Poison Pens 8: the art of confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is, speaking simply, the psychological process where you seek out things that agree with your opinion and dismiss those which do not.

It's most commonly acknowledged among market traders, who seek to be ever alert to the prospect that they could be wrong, and try to remain open to contradicting views. The reason they do this is because if they didn't, they'd quickly lose a lot of money.

But for most of us, confirmation bias isn't something we worry about. We like our own opinions, and we like those who share them, mostly. Sure, we might like people who disagree with us too. But being around them all the time would eventually become... disagreeable. So we don't.

Confirmation bias is one of the things that makes people interact with the media they choose. It's a long-standing canard that tabloid readers buy the redtops in order to confirm their own neanderthal point of view on the world.

In fact, it's much more likely that the very people levelling this argument, smug broadsheet readers, are themselves the biggest victims of confirmation bias.

Tabloid readers are very aware that the world consists of more than X Factor, celeb affairs and premiership football. They read them like some women read Hello! or Elle - for the escapism away from the humdrum reality.

Broadsheet readers, however, do not have the same level of disconnect with their chosen media. Let's take, as an example, the following piece from today's Observer, entitled 'US shaken by sudden surge of violence against gays.'

According to the title, there is a surge of anti-gay violence sweeping across America, which is a shocking prospect, not least to the gay-friendly readers of the Observer.

Yet, the evidence doesn't remotely support that. Within the article, the entire evidence offered consists of one suicide (well-reported, and subject to legal action towards alleged bullies), one quite vicious beating of a gay man and some vaguely euphemised 'other youths' in New York, a group of men who had a bin thrown at them, and a customer of the Stonewall Inn who was robbed.

I don't wish to diminish the seriousness of any of those individual acts, but frankly, all of that and much worse likely happened in any single Dublin housing estate last night. It doesn't add up to anything close to a surge of violence against gays in a country of 300 million people.

The article opens with the poignant scene of one brave man's 'lonely vigil' protesting for civil rights for gay people. Then swiftly moves on to inform us that, like him, 'Liberal America looks on aghast as virulent homophobic prejudice seems to have returned to its streets and cities.'

'Seems' is the key word here, the mealymouthed weasel word which excuses the writer from offering objective fact and allows him to present biased opinion in its place. It's a technique pioneered and perfected by the dark minions of the Daily Mail, where insinuating invective has been house style for many years.

'Seems', 'may be considered to be', 'is now thought by many' - such phrases are bullshit euphemisms. They are shorthand, telling the reader - here is what you should conclude, here is what you should be thinking.

Ironically, the very people who would be impervious to this technique in the Daily Mail are suckers for it in their own favoured papers, like the Observer.

This is confirmation bias in action.

The issue isn't whether there is a tidal wave of anti-gay violence in America or not. Clearly there isn't, and even the article is forced to concede in a single hurried line that the US is set to overturn the ban on gays in the military and Florida has just introduced gay adoption.

The issue is that the Observer, for some reason, has thought it legitimate to pretend that there is, using all the Daily Mail's rhetorical tropes of insinuation to depict skewed opinion in place of objective fact, when those facts do not add up to support their argument.

Journalism is becoming ever more debased, and nowhere is this more evident than in the broadsheets. Don't let confirmation bias blind you to that.

Lesbians versus Lesbians

Well, it looks like the Lesbians have lost the right to exclusively use the term Lesbian.

Lesbians from Lesbos took a case to court in Athens demanding that a Greek gay representative organisation stop referring to the female homosexuals they represent as Lesbian.

Apparently, the inhabitants of the island of Lesbos are in general a bit miffed at how the name of their island, which is as stolidly hetero as the rest of the Greek isles, has been nicked by gay women.

This led to the immortal line uttered by one (male) witness during the case:

"My daughter is a Lesbian, my wife is a Lesbian and I'm a Lesbian too."

It's a little difficult to overturn the common usage of a century, and I'm inclined to look at this court case as a Canute-type attempt to hold back a tide.

At the same time, I do have sympathy for the inhabitants of the isle of Lesbos. The only reason that their name has been co-opted by gay women is because 2,500 years ago, one bisexual lassie who lived there once wrote some smutty verses about lady-loving.

And her name, rather than the name of the entire island, could perhaps more appropriately be used as a descriptor for gay women. And anyway, isn't the term 'Sapphic' so much more, um, poetic than 'Lesbian'?

Of course, 'Sapphic' has been around a long time, and never really caught on. So perhaps a whole new term could be introduced to replace Lesbian and give the poor people of Lesbos their name back.

It would also be a very magnanimous gesture from the Sisterhood to offer to give back the word. Not to mention a rare opportunity to redefine themselves.

A few options come to mind:

Galwegians might work. After all, Ireland's notoriously bohemian West Coast town is so laid back they certainly wouldn't mind sharing their name with the lady-lovers.

Or perhaps Irises. In honour of that gay friendly pillar of tolerance up in Belfast, Mrs Robinson.

Any other suggestions?

Pervert Poet

Pervert poet Cathal O'Searcaigh has apologised for sexually exploiting young boys in Nepal.

Only he hasn't.

What he actually did was apologise 'if his gay lifestyle and relationships had offended anyone.'

Now, the Rape Crisis Centre isn't buying that for a minute. They are rightly still highly concerned about a middle-aged self-styled bohemian who flies to third world countries and plies teens with large amounts of money, first for their sexual favours and secondly in an attempt to buy their silence.

And Colm O'Gorman, spokesman for the One In Four organisation which represents victims of clerical abuse in this country, isn't buying it either. He spoke out strongly this week about how these Nepali boys were exploited and how O'Searcaigh has a case to answer.

What I'm looking forward to, in this week that the gay lobby started officially demanding the right to use the term marriage, is for that self-same lobby to come out in protest at O'Searcaigh defining his abuse of third world boys as a 'gay lifestyle.'

After all, we have heard them condemn from the rooftops for decades any suggestion that homosexuality and sexual exploitation of children are fellow travellers. Paedophiles are paedophiles, whether they prey on girls or boys, we have been told. Homosexuality is nothing to do with it, and men who prey on boys are paedophiles and not gay.

Fair enough. Will the gay lobby in Ireland now take a minute out from their campaign to commandeer the title of a religious sacrament to dignify their own unions, which in any case already have been granted equal rights as heterosexual marriages in Irish law, and condemn this pervert poet?

Let me be clear. I believe in equal rights for all citizens. I firmly support equality under Irish law for gay couples and always have done. However, I see no need for them to be so provocative as to demand a title that has for centuries been reserved for a heterosexual union performed under religious auspices which they do not accept. Civil unions offer equality under Irish law to both religious heterosexual marriages and civil heterosexual unions. Anything else is beyond equality and simply provocation of Irish religious conservatives.

I look forward to seeing some consistency from the gay lobby this time, but I won't hold my breath. The likelihood of them continuing to stand by their former favourite son is as high as the mountains in Nepal amid which pervert poet O'Searcaigh spent his time abusing third world teens.

But if we are to accept, and I do, that paedophiles are paedophiles and not homosexuals when they abuse young boys, then O'Searcaigh is a paedophile and not simply enjoying a 'gay lifestyle.' Does the Irish gay lobby agree?

You are now entering Gay Derry

The past two Friday nights, I've ended up in a gay bar. Fair play to my same-sexed compadres, they do know how to throw a party and keep a bar open a reasonable length of time.

I'm not gay myself, and I have some reservations about the wisdom of attributing the term 'marriage' to a gay union. I'm also not convinced about the necessity for gay people to adopt kids. But these aren't major issues for me. I've got gay friends and we tend to talk about other things.

Mind you, the North of Ireland has rarely been a friendly place for homosexuals, so it is to be welcomed (even if it is hideously garish, dahlings) that 'Free Derry Corner' has been painted pink in support of gay pride week.




Of course, openness to the gay community has not always been the hallmark of all of the North's main political traditions. Who can forget Ian Paisley's campaign over gay rights in the Seventies? (Clue: he wasn't in favour.) Or more recently, his son's expression of personal disgust at gay people?

So it was perhaps not surprising that two posters on Politics.ie decided to imagine what a gay eye for another notorious Northern Irish mural might result in!



St333ve goes for the subtle pastel look above, while Lenster Hauser prefers a more edgy and contemporary vision below!

Supreme Court ruling today

Lost among all the important events of the day, like the Sopranos finale, was an interesting ruling from the Supreme Court.

The birth mother of an infant was permitted the right to continue to appeal for guardianship and joint custody of her fourteen month old child, which the father wishes to remove to Australia for at least a year.

The father, who is in a gay relationship, had sought to take the child to the ends of the earth with his gay lover, but the Supreme Court has ruled in a majority 2-1 decision that he must at least wait until the mother's court appeals to have the rights to see and know her own child have been heard.

Ridiculous? Of course it is. No mother would ever be treated like that in Ireland. It never happened. Only it did, sort of. Swap the genders around and you have the real story.

What I find bizarre is that the father, as this RTE report reveals, has had to go all the way to the Supreme Court just to be permitted the right to ASK for rights to know his own child, before the child's mother and her lesbian lover whisk the infant off to Australia.

One day, perhaps, we might eventually see some equity in parenting in this country. But that dissenting judge's opinion in the Supreme Court today indicates that it won't be any day soon.

Fruit and nut case

Thanks to the Great Wee Azoo, I've become aware that former DUP posterboy and afficionado of hot and steamy rubdowns, Paul Berry chose to vote AGAINST the new sexual orientation regulations in Stormont the other day.

For those who had hoped to put this incident behind them, let me remind you about Mr Berry.

As a card carrying member of the DUP, and a married man to boot, Berry's cherubic good looks and gospel singing career destined him for Willie McCrea type heights within the howling mad fundamentalist wing of Unionism.

However, it all came to grief when a Sunday paper set him up in a sting operation. Berry met up with a man he had encountered online in a gay chatroom at a prominent Belfast hotel, and asked, before they got down and dirty, that now legendary Ulster chat-up line: "I hope you're a Prod, big man?"

He is alleged to have then carried out a sex act with the man, an incident he vehemently denies.

The DUP swiftly carpetted the young turk, and eventually his protestations of innocence fell silent and he accepted being booted severely out of Big Ian's 'No to Sodomy' Party, after he had tried to sue them to stay.

His defence, which has no doubt launched a whole new wave of euphemistic usage?

"I was looking for a sports massage."

He is not believed to have sought to sue the newspaper that stung him, presumably because having lost one court case, he doesn't fancy another. He does, apparently, still claim not to be gay.

Which is, after all, an issue best left for him and his wife Lorna to sort out among themselves. There's no news on his sports injury, though.

However, the vote in the temporary Assembly this week was tied at 39 votes each, and Berry's was one of the 39 block vote (all UUP and DUP, bar him) against the regulations, which are designed to protect sexual minorities from the undoubted harrassment they receive in the North of Ireland.

My question: if you were gospel singing, former DUP member Paul Berry's psychiatrist, where would you even begin?

And if you were a gay or lesbian member of the Unionist community, what would you like to say to Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, who kicked off the debate by saying:

"Let me be clear from the outset that the motion is not about homophobia or gay bashing, as some have accused it of being. It is about something far more important — religious freedom in this country."

Because, you know, Northern Ireland has a wonderful history of religious freedom being respected by all to cherish, and of course there is no such thing as gay bashing in Ulster.