cheese … wait, does that work with this coupon?”

Suffice it to say, something usually holds me back from making such a speech to a fellow human being.

UNICEF reports (pdf) that one in three kids under five around the world – almost 230 million children – has no birth certificate. Ryan Jacobs explains the ramifications of growing up undocumented:

Living without any proof of your existence can be a major challenge. The associated paperwork is often necessary to secure healthcare, education, and other basic rights. And children who don’t have identification are also left at higher risk of displacement, exploitation, and human trafficking. In the chaos of war or disaster, reuniting children separated from their family can be difficult, if not impossible, without proper documentation. And with no formal proof of age, marriage, military service, and employment may all become a reality much sooner than appropriate.

The problem is particularly acute in India, where 71 million children under the age of five go undocumented by the government. Though India leads the world in sheer number of uncounted children, its rate of birth registration—at 41 percent—means that the civil administration there is actually outperforming the bureaucracies in many of the other countries mentioned in the report. Somalia, for example, does not record the existence of a staggering 97 percent of its young children.

Noah Rayman talks to a UNICEF official about what can be done to solve this problem:

Already, UNICEF is working with the Ugandan government to create a mobile system that lets newborns be registered in a matter of minutes and, in the eyes of authorities, brings the children into existence. In Kosovo, where the roughly 5% of unregistered newborns come from some of the country’s most marginalized communities, Kochi’s Innovation Unit developed a way to use mobile phones to allow social workers to report unregistered births. In Nigeria, similar technology allowed the government to register an additional 8 million previously unregistered children over a 15-month period.

John Allen Gay asks whether it makes strategic sense for the US foreign policy to concern itself with how other countries treat vulnerable minorities:

Those who advocate a prominent role for human rights in American foreign policy usually embrace a common argument—that disrespect for human rights at home is a warning sign that a country will promote instability beyond its borders, while countries pushed to respect human rights will behave more constructively. Thus, for instance, the Rwandan genocide was followed by a bloodletting throughout the African Great Lakes region, with the Rwandan government (drawn from the side of the victims) an active sponsor of violence in neighboring states. Thus, Saudi Arabia rules repressively at home and supports Islamic extremism abroad. Thus, Nazi Germany went from Kristallnacht to launching a continental war and an international campaign of genocide.

Yet human rights remain separable from international aggression.

Even a human-rights-free approach to international security is plausible—for example, if the United States were to ignore domestic human-rights violations altogether, but respond forcefully and resolutely to aggression across borders, the world would surely not come to an end. And human rights certainly deserve a role in U.S. foreign policy. Our closest allies share our values; relations with allies that don’t are testier and more reversible. We would like to think of ourselves as a force for good in the world, and our global leadership is strengthened when other states see us as a lawful, fair and generally benevolent power. Yet that doesn’t mean that we must make human rights a central priority, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we should be willing to put vital interests like stopping the spread of nuclear weapons on equal footing with them.