Author: Chris Bodenner

The Down’s Spectrum

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

The PSA you posted highlights how people with mild cases of Down Syndrome can flourish. The degree of impairment due to Down’s, however, is a spectrum. I have a close relative with Down’s who is severely affected. She learned to speak only for a year or two, then it was all forgotten. She is now in her mid-thirties and has not once slept through the night. In fact, as she has gotten older, she has developed Parkinson’s disease. She requires a cocktail of medications that sometimes leads to complete sleep deprivation.

Her kind and loving parents have rejected suggestions to institutionalize her throughout her life and given her the best life they possible could. But they are now elderly, and are her primary caregivers, taking turns spending all night awake with her. I know they do not have an ounce of regret for the choice they made to keep their child, but I would not judge other families who lack their strength.

It’s OK To Bareback … On The Toilet, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader presumes wrong:

I highly doubt this post will become a thread, as so many other weighty topics have done. But I am willing to admit that I have never – in my 60 years of life – ever successfully deployed a paper toilet-seat cover! Either I’m in way too much of a hurry to bother, or the stupid thing tears coming out of the dispenser or while I’m trying to gently unfold it and ease out the center “hole” section. Or I do get it properly placed and then, just as I lower myself down, half of it slips into the toilet. I long ago gave up f-ing with the covers at all. Glad to know I’m not really taking my life in my hands!

Another sees an opening:

I greatly enjoy your blog, but this is the first time I’ve been inspired to write. This thread reminds me of one of my family’s favorite stories.

First, some background: my grandmother was a long-time public advocate for comprehensive sex education and reproductive health, partly during her work for the California’s women’s correctional programs. She was also not known for blunting her speech when a direct approach would do. One day, following a speech on sex education, a nun in the audience stood up to ask if someone could “catch an STD from a toilet seat?”

“Only if you fuck it while it’s still warm, Sister.”

Another conveys the ick factor felt by many readers:

I don’t use toilet-seat covers because I fear STIs; it’s because of icky, dirty seats. Unisex bathrooms where guys with bad aim don’t put the seat up beforehand. Little kids sliding off the seat after a poop. That well-soaked tampon whacking the seat during removal. And don’t even get me started on the vomit. Eew.

Another raises a much bigger issue:

It should be noted that the notion of contracting an STI from public toilets was developed as a means to explain venereal diseases in children before medical professionals and others were willing to entertain the idea that the children were being sexually assaulted by family members or other adults. It’s important to remember that these things happen, are happening and that our historical impulse has been to refuse to listen to the victims and survivors.

Face Of The Day

by Chris Bodenner

Iranian New Year Is Celebrated In Tehran

A man dressed as a traditional character “Haji Firouz” heralds the Nowruz celebrations on March 20, 2014 in Tehran, Iran. Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is calculated according to a solar calendar, this year marking 1393. Iranians traditionally decorate a ceremonial table of Nowruz with goldfish, wheat grass, candles, mirrors and other symbolic items. By Amin Mohammad Jamali/Getty Images.

A Faster FAFSA? Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

An expert weighs in:

As you can see from my email signature, I do financial aid for a living and have done so for 20 years.  There are two issues I want to touch on with regard to that post, and I’ll take them one at a time.

First, the new FAFSA is the greatest innovation in student aid in the last 20 years. Hands down. There is nothing at all complicated about it and the Time article is full of shit. I give a FAFSA completion workshop for parents and students every year, so I know of what I speak. The current FAFSA takes the average low- or middle-income student/parent about 15 minutes to complete, especially if they use the wonderful DRT (data retrieval tool) from the IRS. The questions in Section I that were highlighted in that article only need explained once and the vast majority of parents and students will answer $0 to almost all of them. If they go to a similar workshop the first year, they will never need help again. In fact, attendance at my workshops have decreased over the last 2-3 years since the DRT was implemented because the form has become so easy to complete.

For the critics who think there is anything “complicated” about the current FAFSA, they should direct their ire at Congress.  It is because of their rules for federal student aid that those questions are there and they cannot be gathered through IRS documentation.  Instead of criticizing what the Department of Education cannot change, they should yell at the people who created the situation or, at the very least, provide the DoE with solutions.  Good luck with that.

Second, I have no sympathy whatsoever for the reader who wrote in whining about having to try to hide or sell assets in order to pay for college.  He or she is very, very, very lucky to have enough assets to play games with regarding a child’s education.  Isn’t this why parents make investments and build savings?  So a rich parent has to move some of his/her vast piles of money around and has a vacation home that is counted among the parent assets?  Big freakin’ deal.  Try being a single parent living on minimum wage or a two-parent family making less than $50,000 a year with two kids in college.  Try being one of the foster kids who come to my campus.  Or try being one of the five kids on our campus who had a primary earning parent who died this past year.

Hathos Alert

by Chris Bodenner

The GOP goes Girls:

Alex Pareene pareenes “Scott Greenberg”:

Just your typical millennial here, wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a cool leather jacket and also really concerned about gas prices. They really eat into your typical millennial’s paycheck!

Now it’s true that millennials, on average, are less likely to buy or own cars than any other current generation of Americans. One-third of households headed by millennials under 25 had no car in 2011 (and only one-third of millennials actually head their own households), and fewer 16-24-year-olds had driver’s licenses in 2011 than at any point in the last half-century.

But give the RNC some credit: Most millennials still believe that they need or will need to own a car (which, in most of America, is a completely accurate belief), they just find the cost of car ownership a burden. Just like Scott here! And that’s why Scott is a Republican: Because they support an “all of the above” energy policy, which Scott sums up as, “solar, wind, shale gas, oil, whatever!” I mean, increased domestic energy production doesn’t necessarily lower fuel prices in the U.S. because it is a worldwide market, and “all of the above” is actually the energy policy of both parties, but, you know, “whatever,” as the millennials say. “LOL,” they sext one another. “Let’s frack some shale gas, YOLO.”

The Victims Of False Rape Accusations, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A few readers tackle a recent post:

There is much to say about Matchar’s article, but I only want to comment on one thing.  She writes: “The most reliable statistics available place the number of false rape reports at between 2 and 8 percent of all rape reports. Yet most people, both in and out of the MRM [men’s rights movement] community, believe these numbers to be much higher.”

First off, “most people” believe those numbers to be much higher? Really? That is news to me, and it would probably be to “most people” I know. Moreover, there’s nothing backing that assertion, save that single survey, of which she writes that it found that “both male and female college students believe that about 50 percent of rape allegations are false.” However, if you actually read the linked-to survey, it finds that 50 percent of “intercollegiate athletes” who were “predominately male” believe that. Color me surprised that in a big group of male college athletes and the occasional woman, half of them think that rape victims are lying.

Another focuses on the “2-8 percent” statistic:

It seemed to beg the obvious question: “Does that mean that 92-98% of sex assault reports result in convictions? That seemed impossible. So I clicked through and read the report. The definition is buried pretty deep in the article, but I wanted to send it to you, because it’s a pretty key piece of context for understanding how common this actually is. The study defines “false accusation” thusly:

The determination that a report is false can then only be made when there is sufficient evidence to establish that the sexual assault did not happen (was not completed or attempted.) This does not mean that the investigation failed to prove that the sexual assault happened–in that case the investigation would simply be inconclusive or unsubstantiated.

In other words, an accusation only counts as “false” if there is demonstrable evidence if its falsity – that is, if there’s definitive evidence of deception. That leaves a huge swath of accusations that are not provably “false” but also not provably “true” (i.e. they do not result in conviction.) The article, I guess, is assuming that, out of that undetermined swath, there’s not a single false accusation. This seems an unwarranted assumption, to say the least.

So the reality is: Somewhere between 2-8% of reports are so false that it is actually possible to prove a negative – that they did NOT happen. (Note: This seems like a high number for that, no? 1 out of 20?) Plus, some other number of reports do not admit of strong proof either way, but are false. A third group of cases are true reports, but not provably so, and a fourth group results in sexual assault convictions.

The MRM is unhelpful and out of line when it makes a direct comparison between the problem of being raped and the problem of false rape accusation. Rape, sadly, happens far more, and it’s even more damaging than a false accusation. No one should dispute that. However, progressive feminists are also unhelpful and out of line when they minimize and dismiss the victims of false accusations, or when they insist that anyone who accuses someone of rape must be taken at their word.

The truth is, statistics aren’t very helpful in this area. We don’t know what happens behind closed doors and we don’t know who is telling the truth. But I do know that quoting misleading statistics while acting as if one is being reasonable and generous, as Matchar surely does, is only a more clever and more patronizing way of dismissing a movement that, whatever its faults, addresses a real and serious problem.