Category Archives: Sociology

“Justice & Vengeance” By Kenan Malik

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A fascinating article by Kenan Malik comparing verdict by Judge Aquilina on Larry Nassar case about sexually abusing young Olympic gymnastic girls and Darren Osborne who mowed down Muslim worshipers in London and killing one and injuring many worshipers. F. Sheikh.

Two court cases last week, on either side of the Atlantic, helped illuminate the tensions in our thinking about justice. The first was the harrowing trial of Larry Nassar, the American doctor who, over decades, had abused dozens of gymnasts, mainly young girls, in his care. In the final week, 156 women gave personal statements, testimonies that were both distressing and inspiring.

In her summing-up, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina observed that ‘our constitution does not allow for cruel and unusual punishment’. If it did, she would have allowed ‘many people to do to him what he did to others’. She then sentenced Nassar for to up to 175 years in prison.

The second trial was that of Darren Osborne, accused of mowing down Muslim worshippers in Finsbury Park, north London, in a van last year. One man was killed, many others seriously injured. Osborne, who denies charges of murder and attempted murder, allegedly tried to flee the scene, but was set upon by the crowd. Mohammed Mahmoud, an imam,intervened. ‘I shouted, “No one touch him”’, he told the jury at Woolwich crown court. Osborne ‘should answer for his crime in a court such as this and not in a court in the street’.

Where Aquilina would have imposed an ‘eye for an eye’ punishment, if she could have, Mahmoud insisted that such retribution had no place in justice. There is no direct comparison between the two cases. They pose different moral questions and create different emotions. Had Aquilina been in Finsbury Park that night, she would probably have protected Osborne too. Nevertheless, expressed in Aquilina’s words and in Mahmoud’s actions are two very different conceptions of the relationship between justice and vengeance. For one, justice requires a measure of vengeance; for the other, the two are incompatible.

More than two millennia ago, the Greek playwright Aeschylus explored these very tensions in his magnificent Oresteiatrilogy. Written in the fifth century BCE, it remains one of the most profound studies of the meaning of justice.

Aeschylus’s Oresteia begins where Homer’s Iliad ends. The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War, in which Greek warriors, led by Agamemnon, avenge the kidnapping of Helen by the Trojan prince Paris. In Oresteia, the war is over and the warriors are returning home. In the opening play of the trilogy, Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, brutally murders her husband on his homecoming. It is an act of furious revenge for his having sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia, 10 years previously on the eve of the war to placate the gods.

In The Choephori, the second of the plays, Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, is faced with a terrible dilemma: murder his mother or leave his father unavenged. He kills Clytemnestra.

In the final play, The Eumenides, Orestes is pursued by the Furies, deities whose role is to exact vengeance for sins such as the shedding of kindred blood. He finds refuge in Athens where, in the Acropolis, the goddess Athena convenes a jury to try Orestes. The jury is split. Athena casts her vote in favour of acquittal.

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Sexual Harrasment

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Sexual Harassment

By Shoeb Amin

Sexual harassment and sexually inappropriate behavior is constantly in the news these days. Everyday we hear one more celebrity knocked off his (so far no her)  high perch. Some call it a “watershed” moment because women now feel more empowered to come forth with their complaints and are now more likely to be believed.  That is the way it should have been long ago and that’s how it should continue to be. But I personally have some questions about this issue, along with some difficult answers that I’ll share; hopefully some others will enlighten us with their thoughts.

Disclaimer: 1)  The opinions expressed here are mine and not those of the Thinkers’ Forum.

2)   This write up excludes serious sexual assault and rape

1) Will this “watershed” moment mean the end of sexual harassment?

Both males and females are tugged by evolutionary forces to attract each other and to be attracted to each other. In some species like the birds, males do almost all the adornment and the hard work to attract females. In our own species females do most of the adornment and the hard work to attract the opposite sex. Whether they are thinking consciously at the time or not, everything they do, from exercise to stay in shape, colorful clothing to provocative dressing to jewelry to make up and other accessories, everything is geared toward getting the attention of the opposite sex (even if it be their own mates). Men too strive for female attention but do not put as much effort and time into it. What both sexes are hoping is the attention of a desirable mate; unfortunately it also attracts the attention of undesirables and creeps.

If that first step of attracting is successful it leads to a sexual advance. This could be anything from a complement regarding the appearance to  “what is your zodiac sign” to “can I buy you a drink” to all the way to groping and grabbing, the last two by people who don’t follow social norms nor legal jeopardy or by people who are in a hurry to get to third base without bothering to touch first and second bases. It is the crude advances of undesirables that  constitutes sexual harassment. As long as men – and women – are tugged by evolutionary forces, as long as men and women work in close proximity and as long as women feel they can wear whatever they want and act however they want (even though they legally have the right to do both, at least in Western countries), the answer is not likely. It may become much less in the upper echelons of society because people who value their reputation and careers and have deep pockets will be less likely to indulge in such behavior and will more likely control their impulses.. I doubt it will deter a male waiter in a restaurant from behaving badly with his female co-workers.

2) Do women contribute to their own sexual harassment?

Even just asking that question can get you in the doghouse. Just click on one of the links below and read what happened to Donna Karan when she spoke on this subject.  I am sure I will get a lot of heat for approaching this subject.

Most of us, when asked that question wanting to be politically correct,  would say: absolutely not. That women have the right to wear what they want, go where they want and act however they want without worrying about harassment. And legally they are right; no argument there. But to those folks I would ask a question: Women (and men) also have a right to jog in Central Park after dark, they also have a right to go into a subway at midnight flashing $20000 worth of jewelry and not be robbed. And if anybody did go into the subway at night wearing all that jewelry, and was robbed and beaten, besides feeling angry at the perpetrator, would you not say; were you out of your mind going into into the subway with all that jewelry? That you were asking for it ?(getting robbed and beaten up). And we do advise both men and women to avoid wearing jewelry prominently any time of day and if using the subway at odd hours to stay in the car next to conductor. So why can’t  women be told not to attract the wrong kind of attention for their own safety?

That suggestion should not even come from men but from women themselves for their own protection. Something along the lines of  Black Lives Matter asking Black teenagers to practice “Hands up, don’t shoot” for their own protection. I suggest a slightly less catchy slogan “Less attention, more respect” for women. Now I am not suggesting that all harassment will go away if women dress modestly. No,  men being men, some will always act like Neanderthals. And I am sure sexual harassment happens even in cultures where women dress more conservatively. Some of those cultures may even have more harassment , but mostly because of absence of law and order.But relying exclusively on men to change their behavior is impractical.  Evolution is a slow process and it will take time when ALL men evolve into decent, honorable human beings. Waiting until then is like asking Black men to wait until the police become more racially sensitive while more of them get killed.

That brings up the $64000 question as to what is inappropriate dressing. There are no easy answers; I certainly don’t have one. Wearing a burqa is not the answer. I guess each woman has to decide for herself how much attention she wants, including the attention of creeps. Again this is a women’s safety issue and they should be the ones figuring out those answers.

untitled-[1].plain   (Click to read following articles)

Interesting articles:  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/fashion/harvey-weinstein-donna-karan.html

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/28/entertainment/angela-lansbury-sexual-harassment-comments-trnd/index.html

http://www.newsweek.com/women-have-responsibility-avoid-sexual-harassment-how-they-dress-and-behave-688641

https://www.thecut.com/2017/12/marcy-kaptur-sexual-harassment-clothes-invite.html

http://time.com/5050757/gillian-flynn-on-women-speaking-out-sexual-harassment/

Sex And Morality

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Explicit language used in this article

( Worth reading article by Raja Halwani in understanding current news of sexual harassment by prominent respectable personalities like Charlie Rose. As per Emmanuel Kant, sex and lust by its nature makes us focus on the body , not the person, and reduces the person to mere a thing to satisfy our lust. This equation does not change even when the sex is consensual. f.sheikh)

Kant implicitly acknowledged the unusual power of sexual urges and their capacity to divert us from doing what is right. He claimed that sex was particularly morally condemnable, because lust focuses on the body, not the agency, of those we sexually desire, and so reduces them to mere things. It makes us see the objects of our longing as just that ­– objects. In so doing, we see them as mere tools for our own satisfaction.

Treating people as objects can mean many things. It could include beating them, tearing into them, and violating them. But there are other, less violent ways of objectifying people. We might treat someone as only a means to our sexual pleasure, to satisfy our lust on that person, to use a somewhat archaic expression. The fact that the other person consents does not get rid of the objectification; two people can agree to use one another for purely sexual purposes.

But don’t we use each other all the time? Many of us have jobs – as cleaners, gardeners, teachers, singers. Does the beneficiary of the service objectify the service provider, and does the service provider objectify the recipient by taking their money? These relationships don’t seem to provoke the same moral qualms. Either they do not involve objectification, or the objectification is somehow neutered.

Kant said that these scenarios weren’t really a problem. He draws a distinction between mere use – the basis of objectification – and more-than-mere use. While we might employ people to do jobs, and accept payment for our work, we don’t treat the person on the other side of the transaction as a mere tool; we still recognise that person’s fundamental humanity.

Sex, though, is different. When I hire someone to sing, according to Kant, my desire is for his or her talent – for the voice-in-action. But when I sexually desire someone, I desire his or her body, not the person’s services or talents or intellectual capabilities, although any of these could enhance the desire. So, when we desire the person’s body, we often focus during sex on its individual parts: the buttocks, the penis, the clitoris, the thighs, the lips. What we desire to do with those parts differs, of course. Some like to touch them with the hand, others with the lips, others with the tongue; for others still, the desire is just to look. This does not mean that I would settle for a human corpse: our desire for human bodies is directed at them as living, much like my desire for a cellphone is directed at a functioning one.

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Is charity motivated by reasons that are far less noble ?

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(We give to charity because it eases our conscience, raises our social status and care less about whether it does any good or not, George Bernard Shaw noted in 1896. Socrates opined that people behave ethically when they think they are being watched. Every day new charity organizations sprung up to help third world countries like Pakistan despite the fact that it may have marginal or even adverse effect on their objectives. It does not change the detrimental governmental  policies and it may even encourage neglect or hands off approach by governments which does a lot more harm than what these organization can achieve. A worth reading article by Jacob Burak. F. Sheikh).

Excerpts from article below;

Studies show that, in general, people who feel good, do good – and likewise, people who do good, feel better. The rich are no exception. Giving to charity activates parts of the brain related to reward and pleasure. Yes, the rich do have some distinctive reasons for giving to charity, such as the desire not to ‘morally corrupt’ their heirs. But like others, they also give to strengthen their identity – and probably, to relieve their guilt. As Shaw said, with typical epigrammatic acuity: ‘One buys moral credit by signing a cheque, which is easier than turning a prayer wheel.’

The first person to attribute the act of charity to improving one’s public image was the 18th-century Scottish economist Adam Smith, who claimed that people make moral and ethical decisions based on how an impartial observer would judge them. This idea harks back to a dialogue about justice in Plato’s Republic, in which Glaucon tells Socrates that people behave ethically only when they think others are watching.

Fast-forward to 2009, when Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist at Duke University in North Carolina, co-conducted a studyevaluating the motive of outward appearances in giving to charity. The research found that appearances are so important that they even trump financial incentives. In the experiment, participants were divided into two groups, where each group was asked to type a combination of letters on a keyboard. They were told that if they typed the combination correctly, some money would be donated in their name to the Red Cross, although never more than a few dollars.

In the ‘private’ group, members were exposed only to their own ‘giving’ scores, whereas in the ‘public’ group, each member was asked to publicly announce his or her donation to the others. In the end, members of the public group got the letter combination right twice as often as members of the private group. At a later stage of the experiment, researchers decided to test whether people would forgo a financial reward to look altruistic in the eyes of others. In the public group, adding a personal financial incentive had only a small effect on its success rate, whereas it increased the private group’s success rate by 35 per cent.

Let’s remember, too, that the problems philanthropists want to solve are frequently the result of government decisions, resource allocation and the status of human and property rights. If philanthropists were to commit to deeper and more meaningful action – if they joined governments or other institutions – they could affect public welfare in a more enduring way. Instead philanthropists are often slow to get involved in public policy, and prefer to make donations that counteract the government’s shortcomings. This reveals where their priorities really lie.

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