Misogyny is a part of many right wing ideologies – religious fundamentalists and Red Pill/MRA/PUA types share it. And it strongly correlates with being generally politically conservative – if you look at the legislation agenda of the Republican party, it would seem that the only thing they care about is oppressing (women’s) sexuality.

One aspect of this worldview is the belief that the only thing that matters about a woman is her appearance. Religious men might cloak this in talking about a woman’s “ability to be a wife and mother” but often they simply mean her capacity as a sex object first and baby machine second. Red Pill types are far more blatant about this. Their constant drumbeat is that physical attraction is the only reason a man would be involved with a woman on any level. The generic Republican crowd expresses this when they insist that feminists are ugly, when they made a big deal about Sarah Palin being hot – to them how attractive you are is evidence of how well you conform to their ideas.

And no matter how poorly they react to a woman based on her appearance, they are more obsessed with women’s sexuality. Efforts to control it, either through sexist comments, legislating reproductive services or using “game” take up a lot of their time and attention. They are vigilant.

I think this explains some of the panic over the Rolling Stone cover featuring Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. There are several different reasons people are offended by the cover. I even empathize, a little bit with people who say that criminals shouldn’t get so much attention, that they shouldn’t be rock stars – that if they want infamy we should give them anonymity. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

Amanda Marcotte wrote about how people are totally losing their minds over the cognitive dissonance that a terrorist could be handsome. There are some people in the world who actually believe that real life is a fairy tale and that the good people are always good looking and the evil people are always ugly. And they can’t handle the cognitive dissonance.

But something else, I saw in the reactions to Marcotte on twitter was something far more sinister.

.@AmandaMarcotte Too bad this "book" didn't need the cover before he was judged for his actions.. You must DREAM of f*cking James Holmes.

— Brandy Charlotte (@FatBrando) July 18, 2013

@AmandaMarcotte You were with Edwards? Hmmm, you've come a long way, baby! (gigs) Dzhokhar is cute like Edwards, right? Start knitting.

— Thomas Fredette (@MAKEMINEMILQ) July 18, 2013

Martin Richard was a handsome boy. You're a piece of shit. "@AmandaMarcotte: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev *is* handsome"

— Sean Agnew (@seanagnew) July 17, 2013

@AmandaMarcotte Eric Robert Rudolph and Ted Bundy were more handsome. Ditto the Menendez brothers. Drop 'em a line. @TwitchyTeam

— Deserto Vulpes (@TheRobertBriggs) July 18, 2013

You *are* stupid. He planted a bomb next to a little kid. MT @AmandaMarcotte Dzhokhar Tsarnaev *is* handsome.

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) July 18, 2013

@jtLOL girls like @AmandaMarcotte find misogynists, abusers, emotionally vacant, & narcissistic men handsome…Which is why they r *liberal*

— notwhouthink (@shoopbeedoop) July 18, 2013

@duchessrebecca @AmandaMarcotte Amanda is still thinking with her #ladyparts.

— conservativemuslim (@rightwingmuslim) July 18, 2013

Next up from @AmandaMarcotte: "Stalin & Saddam had such cute hipster mustaches, like, so ironic! Also, you're stupid!" #tcot #BostonBomber

— Chris v Csefalvay (@chrisvcsefalvay) July 18, 2013

@AmandaMarcotte Ted Bundy was also handsome and he liked to kill women that looked just like you. But hey its image that countws right?

— Conservative Citizen (@clarkr3000) July 18, 2013

Amanda Marcotte @AmandaMarcotte does stick a rolled up Rolling Stone mag up her ass and has an orgasm http://t.co/Q5qFgriZ21

— DANEgerus (@DANEgerus) July 18, 2013

They are all filled with incoherent rage by the tweet:

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev *is* handsome. I fail to see what value there is in pretending otherwise. The bad guy isn't always a cartoon.

— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) July 17, 2013

The responses I’ve highlighted above don’t simply fall into the “don’t glamorize criminals” category or even the “obviously villains are ugly, SHUT UP THEY ARE!” category. This line of reasoning goes:

1. Amanda Marcotte said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is handsome.
2. Therefore she thinks he’s a good person AND she wants to have sex with him.

It doesn’t really follow, at all. But I would say that this conclusion does fit in with their warped misogyny. Men who objectify every woman they meet are projecting that women must do the same; if a woman says a man is handsome, then she must feel about him the way he feels about attractive women…!

This also fits with their warped view of female sexuality and the “theory” of “hypergamy.” Many men are obsessed with why women like “bad boys” instead of “nice guys.” Simply stating that an evil man is handsome must be proof of some deeper attraction, they think. And here, right here on twitter is a woman, nay, a feminist – admitting it! She must be punished! Don’t let her get away!

It’s not pretty to look at. But there is so much of it to see.

Vernal Falls, Yosemite California Image credit: Author

A friend forwarded to me this heartbreaking article about a young man who died of a drug overdose after “ex-gay” “reparative therapy” failed to make him straight.

This sentence jumped out at me:

“And since sexuality cannot be separated from the self, we had taught Ryan to hate himself. “

And it made me angry. Their ignorance and stubbornness and refusal to question their faith until it was too late resulted in the death of their son, although I’m sure that they know that.

I started thinking about what I have touched on before, that putting distance between myself and the church, only makes me angrier about the injustices and evils carried on in its name. And I think I finally understand why. I thought that distance in time, and in emotion and in physical space would calm me, and soothe my conscience. But the farther away that I get, the more damage I see to innocent people.

I imagine myself in a rowboat, pushing off from a small oceanfront cabin, built into the bottom of a hill. And as I row, I see that the hill is in fact a mountain. And no matter how far I row, I can’t see all of it at once. My distance is only serving to emphasize how big it really is. And I can only conceive of the mountain as it is today. I cannot truly imagine the span of it’s history across centuries. I row harder and harder, yet still it grows and grows. If I had a camera, I would not be able to zoom out far enough to capture it with any panoramic lens.

I do not know if it is possible to get so far away that it will appear to shrink.

I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft lately. It’s a fun game and it reminds me of The Legend of Zelda games I loved as a kid. Recently I started playing in multiplayer mode and something happened that made me think about they psychology of video games.

I know that one of the reasons video games are so pleasurable is that they give people rewards at quicker and more predictable rates thank other tasks. I can’t really say this is something that I think about consciously, but I do find myself having built a castle or mined some diamonds feeling like I have “accomplished something” when in reality, I haven’t. I just played a game. Leisure activities are necessary, but they aren’t a productive use of my time.

On Sunday I was exploring a cave in Minecraft and I was knocked into the very mineshaft I was looking for by some zombies. They jumped down and killed me. In Minecraft, if you aren’t playing in hardcore mode, you will “respawn” (restart) the game at a certain point, and all of the items/loot you were carrying with you will remain at the place you died for about five minutes. With literally nothing to lose, I sprinted back to the cave to find two zombies, one of which was wearing my armor! This is an often humorous aspect of the game. Zombies will pick up anything they find and try and use it against you. Previously I fought one off that was wielding a piece of rotting flesh that had been dropped by another zombie I had killed. On this occasion, I defeated them both with one of my shovels that they had not yet gotten to and retrieved my armor.

I paused for a moment, feeling kind of weird about re-equiping it. I felt grossed out because a zombie was just wearing it. Then I figured that it was now an extra special trophy of my victory over the zombies.

Then I thought about how this game has tapped into some pretty deep areas of my brain. Firstly I identify enough with my avatar that upon seeing an enemy NPC wearing “my armor” it I was startled, and amusedly indignant. There has been some research about why and how people identify with their video game avatars. It reminds me of the research about how the brain changes to think about a car one is driving. Some theorize that you start to perceive the car as a part of your body and that it changes your proprioception. There is evidence that people with bumper stickers on their car are more aggressive drivers. Similar to having a custom made avatar perhaps?

Second, I am so invested in this game that my innate mechanism for disgust was activated by the idea of my avatar wearing armor that a cartoonish zombie character was just “wearing.” I did have a brief feeling that I was the one putting on dirty clothes. Then I laughed at the idea of getting squicked out over pixels on a screen.

Our brains are more plastic than we may be comfortable admitting. And like Minecraft, almost infinitely moddable. Be careful what you do with yours.

This post is adapted from a recent service I led at my Unitarian Universalist congregation. I gave the presentation with accompanying powerpoint slides, and have linked to relevant images in this post where appropriate.

The reading I gave before my sermon was from the Book of Genesis 3: 1-7

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman,
“Did God really say,
‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent,
“We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
but God did say,
‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden,
and you must not touch it,
or you will die.’”
“You will not certainly die,”
the serpent said to the woman.
“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye,
and also desirable for gaining wisdom,
she took some and ate it.
She also gave some to her husband,
who was with her,
and he ate it.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened

February 24, 2013 was Oscar Night. I settled in to watch the Academy Awards with some Chinese takeout and Twitter open on my iPhone. Seth MacFarlane was hosting the show, and I was soon appalled by his inane and sexist humor. No woman was spared, from those who disrobed in movies, to underage actresses he saw as targets for lecherous older movie stars – beat after beat came at the expense of women. Women who were victims of domestic violence or eating disorders, women who were sex workers, women he deemed too beautiful to have anything worthwhile to say, all became subjects of ridicule. I watched the feminists I knew on Twitter go through several stages – denial, then anger, and finally scathing satire.

I tweeted a few snarky comments of my own, and my enjoyment of the evening came more from blowing off steam about this chauvinist retro mess than the paltry excuse for comedy Hollywood was serving up. My mother and my brother didn’t get it. Why couldn’t I just brush it off or ignore how demeaning the humor was? This sermon is an attempt to explain.

Last summer I lead a service about the Unitarian Universalist idea that revelation is not sealed. As UUs we believe that there is no one holy book or source of information that contains all the answers to life’s questions. And in our search for truth and meaning, we have to admit that there is so much that we do not know. This is a huge responsibility. And this is part of what I mean when I say that there’s no going back. There are some things that we can come to know, that we can never not know again. Last summer, I drew a comparison to Eve and The Apple, and still today, I tend to side with Eve. I’d rather know than not know. In fact, later on in the Bible, in Isah 5:20 it is written,

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil

…And yet we were not supossed to know the difference in the first place.

In January, I spoke about the “Toolbox of Justice.” Social justice is like a toolbox, feminism, anti-racism and other struggles for human rights are not just political movements but ways to understand the world. We can use the ideas found in these movements both to create change and to recognize injustice in our daily lives. Once we understand that a word or an action is harmful to others, our conscience reminds us not to do it again. While some may remain ignorant about why a certain phrase is offensive, or how systemic injustice hurts people – once you know, there’s no going back – there is no excuse for passivity.

There is evidence for this idea embedded within our bodies.

The basal ganglia is a structure located in the base of our forebrain. Among other things, it is responsible for automaticity – the ability to do things deliberately but without much conscious thought. When people refer to something as “like riding a bike,” they are talking about something that can be controlled by this area of the brain. There are many things we can teach ourselves to do without much thought, walking, typing, knitting, even driving – if you have ever found yourself lost in thought and arriving safely at your destination but a bit startled that you don’t remember every turn on a familiar route, thank your basal ganglia. With even complex tasks, once we learn how to do them, we can never forget.

More abstractly, people have compared understanding the basic tenets of feminism to the 1999 Wachowski Brothers movie “The Matrix” starring Keanu Reaves.

And sometimes it feels that way. It did on Oscar night. I couldn’t ignore Seth Meyers sexist bonanza anymore than I could ignore a fire alarm or not turn around when someone calls my name. I can’t unfeminist myself, and I don’t think I would want to, most of the time.

But what does my experience have to do with anyone else? Just because I can’t go back does that mean that no one else can? I think there’s evidence that this is so.

Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature posits that humanity has gotten less violent over time. Despite the horrors of the twentieth century, which was also the most well documented era in human history, wars in past centuries killed even greater percentages of the population than both World Wars did respectively. Slavery, torture and capital punishment have also declined over time as we have seen an increase in human rights worldwide. Pinker cites the enlightenment, widespread education and social movements like feminism as the cause of this decline in violence and cruelty. There is no reason to think that even though horrific acts still do occur that they are increasing or will increase in the future. Our society is becoming less violent, and signs point to it becoming more peaceful still, with studies of younger generations showing that young people today are less racist and more tolerant than ever before.

In fact, our popular entertainment relies on the fact that harmful and bigoted ideas of the past, are entirely alien to audiences today. This may be a bit too optimistic at times, but that doesn’t stop it from being a commonly used trope.

The movie Pleasantville explored the idea of how two teenagers living in the 1990’s would survive in a 1950’s tv sitcom. The provincial mores of the time were played both for comedy and shock value. However, the filmmakers were aware of the larger implications of this idea.

A more serious endeavor, AMC’s Mad Men plays the sexism, racism and homophobia of a 1960’s advertising agency straight, for dramatic effect. To identify with the female, gay or people of color characters on the show is often a lonely and desperate experience. But there would be little value in the great lengths taken to make the show realistic if our world had not undergone so many changes.

Alternately, the Star Trek television series and movies portray a future without poverty, or bigotry. Gene Roddenberry’s vision of utopia was flawed at times, but he sensed that social progress would only continue to march on into the future.

In real life, there are countless examples of how a small change in progress for human rights lead to bigger and bigger things. The integration of the United States military in 1948 was the first large scale attempt at racial desegregation in the US. Although it was met with resistance by some, it was a large victory for the African American Civil Rights Movement. And it set the stage for efforts to desegregate schools and other institutions. The experiences of white soldiers, serving alongside black soldiers contributed to changing ideas about race in America.

Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city supervisor of San Francisco California, famously encouraged his gay and lesbian friends and supporters to come out of the closet. He said, “Once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared.” He knew what social scientists would later prove statistically – that the number one indicator of a person’s support for the rights of Gender and Sexual Minorities was whether or not they knew an out GLBTQ person. Once someone knows that their family member, their friend, their co-worker or neighbor will face harm and discrimination, it’s enough to change their mind. There’s no going back.

UU Minister David McClean has spoken about this quotation by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther Kind Jr.:

“The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, but It Bends Toward Justice”

Reverend McClean said that he believes that this is not just a profound and inspiring statement but something that is literally true – a natural law of the universe. I’m still considering this. Sometimes it feels like ignorance and hatred bog us down as if we were trying to run through deep mud. Sometimes we get distracted and confused that we lose sight of our goals and fight with each other in circles instead of for one another, shoulder to shoulder. But when panning out and looking at ourselves from decades or even centuries past, we can see a pattern. Time and social progress both move in one direction – forward.

I don’t know who will be hosting the next Academy Awards Ceremony. But unless they have a time machine, I’m hopeful that it can only get better.

I’ve written before about how anti-feminism is an appeal to force.

A common MRA argument goes like this: since men are physically stronger than women, everything women have men could take away at any moment. To which I say, “No shit, Sherlock.” Does anyone ever think that women are ever unaware of their relative physical weakness in relation to men, even for a second?

I’ve been hanging out a lot lately at /r/TheBluePill which is a subreddit that satirizes “The Red Pill” a kind of super hardcore MRA/PUA philosophy.

They’ve added Red Pill Women, for ladies who agree that they ain’t shit. There I came across this gem by /u/DaddyMonster

Ladies… Men tend to find women’s lack of physical strength endearing. Arousing even. I know it makes me feel all daddylike.

Enjoy men’s strength. Marvel at it. Isn’t it sweet when you know that a man could squeeze the life out you easily, and he knows it too, but he won’t hurt you (any more than feels good)? He might manhandle you. He might be rough. He might even be very rough, but he will not truly hurt you.

A tingle of fear, safely in his strong arms you know 😉

Something that people frequently lament is that Red Pill effluvia occasionally contains a drop of truth. Confidence is sexy, for example. But what disturbs me more than how inane and misogynist they are is when they stumble on something really important and then completely miss the point.

Red Pillers frequently talk about how it’s so much more easy for (straight) women to get laid than (straight) men. They throw out stereotypes – “women don’t really like sex,” reveal their madonna/whore complexes – “women who are promiscuous have less value,” and appeal to evolutionary psychology – “eggs are expensive, sperm is cheap.” I’m not going to deny that there are social pressures on women to limit and feel ashamed of their sexualities. The difference is that feminists think that this shame is bad, and Red Pillers claim that it’s natural and good. They see female sexuality as a force of chaotic evil.

So “DaddyMonster” sees this fear women have, thinks about those who eroticize it and concludes that it’s all so very sweet. He never considered that this truth about men and women, this primal fear, is the reason it’s much harder for men to get laid. Red Pillers like to think that they know the truth. That women are “hypergamous” vending machines – say the right things “display high value” and sex pops out. It’s a lot simpler than that. It’s about self preservation.*

If anti-feminism is an appeal to force, pickup-artistry and game is an attempt to sell that force as sexy and fun.

UPDATE: In response to the question, “Why do bluepillers react so violently against our philosophies and methods?” [Violently, really?] DaddyMonster replied:

Merely poking or even beating it with a stick doesn’t work. You need to annihilate it. It needs to hurt.

Sharp sticks…

This is from the man who thinks that it’s “sweet” that most men could “squeeze the life out of” their female partners at any given moment.
_
*

*Via Dan Savage

Nicholas Coppola married his husband in October 2012. He is also Catholic and was active in his parish as a lector, a Eucharistic minister who visited ill and housebound Catholics, a member of the consolation ministry, a member of the St. Vincent DePaul society, and a religious educator.

In January, the pastor at St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church in Oceanside stripped Coppola of his jobs as a religious education teacher, lector and visitation minister. A top aide to Murphy had conveyed concerns to the parish after the bishop received an anonymous letter pointing out that Coppola wed his partner under New York’s new gay marriage law.

In response, 18,500 people signed a petition on the website of “Faithful America” a progressive Christian organization – asking for Coppola to be reinstated. How did the Diocese of Rockville Centre respond?

The diocese rejected his reinstatement request, saying Coppola was fired because “by marrying under New York State’s same-sex marriage law, he took a public position against church teachings.”

“The Catholic Church recognizes that all persons share equally in the dignity of being human and are entitled to have that human dignity protected,” Diocese spokeman Sean Nolan said in a statement last week. “This does not, however, justify the creation of a new definition for marriage, a term whose traditional meaning is of critical importance to the furtherance of fundamental societal interests.”

Bill Donahue from the Catholic league called the 18,500 people who are loving their neighbor, “bullies.”

The American people respect the autonomy of religious institutions to craft their own rules and regulations, and they do not look kindly on bullying.

Charming.

Here’s the problem. Bill Donahue is wrong that the people who signed the Faithful America petition are bullies. They’re not. They are misguided people who for some reason think that the Catholic Church is a democracy or cares about public opinion. And that’s where I am inclined to agree with him.

The internal affairs of the Catholic Church are not the business of the public, and this includes outside advocacy groups as well as government agencies. Among the internal issues of the Church are employment decisions. Just as it is the right of a yeshiva to insist that its employees abide by Judaic strictures, it is the right of a Catholic school to insist that its employees respect Catholic teachings. Regrettably, GLAAD, Dignity and Faithful America show nothing but contempt for this verity.

I would disagree that Coppola is an “employee.” He’s not, he’s a volunteer. I also have a different view on the “contempt” that GLAAD and Fathful America are acting upon. They are not acting out of malice. I would call it righteous anger. I think that they are right to support Coppola, and to be outraged on his behalf. He did a lot of work for many years for his parish and he was cast aside for no other reason than bigotry based on a deeply flawed religion. But if they think that the Catholic Church can ever, or will ever be changed, they are sorrily mistaken.

Rebecca Goldstein’s talk “The Mattering Map: Religion, Humanism, and Moral Progress” gave me a lot to think about. She touched on “the gender issue,” microaggressions, and the idea of mattering. If you are at all interested in philosophy I recommend you check it out when it’s posted online.

What really caught my attention was when Goldstein described abrahamic monotheism as crediting God with creating both the physical world without and the moral world within.

What if you think it’s only the latter?

This is why I struggle with labels like atheist/theist/agnostic. Secular is a better word. It relegates religion to the private realm. As I have stated before, I truly believe that how we live, how we make decisions, what our values are – matter more than what our theology may be.

Ron Lindsay, president of the Center for Inquiry began today’s conference with a bizarre opening statement. He started off by reading from 1 Timothy (A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man…) and people were snickering along assuming her was being facetious, but after hearing his whole talk, I’m not so sure.

Lindsay gave bell hooks definition of feminism, that it is “a movement to end sexism.” But then he launched into a strange discussion about how feminists disagree about what sexism is and danced around the idea that feminists frequently fall victim to a “no true Scotsman” fallacy.

Then he sunk even lower and broached the topic of privilege. He made some concessions that women and minorities still face discrimination, but quickly rushed to his larger point that the concept of privilege is used as a weapon to silence white dudes. I don’t think he saw the irony in saying this at the beginning of the “Women in Secularism” conference. At all.

Also Justin Vacula is here. And tweeted the following. Surprising no one.

@ralindsay is a #bravehero – pretty good opening remarks at #wiscfi

— Justin Vacula (@justinvacula) May 17, 2013

It’s prom season, and so in the interest of the public, media outlets will be spending a lot of effort covering high school dress codes. These schools are teaching our girls an important lesson about how their bodies are valued. But, as so many have asked, what about the boys? What about the boys, indeed. This must have been an oversight – in all of the hubbub about short skirts and spaghetti straps, we haven’t even begun to discuss the things that distract girls during classroom time! There are so many things administrators must bar from our schools which are stumbling blocks for girls.

To do my part, I have drafted the following dress code for our nations young men. Because the groundbreaking Rebolution Modesty Survey did not include any questions for girls about what they think about boys attire, I instead thought back to all of the things that jeopardized my education almost 13 years ago.

1. No tight pants. During my year in Catholic School, there was a guy who wore his regulation uniform pants rather tightly. He was a frequent topic of discussion among the girls on the bus home from school. We really should have been doing our math homework and praying The Rosary instead.

2. No wearing undershirts as shirts. This was common when I got to public school, and was especially distracting for me. “Wife beaters” and v neck undershirts expose too much of the chest area, and are not appropriate for school.

3. No stubble. Boys must be clean shaven or have clearly defined facial hair. Boys with stubble would not allow girls to focus on their studies. It’s science.

4. No long hair. Hair must be short enough so that it is not touching the ears or shirt collar. A few of my friends were always going on about guys with “sexy hair,” and of course we have the cautionary tale of Angela Chase. She could have been a Rhodes Scholar if it were not for this dude:

4a. No hair product. Even students with regulation hair cuts can cause a distraction with proper styling. I myself made a juvenile joke out of pure frustration about having to share the library with such a rogue. It was something like “That dry look is sure making me wet.” Such a tragedy. How many young female minds are wasted because of styling gel, mousse and spray?

5. Short sleeved shirts must come to the elbow. Shirts which cut the arm at the thickest part of the bicep are too distracting.

6. Shirts with buttons must be buttoned all the way up to the collar. Unbuttoning the top two or three buttons of a shirt draws too much attention to the neck and shoulders and is inappropriate for school.

I’m sure with these simple suggestions, schools can make the classroom a place where girls can spend all of their attention on learning. We must teach our boys that it is their responsibility not to disrupt the school day with they way that they dress. This is a lesson they will carry with them into the workplace and throughout their lives.

On Monday, the Daily Beast published an article titled, “What BP Doesn’t Want You To Know About the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill” an expose that was in part about the toxic effects of Corexit, a dispersant manufactured by Nalco and used by BP in the Gulf of Mexico to clean up the oil spill.

It appears that people who were exposed to Corexit are now suffering severe health problems, including headaches, fatigue, muscle spasm, short term memory loss, bloody coughing fits, and painful nerve damage. BP was allowed to use Corexit, but they did not follow the safety instructions for use as outlined by the manufacturer, Nalco.

I was very curious as to how a dispersant like Corexit was approved in the first place, and to understand what it meant for the government to approve a dispersant with “confidential” ingredients.

In 1990, during the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act. One provision of the act was that companies must have a “plan to prevent spills that may occur” and have a “detailed containment and cleanup plan” for oil spills. This provision led to an update to the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan which is overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1994, the EPA finalized rules which, in part created the National Contingency Plan (NCP) product schedule.

EPA maintains the NCP Product Schedule, which lists the following types of products that are authorized for use on oil discharges:

-Dispersants
-Surface washing agents
-Surface collecting agents
-Bioremediation agents
-Miscellaneous oil spill control agents

The full rules for the NCP are a part of the Code of Federal Regulations, and with regards to the process a manufacturer must undergo to have their dispersant listed in the NCP Product Schedule they state, in part:

300.915.a.10 Dispersing Agent Components.
Itemize by chemical name and percent-age by weight each component of the total formulation. The percentages will include maximum, minimum, and average weights in order to reflect quality control variations in manufacture or formulation. In addition to the chemical information provided in response to the first two sentences, identify the major components in at least the fol­lowing
categories:
surface
active
agents, solvents, and additives.

Additionally, it is stated that,

The submitter may assert that certain information in the technical product data submissions… is confidential business information… Such information must be submitted separately from non-confidential infor­mation, clearly identified, and clearly marked ‘‘Confidential Business Infor­mation.’’ If the submitter fails to make such a claim at the time of submittal, EPA may make the information available to the public without further no­tice.

It appears that Corexit was initially one of the products submitted with the ingredients marked confidential. But a quick perusal of the database shows that most of the products in the NCP schedule have at least some of their ingredients listed as “CONFIDENTIAL.”

The special handling instructions and worker precautions for Corexit state:

Avoid eye contact. In case of eye contact, immediately flush eyes with large amounts of water for at least 15 minutes. Get prompt medical attention. Avoid contact with skin and clothing. In case of skin contact, immediately flush with large amounts of water, and soap if available. Remove contaminated clothing, including shoes, after flushing has begun. If irritation persists, seek medical attention. For open systems where contact is likely, wear long sleeve shirt, chemical resistant gloves, and chemical protective goggles.

But as the Daily Beast detailed, these instructions were ignored.

In response to public outrage after Corexit had already been dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, the ingredients were released, and listed them on a Q&A page about dispersants designed to respond to Frequently Asked Questions about the Gulf Oil Spill.

The ingredients for Corexit 9500A and 9527A are still not listed in the NCP database. This is probably a bureaucratic oversight. But unless you knew about the special FAQ, you couldn’t find the full list ingredients of Corexit.

In response, EPA Chief Lisa Jackson and Senator Lautenberg supported the “Safe Dispersants Act” introduced in July 2010, which

would require better testing, approval, and disclosure of the health effects of dispersants used in response to an oil spill under the National Contingency Plan. It would also require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to conduct a study to determine whether additional regulations are needed. The legislation would achieve the following:

Require testing on a wide range of acute and long-term environmental and health effects of specific chemical dispersants before they could be added to an approved products list.

Ban the use of dispersants that cannot be proven better for the environment and health than natural or mechanical removal of oil.

Require the public disclosure of both chemical dispersant ingredients and ingredient concentrations.

The bill was referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works, and no further action has been taken. Perhaps it’s time for another letter writing Sunday?