By David Futrelle
Nyasha Madzima is the CEO of a one-person “branding and media” company that doesn’t seem to have a working web page. He also doesn’t seem to have a working knowledge of biology.
In a recent Twitter thread, he attempted to explain why women shouldn’t have more than one sexual partner in their lifetime.
I’ve run across assorted misogynists making a similar, er, argument — claiming that when women come into contact with a man’s sperm, it essentially rewrites her DNA and makes her a little bit more like the sperm-depositor. (This is complete nonsense, of course.) But Madzima is much more mystical about it, and presumably wearing a condom won’t prevent that Life Force from sneaking into the vagina, or wherever it’s supposed to be going.
Either way, the result is the same, offering men another excuse to claim that women who aren’t literally virgins are man-contaminated whores who can’t love good men correctly because they’re so full of the collective Life Forces of other (bad) men.
Which, even according to the perverse logic of these arguments, doesn’t seem quite fair. If any of this were true, wouldn’t the onus be as much on the man to avoid sex with multiple women to avoid contaminating or confusing them? Wouldn’t it thus be the duty of all men to remain virgins until marriage to keep from damaging them? If contact with a man’s dick is polluting, shouldn’t there be some sort of cap and trade program for dicks?
But it’s pointless to try to argue any of this logically, because this isn’t about logic any more than it’s about scientific facts; it’s just another way to make women feel shitty about having a sex life. Or to try anyway, because there aren’t a lot of women out there who buy any of this bullshit.
Anyway, this all made me think of this old song:
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@Happy Cat,
@Jenora, I get the impression McKennitt is a little techphobic in general; I saw her live a few years ago and she went on a long (if elegantly polite) rant about how everyone is on screens too much and so on. Still love her music and just figure it’s her quirk.
@ jenora
I did quite well out of forum shopping what with England then being so Claimant friendly. That’s all changed of course with the 2013 Act; and Scotland looks to be following suit.
Singh was a useful case though, and the general principle went into the new Act. So now you can’t be done for defamation for anything appearing in a peer reviewed journal, or quoting from that. So science wins that one.
As for McKennit v Ash that said you could get an injunction in privacy, even if you were saying the ‘revelations’ weren’t true.
Previously it had always been that only true information could attract confidentiality. Untrue information would have to be dealt with as defamation, and generally you can’t get interim injunctions to restrain publication there.
All fascinating stuff; if you like media law.
@Susan, @Victorious Parasol, @Alan Robertshaw:
I believe playlists are the contemporary equivalent.
Re: mixtapes and playlists
I know that most people like playlists, but I just can’t get into them. I might be the last person to still listen to albums all the way through. I do use streaming services (Apple Music), but I’m just not really into playlists as a concept. It’s just easier for me to pick a favorite album on streaming and listen to it all the way through.
I have made mixtapes, what I liked about that was the ability to include some parts of a song but not others, so I could make mixtapes of just the heaviest or most intense bits of songs. I might still have some around, I’ll have to look later.
A lot of rappers still make what they call mixtapes, but I would hesitate to refer to what is essentially just an EP or demo tape as a mixtape.
@Kelly L.:
That wouldn’t at all surprise me, given she was still doing mailed print newsletters well after others had started moving to email.
@Alan Robertshaw:
Hunh, that is an interesting aspect of the McKennit suit. Sounds like she could have won that in two different ways, then, either allowing an injunction under privacy concerns even with false information, which is what happened, or potentially allowing injunctions in defamation cases. I would not be surprised to learn that the judge’s decision as to which of those two to follow involved ‘which has the fewer possible side effects’, as I can see the ability to allow preliminary injunctions in defamation cases could cause all sorts of problems with regards to freedom of the press. Which, of course, is one of those issues where England, the U.S., and Canada all draw the lines in different places anyway.
(I think some of my interest in law comes from the same place as my interest in linguistics and in history in general: so much of it is really applied sociology, and it attracts the pattern-seeker and trouble-shooter in me. I only ever actually took one law course in University, a general ‘law for engineers’ course, and it was pretty much ‘here’s the general framework of the parts of law you’ll most likely be dealing with, and here’s when you need to call an expert’.)
@ jenora
Yeah; there’s two very different approaches in privacy and defamation.
In privacy/confidence cases it’s relatively easy to get an interim injunction prior to full trial. The rationale being that, once the cat is out of the bag, you can’t put in back again; so best to preserve the status quo until trial. If there’s a risk the information could go ‘stale’ you can ask for an expedited trial.
But defamation adopts a ‘publish and be damned’ approach. So you can only get an interim injunction if you can show there’s really no chance of the defendant succeeding at trial. So it’s almost a species of summary judgment.
The issue in M v A was that the ex friend was intending to do a tell all story about her relationship with M. That would normally be something you could injunct; as there’s a strong presumption that family matters are confidential and anyway there was no real harm done in delaying the book for a bit (and when you get an interim injunction you give a cross undertaking in damages so if there is any harm for an injunction being incorrectly granted you make up for that).
But M said that in any event a lot of the revelations weren’t true anyway. However that meant they were arguably defamatory so the rule in Bonnard v Perryman would normally apply and the court would be reluctant to stifle freedom of expression.
So like you say, the court went for a bit of an ‘on the facts of the case’ compromise.
More here about the general principles in case anyone cares:
https://www.5rb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Interim-Injunctions-and-the-Overlap-between-Privacy-and-Libel.pdf
I love how crowds that used to pride themselves on their rationality readily accept the kookiest pseudoscience they can find to validate their cherished prejudices.