Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 April 9

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April 9

First abolitionist newspaper in the United States? (needs JSTOR lookup)

What was the first abolitionist newspaper in the United States? Some say it was the The Emancipator from Tennessee (this is what Wikipedia currently says). Others say it was The Philantropist from Ohio. The answer is probably in this paper, but unfortunately, I don't have JSTOR access any more. Kaldari (talk) 05:06, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

You'll want to ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange, which is designed for exactly this kind of problem. --Jayron32 05:12, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

For the record, Category:Wikipedians who have access to JSTOR. From a quick scan (I'm on my way out), the article mentions the Philanthropist first. sonia♫ 05:13, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I've asked at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange. Sorry for posting to the wrong venue. Kaldari (talk) 05:24, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Kaldari, lots of public libraries offer JSTOR access. You might try your local one, or (if you're in the US) one in a big city in your state. I think US libraries will generally issue free library cards to any resident of the state that the library is in. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 06:33, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

As Sonia says, thr JSTOR article says it was the Philanthropist, in 1817. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:43, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Re: new DNC Chairwoman

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-FL20 is the designate, with an election by the 20th; presuming she's elected and assumes the post, is she required to resign her House seat, or is she allowed to hold both? Dru of Id (talk) 08:09, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

None of several news articles mentioned it, and I assume it would be something worth mentioning. I can't think of a reason why she wouldn't be allowed to hold both offices. Chris Dodd was General Chairperson for the Democratic National Committee from 1995 – 1997, while still holding the office of a Senator from Connecticut. ^Avic_ennasis @ 09:06, 5 Nisan 5771 / 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I hadn't looked that far back at the Chairs; I just saw that the more recent ones were not in Congress during their (edit) tenure; Thanks! Dru of Id (talk) 09:12, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

An article in this morning's paper said that no, she will not resign her seat. The article talked about her juggling the concurrent roles as DNC Chair, Member of Congress, and mother. Corvus cornix_talk 19:45, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Are Republicans hypocrites?

Do republicans qualify as hypocrites by disapproving of abortion on the grounds of being pro-life while at the same time disapproving of funds for adoption of to support parents unable to support a child themselves? --DeeperQA (talk) 08:58, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

No. A child that isn't adopted won't be "killed". ^Avic_ennasis @ 09:09, 5 Nisan 5771 / 9 April 2011 (UTC)

"Pro-life" was originally called "Right to life", which really was "the right to be born". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:13, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Not sure that the right word is really "hypocrisy", but it's been a common observation/allegation since the Reagan administration that some pro-life advocates seem to be a lot more concerned about the fetal period than what happens after a baby is actually born, and that their "pro-life" principles do not seem to extend to such areas as health care, death-penalty, militarism, gun control, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 10:51, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

It's true that this "hypocrisy" has been pointed out for decades, which is why their original slogan "right to life", as in "right to be born alive", was the more correct term. There is not necessarily any ambiguity in their support of the death penalty (though not all right-to-lifers do support it), the argument being that people choose to commit capital crimes and choose to make war on us, but they do not choose to be conceived. Note that I don't necessarily agree with that philosophy, but that's the conservative or libertarian argument on the matter. They have either not done a good job of explaining that distinction, or the other side is not paying attention, or maybe both. "Pro-choice" is also "hypocritical", because as noted, the embryo or fetus has no choice in the matter. "Pro-abortion-rights" would be the better term, but both sides of the argument have come up with terms that are more political than factually accurate. That covers all the points you raise except for health care, and that's where the real hypocrisy and obfuscation come from. The arguments about "quotas" is a red herring, as there already is a "quota", in the sense that there are not infinite resources to cover everyone properly, yet people don't typically "choose" to become ill, either. What it's really about is capitalism vs. socialism, i.e. about the government forcing the wealthy to support the not-wealthy. That already occurs to some extent, as hospital emergency rooms can't turn away gunshot victims just because they have no insurance. Higher premiums, for those who can pay for health insurance, are in some sense "voluntary", whereas taxation to cover health care would be compulsary. That's probably the core issue, what Tom Lehrer called, "What we most sincerely and deeply believe in... money." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:11, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

It does lead to real problems for society, if you do everything US Republicans want:

1) Restrict birth control availability and education, thus ensuring more teenage pregnancies.

2) Ban abortion, thus ensuring more unwanted babies.

3) Cut all funds to care for and educate unwanted babies and children, thus ensuring that they grow up neglected.

On the plus side, Republicans are usually willing to pay for more prisons and execution chambers, where the results of their social experiments are likely to end up. StuRat (talk) 18:13, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

As you imply, attempts at social engineering often have unintended consequences. Despite the introduction of sex education in schools a couple of generations ago, despite the much more open availability of contraceptives, and despite the availability of abortion, the teen pregnancy rate is much higher now, particularly among those who can least afford it. As more than one woman has said to me, the reason many girls don't use these available preventatives is that they don't care, and neither liberals nor conservatives have figured out a way to socially engineer against that attitude. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

"They don't care" is not a very convincing explanation. Research (in the UK is the stuff I know about, but likely also to apply in the US) shows 1) that young women often want to use condoms but their partners refuse 2) that there is a culture among young men of refusing to use condoms and that reflects both lack of sexual confidence and over-confidence, and that 3) some young women actively want to become mothers because that gives them a social status they aren't going to get through education. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:52, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

It might be noted here that there are some Republicans for Choice out there, and not all republicans want to completely cut off all funds to the poor either. I highly doubt Olympia Snowe, for example, would agree with any of your three points there. The most extreme wing of the party tends to get the most media coverage, but don't forget that there are centrists in both parties. Also, I haven't heard of any republicans trying to ban birth control, but I live in the North East and maybe that is a more Southern thing? Qrsdogg (talk) 19:38, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say banning birth control, but rather restricting it's availability, such as requiring parent's consent (which should scare off many teens, resulting in more teen pregnancy) and eliminating free (taxpayer funded) birth control (which would mean more unwanted babies born to poor women). StuRat (talk) 21:53, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

For sure. That's one reason why Giuliani was never given much of a chance by the party. The extremists in both parties tend to drive the agenda. Back to the issue of "hypocrisy", though, it's somewhat of an unfair charge - because each side has what they consider to be logical and consistent reasons for their views. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:59, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

In the American political system, politicians of all sorts are required and expected to be hypocrites to a certain degree. This is because the system has evolved so that positions of political power are achieved through the manipulation of public opinion. Politicians must first define a platform which engages public support (meaning that they choose issues which are emotionally charged and then frame them in morally unambiguous ways), and once elected they must follow through on the issues at least marginally to maintain the impression that they are committed to them. Issues relating to children are always good candidates for emotional reasoning, and campaigns discourage the kind of 1+1=? reasoning that shows contradictions between separate talking points.

Republicans are more prone to this than Democrats, which may be a reflection of the fact that the Republican base is not at all unified. Republicans have built their base out of a number of unrelated groups: big-money interests, farm-county conservatives, religious reactionaries, small business owners, libertarianoids, paramilitary statists... It's no wonder their candidates sometimes look crazy, trying to appeal to all those divergent interests simultaneously. --Ludwigs2 20:14, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, because in various parts of Europe the equivalent constituencies have been appealed to by the Left rather than the Right. Far-left groupings of small farmers in both France and Italy, leftist approaches to small business people in those countries and others, left libertarians and anarchists taking up the social freedom and anti-statist agendas, and various varieties of Christian socialism popular in both Catholic-tradition and Protestant-tradition countries. Actually, Europeans tend to think of American Democrats as instrumental in the way they seem to try and capture different constituencies. ("The Jewish vote seems to be OK, let's see about the Chinese vote next, and perhaps we need to pay some attention to the Hispanics...") Itsmejudith (talk) 20:52, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, the way I see it, in the US the Democratic party found its definition in the social rights movements that dominated here from the 60s to the mid-80's - their constituency is unified by a kind of liberal, anti-violent, compassionate, pro-underdog motif (doesn't matter whether the underdog is migrant farm workers, unionized laborers, minority groups, spotted owls, oppressed foreign nationals, un-liberated women...). The Republicans have spent the last 20-30 years gathering up the the groups that feel slighted by that motif: farmers who object to controls on migrant labor, corporations who don't like unionized labor, strong Christians who object to the secularization that comes with multiculturalism, old-school statists who dislike non-aggressive foreign policy and protected domestic rights, conservative whites who are leery of racial integration, ideological conservatives who dislike taxation and government intervention... it's much harder to draw all that under one easy rubric. Of course, in europe it will be different because there will be different defining elements for the parties - for instance, no one in Germany wants to associate with old-school statists, France's more socialist perspective will create different alliances, and the whole new EU thing puts a federalist spin on everything there. European politics really isn't my thing, though. --Ludwigs2 22:42, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I have trouble believing that this problem is by any means limited to either Americans or Republicans. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:20, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. It seems to me Ludwigs has accurately described the majority of politicians in all Western world style democracies. That is simply the premises of modern day politics in democratic societies, and the Republicans are no better or worse in that respect than the rest. It mainly comes down to whether you agree with their particular politics or not, and thus how much you are willing to ignore their particular but inevitable hypocrisies that being a politician in such a system creates. --Saddhiyama (talk) 20:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Possibly. I know much more about US politics than about politics anywhere else, and I like to keep a quiet little dream that I can someday pack my bags and move to some democracy where political figures aren't largely raving lunatics. So far I've excluded Italy, India, Greece, most of the balkan states, The Netherlands, and Russia. Ireland, Sweden, France, and Spain are still in the running, so don't tell me anything bad about them. --Ludwigs2 22:50, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Have you considered Sealand? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:27, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Hey Ludwigs2. Wow! I think we have common political ground! (Nice to agree on something!) My god you describe things well. How about moving to Denmark? I have lived there for 24 years. It's a paradise for liberal, Democratic, humanitarian socialists, and the Danes are the happiest people in the world.

In modern social democratic societies in many Western European countries, as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the populace voluntarily adopts certain values and ideas about human rights. They say:

• "We refuse to accept poverty, illness and ignorance as normal or acceptable, therefore we choose less income inequality so we can pay higher taxes into a national fund where there is no profit motive, and it gets paid back to the citizenry to ensure that our concept of human rights is respected. We believe that healthcare and education are human rights, therefore we choose to build a society where it is freely available to all. Our politicians are entrusted with a responsibility to administer those funds properly, and if they deviate from our humanitarian socialist values, we will use our democratic rights to replace them."

And it works! Denmark has the lowest level of income inequality in the world and they are the happiest people in the world: Few have too much, and fewer have too little. They are secure in many ways; they have decent health care and see no medical bills; they are very well-educated, and get paid to go to school all the way through university; their home economy is no barrier to becoming a physician, lawyer, architect, etc.; women have equal rights and extended pregnancy/child rearing rights and leave time, and their husbands/partners can share it; there is little crime; children are raised without fear of oppression by their parents, without censorship, with early self-responsibility, and they develop into independently thinking and mature adults who function very well in society; the military budget is small; the country gives a higher percentage of its GNP in international aide than the USA; even the few who are homeless and losers in society are kept from real suffering. -- Brangifer (talk) 03:12, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

What are the immigration rules? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:40, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

LOL! Fairly strict. Just kidding. I'm not sure. -- Brangifer (talk) 17:42, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

If you're an EU citizen, then just go and live there! --TammyMoet (talk) 18:21, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to enter this conversation as it's not the kind of thing best suited for the Reference Desk. But I can't help noting what Barney Frank said about this issue: that conservatives think "life begins at conception and ends at birth." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:50, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't really seem like an appropriate reference desk question to me either. Take the name of the party and the party platform and replace them with any other and you'll have exactly the same question. Politics are power, not honest debate. The more honest debate there is in that equation the better and freeer the political system. That's true for every country, every century, so long as primates formed societies there's maneuvering for power. We're only better at it than our ancestors. The best we can strive for is a system that balances those forces as much as possible by pushing them against themselves. History strongly suggests we won't good will ourselves into a better arrangement though. Shadowjams (talk) 08:21, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Something else that should be mentioned is that US Republicans consist of two main groups, fiscal conservatives and religious conservatives. There isn't any inherent reason for these two groups to be in the same party. Fiscal conservatives want low taxes, low spending, and low debt, and generally want the government not to interfere in our lives, while religious conservatives want to ban abortion and gay marriage, which are ways of increasing government interference in our lives. So, there's an automatic conflict there. Also, the issue of immigration is a problem, as fiscal conservatives want cheap foreign workers for their businesses, while religious conservatives "have been opposed to immigration ever since they came to this country". :-) "Conservative Christians" do seem to be hypocritical, in that they really don't endorse the teachings of Christ, such as pacifism and caring for the poor and sick, so calling themselves "Christians" seems entirely wrong. They should call themselves "Old Testament Conservatives", since those beliefs are more in line with the Old Testament values. StuRat (talk) 20:39, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

transgendered novels

Can you recommend anyone non-explicit novels that have a transgendered character as a main character? Thanks!

You asked this at the Miscellaneous Desk a little earlier today. Please do not post the same question on more than one desk. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:36, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Women attending funerals

I have the impression, that it was not considered proper for women to attend funerals in early modern Europe. The men placed the coffin in the grave in all-male company and the women did not follow them to the cemetary. This seem to have changed in the 1850 or thereabout. Is this correct? Why was it like that? And why did it change? Thank you. --Aciram (talk) 12:21, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

It is still the case in some funerals, although I have been unable to find definitive references for this. I'm thinking of some extreme Presbyterian sect, or traditionalists in the Scottish Isles. This page gives the old Scottish funeral procedure with reference to this practice. My reason for thinking it is still current is the fact that I have seen it within the last few months on the television in the UK. --TammyMoet (talk) 12:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

There is a reference here to the practice. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:10, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

You can also see it in a picture here, where the deceased's mother is the only female in attendance. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:14, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

It sounds like you are talking about the burial. Women would still have attended the wake, prior to the burial. StuRat (talk) 18:06, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I googled [women attending burials] and there were a fair number of entries, many of them about Islam, but it seemed to be connected to the concern that women would be too emotional. This general concern is also mentioned somewhere in the Funeral article. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:20, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Not always. Some Jewish groups bar women from funerals for other reasons. One pervasive belief is that the evil spirits that supposedly exist at graveyards could harm a fetus; another is that women are simply unclean and would pollute the graveyard. Some groups simply point to the ruling of a rabbi, who may not have given a reason for his decision. (But the vast majority of Jewish groups allow women at funerals.) In Islam, the reason for the ban seems to be not just that women cried loudly, but that families would hire women to cry loudly - it became a sort of competition. In Hinduism, two of the most common reasons given are the prevention of sati and the tendency of women to cry, but women were also expected to ritually clean the deceased's home during the cremation. Most other religions and non-theistic cultures allow women to attend funerals, and in some cultures women are traditionally in charge of funerals. --NellieBly (talk) 01:56, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

A reference to women not attending funerals in Scotland here and a quote here (can't link directly to it(?), but click on "Categories" then "Streets and Houses" then "Death") "We only had the two rooms – we put the coffin in the back room and anyone who came in got shown into the back room to see the body. The coffin was never screwed down until the last minute. Nobody left from a funeral parlour – everybody left from the house – and in those days the women didn’t go to funerals – they stayed at home and made sandwiches. It was only the men that went to the cemetery." - an elderly woman remembers Dundee in the early 20th century. Alansplodge (talk) 15:23, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Another quote here; "(Scottish) women in the eighteenth century regarded a funeral as an occasion to wear their best clothes; they usually walked to the kirkyard gate, leaving the men to follow to the grave..". Alansplodge (talk) 15:36, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

And another here about "A Highland Funeral" by Sir James Guthrie 1881. "As the painting shows, women did not generally attend funerals at the time". Apparently it wasn't only Scotland, but across the border at Jarrow-on-Tyne where "the women did not attend the funeral, except a girl who died unmarried, and then all the unmarried young women attended in a body, wearing white sheets... These and other such customs were very religiously observed till well into the twentieth century."[1] Alansplodge (talk) 15:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

when did oral tellers of the Greek Iliad and Odyssey die out?

I understand that these texts were not passed on in written form, but by people who would memorize them. When did the last of these people probably live? (I assume we do not have a direct lineage to modern day, so that if anyone still does that, they can only trace it back to a book, not the oral tradition: is this assumption correct?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.27.188.226 (talk) 22:32, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Since the precise knowledge of oral traditions tend to die out with the individuals that lives by them, we don't really know. Generally speaking the oral tradition of storytelling has survived on up until quite recently, though most likely not in a direct line from the Hellenic storytellers. It is only a guess, but the storytellers directly familiar with the original Homeric epics probably did become somewhat superflous with the spread of the written narratives in the Hellenistic world especially from the 3rd century BC and onwards. The general oral tradition of storytelling started to become outdated in the Western world when the reading revolution of the 18th century kicked in, and more so during the following centuries, especially combined with the addition of new media of the radio, cinema, TV and lastly the internet. The oral tradition still survives to some extent, but it is largely a fringe phenomena, and generally is a revival that has no direct connection to the oral tradition of the past. --Saddhiyama (talk) 23:48, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Just as an aside, regarding oral history, there are some societies where oral history taking was preserved for a very long time, even alongside writing; and in some cases, while their role is diminished in a modern society, hard work has preserved the tradition in an essentially unbroken line. The Griot or "Djeli" of West Africa represent such a tradition. --Jayron32 04:21, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

The Greeks (and Romans) may not have been as literate as us, but the small class of people who were literate weren't much different from us. The Homeric epics were first written down in the 6th century BC in Athens, under Pisistratus, and the 6th century is pretty early, considering that what we think of as ancient Greece didn't start until the 5th century. The oral epics seem to date from only a couple of hundred years earlier, the 9th or 8th century BC, but that just means the texts are based on the stories of the 8th century. The actual events were supposed to have taken place another several hundred years before that, so if by some chance they had been standardized in writing in the 8th century, or not until the third century, maybe the oral tradition would have been different and we would now have different texts. It's sort of like what we have with fairy tales, or the King Arthur stories. I hope that makes sense...what I mean is, not to discount the important or oral history, but the Greeks made a big deal about writing things down very early on. Adam Bishop (talk) 06:16, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

"We know that officials in sixth-century BC Athens used written copies of Homer's epics to ensure that performers did not diverge from the authorized text" notes Herbert Jordan in his recent (2008) notes to The Iliad. This recension, traditionally authorized by Pisistratus, is known as the Ilias Atheniensium: google that phrase. George Melville Bolling spent a career trying (fruitlessly?) to identify the pre-Alexandrian text.--Wetman (talk) 07:13, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

The professional singers who performed the Iliad and Odyssey were rhapsodoi or rhapsodists, but modern scholarship is divided as to whether they relied on their memories, as you say, or on written texts. Our Rhapsode page says they existed "in the fifth and fourth centuries BC (and perhaps earlier)". The latest historical witness cited there is the orator Lycurgus, from whom, apparently, we learn that "At Athens, by 330 BC, there was a law that rhapsodes should perform the Homeric poems at every Panathenaic festival". I agree with Saddhiyama's first point that it would, almost by definition, be very difficult to establish the date when the oral tradition (if that's what it was) finally died out. --Antiquary (talk) 12:53, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I remember reading in a book by or about Patrick Leigh Fermor that, during his time with the Cretan resistance, he would fall asleep in a cave listening to a shepherd recite the Iliad, and wake hours later to find the recitation unbroken. A more recent interveiew with him and one of these resistance fighters, now old men:

Although George's father, Nicolas, was illiterate, he could recite by heart the whole of the Erotocritos, the 17th-century Cretan epic poem that comprises 10,000 lines of rhyming couplets. And the rhythm lodged in the son's head and on his tongue: poetry to these people was not the object of solemn study but a spur to the spinning of legends and the cue for a bloody good song.[...] On their first trek together, Paddy recalls how George recited a poem he had written on the unambitious theme of The Second World War So Far. "It covered the invasion of Poland, the fall of France, the German invasion of Greece and Rommel's final advance. It lasted more than two hours and finished on a note of triumphant optimism and presage of vengeance, which he emphasised by borrowing my pistol and firing it into the sky with the remark that we would soon be eating the cuckolds alive." [2]

BrainyBabe (talk) 16:02, 10 April 2011 (UTC)