Does anyone remember Boobquake ? Reading the current news headlines (moiself handles it by glancing at them and shrieking), I feel like the world could use many more rounds of guerilla activism and mocking-the-mock-worthy.
Boobquake, a rally to protest (read: mock) an Islamic cleric’s proclamation attributing earthquakes to women’s immodest attire, took place on April 26, 2010. It was inspired and co-organized by (then) grad student and blogger, Jen McCreight. [1]
“In early 2010, there came news reports that an Iranian Islamic cleric, Kazem Seddiqi, had blamed earthquakes on God‘s wrath because of women who dressed immodestly and advised ‘Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.’ and Iranians should ‘adapt their lives to Islam’s moral codes’ to avoid being ‘buried under the rubble.’ The day that this was reported, (genetics grad student and activist/blogger ) Jen McCreight [2] comically encouraged her readers (via Facebook) to dress ‘in your immodest clothing to represent Boobquake,’ which they referred to as a scientific experiment. The actual event took place on April 26, with McCreight carefully avoiding hateful, anti-Islamic, or anti-Iranian messages.
The center of the event (the ‘epicenter’) was at Purdue University, with participants dressed in appropriate attire and carrying signs saying things like Cleavage for Science, and God hates boobs….
An estimated 200,000 people participated in Boobquake…..true to the, um, scientific nature of the event, McCreight ran a rigorous statistical analysis of seismic activity during Boobquake and figured out that world-wide incidence of earthquakes on April 26 was actually below average. Conclusion: boobs stop earthquakes!”
( excerpts, rationalwiki, McCreight )
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Department Of Why Do We Forget This?
We hear so much about PTSD – so much that some people are under the mistaken impression that every traumatic event will bring PTSD to those who experience trauma – and we hear relatively little about the other effects of living through or with trauma. One of the most important effects is a positive: PTG, as in, Post Traumatic Growth. PTG is not about denying or repressing one’s suffering, but about recognizing that living through trauma can also lead to developing resiliency and insightfulness, to having changes in perspective and increasing compassion for one’s self as well as for others. But PTG rarely seems to be addressed or even acknowledged, along with the fact that it’s possible to experience both PTSD and PTG from the same traumatic circumstances.
“There is research showing that, in the aftermath of a traumatic stress, some people – probably not immediately – actually end up better off. They develop resources, friendships, social networks, insights into themselves, a sense of purpose….so many people, for example, who receive a terminal diagnosis of cancer at least will *say* that it *really* put things in perspective, and they valued their last days much more than they probably would have in any other scenario. So, it’s possible, for example, that there is some benefit for having been through something terrible.”
( ecerpts, No Stupid Questions, Episode 23, “Is It Wrong To Crave Praise? ”
originally aired 10-18-20 )
Well someone knows enough about it to turn it into a list.
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Department Of A Name I Can Live With
As regular/longtime readers may know, moiself cannot even bear to type the name of that international sign of shame that is our current occupant of the White House; thus, I must resort to aliases (e.g., the Mandarin Mussolini) when mentioning him. But, leave it to science – specifically, taxonomic classification – to provide an alternative.
This nomenclature suggestion comes from (I assume) an ornithologist, or someone in the birding community:
The Common North American Trump ( anus tangerinus ).
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Department Of Finding An Unexpected Use For A Often Troubling Technology
As much as I have grave doubts about AI usage (except for certain applications, e.g., to medical and scientific research), there is one thing which recently gave me a favorable feeling toward these technologies: their mere existence has given me the almost perfect framework with which to understand, or at least classify, a phenomenon which has both bemused and saddened moiself for decades.
I have Religious Friends And Family Members ® whose correspondence and interpersonal interactions [3] have long struck moiself as…pamphlet-like, ya know? I’ve struggled with ways to describe it; after last weekend, I shall struggle no more.
Dateline: Saturday; 7:45 AM; morning walk. Apropos of almost nothing ( but perhaps a recent article I’d read about professors despairing of reading the all-sound-alike, AI-assisted essays from their students? ) I had a click moment which provided me with a more contemporary description for my impressions:
It’s like these RFAFM’s lives are guided by Christian AI.
There are many, many Christian denominations – over 200 in the U.S. and a staggering 45,000 globally, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity – a head-scratching number for a religion that, according to most of its adherents, is just so obviously the only true faith/pathway to salvation/god. [4]
Ah, yet again, I digress.
These RFAFMs of whom I write are typically aligned with the conservative/evangelical brands of the religion. Over the years, when I listen to the things they say/read the things they write/watch the things they do, I’ve often found moiself wondering, Is there an individual in there? It all sounds so…scripted. I can’t distinguish what she said or wrote from what her sister or that cousin/friend/coworker said or wrote. In conversations with RFAFM’s that might actually (and would likely, with other people) steer toward the substantive, there is little of anything uniquely personal – little of *them* present – other than their discernable desire to fulfill an obligation to be looking for any moment, in every situation (particularly when they are in the company of us happy heathens), to say or show how their lives are a “witness” to their religion.
It’s as if they are reading from a Christian AI script. [5]
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Department Of Sound Advice For The…
Day… Week… Month…Your Entire Life.
This is advice (usually but not always solicited) which moiself has given – and heeded – many, many times:
Write it down. Then put it away.
Come back to it in a few days ( or better yet, weeks),
and read it with the mindset, Is this still what I want to say?
Edit, then send…
or not (maybe it’s no longer necessary?)
Context: moiself’s favorite advice columnist, The WaPo’s Carolyn Hax, writing to an advice seeker who’d been zinged at her mother’s funeral, by her mother’s sister. The advice seeker was wondering how to respond to her aunt, as the zing – and the feelings it brought – still linger. Hax listed several possible options, including
* write off your aunt’s words as the rantings of a grieving mess;
* two variations on the do-nothing/let it go response;
* handwrite a note to your aunt.
Moiself strongly favors that last option. I have seen too many friends and family estrangements come from slights and resentments left unspoken. Brushing things under the rug gets you nothing but a houseful of lumpy rugs. Don’t leave it to others to assume how/why you are feeling what you are feeling…
BUT, and this is a big but…
almost as big as this one?
BUT:
* choose your battles, and
* use the perspective which can only come from deliberation,
as opposed to the instantaneous reactivity of texting, or emailing,
or (gasp) using social media IN ANY WAY.
Write it down; then, sit on it, so to speak.
“The purpose of paper is to encourage slow reactions. You write it and set it aside, in case just writing it is enough; if you want to send it, then you rewrite it as needed until all venom is out; then you snail-mail it so she can’t hit “reply” and react. Etc. Cooler heads.”
( excerpt, “Aunt’s vicious jab at funeral tarnishes a late mother’s gift,”
Carolyn Hax, The Washington Post, 5-6-25 )
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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [6]
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May you never attribute temblors to tatas;
May your birding binoculars never be soiled by the image of an anus tangerinus;
May your interactions never sound as if they are AI-scripted ;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] Jen McCreight goes by the name Jey McCreight now and uses different pronouns, but at the time of Boobquake and her other feminist activisms other she identified as Jen/female; thus I am using the names/pronouns which she used at that time and was identified as in news reports, etc.
[2] who described herself on her blog (at the time) as “a liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted atheist feminist trapped in Indiana.”
[3] both of which are becoming increasingly infrequent, given the years and physical and emotional distance between us.
[4] So “obvious” in its theologies and tenets that there is a need for all those denominations, as these followers of the One True God ® can’t agree on how that god wants them to eat, live, sing, worship, dress, pray, love, play music….
[5] Move along; no footnote to read here.
[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
