Head in the clouds

re: "Hijab not oppressive" (BP, PostBag, December 27, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Kuldeep Nagi, there is a very simple test of whether some piece of head wear is oppressive or not. Is its use required and subject to forced shows of respect? Women wearing expensive haute couture hats or comfy caps from a local street stall can ditch them if they wish in the manner of their choosing.

Can women wearing it who tire of the hijab toss it onto a convenient bonfire if they so wish and suffer no unpleasant consequences, legal or social, as a result? Can Muslim women in, for example, France, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, decide that they don't want to wear a hijab today and go shopping without it? If and only if the answers are all "Yes" is the hijab not oppressive. Otherwise, it is one more bit of faith-based oppression that morally decent people will throw onto a convenient bonfire of superstitions past their use by date.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 31, 2021, under the title "Head in the clouds" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2240171/dreaming-of-2022
  

re: "Do We Have the Supreme Court We Deserve?"

re: "Do We Have the Supreme Court We Deserve?" (The New York Times, December 30, 2021)

 
Should the current US Supreme Court, contrived for exactly that purpose, slaughter Roe v. Wade, the outcome might well prove positive. It will force those who recognize that women are human persons with rights in need of protection to seek more solid legal protections for those rights.

An end to Roe v. Wade at the brutal hands of the religiously inspired unreason that founds Texas's S.B.8 and that is apparent in the equally faith-based unreason of Mississippi's restrictive abortion law might prompt a healthy debate about what it means to be a human being, which every foetus is, and what it means to be a human person, which no foetus ever is.

Better still, it might push those who respect the rights of women, who are actual human persons, to work to elect politicians who will pass laws to protect those rights from attack by thinly disguised religious bigotry.
 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/30/opinion/supreme-court-republican.html#commentsContainer&permid=116126133:116126133

  

'One-child' policy

re: "Top of the class" (BP, December 22, 2021)

 
Dear editor,
Save her excessive gentleness extended to morally antiquated reasoning that would defend slavery on the grounds that it was a traditional part of society for many generations, Melalin Mahavongtrakul's comments in "Top of the class" are all well said.

And from that officially stated reasoning for denying same-sex couples an equal right to marriage, it would seem to follow with logical rigour that in order to prove both ability and a serious commitment to the stipulated procreation requirement, mixed-sex couples wishing to do so should first be required to have had at least one child before being allowed to legally register their marriage. No?

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 25, 2021, under the title "'One-child' policy" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2237535/covid-fatigue
  

Equal rights

re: "'High heels mob' wants wage relief from state" (BP, December 23, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

It is encouraging to see another group of informed Thai citizens peacefully protesting for justice. Thailand's famous sex workers are yet another group who suffer the real harm that comes from bad policy leading to unjust law at the behest of hypocritical social values.

The men with power and money want to buy sex cheap by exploiting the poor, but at the same time want to pretend to be against such behaviour. That dishonest pretence of bowing before a morally rotten social tyranny (as the great John Stuart Mill put it) leads to the very real evil of actual harm being inflicted on many - all those who work honestly in Thailand's traditional sex industry serving the hypocrites in suits, uniforms, and other gaudy get up.

Their work should be legal and respected as any other labour freely chosen, from lawyering and cooking to engineering and teaching. They should be paying taxes. And in hard times, they deserve the same assistance from the state as any other group of Thai citizens.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 24, 2021, under the title "Equal rights" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2237091/equal-rights
  

No bad words here

re: "Vulgarity won't win" (BP, PostBag, December 17, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Overlooking his deep historical ignorance of 2,500 years of the rich speech that has often characterized the democratic process in the agora and beyond, and his gross misunderstanding of it when he falsely claims that "vulgarities are not acceptable when you are calling for democracy and equality in society," can Vint Chavala be serious when he writes that "Vulgarities and obscenities are foreign-induced traits that will only bring about negative responses from the Thai public"?

Can Mr Chavala really believe that the Thai people were so traditionally immaculate that prior to learning natural human characteristics such as a delight in rich language, they did not use the vulgarities and obscenities that every other human culture has revelled in as part of its daily linguistic heritage? Can it be that the curse words I've learned in Thai are all foreign imports or were created after Thais learned to have a full-bodied language from foreigners? I'm no scholar of Thai, but that claim seems literally incredible.

Are Thais truly angels incarnate, as pure as the driven gods and stainless beyond natural humanity? Or might it just be that Thais are not really the inhuman prudes that Mr Chavala would paint them as?

As to what the feelings of the unknown silent majority might be, perhaps they should each be allowed an equal right to a voice to let their ideas be heard, however earthily contrary to immaculate myth?

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 19, 2021, under the title "No bad words here" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2234231/ev-challenges
  

Sticks and stones

re: "Nobel winner Ressa decries 'toxic sludge' of social media" (BP, December 10, 2021) 

 
Dear editor,

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa of the Philippines is correct that much, but certainly not all, of Facebook and like social media are "toxic sludge" that spreads lies, hate, and the like. But it also connects people, and can spread truth, concern and community. But that one-sidedness is Ms Ressa's small mistake in the exuberance of her rhetoric.

Far more serious is her attack on democratic principle under the guise of opposing violence. It sounds cool to boldly assert that "Online violence is real world violence.” But calling someone whatever vile name online, or in a newspaper, or on the phone, or over the back fence with your neighbour, or on the schoolyard playground, is not in fact "real world violence." It might be disgusting, base and a lie, but it's not remotely in the same league as breaking someone's arms, chopping an outspoken critic into pieces in a convenient embassy, or locking a young protestor up in prison for years on end. The latter are real world acts of violence. Name calling is not violence. Even deliberate, outright lying is not actual violence.

Worse, the hyperbole that falsely equates anything fake or vile said on social media with actual real world violence plays immediately into the schemes of dictators and  authoritarian populists, who delightedly take it up. Claiming the same enlightenment that Ms Ressa is propagating, the real bullies in power argue that free speech must, therefore, be restricted because it is an act of violence. That way lies laws that ban any and all speech deemed offensive to dictators, military thugs, and authoritarian populists of all stripes, from China's Xi Jinping to Thailand's Prayut Chan-o-cha, from Russia's Vladimir Putin to Hungary's Viktor Orban. Such enemies of democracy argue, like Ms Ressa, that speech in favour of, for example same-sex rights or women's rights or land rights, or institutional reform for accountability and so on, are acts of "violence" against their nation's people, whose traditions such speech would smash. And being "violence," the law must naturally criminalize it to protect the nation and its people from the threat of violent overthrow by such speech on social media, traditional media, or any public speech deemed a threat.

The Nobel Peace Prize recipient has proved her courage in the face of real world violence and certainly means well, but is nonetheless wrong. Speech that incites real world violence is about the limit of what may justly be banned by law. In equating a much wider range of merely vile, offensive, hateful, false or otherwise repugnant speech acts with actual real world violence, it is a dangerous weapon Ms Ressa would hand such enemies of human rights and democracy as the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte, one they will be only too happy to take up from her hands and use to justify very real violence against their people.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 18, 2021, under the title "Sticks and stones" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2233943/who-blinks-first-
  

Critical questioning

re: "Anchilee did more than break old stereotypes" (BP, December 14, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Thank you Atiya Achakulwisut for the reminder that merely being a traditional belief or standard can never make any habit, custom, attitude, or law reasonable, fit for society, or just. What older generations might have accepted without question for no better reason than that they did not in fact question its propriety should not reign absent reason and good morals over the living generation who can critically question the received wisdom of past ages, as the Buddha in his Kalama Sutta so wisely counsels.

Compare with the once venerated tradition of slavery. In antebellum America, the strongest defence for retaining the traditional custom of slavery and the associated attitudes and laws of society was to protect society as it then was. As the zealous pro-slavery loyalist John C. Calhoun very clearly stated it in his 1837 speech “Slavery as a Positive Good,” whose title says it all: slavery was a long established tradition "grown up with our society and institutions and is so interwoven with them that to destroy it would be to destroy us as a people.” And ultra-loyalist to the old ways that he was, Calhoun insisted with equal fervour that slavery was so far from being any evil to them as to be an absolute benevolence to the enslaved, who thereby received all the sufficiency of benefits forced upon them by their masters.

And in Thailand in 2021, the slavery-loyalist Calhoun's is exactly the same argument used to justify continuing the rule of inequality, prejudice and injustice over the LGBTQ portion of the Thai people. It is also exactly the same argument, an appeal to unspeakable tradition, unquestioned habits, and morally dubious values that are merely traditional that is used to justify similar injustice being protected by law from reform.

John C. Calhoun would be proud to see his arguments in defence of the traditional institution of slavery, so essential to the stability of the realm, being brought out to support the equally bigotted attacks on the LGBTQ and other portions of the Thai people who would free themselves and their nation from ancient shackles. Fortunately, Thailand has bright, informed, critically capable, and morally aware young citizens like Anchilee Scott-Kemmis to counter the ultra-conservative Calhouns of Thailand with their critically defective arguments in support of the morally indefensible.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 15, 2021, under the title "Critical questioning" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2232095/critical-questioning
  

re: "How Do You Tell the World That Doomsday Has Arrived?"

re: "How Do You Tell the World That Doomsday Has Arrived?" (The New York Times, December 9, 2021)

 
Who needs puny human science?

Prayer will save us. Have the gods ever done the dirty on their human play things? Have they ever let plagues ravage humanity? Tsunamis wash us potently away?

And if faith-based prayer doesn't do the trick, sacrifice more women on the alter of unreason that the anti-abortionists have raised to honour their chief deity. The gods love that - their sacred works promise it is so.
 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/science/dont-look-up-movie.html#commentsContainer&permid=115853344:115853344

re: "The Ghosts of Mississippi"

re: "The Ghosts of Mississippi" (The New York Times, December 7, 2021)

 You have to wonder what went wrong with the upbringing of some people that they can seriously think Black women and men are inferior to the white folk, or that they reject the obvious reality that being a person is what matters morally not only in the abortion debate but also in the controversies over sexism and racism.

Pointing out that "It's a human being," whilst true, is as relevant to the debate about abortion as arguing against women's rights that "They're women!" - no argument at all. It is as morally sound as arguing for segregation by repeating the mantra that "They're Black!" - perfectly true and absolutely irrelevant to a person's rights and treatment under just law.

Every argument against abortion is on a par with  the arguments against women's and Black rights that they are women or Black.

Yes. Every foetus is a human being. And that is irrelevant to being a person that can have rights.
 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/opinion/abortion-mississippi-constitutional-rights.html#commentsContainer&permid=115783916:115783916

  

See the real problem

re: "Protesters call for lower cost of living" (BP, December 1, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Whilst their specific suggestions by the network of labour groups and activists protesting in front of Government House to reduce the cost of living are not unreasonable, the protestors should perhaps address the deeper problem, which is not that the cost of living is rising according to free market laws. The underlying problem is the grossly unjust distribution of the wealth of the Thai nation, which is considerable.

When 1% own 67% of the nation's wealth (Credit Suisse, 2018), something is seriously amiss. But of course, gross inequality that cannot plausibly be a result of just process is precisely the sort of thing that Thai law against free speech exists to prevent discussion of, lest the cumulative injustices of many, many decades come to public understanding. It would not suit the 1% to allow transparency, openness or accountability to mess up the revered injustice of benevolent and righteous tradition manifested in a proper inequality of wealth distribution that respectfully reflects the Thai reality that the better class of people are vastly more equal than the struggling masses whose work has created Thailand's national wealth.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 3, 2021, under the title "See the real problem" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2225967/see-the-real-problem