Daylight Losing Time

by David Balashinsky

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

These slogans, examples of "doublethink" from George Orwell's 1984, come to mind about this time every year when much of the United States artificially advances spring by about one month as we switch from Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time.  Turning the clocks ahead by one hour does not, of course, "save" daylight.  It merely steals daylight from its rightful owner, morning, and gives it to nighttime, who neither needs it nor wants it.  And while this artifice may give the illusion that we have magically time-traveled forward one month into spring when sunset occurs an hour later, the illusion only works in the afternoon and evening.  Every morning, Daylight Saving Time unnaturally prolongs winter by a month, depriving us of an hour of sunshine and making it appear as though it were not early March but early February.  

To be fair, "Daylight Saving Time" may not be a perfect example of doublethink because it does not equate one thing with its opposite.  (For that matter, "ignorance" and "strength" are not opposites either.)  Yet, at the very least, "Daylight Saving Time" (DST) is a misnomer that is intended to promote the fiction that, by legislative fiat, we can increase by an hour the amount of time each day that we experience daylight.  Since that is manifestly not true, and since the additional hour of sunlight that we get at nighttime can only come at the expense of the hour of sunlight that we lose every morning, it makes as much sense to refer to Daylight Saving Time as "Daylight Losing Time."  It really depends on one's perspective and preference.  An unbiased or neutral name for the time-keeping system now in force would be "Daylight Shifting Time" but this doesn't describe which way the shift was made: toward more light in the evening or toward more light in the morning.  Moreover, the neutrality of this phrase does not, in my opinion, adequately convey the harms of DST that result from shifting the clocks away from morning light and toward morning darkness.  On balance, then, "Daylight Losing Time" (DLT) is a more accurate designation for "Daylight Saving Time."

The name of legislation (which has been pending in congress for several years) that would make DLT permanent - the "Sunshine Protection Act" - represents an even more audacious use of language to foster the deception that DLT creates an additional hour of sunshine each day.  Reading some of the speeches and statements that have been offered in support of this bill one would think that it were actually possible, through an act of congress, to increase the number of hours that the sun shines.  According to Senator Patti Murray, "every winter in Washington state, folks despair at the prospect of losing an hour of precious sunlight when we are forced off Daylight Saving Time. . . .  This is about . . . just putting a little more light in families' lives so they can spend time together, outdoors, in the sunshine."  Senator Martin Heinrich claims that the Sunshine Protection Act will create "More time for sunshine."  Similarly, Senator Katie Britt justifies the bill by asserting that "Alabamians want more sunshine. . . ."  As reported in the Congressional Record (March 15, 2022), Senator Tommy Tuberville (yes, that Tommy Tuberville) celebrated the senate's passage of the Sunshine Protection Act by unanimous consent with the observation that "[i]t is especially timely given that we all had to change our clocks this past weekend and we are now experiencing longer, sunnier days. . . ."  Incidentally, that procedure - "unanimous consent" - by which this bill passed in the senate, with Kyrsten Sinema presiding (yes, that Kyrsten Sinema), occurred, apparently, without many senators even realizing what it was to which they were consenting.

What's also striking is the frequency with which many of the politicians who are so eager to unnaturally alter our sleep-wake cycles invoke what they claim are the positive benefits of DLT.  Senator Markey, for example, has stated that "[s]tudies have found that year-round daylight saving time would improve public health, public safety, energy policy, [and] mental health. . . ."  A press release from Congressman Vern Buchanan in 2023 in support of the Sunshine Protection Act claims that "[t]here are enormous health and economic benefits to making daylight saving time permanent," including reduced car accidents and accidents involving pedestrians, decreased childhood obesity and increased physical fitness, as well as decreased crime rates and energy usage.  Senator Britt, likewise, claims that DLT is "better for our mental and physical health."  Patty Murray also cited "public health" and the economy as justifications for switching to permanent DLT.

But just as moving our clocks forward by one hour at the close of each winter doesn't "save" or "protect" daylight, neither would permanent DLT be the panacea its boosters claim it would be.  On the contrary, the consensus among the experts - the people who actually study these things - is the exact opposite.  They cite numerous harmful effects of DLT - whether permanent or even just for eight months out of the year, as is currently the case - and argue that it would be healthier and more beneficial overall to adopt Standard Time (ST) year-round.  The list of organizations representing the many experts who have endorsed the adoption of permanent ST is long.  It includes the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Medical Association, the Canadian Sleep Society, The National Sleep Foundation, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, the American Academy of Cardiovascular Sleep Medicine, the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine, the American Association of Sleep Technologists, the American College of Chest Physicians, the National Safety Council, the Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine, the Sleep Research Society, the World Sleep Society, and scores of other organizations.

The increased risk of harm and the actual harms of advancing the clocks by one hour every winter are well recognized and include acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), stroke, sleep-loss, increased motor-vehicle accident fatalities, depression, anxiety and seasonal affective disorder.  Aside from the disruption to my own circadian rhythms (more on this below) and, obviously, the increased darkness that result from switching to DLT, my chief objection to it originates in my love of nature and the inspiration that I draw from natural phenomena.  This is especially true of the waxing and waning of daylight as the seasons change.  Part of what makes the lengthening days of winter and spring so appealing, after all, is that each day is just a little bit longer than the one that preceded it.  This portends summer's inevitable triumph over winter as daylight supplants darkness by a few minutes each day, culminating in the arrival of the summer solstice.  It's like watching something beautiful grow.  At the latitude where I live, the change in daylight - not just how much of it there is every day but even its color - is noticeable as the angle of insolation changes.  To experience firsthand, and in such a salient way,  the reminder that we live on a planet that rotates on a tilted axis as it revolves around the Sun is to witness, every single day, one of the wonders of the universe.  How can one not be awed by that?

Yet with DLT, all this is ruined every March.  It is not just jarring but an affront to the cosmos to artificially advance this natural cycle by an hour.  It cheapens and demeans the experience.  DLT is the epitome of a toddler's need for instant gratification.  It's like reading a novel and, halfway through, skipping ahead by a hundred pages just to get to the end more quickly.  If one engages with literature this way, can one really appreciate the book?  Can one even claim to have read it?  Likewise, if one knows time, nature, and daylight only in their manipulated state, can one really appreciate them? 

The fact that congress has come as close as it has to getting rid of the biannual time shift indicates that our society is at a tipping point.  No one seems to like switching the clocks forward and backward every year (that's an exaggeration: nineteen percent of Americans actually do) but the question is what to do about it.  Obviously, there are two sets of choices here, one contingent upon the other.  The first is whether or not to continue setting the clocks ahead in March and back to Standard Time in November.  If that is resolved in favor of scrapping the biannual time-shift, the next question would be what to replace it with.  One option would be a permanent return to Standard Time, or Natural Time (NT).  I say "return" because this is the system under which humans have prospered, phylogenetically speaking, throughout our evolutionary history.  It is also the system that we have consciously used throughout most of our recorded history.  (DLT originated in Canada in 1908.  The first nationwide implementation of DLT was by Germany in 1916 and it wasn't until 1918 that DLT, then called "War Time," was established in the United States.)  I also specify "Natural Time" because this system is based on the position of the Sun relative to the Earth.  Twelve noon is twelve noon because that is when the Sun is at its highest point overhead.  The alternative would be the establishment of permanent DLT or Unnatural Time (UT).  I say "Unnatural Time" for the obvious reason that a system that offsets time by one hour rather than indicating the time that actually is, is by any measure unnatural.  If the position of the Sun relative to our location on Earth creates a natural noontime, it follows that it's unnatural to designate noon as one o'clock.  It's equally unnatural, albeit less noticeably damaging to our circadian rhythms, to designate 11:01 p.m. Sunday as 12:01 a.m. Monday, or 11:01 p.m. December 31st, 2025, as 12:01 a.m., January 1st, 2026, which is what permanent DLT/UT would force us to do.

From a health standpoint, permanent DLT would be better - and not by much - than the biannual time switch but it would still be unhealthy.  The main reason is that permanent DLT would force us to live our entire lives in "circadian misalignment."  As Beth A. Malow explains in a position statement on behalf of the Sleep Research Society, under permanent DLT, "[t]he timing of natural light becomes desynchronized from normal physiological processes, with dysregulation of melatonin and cortisol.  Disruption of these hormones contributes to stress, altered metabolism, and inflammation [citation omitted]."  The reason for this circadian misalignment, as Matthew Solan points out, is simply that our "[c]ircadian rhythms largely depend on light exposure. . . .  Less morning light can decrease levels of the mood-boosting hormone serotonin.  In contrast, exposure to light later in the evening can delay the production of melatonin, the hormone that helps you fall asleep."  The result is that, under permanent DLT, it would be harder to wake up every morning and harder to fall asleep every night, year-round.  As Horacio de la Iglesia, another specialist in the study of circadian rhythms, puts it, living under permanent DLT "would be like Monday morning every day for the rest of your life."

One of the ways that sleep- and circadian rhythm researchers gauge the effects of light on our health is by studying the "western edge effect."  Here's Malow, again:

The literature on time zone border effects has been used to support the role of DST in contributing to sleep loss and circadian misalignment.  Compared to those living on the eastern edge of a time zone, people living on the western edge of a time zone, who get light later in the morning, and later in the evening, self-report getting less sleep. . . .  This sleep loss is believed to be secondary to evening light exposure delaying the brain's release of melatonin.  Sleep loss in adults has been associated with weight gain and obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and stroke, depression, and increased risk of death, along with impaired immune function, increased pain, impaired performance, increased errors, and greater risk of accidents.  Sleep loss in children has been associated with attention, behavior, and learning problems along with increased risk of accidents, injuries, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts [citations omitted].

Malow also notes that residents of western edges had higher rates of many kinds of cancer and other health problems as well as lower per capita income and higher health care costs.  "Those supporting a return to permanent ST," she observes, argue that permanent DLT "would exacerbate these effects." 

There are also practical consequences of pushing day into night and night into day.  As I have already mentioned, unnaturally prolonging daylight by an hour at nighttime necessarily entails prolonging darkness by an hour every morning.  The result of permanent DLT, then, would be that, in some locations, sunrise wouldn't occur until after 9:00 a.m. during the winter months.  In my location, Binghamton, NY,  under permanent DLT, sunrise wouldn't occur until after 8:00 a.m. for three months out of the year.  That means my wife would be leaving for work in darkness from the middle of November through the middle of February.  The children who live across the street from me get picked up by a school bus at 7:00 a.m. every day.  For them, permanent DLT would mean that they'd be waiting outside in the dark every morning for close to six months out of the year.  This is a semi-rural area so, fortunately for them, the bus picks them up in front of their house.  But what about the millions of children who walk to school, or walk to bus stops?  As it happens, it was partly due to the entirely valid anxiety of parents over the safety and welfare of their children who had to walk to school in darkness that permanent DLT was abandoned - less than a year after it was established, so unpopular was it - when it was tried in the 1970s.  I'm an early riser so, for me, getting up at 5:00 a.m. every day means that under permanent DLT I'd be getting up in darkness 365 days per year.  (If you want to know when sunrise and sunset would occur in your location or in any location in the United States under any of the three alternative time systems - permanent ST, permanent DLT or switching back and forth -  Save Standard Time has an easy-to-use interactive sunrise calculator that you can use to find out.)

This is what 6:00 a.m., DLT (Daylight "Saving" Time), March 19, 2025 looks like at my house:

 

This is what 6:00 a.m., Standard Time (Natural Time), March 19, 2025 would look like:

Still another consideration is energy consumption.  That was the original rationale for "War Time" back in 1918.  For the life of me I cannot see how burning one kilowatt hour of energy at 7:00 a.m. uses less energy or costs less than burning the same kilowatt hour at 8:00 p.m. would.  Sure, I can turn the lights on an hour later at night under DLT, but that just means that I also have to turn the lights on an hour earlier in the morning.  Nevertheless, the proponents of permanent DLT continue to claim that it would result in less energy usage.  Yet, here too, the facts are at odds with the claims.  A study of energy usage in Indiana under both systems determined that the adoption of DLT added $8.6 million dollars to the energy bills of Indiana residents each year.  As reported in the Toronto Star, the researchers concluded that "since 95 per cent of that extra energy was generated by coal-fired power plants, that meant much more atmospheric-warming carbon dioxide was spewed into the air.  Expanded nationally, these results would translate to at least two coal-fired electricity plants pumping power just to feed the daylight savings habit."

It goes without saying that enjoying sunshine during the day rather than at night is a personal preference.  Mine is for a time system based on the position of the Earth relative to the Sun and in harmony with our bodies.  I prefer Standard Time and dislike Daylight Losing Time in the same way that I would prefer not to have PFAS ("forever chemicals") in my food and water and would prefer not to have microplastics circulating in my bloodstream and embedded in my organs.  Call it what you will, nothing, including Orwellian euphemisms, can alter the fact that DLT is unnatural and harmful.  And, as bad as it is living with it for eight months out the year, making DLT permanent would mean that every minute of every hour and every hour of every day, 365 days per year, would not be what the clock says it is but a counterfeit time, told by a "false clock."  Much like the "innies" of Severance, we would be confined within an artificial reality but stuck there until the end of time itself.  

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For more information and to learn how you can help save Standard Time, visit Save Standard Time, the Coalition for Permanent Standard Time and the International Alliance for Natural Time.

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                                                                               The moon, photographed at 6:00 a.m. DLT, 19 March 2025

About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York.  I am a licensed physical therapist and I write about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics.  I currently serve on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.

An Open Letter to President Zelensky

Dear President Zelensky,

First, allow me to apologize on behalf of the American people and the United States of America for the disrespectful treatment you received from President Trump and Vice President Vance at the White House on Friday.  Their behavior toward you was not just a breach of protocol - it was inhospitable and - there's no other word for it - rude.  President Trump's and Vice President Vance's disgraceful and sordid conduct was an embarrassment to the very idea of the United States of America - that ineffable ideal that exists in the hearts of Americans as a concept but that also exists as the political entity that we have been proud to call our nation and our home.  It was an embarrassment to me personally, as an American, just as it was to millions of my fellow Americans.  It was an embarrassment to us domestically because, acting in our name, President Trump failed in the very first duty of a host: to conduct himself graciously while treating his guest with courtesy, dignity and respect.  It was also an embarrassment to our nation on the world stage of international diplomacy.  The damage that Trump and Vance have done (this includes Vance's pro-neo-Nazi speech at the Munich Security Conference last month) to America's standing and reputation as a stalwart defender of freedom, democracy and the international rule of law is incalculable.  I can only hope that you can look beyond the pettiness, the smallness, the personal self-interest, the vindictiveness and the boorishness that are the stock-in-trade - the very essence - of Donald Trump and that you will continue to regard the American people and the United States as allies in Ukraine's courageous struggle against Russian aggression, imperialism and cultural genocide of the Ukrainian people.  

Speaking to you as an American, I also want to take this opportunity to set the record straight.  President Trump lied when he called you a dictator.  When he uttered that calumny, he was not speaking for the American people.  The American people know that you are a democratically-elected president who won in a landslide with 73 percent of the vote in 2019 and whom history has since thrust into the position of having to rally your countrymen and -women in support of the sacred cause of defending your nation's very existence; a duly elected leader upon whom circumstances beyond your control have imposed the unenviable task of seeking the financial and military assistance of freedom-loving democracies around the world in support of that noble cause. 

Trump also committed a lie - a lie of omission - when he refused to admit that it is Putin who is the real dictator.  It is not enough, you see, for Trump to try to discredit you.  He is also doing everything he can to legitimize a former KGB agent who "won" his fifth and most recent term as president in an election in which "[a]ll genuine opposition candidates were barred from running, imprisoned, dead, or in exile."   A dictator who has presided over massive and systematic political repression and wholesale human rights abuses in Russia.  An oligarch worth an estimated $200 billion (which would make Putin the third richest man in the world) under whose dictatorial regime numerous political opponents, free-speech- and democracy advocates have been murdered.  You may wonder, President Zelensky, why Trump is so obsequious to Putin - so nauseatingly servile on his behalf, parroting his lies and promoting his interests over Ukraine's and even over the interests of the United States.  All I can tell you is that we Americans, who are proud that our nation, along with our NATO allies, won the cold war, are wondering the same thing. 

Trump also lied when he claimed that your nation, Ukraine, started the war with Russia. The world will always know - and history will always record - that Putin's war against Ukraine began when Russia invaded and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and expanded when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of your sovereign territory on February 24, 2022. Since then, Ukraine has "endured relentless death, destruction and displacement," including the deaths of over 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, the deliberate targeting and destruction of civilian infrastructure, including a devastating and deadly attack on Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital, and the widespread use of torture and sexual violence against civilians and detainees. Russia's cultural genocide against Ukraine includes the abduction of over 19,000 Ukrainian children - a war crime for which arrest warrants have been issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, acting - perversely and preposterously - in her capacity as Russia's Commissioner for Children's Rights. Russia itself has suffered enormous casualties since its invasion of Ukraine, with 95,000 troops killed - many or perhaps most of them Putin's pawns, their lives sacrificed on behalf of Putin's revanchist-imperialist ambitions. One can scarcely fathom the depth of moral depravity of the man responsible for all this. Likewise, it's almost impossible to fathom the depth of moral depravity on display at Mar-a-Lago recently when Trump literally added insult to injury by accusing your nation, Ukraine - Russia's victim - of being the instigator of this horrific war.

Trump and Vance also lied when they accused you of being insufficiently grateful to the United States for its support of Ukraine - to say nothing of the arrogant, condescending and totally inappropriate tone and manner in which they did so. Numerous (credible) media outlets have documented at least 33 occasions on which you expressed your thanks to us and to our country sincerely and enthusiastically.  United24.media has documented at least 94 instances of your thanking the United States.  Please be assured that America acknowledges your gratitude and appreciates it.

Since our nation's founding, the United States of America has sought to embody the ideals of liberty, justice, and democracy.  We have fallen woefully short of our founders' aspirations for much of our history, beginning with the founders themselves when they wrote inequality on the basis of sex and race  into our founding document.  But the saving grace of our constitution was that it also included a mechanism for improvement - for an expansion of liberty and justice.  

As a nation that has formed alliances and waged wars, the United States has also gotten many things wrong.  But there are some things that we got right.  In World War II, for example, we were not only the right side of the war but on the right side of history.  One of the things the United States fought (and sacrificed more than 400,000 American lives) for 80 years ago was the principle that a powerful nation may not simply invade and conquer a less powerful one and be permitted by the other nations of the world to get away with it.  Because of this, the United States has long enjoyed a reputation for throwing in its lot with the underdog - and backing that up with our considerable military might.  We have not always been consistent and we have not always deserved that reputation.  There have been many occasions throughout our history, especially during the 20th century, when the United States helped to install or supported dictatorships in other countries, most notably in South America.  

And yet, because of our unique position in world history - from our humble beginnings as colonies that banded together to overthrow an oppressive distant monarchy to our present position as a superpower -  because of the enduring nature of our democracy, because of our wealth (the envy of the world), because of our formidable military strength, our role in defeating the Axis powers in WWII, and, above all, because of the ideals that we profess to ourselves and to the world, the United States has been looked upon as a defender of just causes - a bulwark of last resort against tyrants.  If this is how Ukraine has looked upon America from afar, it is also how Americans have come to view our great nation from within.

Helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian imperialism would not, of course, simply be an act of altruism.  Much of the good the United States has done internationally since WWII has been a manifestation of enlightened self-interest.  That is the principle behind much of the "soft power" that the U.S. has projected around the world.  By improving conditions for citizens in poor and underdeveloped countries, we can reduce armed conflict, war, criminality, poverty, starvation, disease, and political radicalization - all of which have led to large numbers of émigrés seeking to enter the United States any way that they can - while fostering good will toward the United States.  At the same time, the U.S. has filled a void - support for healthcare, nutrition, education and infrastructure - that our adversaries, such as China, would otherwise be only too happy to fill.  (This is one of the reasons why the wholesale dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development is ultimately so counterproductive to U.S. interests, to say nothing of the absolute moral abomination of allowing thousands of people to suffer and die for want of adequate medical care and nutrition). 

Additionally, history teaches us that those who would wage war on their neighbors for the purpose of territorial expansion and conquest do not stop of their own accord - they must be stopped.  You were absolutely correct, President Zelensky, when you reminded President Trump that, although we have "a nice ocean" between us and Europe and "don't feel now" the effects of Russia's aggression, unless Ukraine prevails it is inevitable that we "will feel it in the future." 

There is every reason therefore, why the United States should continue to support Ukraine in its fight for survival as a sovereign nation against its Russian would-be conqueror.   Not simply because it is in our own strategic national interest to do so but because, morally, it is the right thing to do.  And, as I have said, because doing so is consistent with the principles that the United States prides itself on standing for. 

It is against this historical background and in the context of all of these strategic and ethical considerations that the world witnessed - and you bore the brunt of - the current president of the United States effectively siding with Putin and Russia against you and the people of Ukraine at the White House last week.  As an American, to see the president of the United States treating an ally so shabbily while denying and repudiating America's role as a champion and supporter of peace and democracy was profoundly demoralizing.  But, for now, we here in America are, indeed, protected (at least to some extent) by an ocean.  For America, it is only our nation's good name that Trump is destroying.  For you and your people, the stakes are incomparably higher: without the necessary political, financial and military support, it is your freedom and your very lives that are on the line.  That President Trump would abandon you and your nation or do Putin's bidding by attempting to strong-arm you into what would amount to an abject surrender is reprehensible.  It is an affront not only to you and to Ukraine but to everything that America stands for.  Liz Cheney put it succinctly:

Generations of American patriots . . . have fought for the principles Zelenskyy is risking his life to defend.  But today, Donald Trump and JD Vance attacked Zelenskyy and pressured him to surrender the freedom of his people to the KGB war criminal who invaded Ukraine.  History will remember this day - when an American President and Vice President abandoned all we stand for.

I can only express my support of this sentiment and my solidarity with you and the Ukrainian people.  I sincerely hope that you will not view Donald Trump's betrayal of America's values and his betrayal of the Ukrainian people as a reflection of the American people themselves.  On a purely human level, President Trump's and Vice President Vance's conduct at your last meeting was as antithetical to our values as Americans as their hostility to the cause of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty is antithetical  to our political values as Americans.  It is precisely because we are Americans - with all that that means to us - that millions of us continue to support Ukraine and encourage you not to lose heart nor hope.  A free and independent Ukraine will prevail.

Sincerely,

David Balashinsky

 

Massachusetts Becomes the Third State to Protect Cats' Right to Bodily Integrity. Boys and Girls Assigned Male at Birth Are Still Waiting for the Same Right.

by David Balashinsky

Before I say anything else, let me state for the record that I am a cat-lover and that none of my cats ever has or ever will be declawed.  I have long believed that cat declawing is both inhumane and unethical, which is why I supported efforts to ban this practice in my home state of New York and support banning the practice nationwide.  As a New Yorker, I am proud that my state became the first to institute a statewide ban on cat declawing.  Maryland became the second state to do so in 2022 and, now, Massachusetts becomes the third.

Still, I have mixed feelings about these laws.  The reason is that they create a legal protection for cats that, to this day, is denied people like me.  I am referring to human males and transwomen (anyone born with a penis) and to the practice of removing penile foreskins when not medically indicated, a practice known as nontherapeutic penile circumcision or, simply, "circumcision."  As much as I love cats, it is impossible for me not to view these anti-declawing laws from the vantage point of someone who had part of his body cut off without his consent.  Given that the part of me that was ablated without any rational reason or justification is just as important to me as cats' claws are to them, it is hard not to look at cats now without feeling some envy.  I feel demeaned by the fact that my cats now have a greater legal right to bodily integrity than I did when I was an infant and would still if I were under 18.  (By the same token, if my twin sister and I had been born after 1996, she would be legally protected against genital cutting whereas I would not.)

A word about the male prepuce, or foreskin, is in order.  Like cats' claws, the prepuce has evolved and been retained through millions of years of evolution because it serves important physiological functions.  One of these is providing protection for the glans penis in exactly the same way that the clitoral hood, its homologous counterpart in females, provides protection for the glans clitoris.  (Anatomically, both the male foreskin and the female clitoral hood are identified as the prepuce.  Unlike boys, however, in Massachusetts and the rest of the United States, girls are allowed to keep theirs.)  In addition, histological studies demonstrate that the male prepuce contains numerous sensory receptors.  These specialized, light-touch mechanoreceptors (known as Meissner's corpuscles), are found in particularly dense concentrations in the body where light-touch sensation is most important, including the finger tips, the lips and, it should come as no surprise, the prepuce.  Several studies have demonstrated that the male prepuce is, in fact, the primary sensory apparatus of the penis.  All of the sensation that the prepuce enables an individual to experience is lost forever when this part of his penis is removed.  Moreover, once the glans penis has been permanently deprived of its natural protective covering, the glans, itself, becomes keratinized (dried out and "toughened up"), making it even less sensitive.  In short, the male prepuce is not "excess skin."  It is an integral and essential part of a person's penis.  It is a part of his body that that individual has as much a right to keep as he has to keep any other part of his body.  And it is a part of his body that he has as much a right to keep as cats have to keep their claws.

A word about nontherapeutic penile circumcision is also in order.  Non-therapeutic neonatal penile circumcision (like cat declawing) is always performed without the consent of the one subjected to it.  It always entails the painful removal of a normal, functional and highly erotogenic body part.  And, in virtually all cases, penile circumcision is imposed on a child not because there is a pathological condition that needs to be treated or a congenital deformity that needs to be corrected but, rather, for reasons involving custom, social conformity, convenience, socially-influenced aesthetics about human genitals, specious medical rationalizations and medical profiteering (often at tax-payer expense through Medicaid funding).

Both cat declawing and penile circumcision, then, have a lot in common.  Both entail the removal of a normal, functional body part.  Both entail a surgical removal of healthy tissue without any regard to the wishes of the cat or infant human male who is subjected to it.  Both practices are inhumane, unnecessary, unjustifiable and unethical.  Not surprisingly, because the campaigns to ban both practices are based on the same philosophical and moral principles - especially, respect for the rights, the bodies and the welfare of living things - many of those who oppose cat declawing also oppose nontherapeutic penile circumcision.  

Also not surprisingly, just as there are parallels between the practices themselves, there are parallels between the movements to eradicate them.  Consider the legislative history of the New York bill banning cat declawing.  Passage of Senate Bill S5532B / Assembly Bill A1303B  did not happen overnight but was the culmination of a long, arduous process that required its sponsors to persevere against the stiff headwinds of an entrenched practice.  The legislation had to overcome the opposition of the New York State Veterinary Medical Society (NYSVMS), which opposed it for perfectly rational and, it could be argued, even humane reasons.  It had to overcome the resistance of legislators who, no doubt, initially scoffed at the notion that this is a matter worthy of the legislature's time.  It had to overcome the opposition of those who believe that cat "owners" have a right to make such medical decisions on behalf of their cats.  And it even had to overcome the opposition of those who profess to love cats and probably do love cats just as much as I do.  It is important to remember, in this regard, that people who subject their cats to declawing are not evil, sadistic monsters who want to harm their cats.  These are people who love their cats but who, for one reason or another, believe declawing to be beneficial, appropriate and ethical.  Thus, it was the combined resistance of societal and institutional acceptance of cat declawing, including, especially, the normalization of it, that the bill's sponsors had to overcome in order to get it passed.

These types of opposition to New York's anti-cat-declawing bill all have parallels in the campaign to eradicate nontherapeutic penile circumcision which, like the campaign to ban cat declawing, also faces stiff institutional and cultural headwinds.  Banning nontherapeutic circumcision is opposed by medical trade associations (whose members profit handsomely from the procedure), such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, both of which have issued statements that implicitly or explicitly endorse nontherapeutic circumcision while conceding that it is not medically necessary.  These position statements include one rationalization after the other that exaggerate the purported benefits of penile circumcision while minimizing or ignoring its incontrovertible harms.  In certain crucial respects, these organizations' position statements on nontherapeutic circumcision are strikingly similar to that of the NYSVMS on cat declawing.

Then there is the reluctance of legislators to take on this issue for a variety of reasons, not least of which is their mistaken belief that a ban on non-therapeutic circumcision would violate the first amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion. Of course, numerous state legislatures have demonstrated no such qualms about banning female genital cutting for religious reasons. 

Added to this is the persistent cultural view of children as property. Many parents who support nontherapeutic penile circumcision claim that, because their children belong to them, they (the parents) have a right to cut off part of their children's genitals.  This, too, mirrors the view of people who regard companion animals as property, to do with whatever they choose.

Finally, the genital autonomy movement has had to contend with the deep-seated conviction of those who endorse nontherapeutic circumcision that this is not something that one does to a child but for a child.  Those who practice genital cutting of any type - whether of boys, girls or intersex children - sincerely believe that the genital-modification surgery to which they are subjecting their child will benefit that child.  At the very least, they regard it as harmless.  Even when this blithe fantasy collides with the reality that any surgery is traumatic for an infant - especially one performed on one of the most sensitive parts of the body (and, typically, with insufficient or even no anesthetization) - still such parents reason with themselves that, in any event, "the benefits outweigh the risks" ("risks" serving, in this case, as a conceptual stand-in for "harms").  Those who opt to have their sons circumcised thus make a moral calculation that the overall good that results outweighs the potential and even the actual harms of the genital cutting itself.

Similarly, those who defend cat declawing do so on the principle that it produces an overall good when the alternative is abandonment or euthanasia.  (This was one of the rationales in support of cat declawing formerly offered by the NYSVMS.)  These cat-lovers likewise have made a moral calculation that the overall good that results from having their cats declawed outweighs the actual harms of declawing.

In both of these cases, however, it is not the person exercising this surgical option who must live with the consequences of the surgery but the cat or the human infant - and, of course, the man that that infant will one day become, since circumcision is irreversible.  Still, it must be acknowledged that parents who impose their own penile preferences on their sons' bodies are not evil, sadistic monsters who want to harm their sons.  These are parents who love their sons but who, for one reason or another, believe nontherapeutic circumcision to be beneficial, appropriate and ethical.  This is no less true, by the way, of parents who subject their daughters to what is known in our culture as female genital mutilation (FGM).  The parents in these cultures love their daughters just as much as we love our sons.  And when they choose genital cutting for their daughters, they do not do so out of malice, nor do they regard it as "mutilation."  They regard it as beneficial, as something religiously mandated and as something culturally meaningful.  Above all, like parents in our society, they regard it as their right to make this decision on behalf of their daughters.

If the similarities between cat-declawing and non-therapeutic penile circumcision were not  plain enough,  a statement by one of the New York bill's sponsors, Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal, which she made when she first introduced her legislation, underscores the point:

There's no reason to do it unless the animal has [an] infection that is never going away, or if there is a cancer or tumor-related issue in the claw.   It's basically done because humans want it done, and I don't think it's our right to mutilate our animals for our own satisfaction.

Exactly the same can be said of nontherapeutic penile circumcision:

There's no reason to do it unless the infant has an infection that is never going away, or if there is a cancer or tumor-related issue in the prepuce.  It's basically done because humans want it done, and I don't think it's our right to mutilate our sons for our own satisfaction. 

All of which leads me to wonder how, in passing these anti-cat-declawing laws, these legislators can exude such compassion, empathy and respect for the bodily integrity of cats while remaining perfectly indifferent to the bodily integrity and the right to bodily autonomy of people with penises.  After all, don't we deserve to have the same rights as cats?

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About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York.  I am a licensed physical therapist and I write about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, politics, and sometimes cats.  I currently serve on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.

Some Thoughts on Dress Codes

by David Balashinsky

 

 

It's reported that Spirit Airlines has revised its passengers' dress code.  Section 4.3 of Spirit's Contract of Carriage states that "A guest shall not be permitted to board the aircraft or may be required to leave an aircraft if that guest . . . is barefoot or inadequately clothed (i.e., see-through clothing; not adequately covered; exposed breasts, buttocks, or other private parts), or whose clothing or . . . body art is lewd, obscene or offensive in nature. . . ."  It's not clear to me whether this policy constitutes a clarification, a tightening or a loosening of its dress code but it comes in the wake of a widely publicized incident last fall in which two women were removed from a Spirit Airlines aircraft because they were wearing crop tops.  

Spirit Airlines isn't the only carrier that has created controversy by ejecting passengers because of what they were wearing.  Also last fall, a Delta Airlines flight attendant forced a Marine Corp veteran off of a flight because of a suicide-prevention message that was printed on the veteran's tee-shirt.  The message, which in the opinion of the flight attendant, was "threatening," was this:

Last spring, in another incident involving Delta, one if its employees escorted a passenger off of one of its flights because she wasn't wearing a bra, although, ultimately, the passenger was allowed to re-board on the condition that she layer a second shirt over the one she was wearing.  As NBC4 Los Angeles reported, the passenger had been told by the head flight attendant that "Delta's official policy is that 'women must cover up.'"

Delta Airlines does not, in fact, have an official policy that "women must cover up."  Delta's Contract of Carriage explicitly states (in Rule 7, Section E) that "Delta will not refuse to provide transportation based upon race, color, national origin, religion, sex or ancestry."  However, Delta's Contract of Carriage goes on to say that

Subject to those qualifications, Delta may refuse to transport any passenger, or may remove any passenger from its aircraft, when refusal to transport or removal of the passenger is reasonably necessary in Delta's sole discretion  [my emphasis] for the passenger's comfort or safety, for the comfort or safety of other passengers or Delta employees, or for the prevention of damage to the property of Delta or its passengers or employees.  By way of example, and without limitation, Delta may refuse to transport or may remove passengers from its aircraft in any of the following situations. . . .

The contract then lists eight "situations."  Situation number two is "When the passenger is barefoot" and situation number eight is "When the passenger's conduct, attire, hygiene or odor creates an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance to other passengers."

The problem that immediately arises here is the ambiguity written into this and similar airline policies and, therefore, the subjectivity that these policies authorize in those who are delegated with the task of enforcing them.  As the Times explains in its coverage of this story,  "Clarifying all this tends to fall to airline employees, including the flight crew."  But airline employees, whether flight attendants or pilots, are people just like the rest of us, with their own cultural baggage, unconscious biases, prejudices, deeply ingrained concepts of gender, and standards of propriety.  Inevitably, offensiveness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  Who's to say whether someone is "adequately clothed" or "inadequately covered," as Spirit puts it?  If a woman were wearing a crop top, her breasts (assuming she has breasts) would be covered but her abdomen would not be.  Is this woman "inadequately clothed" or is she, rather, "adequately covered"?

I have mixed and contradictory feelings about dress codes.  I support them, in principle and up to a point, but I am also bothered by the fact that they can privilege one standard of dress by imposing it broadly on a society that consists of a diversity of standards.  Moreover, the standards that they impose may be sexist, racist or discriminatory in other equally invalid ways.  It should not be lost on anyone that two of the most notorious recent episodes of passengers having been removed from aircraft or otherwise chastened (I use that word advisedly) for their attire involved women passengers.  Just to be sure I wasn't jumping to conclusions or succumbing to the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, I typed into my browser's search box the following questions: What is the most common reason women are removed from airplanes? and What is the most common reason men are removed from airplanes?  The AI-generated response surprised me but also confirmed my suspicions.  The most common reason (according to google AI) that women get kicked off airplanes is because they have engaged in "disruptive behavior caused by excessive alcohol consumption" but the second most common reason (I have to assume the reasons are listed in order of their rate of occurrence) is because they were "wearing attire that is considered too revealing or offensive according to airline policies."  In contrast, while the most common reason men get removed from airplanes is also because of "disruptive behavior," the AI-generated overview includes not one mention of men being kicked off of flights on account of being "inadequately clothed."  Instead, the overview lists four "key points about men being removed from flights," including "alcohol related issues," "verbal aggression," "non-compliance with safety rules" and "physical altercations."  The third, fourth and fifth reasons women get kicked off of airplanes are, respectively, "poor hygiene," "non-compliance with instructions," and "medical emergencies."  (Call me old fashioned but I'd much rather be seated on a flight next to an "inadequately clothed" woman than next to a verbally aggressive and pugnacious man.)

I suggested that it should not be lost on anyone that incidents in which passengers have been removed from flights or threatened with removal tend to involve women specifically because of how these women were dressed.  It hasn't been.  The DailyMail.com, for example, ran a story last fall reporting four such incidents, the two I cited at the beginning of this essay and two others.  (This article also describes an incident in which a male Trump supporter was thrown off a flight because of the shirt he was wearing but, in contrast to most of the cases involving women, it wasn't because his shirt revealed too much skin but because of the picture and text that were on the shirt, itself.)

This phenomenon - which, so far as I can tell, amounts to institutionalized slut-shaming - is not confined to airlines.  neaToday ran a story back in 2018 (When School Dress Codes Discriminate) that explains how "Student dress codes continue to unfairly target girls and students of color."  It begins:

While a dress code is supposed to make the school environment more conducive to learning, it frequently does the opposite.  In the past year, schools all over the country made national news for the ways they enforce their dress code - asking a student to put duct tape over the holes in her jeans, suspending a student for a skirt that was too short, or sending a student to the office for not wearing a bra - all of which take the focus off learning and place it on girls' bodies.

This article cites one high school, in Massachusetts, in which six out of the nine regulations in its dress code "targeted female students."  A crucial element of such dress codes is that they are based on the archaic view that girls' and women's bodies are so innately sexually arousing that boys and men - utterly powerless to resist such temptation - cannot but be distracted by them.  Accordingly,  the onus to cover up for the benefit of boys and men is placed on girls and women.  As one fourth-grade teacher quoted in the article characterized it, "A boy's education can be compromised by your gender.  Please do what you can to neutralize it." At the same time, such dress codes, according to one of the co-authors of a study issued by the National Women's Law Center in 2018, send the message that "What a girl looks like is more important than what she learns and thinks."   (As noted, this article also describes how school dress codes unfairly penalize and discriminate against Black students and, especially, Black female students.)  

Although my own childhood experience with dress codes differs in important ways from that of middle- and high school girls nowadays, a part of me is still hostile to dress codes because I remain deeply resentful of having been forced to wear what was basically office attire (minus the sports jacket) from the first through the sixth grade.  Back in the 1960s (when I was in elementary school) boys had to wear ties (yes, even in the first grade) and girls had to wear skirts or dresses.  Sneakers, except on gym days, were verboten.  Any infraction would get one sent home or to the principal's office.  This happened to me once when one of my teachers capriciously (since this is what I wore every day) decided that my bolo tie didn't count as a real tie.  Everything that was required by the dress code was, it goes without saying, physically uncomfortable for a young child but beyond this was the complete deprivation of one's self-expression and the negation of one's individuality.  Looking back on my elementary school experiences, it has always seemed to me that the effects of compulsory schooling, if not its explicit purpose, were to enforce social conformity, to suppress individuality, to stifle creativity, to discourage independent thinking, and, of course, to reinforce gender (hence the buttoned up shirts and ties for the boys, the skirts and dresses for the girls). 

What about dress codes for employees?  The dress code at the hospital where I work prohibits bluejeans; this seems perfectly reasonable to me yet it also seems perfectly illogical since denim of any other color is permitted.  What is it about the color indigo that makes bluejeans inappropriate for the office or in a hospital?  It can't be the color because indigo khakis are perfectly okay.  Rather, it seems to be the particular combination of denim and indigo that makes bluejeans unacceptable.  Obviously, this is an example of the power of the cultural meaning that clothing - especially certain articles of clothing - acquires.  Except in certain jobs, jeans (by which most people automatically assume I am speaking about bluejeans, which tends to prove my point) are considered the unofficial uniform of leisure, or downtime.  They are what one wears on weekends.  My ability to perform my job would not be adversely affected one iota if I were to perform it in jeans and yet, if I sought medical care from a healthcare professional, I would be bothered and feel even a little insulted if she walked into the exam room in jeans.  It is unquestionably a social construct - as propriety always is - but that does not make it any less the case that wearing jeans in this context telegraphs a lack of professionalism.  (The first hospital I worked in, NYU Medical Center, prohibited, of all things, ankle socks.  In regard to this the physical therapists in my department used to quip, "nothing says 'unprofessional' like exposed malleoli!")

What about clothing that may be offensive by its very nature because of its cultural meaning?  No one can pretend that a white robe and hood, because of their well-documented history, do not constitute hate speech in and of themselves.  But what about hijabs and abayas?  Are these intrinsically offensive or disruptive in Western contexts?  In 2023, France banned these in public schools on, ostensibly, liberal-secularist grounds.  But the ban has been criticized as Islamaphobic and even mysogynistic.  At the same time, the obligation of women to cover up in in certain Islamic countries, such as Afghanistan, has itself been criticized as a human rights violation and as a manifestation of the oppression of women.  Writing in 2009, Mona Eltahawy argued for a ban on the burqa:

I am a Muslim, I am a feminist and I detest the full-body veil, known as a niqab or burqa.  It erases women from society and has nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it.

We must not sacrifice women at the alter of political correctness in the name of fighting a growingly powerful right wing that Muslims face in countries where they live as a minority.

As disagreeable as I often find French President Nicolas Sarkozy, he was right when he said recently, "The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women.  I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory."  It should not be welcome anywhere, I would add.

I don't mean to wander too far afield - the topic here is dress codes and, more particularly, the dress codes that airline passengers are required to abide by.  But I raise the examples of white robes and hoods and burqas not necessarily to compare them but to point out that it's not just possible but perfectly reasonable for a person to be deeply offended by one or both of them.  And if the regulation in an airline's Contract of Carriage states that a passenger may be removed from a flight, as Delta's does, "when the passenger's . . . attire . . . creates an unreasonable risk of offense . . . to other passengers," what then?  Ejecting a white-robed and -hooded Klansman from an airplane (preferably, after it has taken off) would seem to be a no-brainer.  But what about a Burqa-wearing Muslim woman?  And how, in this case, would Delta reconcile its policy of not allowing a passenger to cause other passengers offense with its other policy in which it promises not to refuse to provide transportation to any passenger on the basis of, among other things, religion and sex?

Patently offensive symbols or articles of clothing, in some sense, represent less of a grey area.  One would hope that there is, at least for now, still a broad consensus that a swastika displayed on an article of a passenger's clothing is sufficient grounds for removing that passenger from a flight.  But what about a confederate flag appliqué?  What about a MAGA hat?

If dress codes are intrinsically problematic and contradictory - as I believe they are - so, too, are my own feelings about them, as I have already acknowledged.  I will use a dining experience I had at the local Olive Garden several years as a concluding illustration of how and why.  

 

Binghamton, where I live, is a small Rust-Belt metropolis (and the hometown of Rod Serling).  This area is surrounded by farms and countryside but it is also home to one of the nation's premier public universities (Binghamton University) and a number of tech companies.  Within the greater metropolitan area of Binghamton (in the village of Endicott, to be exact) the original campus of IBM stood (and still stands, although IBM has since pulled up stakes, leaving a toxic plume in its wake).  With cultural and economic diversity like this, one sees all types here in all manner of dress: from hardcore rednecks in hunting camo to BU students in crop tops.  Once, when my wife and I were out to dinner, a very slovenly looking man was dining one or two tables away. He was probably about 225 pounds, very hairy, and wearing a very loose-cut tank top, by which I mean to say that the openings for his arms (where the sleeves would have been) descended halfway down his rib cage displaying copious amounts of pimpled skin folds and body hair.  Every time he brought his fork up to his mouth, his axillary hair came prominently into view.  It was a decidedly unappetizing spectacle.  Besides being physically repulsed, I was indignant that there was not a dress code requiring this patron to cover up or, if there were, that it had not been enforced.  

 

As I have examined my reaction to this diner over the years, however, I have had to confront my own inconsistency and subjectivity insofar as dress codes are concerned.  It is these two things - inconsistency and subjectivity - that are the problem at the heart of dress codes.  What if the diner had been not the man whom I have just described but, instead, an attractive, svelte young woman?  Would I have been offended, let alone appalled and disgusted, if someone fitting this description were seated directly in my line of sight wearing a loose-cut tank top?  If the man should be prohibited from wearing a tank top, shouldn't she?  Should we have different dress codes for men and women?  For overweight people and thin people?  For elderly people and young people?  For hairy people and hairless people?  If we insist that the man should cover up, are we fat-shaming him?  If we insist that the young woman should cover up, are we slut-shaming her?  Is having to look at men dining in tank tops the price we have to pay for not slut-shaming young women?  Is slut-shaming young women the price we have to pay for not having to look at men dining in tank tops?  Alternatively, how can one justify, with a straight face, having different dress codes for different types of people depending on what they look like?

 

The only equitable solution to all this is a either a uniform standard for dress codes - on planes, in schools, in restaurants - or no standards at all.  And if there is a standard, whose?  A uniform standard entails drawing the line somewhere.  But where?  Someone, some category, some class, some culturally-significant article of clothing is going to fall outside of that line.  Is it even possible to draw a line anywhere now without offending someone?  For that matter, when has it ever been possible to rub elbows with the rest of humanity, in all its multifariousness, without being offended?

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About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York.  I am a licensed physical therapist and I write about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics.  I currently serve on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.