Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves
At Obsidian Wings.
Labels: fanfic theory, feminism, obiwi, porn, surveyfail
posted by Doctor Science at
6:48 PM
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0 comments
Friday, May 27, 2011
Monday, June 15, 2009
Pro-Life and Seeing Women
(not). Daniel Larison, who is extremely sensible for a conservative but is still Conservative, wrote his thoughts on Tiller. I commented:
jake has IMHO nailed it:
I must say it’s enraging to see Scott, Richard, and Daniel discussing abortion as though their opinions must be Serious and Important, even though none of them has any skin in the game. And it’s doubly enraging to see posts like Daniel’s that do not even mention the word “women”, as though we’re invisible and inaudible even when the battlefield is our own bodies.
Until you *act* as though women are autonomous actors in our own lives, it would be foolish of me to assume that’s what you believe. You may even tell youself you fully respect me as a human being with my own agency, but when you discuss what barriers to place between me and my doctor *without even mentioning my existence* your actions — that is, your words — show that I am not solid and real in your eyes.
jake has IMHO nailed it:
For whatever reason, many anti-abortionists believe the woman shouldn’t be held responsible for her actions. I think it is the same kind of thinking that underlies the resistance to abortion - the subject is defenseless, at the mercy of more powerful beings, and because we have an obligation to protect and defend the weak, we also don’t hold the weak (fully) responsible for their bad actions. In essence, a woman is a permanent ward of her family, and not an autonomous actor in her life.In other words, the central question is *not*, despite the framing, “Is a fetus a human being?” but “Is a woman a human being to the fullest extent of the law?” You don’t get to say “of course! no-one ever doubted it!” when the historical truth is that it has *often* been doubted, at great length.
I must say it’s enraging to see Scott, Richard, and Daniel discussing abortion as though their opinions must be Serious and Important, even though none of them has any skin in the game. And it’s doubly enraging to see posts like Daniel’s that do not even mention the word “women”, as though we’re invisible and inaudible even when the battlefield is our own bodies.
Until you *act* as though women are autonomous actors in our own lives, it would be foolish of me to assume that’s what you believe. You may even tell youself you fully respect me as a human being with my own agency, but when you discuss what barriers to place between me and my doctor *without even mentioning my existence* your actions — that is, your words — show that I am not solid and real in your eyes.
Labels: abortion, blogcomment, eunomia, feminism, larison
posted by Doctor Science at
7:00 AM
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2 comments
Friday, June 12, 2009
Abortion and quickening
OMG, I spent too much time today in the continued discussion at Erin's post All or Nothing:
my latest:
a) so does a heart transplant
b) you're saying before there's a heartbeat it's OK, then?
When your billboard makes me think these things I'm not sure it was a successful slogan.
Let's see what sources I have to hand. In A Historical Summary of Abortion from Antiquity through Legalization (1973), Excerpted from A Christian View of Abortion By John W. Klotz (Concordia):
The issue was always killing, not a husband's rights, or else the act would not have been condemned had it been taken at the father's behest, which was not he case at all.Here I am relying more on my memory (it's been a long time since I read the primary sources, and the books I have to hand aren't the ones I need). In the 19thC, at least, doctors and clerics were very conflicted when husbands wanted their wives' pregnancies terminated when the wife did not. On the one hand, abortion (ew ew); on the other, undermining husbandly authority. I do not recall hearing about male authority figures advising wives to resist their husband's wishes on this issue, nor, frankly, does it seem plausible given the general emphasis on wifely submission and the extremely broad rights a husband had to his wife's body.
I do seem to recall that clerics (who tended to be more distant from the realities than doctors were) had a hard time believing that a husband truly *would* want his wife to abort -- and the situation where a wife wanted a child despite her personal danger[1] but the husband did *not* would not have been common.
The situation with unmarried couples was different, of course, and the rhetoric often stressed how aborting illegitimate pregnancy was covering up "the crime" -- the crime being illicit sex. In George Eliot's "Adam Bede", Hetty Sorrel is guilty of infanticide by abandonment, but her sentence of hanging is commuted to transportation (to Australia) when her well-born lover confesses. It's not clear how realistic this is, of course, and how much her life is spared because her boyfriend turns out to be the Squire's son. Within the novel, it's clear that Hetty's unwillingness to "name the father" is considered an aggravating circumstance.
Update #2 (multiple comments):
You don't do that when people's elderly parents die, do you, even though it is *possible* that euthanasia was involved?
My experience is that there *is* an investigation when an elderly person dies alone and unexpectedly. It's also my experience that the issue is far more likely to be suicide than euthanasia.
do you really think that when people hold strong to a moral principle, that means they are absolutely incapable of any nuance when it comes to law?
"All or nothing" is what it says.
Here's a primary source quote for you:
[quoted in "When Abortion Was a Crime", from Joseph Taber Johnson, "Abortion and its Effects," American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children 33 (January 1896): 86-97]
As for how reasonable people would be in practice, here's a Boston Globe article on the abortion ban in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Chile. In those countries, poor women may find it difficult or impossible to be treated in a timely way for ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage, due to doctors' fear of prosecution. As you probably know, a D&C is both a method of abortion and frequently necessary to treat miscarriage -- doctors in public hospitals in these countries will wait as long as possible before performing one, lest they be charged with murder.
At present, do people hold inquests for every death that occurs? I was unaware of this practice.
AFAIK all "unattended deaths" are investigated, yes. I don't think they all go to the legal level of a formal inquest, but they're definitely treated as police matters.
Another citation:
from Joseph F. Donceel, S.J., "Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization,"
Theological Studies, vols. 1 & 2 (New York: Columbia University Press,
1970), pp. 86-88; cited here.
Rebecca:
I don't get it. How would abortions continue without any problem? How would doctors go around performing surgical abortions for a living? Attempting to self-inflict abortion is dangerous and I doubt many women would go for it.
I'm going to assume that this an honest question, and that you were born after 1960 or so. I have a post in moderation with links, but briefly: there would be a network of discrete, well-paid doctors performing safe, expensive abortions for well-to-do women. *Lots* of women who couldn't afford such doctors would try all kinds of things to induce abortion, and many, many of them would die.
When pro-choice activists say "No More Coat Hangers!" they're talking about a historical reality.
I don't get it. How would abortions continue without any problem? How would doctors go around performing surgical abortions for a living? Attempting to self-inflict abortion is dangerous and I doubt many women would go for it.
I'm going to assume that this an honest question, and that you were born after 1960 or so. Alas, this comment will go to moderation, but I hope the links will be worth it.
Some doctors would still make a living performing abortions for well-to-do women, as is the case in most of Latin America (as reported in the Boston Globe article I linked to previously). When Barry Goldwater's daughter became pregnant out-of-wedlock in 1955, he arranged a safe, though illegal, abortion for her in New York. Networks of safe, expensive, discrete abortion doctors were *everywhere* in those days, with referrals through an intense network of word-of-mouth, mostly woman-to-woman, and ads using the words like "full gynecological services" and "complete privacy and discretion". Women would go out-of-town if they could -- a "spa weekend" to "restore one's health" was a *euphemism* in my youth. I don't know what this kind of service cost in today's dollars, but I'd guess that if a legal abortion costs $400 today, a safe illegal one one would cost $1000 or more, if you follow me.
As for women who couldn't afford a good doctor, yes they did take awful risks. Here's one doctor's report:
Hector:
I have the impression that Rebecca thinks making abortion illegal would eliminate almost all of them, and that's what I was addressing.
Yes, making it illegal would reduce the rate -- but it would also severely *increase* the death rate for women, and abortions that did occur would be at a later stage because the finances and logistics would be more difficult.
Another cite from "When Abortion Was a Crime": The year after abortion was legalized in New York State, the maternal-mortality rate there dropped by 45 percent.
Rebecca:
It's true that I never heard first-hand of anyone using a coat hanger. I did hear first-hand stories about crochet hooks. Is that scary enough for you? You've said that "I doubt many women would go for [self-inflicted abortion]", but the historical record and what's going on in Latin America proves that many *will*. Shocking, dangerous, horrifying -- yes, but it's a *fact*.
-------
[1] How many of your great or great-great-grandmothers died in childbirth? Of my four great-grandmothers (born in various countries between 1865 and 1880), half died in or shortly after childbirth.
my latest:
abortion stops a beating heartI've often wondered about this slogan -- I used to drive by a billboard displaying it. Two things went through my head every single time:
a) so does a heart transplant
b) you're saying before there's a heartbeat it's OK, then?
When your billboard makes me think these things I'm not sure it was a successful slogan.
Let's see what sources I have to hand. In A Historical Summary of Abortion from Antiquity through Legalization (1973), Excerpted from A Christian View of Abortion By John W. Klotz (Concordia):
One interesting and oft cited distinction made in the early church was that abortion in the early stages of a pregnancy was not considered wrong. The reason for this can be traced back to Aristotle who held that the soul entered the body of a male fetus at 40 days and the body of a female fetus at 80 days. He believed that at conception the individual received a vegetable soul which gradually was replaced with an animal soul and finally by a rational soul. It was only after the appearance of the rational soul that abortion was to be considered murder. Sixtus V issued a bull in 1588, Effraenatum, wiping out the 40- and 80-day rule and punishing all abortion as murder; the punishment was to be excommunication. Subsequently Gregory XIV returned to the 40- and 80-day rule. However in 1869 Pius IX returned to the sanctions of Sixtus V.Note that he says not just "not murder", but "not wrong". From The History of Birth Control, by Kathleen London:
The majority of women before the 19th century and many in the 19th century did not consider abortion a sin. Until the early part of the [19th] century, there were no laws against abortions done in the first few months of pregnancy [in the US]. Prior to the 19th century, Protestants and Catholics held abortion permissible until ‘quickening’—the moment the fetus was believed to gain life.
The issue was always killing, not a husband's rights, or else the act would not have been condemned had it been taken at the father's behest, which was not he case at all.Here I am relying more on my memory (it's been a long time since I read the primary sources, and the books I have to hand aren't the ones I need). In the 19thC, at least, doctors and clerics were very conflicted when husbands wanted their wives' pregnancies terminated when the wife did not. On the one hand, abortion (ew ew); on the other, undermining husbandly authority. I do not recall hearing about male authority figures advising wives to resist their husband's wishes on this issue, nor, frankly, does it seem plausible given the general emphasis on wifely submission and the extremely broad rights a husband had to his wife's body.
I do seem to recall that clerics (who tended to be more distant from the realities than doctors were) had a hard time believing that a husband truly *would* want his wife to abort -- and the situation where a wife wanted a child despite her personal danger[1] but the husband did *not* would not have been common.
The situation with unmarried couples was different, of course, and the rhetoric often stressed how aborting illegitimate pregnancy was covering up "the crime" -- the crime being illicit sex. In George Eliot's "Adam Bede", Hetty Sorrel is guilty of infanticide by abandonment, but her sentence of hanging is commuted to transportation (to Australia) when her well-born lover confesses. It's not clear how realistic this is, of course, and how much her life is spared because her boyfriend turns out to be the Squire's son. Within the novel, it's clear that Hetty's unwillingness to "name the father" is considered an aggravating circumstance.
Update #2 (multiple comments):
You don't do that when people's elderly parents die, do you, even though it is *possible* that euthanasia was involved?
My experience is that there *is* an investigation when an elderly person dies alone and unexpectedly. It's also my experience that the issue is far more likely to be suicide than euthanasia.
do you really think that when people hold strong to a moral principle, that means they are absolutely incapable of any nuance when it comes to law?
"All or nothing" is what it says.
Here's a primary source quote for you:
To the dismay of medical leaders, the public still believed that quickening marked the beginning of life. The practice of abortion persisted nationwide. "Many otherwise good and exemplary women," Dr. Joseph Taber Johnson reported in 1895, thought "that prior to quickening it is no more harm to cause the evacuation of the contents of their wombs than it is that of their bladders or their bowels."
[quoted in "When Abortion Was a Crime", from Joseph Taber Johnson, "Abortion and its Effects," American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children 33 (January 1896): 86-97]
As for how reasonable people would be in practice, here's a Boston Globe article on the abortion ban in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Chile. In those countries, poor women may find it difficult or impossible to be treated in a timely way for ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage, due to doctors' fear of prosecution. As you probably know, a D&C is both a method of abortion and frequently necessary to treat miscarriage -- doctors in public hospitals in these countries will wait as long as possible before performing one, lest they be charged with murder.
At present, do people hold inquests for every death that occurs? I was unaware of this practice.
AFAIK all "unattended deaths" are investigated, yes. I don't think they all go to the legal level of a formal inquest, but they're definitely treated as police matters.
Another citation:
While Aquinas had opposed abortion — as a form of
contraception and a sin against marriage — he had maintained that the
sin in abortion was not homicide unless the fetus was ensouled, and thus,
a human being. Aquinas had said the fetus is first endowed with a
vegetative soul, then an animal soul, and then — when its body is
developed — a rational soul. This theory of "delayed hominization" is
the most consistent thread throughout church history on abortion.
from Joseph F. Donceel, S.J., "Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization,"
Theological Studies, vols. 1 & 2 (New York: Columbia University Press,
1970), pp. 86-88; cited here.
Rebecca:
I don't get it. How would abortions continue without any problem? How would doctors go around performing surgical abortions for a living? Attempting to self-inflict abortion is dangerous and I doubt many women would go for it.
I'm going to assume that this an honest question, and that you were born after 1960 or so. I have a post in moderation with links, but briefly: there would be a network of discrete, well-paid doctors performing safe, expensive abortions for well-to-do women. *Lots* of women who couldn't afford such doctors would try all kinds of things to induce abortion, and many, many of them would die.
When pro-choice activists say "No More Coat Hangers!" they're talking about a historical reality.
I don't get it. How would abortions continue without any problem? How would doctors go around performing surgical abortions for a living? Attempting to self-inflict abortion is dangerous and I doubt many women would go for it.
I'm going to assume that this an honest question, and that you were born after 1960 or so. Alas, this comment will go to moderation, but I hope the links will be worth it.
Some doctors would still make a living performing abortions for well-to-do women, as is the case in most of Latin America (as reported in the Boston Globe article I linked to previously). When Barry Goldwater's daughter became pregnant out-of-wedlock in 1955, he arranged a safe, though illegal, abortion for her in New York. Networks of safe, expensive, discrete abortion doctors were *everywhere* in those days, with referrals through an intense network of word-of-mouth, mostly woman-to-woman, and ads using the words like "full gynecological services" and "complete privacy and discretion". Women would go out-of-town if they could -- a "spa weekend" to "restore one's health" was a *euphemism* in my youth. I don't know what this kind of service cost in today's dollars, but I'd guess that if a legal abortion costs $400 today, a safe illegal one one would cost $1000 or more, if you follow me.
As for women who couldn't afford a good doctor, yes they did take awful risks. Here's one doctor's report:
The first month of my internship [in 1962] was spent on Ward 41, the septic obstetrics ward. Yes, it's hard to believe now, but in those days, they had one ward dedicated exclusively to septic complications of pregnancy.Right now, complications from illegal abortions are a leading cause of death for women of child-bearing age in South America. In Peru alone, an estimated 50,000 women a year either die or suffer serious complications after an illegal abortion. More women in Ethiopia die from complications from illegal abortions than from any other medical reason save tuberculosis, the World Health Organization reports.
About 90% of the patients were there with complications of septic abortion. The ward had about 40 beds, in addition to extra beds which lined the halls. Each day we admitted between 10-30 septic abortion patients. We had about one death a month, usually from septic shock associated with hemorrhage.
Hector:
I have the impression that Rebecca thinks making abortion illegal would eliminate almost all of them, and that's what I was addressing.
Yes, making it illegal would reduce the rate -- but it would also severely *increase* the death rate for women, and abortions that did occur would be at a later stage because the finances and logistics would be more difficult.
Another cite from "When Abortion Was a Crime": The year after abortion was legalized in New York State, the maternal-mortality rate there dropped by 45 percent.
Rebecca:
It's true that I never heard first-hand of anyone using a coat hanger. I did hear first-hand stories about crochet hooks. Is that scary enough for you? You've said that "I doubt many women would go for [self-inflicted abortion]", but the historical record and what's going on in Latin America proves that many *will*. Shocking, dangerous, horrifying -- yes, but it's a *fact*.
-------
[1] How many of your great or great-great-grandmothers died in childbirth? Of my four great-grandmothers (born in various countries between 1865 and 1880), half died in or shortly after childbirth.
Labels: abortion, beliefnet, birth control, blogcomment, contraception, feminism, history
posted by Doctor Science at
5:33 PM
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0 comments
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
In which my last nerve is dissolving
Comments made at Obsidian Wings re the Tiller assassination.
At hilzoy's post on Terror Should Not Pay:
Why were the OB/Gyns who performed late-term procedures in Wichita, Boulder, and I think Florida, and not say in NYC or LA?
I'm guessing, here, but I'll bet there are in fact such doctors in the NY, DC, LA, SF, Seattle, and Chicago areas. The difference is, the doctors in those areas do not need to advertise their services -- they get as many patients as they can cope with in their respective metropolitan areas by local referrals.
myq: Thanks for the link, it's nice to see my guess was correct.
I made it in part based on a friend of mine who had a late-term, emergency ID&E in one of those major metropolitan areas about 5 years ago. I'm quite sure it saved the life of the other twin -- and indeed, ID&E aka "partial birth abortion" is frequently the best choice when one fraternal twin is dead or dying. But AFAIK the procedure is now banned *regardless*.
In my friend's case, I don't know if the one twin was absolutely certainly 100% dead when they began the procedure. But I am sure that if they'd have to flail around finding someone who knew what they were doing, both twins would have died.
I find it noteworthy that no restrictions on late abortion have a "life of the other twin" exception. Why, it's almost as though they're not really concerned about children's lives.
At hilzoy's post In which I disagree with Megan McArdle:
I'll say this for McArdle, at least she has some skin in the game. Over the course of the day I'm getting to the "Flames! on the side of my face!" point, having to hear/read/talk to *so many* people who have opinions about abortion but no skin. As echidne said after the final presidential debate:
"It is always extremely distasteful to watch two men discuss what should be done about abortion. Always, never mind what they say."
*Always*, guys.
stonetools:
I expect that for many here, Dr. Tiller was just a nice guy removing unwanted tissue from some women by performing perfectly legal operations.
I dare say you expect *wrong*. As cleek suggested, read some of the personal accounts Sully has posted today. Think about the friend I wrote about in the previous thread, who had a so-called "partial birth abortion" to save the life of one twin when the other was doomed.
Both medicine and motherhood sometimes involve hard choices, and they always have. The only question is whether women and doctors will make those choices *themselves* or not.
What WT said, not to mention that I have personally read discussions on pro-life fora about whether it's moral to abort an ectopic pregnancy. Their conclusion, BTW, was "no, but it's OK to take out the fallopian tube with the implanted embryo in it -- you may be destroying the woman's fertility, but you aren't *directly* killing anyone so that's OK".
At Sebastian's post, What conclusions should we draw?
In general, folks, I'm finding the use of sarcasm, irony, and rhetorical exaggeration in this discussion is a layer too far. I am having a lot of trouble deciphering what people are *actually* intending to convey. It seems that the widespread use of the phrase "the abortion Holocaust" has caused my sarcasm/irony detector to go offline, at least for the purpose of this discussion.
Specifically, Sebastian, I have no sense of whether you're rhetorically exaggerating or not when you parallel Tiller's murder and the recruiter's. I'd like it if you (or von, or whomever) addressed the points made by Jeff Eaton's not-at-all-rhetorical points.
Do you, Sebastian, truly think that Tiller's death was "a single murder"? Do you truly think that it was not incited? Do you truly believe that women and our doctors have not been made afraid -- terrorized, even -- by harrassment and violence directed at abortion clinics and birth control providers?
dana:
I don't think OR's rhetoric rises to the level of incitement
Why not? Is there something about the legal definition of "incitement" that you're relying on?
Even without Jeff Eaton's evidence, it seems perfectly obvious to me that OR (and O'Reilly, and probably others) have been trying to get someone to kill Dr. Tiller for *years*. Sarah Robinson has a good, simple round-up of the evidence at Orcinus.
Is anyone here truly surprised that Tiller was killed? Does anyone honestly believe that it was not assassination -- murder of a public figure for a political reason?
what a coincidence. no common thread at all.
clee-eek, that's what I'm talking about. Please try to restrain the sarcasm, it means that every sentence has to be re-parsed, which is more neuro-cycles than my current brain installation can afford.
Jeff:
As you say, a lot of the sarcasm is both a sign of very strong feelings and of a lack of respect for others. I have no problem with the former except when it leads to the latter.
Meanwhile:
Because of the high sarcasm concentrations in the air, I cannot tell if stonetools has changed hir mind about whether Roeder is a terrorist.
I also cannot tell if OCSteve is serious about equating rare protests at recruiting stations with the very common protests at abortion clinics. I also cannot tell if he seriously thinks recruiting-station protests actually frighten potential military recruits. The very fact that most abortion clinics need client escorts should tell him that yes, anti-choice protests are often frightening -- one might even say, terrorizing.
At hilzoy's post on Terror Should Not Pay:
Why were the OB/Gyns who performed late-term procedures in Wichita, Boulder, and I think Florida, and not say in NYC or LA?
I'm guessing, here, but I'll bet there are in fact such doctors in the NY, DC, LA, SF, Seattle, and Chicago areas. The difference is, the doctors in those areas do not need to advertise their services -- they get as many patients as they can cope with in their respective metropolitan areas by local referrals.
myq: Thanks for the link, it's nice to see my guess was correct.
I made it in part based on a friend of mine who had a late-term, emergency ID&E in one of those major metropolitan areas about 5 years ago. I'm quite sure it saved the life of the other twin -- and indeed, ID&E aka "partial birth abortion" is frequently the best choice when one fraternal twin is dead or dying. But AFAIK the procedure is now banned *regardless*.
In my friend's case, I don't know if the one twin was absolutely certainly 100% dead when they began the procedure. But I am sure that if they'd have to flail around finding someone who knew what they were doing, both twins would have died.
I find it noteworthy that no restrictions on late abortion have a "life of the other twin" exception. Why, it's almost as though they're not really concerned about children's lives.
At hilzoy's post In which I disagree with Megan McArdle:
I'll say this for McArdle, at least she has some skin in the game. Over the course of the day I'm getting to the "Flames! on the side of my face!" point, having to hear/read/talk to *so many* people who have opinions about abortion but no skin. As echidne said after the final presidential debate:
"It is always extremely distasteful to watch two men discuss what should be done about abortion. Always, never mind what they say."
*Always*, guys.
stonetools:
I expect that for many here, Dr. Tiller was just a nice guy removing unwanted tissue from some women by performing perfectly legal operations.
I dare say you expect *wrong*. As cleek suggested, read some of the personal accounts Sully has posted today. Think about the friend I wrote about in the previous thread, who had a so-called "partial birth abortion" to save the life of one twin when the other was doomed.
Both medicine and motherhood sometimes involve hard choices, and they always have. The only question is whether women and doctors will make those choices *themselves* or not.
What WT said, not to mention that I have personally read discussions on pro-life fora about whether it's moral to abort an ectopic pregnancy. Their conclusion, BTW, was "no, but it's OK to take out the fallopian tube with the implanted embryo in it -- you may be destroying the woman's fertility, but you aren't *directly* killing anyone so that's OK".
At Sebastian's post, What conclusions should we draw?
In general, folks, I'm finding the use of sarcasm, irony, and rhetorical exaggeration in this discussion is a layer too far. I am having a lot of trouble deciphering what people are *actually* intending to convey. It seems that the widespread use of the phrase "the abortion Holocaust" has caused my sarcasm/irony detector to go offline, at least for the purpose of this discussion.
Specifically, Sebastian, I have no sense of whether you're rhetorically exaggerating or not when you parallel Tiller's murder and the recruiter's. I'd like it if you (or von, or whomever) addressed the points made by Jeff Eaton's not-at-all-rhetorical points.
Do you, Sebastian, truly think that Tiller's death was "a single murder"? Do you truly think that it was not incited? Do you truly believe that women and our doctors have not been made afraid -- terrorized, even -- by harrassment and violence directed at abortion clinics and birth control providers?
dana:
I don't think OR's rhetoric rises to the level of incitement
Why not? Is there something about the legal definition of "incitement" that you're relying on?
Even without Jeff Eaton's evidence, it seems perfectly obvious to me that OR (and O'Reilly, and probably others) have been trying to get someone to kill Dr. Tiller for *years*. Sarah Robinson has a good, simple round-up of the evidence at Orcinus.
Is anyone here truly surprised that Tiller was killed? Does anyone honestly believe that it was not assassination -- murder of a public figure for a political reason?
what a coincidence. no common thread at all.
clee-eek, that's what I'm talking about. Please try to restrain the sarcasm, it means that every sentence has to be re-parsed, which is more neuro-cycles than my current brain installation can afford.
Jeff:
As you say, a lot of the sarcasm is both a sign of very strong feelings and of a lack of respect for others. I have no problem with the former except when it leads to the latter.
Meanwhile:
Because of the high sarcasm concentrations in the air, I cannot tell if stonetools has changed hir mind about whether Roeder is a terrorist.
I also cannot tell if OCSteve is serious about equating rare protests at recruiting stations with the very common protests at abortion clinics. I also cannot tell if he seriously thinks recruiting-station protests actually frighten potential military recruits. The very fact that most abortion clinics need client escorts should tell him that yes, anti-choice protests are often frightening -- one might even say, terrorizing.
Labels: abortion, blogcomment, feminism, obiwi, politics, simmering rage, terrorism
posted by Doctor Science at
9:12 PM
|
0 comments
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Domestic violence
Over the past week or so there's been an interesting and emotional series of posts in the political blogosphere about domestic violence, which I guess kicked off with :Linda Hirshman talking about Morgan steiner's book Crazy Love.
hilzoy:
Why do they stay? (April 10) Must-read.
Battered Women: The Sequel (april 13)
And another thing (April 15).
Ta-Nehesi Coates:
When You Love Someone Who Chokes You
Abuse and Responsibility (april 9). Must-read.
Battered Women and Responsibility, Pt. 2 (april 14)
Rambling, rambling, and more rambling (april 15)
On Last Note on Spousal Abuse (April 15)
-----------
I can't remember if I posted multiple times, but I've certainly read a lot -- these posts, and their *voluminous* comments. My comment on hilzoy's latest post, for the record:
It's not often that I disagree with Jes[urgislac] by being the *more* radical feminist one, but this time I do.
in any discussion of partner abuse, domestic violence, I agree it's probably better to attempt gender-neutral language - difficult though that is.
Abuse of women by male partners is objectively worse (=more likely to lead to murder, for instance) but also *different* from abuse of men. It is different because it has been -- historically, and in many cultures or subcultures still is -- endorsed. It is expected, it is normal, it is something (some proportion of) men feel entitled to do. They feel that way because other people back them up.
The problem of humans getting violent with their intimate partners is probably eternal. The super-problem here, the over-arching problem, is that one particular sort of violence is tolerated, endorsed, classified as "chastisement" or business as usual. IMHO treating female-on-male abuse as the equivalent of socially-endorsed male-on-female abuse is a way of directing attention away from the social factors, and in particular from the way that *we*, the rest of society, are complicit.
hilzoy:
Why do they stay? (April 10) Must-read.
Battered Women: The Sequel (april 13)
And another thing (April 15).
Ta-Nehesi Coates:
When You Love Someone Who Chokes You
Abuse and Responsibility (april 9). Must-read.
Battered Women and Responsibility, Pt. 2 (april 14)
Rambling, rambling, and more rambling (april 15)
On Last Note on Spousal Abuse (April 15)
-----------
I can't remember if I posted multiple times, but I've certainly read a lot -- these posts, and their *voluminous* comments. My comment on hilzoy's latest post, for the record:
It's not often that I disagree with Jes[urgislac] by being the *more* radical feminist one, but this time I do.
in any discussion of partner abuse, domestic violence, I agree it's probably better to attempt gender-neutral language - difficult though that is.
Abuse of women by male partners is objectively worse (=more likely to lead to murder, for instance) but also *different* from abuse of men. It is different because it has been -- historically, and in many cultures or subcultures still is -- endorsed. It is expected, it is normal, it is something (some proportion of) men feel entitled to do. They feel that way because other people back them up.
The problem of humans getting violent with their intimate partners is probably eternal. The super-problem here, the over-arching problem, is that one particular sort of violence is tolerated, endorsed, classified as "chastisement" or business as usual. IMHO treating female-on-male abuse as the equivalent of socially-endorsed male-on-female abuse is a way of directing attention away from the social factors, and in particular from the way that *we*, the rest of society, are complicit.
Labels: abuse, blogcomment, feminism, obiwi, sexism, violence
posted by Doctor Science at
8:37 AM
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0 comments
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
False accusations of rape
At Shakesville, Sunless Nick posted the definitive reply to people who say false accusation of rape is as big a problem as rape. My comment, in reply to another commenter (not Nick):
"Being accused of murder when one is innocent is as bad as being murdered."
"Being accused of beating someone to a bloody pulp when one is innocent is as bad as being beaten to a bloody pulp."
"Being accused of kidnapping when one is innocent is as bad as being kidnapped."
"Being accused of theft when one is innocent is as bad as being robbed."
"Being accused of plagiarism when one is innocent is as bad as being plagiarized."
The last one starts to come close to what you're talking about -- but notice that for plagiarism and the accusation, neither side is actually physically hurt: both the crime and the false accusation are about issues of repute and honor. Rape is a *physical assault* -- of course it's worse than a false accusation. The only possible reason to say that a false accusation is "as bad as rape" is if you take a really old-fashioned patriarchal approach, and say that the crime of rape is really against the honor and property value belonging to the raped woman's owner (husband, father, brother). In that case, rape *is* much more like theft or plagiarism: an attack on something that belongs to you, but not a direct attack on your person, the body where your self lives.
To equate rape and false accusation like that makes the actual woman and her actual suffering unimportant, and makes it seem as though she is not a real person, not as real as a man.
I think being accused of rape when one is innocent is as bad as being rapedI think *not*. Let's put it this way, of what other crime would you say something similar?
"Being accused of murder when one is innocent is as bad as being murdered."
"Being accused of beating someone to a bloody pulp when one is innocent is as bad as being beaten to a bloody pulp."
"Being accused of kidnapping when one is innocent is as bad as being kidnapped."
"Being accused of theft when one is innocent is as bad as being robbed."
"Being accused of plagiarism when one is innocent is as bad as being plagiarized."
The last one starts to come close to what you're talking about -- but notice that for plagiarism and the accusation, neither side is actually physically hurt: both the crime and the false accusation are about issues of repute and honor. Rape is a *physical assault* -- of course it's worse than a false accusation. The only possible reason to say that a false accusation is "as bad as rape" is if you take a really old-fashioned patriarchal approach, and say that the crime of rape is really against the honor and property value belonging to the raped woman's owner (husband, father, brother). In that case, rape *is* much more like theft or plagiarism: an attack on something that belongs to you, but not a direct attack on your person, the body where your self lives.
To equate rape and false accusation like that makes the actual woman and her actual suffering unimportant, and makes it seem as though she is not a real person, not as real as a man.
Labels: blogcomment, crime, feminism, rape, shakesville
posted by Doctor Science at
8:26 PM
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2 comments
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Fetal rights, category errors, and the Invisible Woman
At Crooked Timber, John Holbo linked to a post about category errors and whether fetuses are human. In the ensuing discussion, I wrote:
Aulus:
But I think the arguments raised in this post all apply perfectly well to the purely personal, moral question, “should I abort this pregnancy?”
It is my impression that of the participants in this (local) discussion only Katherine, aimai, and I could ever theoretically ask this question.
What the rest of you (presumed) guys are asking is, “should I permit this woman to abort this pregnancy?” By making the question, “when is the fetus a human person?” you-all are gliding over the true issue, which is: “when is the woman a person?”
Don’t tell me “of course the woman is a person!” There is no “of course” about it—we women have not (historically, traditionally, conservatively) had the full rights of “real”, male human persons. We might not have the right to own property, drive a car, initiate a divorce, vote, run for office, be a doctor, have legal custody of our own children … it has depended on circumstance. A cynical woman would not assume, a realistic woman should not assume, that she has will automatically be granted all the rights a man may assume.
In particular, I don’t think any of you male-type persons here have been told that your body does not belong to you. If your sibling needed a bone marrow donation to treat their cancer, for instance, you would not be legally obliged to give it. You would not expect to be shackled to a bed for weeks or months if necessary, to keep someone else alive—even someone you should love (whether you do or not). You would certainly not expect total strangers to come up to you and give their opinions about whether you are drinking too much coffee, or smoking, or to stroke parts of your body and discuss your medical condition, lifestyle choices, etc.
It’s possible I’m the only one in this discussion here who’s actually *been* in that position, who’s borne children and who knows what it’s like to have my body be considered public property, to a certain degree. Fortunately for your male-type people, the worst offenders (by far) are women of the grandmotherly demographic, and I can kind of understand where they’re coming from—though it is certainly not a place know to most philosophers, so I suggest you back off. Unless you can talk about things like “episiotomies” without turning a hair.
A zygote will.
No, Julian, a zygote *might*, but it usually doesn’t. To get a human being requires both a considerable amount of luck *and* months of cooperation from a woman. You don’t get to decide that the zygote—not coincidentally, the only part of the process requiring a male—is the important bit, and then force the woman’s far more substantial contribution whether she likes it or not. Not to mention blaming her for all the factors known as “luck”, which in the normal course of events doom more than half of all zygotes anyway.
jcs:
I was going for an overcurrent of anger, actually. I’m not angry because you can’t bear children, I’m angry because, once again, a bunch of men are sitting around talking about what women should do with our bodies and our lives. As echidne of the snakes said after the final Presidential debate:
It is always extremely distasteful to watch two men discuss what should be done about abortion. Always, never mind what they say.
*Always*, dudes.
Do really believe this is a legitimate analogy? I mean I am pro-choice, so you do not need to convince me, but do you really think the two situations are comparable?
Organ donation and pregnancy? Yes.
In both cases, I’m giving up use of part of my body for the benefit of another person. In both cases, the consequences for me are at minimun painful, may include permanent changes to my body, and may be life-threatening.
Differences include that organ donation doesn’t generally take 9 months of increasing physical risk and constraint, doesn’t normally involve a 20-year commitment thereafter, and is hardly ever done more than once in a donor’s life.
In what way do you see them as *not* comparable situations?
jcs:
Should I understand your position to be that no man has any business ever discussing the notions of personhood and rights as those terms may pertain to a fetus?
He has no business discussing them without even noticing the woman. He has no business talking about fetal rights without mentioning that what makes fetal rights different is that they are literally embedded in another person’s rights. To discuss fetal rights without talking about women is to make women invisible, to erase us as persons, to make us The Women Men Don’t See.
I’m not so much angry at you personally, jcs, as at the way John H. could start this discussion and you-all could take it down to comment #14 before Katherine (surprise, surprise—NOT) mentions that there is a woman in the issue. At least you, jcs, seem aware that perhaps you *should* notice the woman, instead of some of the other commenters who just glide right over her, nothing to see here, move along.
Aulus:
But I think the arguments raised in this post all apply perfectly well to the purely personal, moral question, “should I abort this pregnancy?”
It is my impression that of the participants in this (local) discussion only Katherine, aimai, and I could ever theoretically ask this question.
What the rest of you (presumed) guys are asking is, “should I permit this woman to abort this pregnancy?” By making the question, “when is the fetus a human person?” you-all are gliding over the true issue, which is: “when is the woman a person?”
Don’t tell me “of course the woman is a person!” There is no “of course” about it—we women have not (historically, traditionally, conservatively) had the full rights of “real”, male human persons. We might not have the right to own property, drive a car, initiate a divorce, vote, run for office, be a doctor, have legal custody of our own children … it has depended on circumstance. A cynical woman would not assume, a realistic woman should not assume, that she has will automatically be granted all the rights a man may assume.
In particular, I don’t think any of you male-type persons here have been told that your body does not belong to you. If your sibling needed a bone marrow donation to treat their cancer, for instance, you would not be legally obliged to give it. You would not expect to be shackled to a bed for weeks or months if necessary, to keep someone else alive—even someone you should love (whether you do or not). You would certainly not expect total strangers to come up to you and give their opinions about whether you are drinking too much coffee, or smoking, or to stroke parts of your body and discuss your medical condition, lifestyle choices, etc.
It’s possible I’m the only one in this discussion here who’s actually *been* in that position, who’s borne children and who knows what it’s like to have my body be considered public property, to a certain degree. Fortunately for your male-type people, the worst offenders (by far) are women of the grandmotherly demographic, and I can kind of understand where they’re coming from—though it is certainly not a place know to most philosophers, so I suggest you back off. Unless you can talk about things like “episiotomies” without turning a hair.
A zygote will.
No, Julian, a zygote *might*, but it usually doesn’t. To get a human being requires both a considerable amount of luck *and* months of cooperation from a woman. You don’t get to decide that the zygote—not coincidentally, the only part of the process requiring a male—is the important bit, and then force the woman’s far more substantial contribution whether she likes it or not. Not to mention blaming her for all the factors known as “luck”, which in the normal course of events doom more than half of all zygotes anyway.
jcs:
I was going for an overcurrent of anger, actually. I’m not angry because you can’t bear children, I’m angry because, once again, a bunch of men are sitting around talking about what women should do with our bodies and our lives. As echidne of the snakes said after the final Presidential debate:
It is always extremely distasteful to watch two men discuss what should be done about abortion. Always, never mind what they say.
*Always*, dudes.
Do really believe this is a legitimate analogy? I mean I am pro-choice, so you do not need to convince me, but do you really think the two situations are comparable?
Organ donation and pregnancy? Yes.
In both cases, I’m giving up use of part of my body for the benefit of another person. In both cases, the consequences for me are at minimun painful, may include permanent changes to my body, and may be life-threatening.
Differences include that organ donation doesn’t generally take 9 months of increasing physical risk and constraint, doesn’t normally involve a 20-year commitment thereafter, and is hardly ever done more than once in a donor’s life.
In what way do you see them as *not* comparable situations?
jcs:
Should I understand your position to be that no man has any business ever discussing the notions of personhood and rights as those terms may pertain to a fetus?
He has no business discussing them without even noticing the woman. He has no business talking about fetal rights without mentioning that what makes fetal rights different is that they are literally embedded in another person’s rights. To discuss fetal rights without talking about women is to make women invisible, to erase us as persons, to make us The Women Men Don’t See.
I’m not so much angry at you personally, jcs, as at the way John H. could start this discussion and you-all could take it down to comment #14 before Katherine (surprise, surprise—NOT) mentions that there is a woman in the issue. At least you, jcs, seem aware that perhaps you *should* notice the woman, instead of some of the other commenters who just glide right over her, nothing to see here, move along.
Labels: abortion, blogs, crooked timber, feminism
posted by Doctor Science at
8:05 PM
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1 comments
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
It's not just Palin
Sarah Palin has been getting much-deserved flak because while she was mayor of Wasilla, rape victims were charged the cost of the forensic rape kit. The state had to pass a law making it illegal to charge victims for evidence collection. (the link is to the local Wasilla paper, from 2000.)
However, I don't think we can pin this on her, specifically. Charging rape victims for evidence collection turns out to be standard in North Carolina and Tennessee.
H/t to Women's Health News.
However, I don't think we can pin this on her, specifically. Charging rape victims for evidence collection turns out to be standard in North Carolina and Tennessee.
H/t to Women's Health News.
posted by Doctor Science at
2:28 PM
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0 comments
Friday, June 27, 2008
The Right to Arm Bears
Hi! Today is a day when, when I'm not worky-work-working, I'm getting involved in discussions of gun control. Dumb or masochistic: you be the judge!
All the lawyer-kids are talking about Heller, and publius at Obsidian Wings has posted twice so far:
Heller, and
Heller's Indictment of Originalism.
My comments on the former:
You know what I'd like to see one of you lawyer-types do in the "post-season analysis"? Show me how many SCOTUS opinions (per Justice) of the season were *not* predictable knowing their political affiliations.
To a first approximation, the IANAL analysis is: none. All of the opinions look as though the Justice decided what ze wanted, and then sought the argument, history, etc., that would support hir desires.
In fact, it looks quite Humean: we choose moral opinions based on emotional factors, but justify them with reason (and rhetoric, cute kittens, blinkenlights, etc. -- whatever we find in the bag).
*Only* Justices who say, "this isn't what *I* want, but it's what the law says" will get any faith or credit toward the idea that they are arguing based on law or facts. Otherwise, I will assume they are arguing like human beings -- it seems like a reasonable default assumption, doesn't it?
hairshirthedonist: Yeah, that's how it look to this non-lawyer, too. I can be talked out of this attitude if the lawyer-types present *evidence* that this is not how it works -- but since our cynical view is based on "how human beings usually work", they're going to have to *prove* that SCOTUS (and lower courts) aren't acting just like other people.
Defense of the self & home is a traditional *rationale* for individual firearms ownership. But it is not, statistically speaking, what firearms are *used for*.
Firearms in the home are used *for* suicide and for killing family members, far more than they are used for defense against strangers.
Firearms outside the home are used *for* "resolving" arguments and protecting oneself when the other man wants to resolve them with a firearm, too.
I'm trying to think of a comparable case, of a device that is ostensibly for purpose A but which is in practice used for other purposes. An off-road vehicle that is used to go to the grocery store?
Brett:
Do you think that "legitimate" (self-defense rather than assault or suicide) in-home firearm uses represent more than a third of all in-home use? More than half? On what do you base your opinions?
In RL, I know a number of people who have been killed or assaulted with firearms (accident, suicide, strangers, intimates); I don't know that I know anyone who has actually used a firearm in anything approximating self-defense. My observation, then, is that true self-defense by firearm is rare, assault/murder/suicide/accident are not.
I don't understand what that has to do with my observation, frankly. I'm saying that AFAIK the use of firearms for self-defense is rare compared to other uses against humans.
Yes, kitchen knives can be used for self-defense -- but in my experience, they're mostly used to prepare food, which is also what they're sold for. So the *ostensible* reason for having a kitchen knife is the same as the *actual* reason -- it just can also be used for self-defense, just as it can also be used to cut up cardboard boxes.
The situation with guns reminds me of off-label drug use, especially cases where a drug is being *mostly* used off-label.
OCSteve said: I guess you would have to show me studies that prove that violence is more likely to happen just because a handgun is conveniently at hand
Here ya go:
# The risk of suicide or homicide is twice as high for individuals with a family history of registered handgun purchase, than for those without such a history.
[Source: Cummings, P. et al. The Association between the purchase of a handgun and homicide or suicide. AJPH, 87(6) June 1997:974-978.]
# Suicide is nearly 5 times more likely to occur in a household with a gun than in a household without a gun.
[Source: Kellermann, A.L. et al. Suicide in the home in relation to gun ownership. N Engl J Med, 327(7) Aug. 12, 1992:467-472.]
# The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home.
[Source: Kellermann, A.L. et al. Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home. N Engl J Med 329 (15) October 7, 1993: 1084-1091.
from this article.
So yes, presence of firearms in home = increased risk of suicide and homicide in the home. IIRC -- I can find the stats if you insist -- this is particularly the case for women, because women are usually killed by men who are close to them (lover or family member), while men are more often killed by men they don't know.
Almost all murders and most suicides are by men, so this is overwhelmingly a problem of *male* behavior.
Phil: If I had to make a guess, I'd wager that the vast majority of handguns that are in people's homes are never actually used for anything at all
I agree, where "used" means, you know, "used". What guns are primarily *for*, I will argue, is to make people *feel* more secure -- even while they actually decrease security on both an individual and a collective basis.
link to Tim Lambert.
Thanks, Bruce. I don't know that I want to make a lifestyle of this, though ...
But to get back to the question I have on the table before Brett (and OCSteve and Sebastian, or heck, anybody): in your *personal*, statistically insignificant RL experience, what are non-hunting firearms *actually used* for? "Actual use" in this case includes showing the weapon to someone you want to frighten (whether for defense or rape, robbery, etc.), as well as times the weapon is actually fired at someone.
The fact that most guns are never fired at anyone doesn't matter if their true purpose is safety equipment -- I've owned a number of fire extinguishers in my life, but only actually *used* one once.
But I think guns are very different than fire extinguishers, because my observation is that the pleasure of owning a gun is far more intense and personal than the pleasure of owning a fire extinguisher. Guns make people feel better, in a way that fire extinguishers do not. And of course, off-label use of fire extinguishers is fun *NOT THAT I'D KNOW ABOUT THAT FROM COLLEGE OR ANYTHING* but not actively homicidal.
I'm sorry, Sebastian, I cannot take Megan McArdle in general and that article in specific seriously.
women tend to choose poison everywhere, presumably because of some deep fear of disfigurement
Presumably?!? If that's the kind of thing she "presumes" -- about people with whom she has something in common, too, worse luck for us -- then I "presume" that the rest of her article is a farrago of half-baked nonsense pulled from the nether regions of a goat. Presumably.
Sebastian:
I am not dismissing McArdle because I have some "irrational dislike" for her. I am dismissing her because barely 2 sentences into her post she made a sweaping, mean-spirited statement of breathtaking stupidity. Why should I keep reading?
In the case of the simplest sort of violence, suicide (simplest because attacker=victim), there is *no doubt* that access to firearms increases the suicide rate -- because suicide by firearm usually *succeeds*. There are of course lot of other ways to kill yourself, but there are many fewer failed attempts by firearm.
Having firearms in the house increases the suicide rate not because it increases the household violence level, but because it increases the chance that a suicide attempt will be fatal. Mutans mutandis, the same factor should apply to other equations of violence -- firearms up the stakes and increase the likelihood of a fatal outcome.
Sebastian, I actually find it boggling that you've known so few people who have died by guns. This may just mean that you're younger than I thought -- I'm over 50, so it's not as though the few cases I know represent a very high rate.
An old woman, murdered in her home by a young man she knew (motive: robbery); a boy, accidentally killed playing with his father's hunting rifle; a man, suicide; a man, killed by a stranger, probably drug-related.
Dr. Morpheus: yours is not only the wrong question for the circumstances, it doesn't make any sense.
Did I ever say that there would be no violence without guns? No. Did I ever imply it? Again, No.
It is my understanding that one of the "features" of using machetes instead of guns is that it results in a larger number of wounded -- who need to be taken care of -- rather than dead, who can only be avenged. There are other "features", of course, including that machetes don't run out of ammo.
jrudkis:
It is intended, even more, to invite those of you who are probably *not* homicidal to consider whether you are encouraging and supporting violence by other guys. Is there a culture of tolerance and admiration toward men who kill? -- only if they *have* to, of course. Do you think that men who are killers are more manly or masculine than men who forswear violence? Does the idea of giving up firearms seem almost ... castrating?
and on the latter:
A few brief comments, before I go do this thing we call "work":
I agree with Brett! We're talking about guns! bring my smelling salts.
publius, in your post you refer to: the Court’s tedious examination of dueling history books
Did they actually talk about the history of duelling? -- which is not IMHO irrelevant to the history of right to bear arms, not at all.
Otherwise -- what Bruce Baugh said, except that I personally do not know disabled people who've used guns for self-defense. But then, most of the disabled people I know are women.
Note: what Bruce Baugh said was:
The reason I wondered if the dueling histories involved histories of dueling is that I have no doubt -- as someone who has studied that history -- that the Founders in general thought: citizens have a right to bear arms. It was a mark of invidious distinction to limit the bearing of arms to the aristocracy, and we as Englishmen are proud such was never our custom. [n.b.: not necessarily historically true, but they would have *said* it was.]
But also: women cannot and should not bear arms. Women cannot and should not be full citizens.
There is IMHO a connection between the well-known Swiss insistence that every male be in the Army, and the fact that Swiss women didn't get the vote until *1972*.
If you're going to go dragging in the original intentions of the Founders, then you have to acknowledge that for them the Right to Bear Arms was woven tightly into the idea of Male Citizenship and Male Honor. *Everyone* is cherry-picking, pulling out the parts of the Founders' original intention that you-all feel comfortable with -- but not all the other baggage it was wrapped up with. And IMHO still is.
It seems inarguable that prior to the 20th century, the right to bear arms was simply understood on its face to mean anyone could have a gun and the government couldn't say they can't
Well, I'm arguing against that.
I'm arguing that it was taken to mean that every *white male* could have a gun. It wasn't usually articulated so clearly, because it was generally understood that everyone who was anyone was a white male. For blacks and women to be generally armed was literally unthinkable.
The ostensible purpose of the RTBA, for the Founders down the line to Brett, is for self-defense and for a check on government power -- and they are not distinct functions, one is thought to flow out of the other. Free men who can defend themselves and their property (including their women) will naturally resist and if necessary overthrow tyranny -- that's the theory, that's what the Founders thought they had seen in the Revolution.
But as Bruce Baugh pointed out, the RTBA is an empirical failure as a check on tyranny. *It doesn't work*. I'm arguing that it also doesn't work for personal security: men with guns are not safer, nor are "their" women.
It is possible that if the RTBA were restricted to women, it *would* make people -- regardless of chromosome count -- safer. But that's even more implausible than Golda Meier's suggestion that the solution for a rape epidemic should be a curfew for men, not for women..
All the lawyer-kids are talking about Heller, and publius at Obsidian Wings has posted twice so far:
Heller, and
Heller's Indictment of Originalism.
My comments on the former:
his reasoning is as patently results-oriented as kennedy's
You know what I'd like to see one of you lawyer-types do in the "post-season analysis"? Show me how many SCOTUS opinions (per Justice) of the season were *not* predictable knowing their political affiliations.
To a first approximation, the IANAL analysis is: none. All of the opinions look as though the Justice decided what ze wanted, and then sought the argument, history, etc., that would support hir desires.
In fact, it looks quite Humean: we choose moral opinions based on emotional factors, but justify them with reason (and rhetoric, cute kittens, blinkenlights, etc. -- whatever we find in the bag).
*Only* Justices who say, "this isn't what *I* want, but it's what the law says" will get any faith or credit toward the idea that they are arguing based on law or facts. Otherwise, I will assume they are arguing like human beings -- it seems like a reasonable default assumption, doesn't it?
hairshirthedonist: Yeah, that's how it look to this non-lawyer, too. I can be talked out of this attitude if the lawyer-types present *evidence* that this is not how it works -- but since our cynical view is based on "how human beings usually work", they're going to have to *prove* that SCOTUS (and lower courts) aren't acting just like other people.
Defense of the self & home is a traditional *rationale* for individual firearms ownership. But it is not, statistically speaking, what firearms are *used for*.
Firearms in the home are used *for* suicide and for killing family members, far more than they are used for defense against strangers.
Firearms outside the home are used *for* "resolving" arguments and protecting oneself when the other man wants to resolve them with a firearm, too.
I'm trying to think of a comparable case, of a device that is ostensibly for purpose A but which is in practice used for other purposes. An off-road vehicle that is used to go to the grocery store?
Brett:
Do you think that "legitimate" (self-defense rather than assault or suicide) in-home firearm uses represent more than a third of all in-home use? More than half? On what do you base your opinions?
In RL, I know a number of people who have been killed or assaulted with firearms (accident, suicide, strangers, intimates); I don't know that I know anyone who has actually used a firearm in anything approximating self-defense. My observation, then, is that true self-defense by firearm is rare, assault/murder/suicide/accident are not.
However, it is much easier to defend yourself with a M1911 that happens to be on your person than to look around for a steak knife.
I don't understand what that has to do with my observation, frankly. I'm saying that AFAIK the use of firearms for self-defense is rare compared to other uses against humans.
Yes, kitchen knives can be used for self-defense -- but in my experience, they're mostly used to prepare food, which is also what they're sold for. So the *ostensible* reason for having a kitchen knife is the same as the *actual* reason -- it just can also be used for self-defense, just as it can also be used to cut up cardboard boxes.
The situation with guns reminds me of off-label drug use, especially cases where a drug is being *mostly* used off-label.
OCSteve said: I guess you would have to show me studies that prove that violence is more likely to happen just because a handgun is conveniently at hand
Here ya go:
# The risk of suicide or homicide is twice as high for individuals with a family history of registered handgun purchase, than for those without such a history.
[Source: Cummings, P. et al. The Association between the purchase of a handgun and homicide or suicide. AJPH, 87(6) June 1997:974-978.]
# Suicide is nearly 5 times more likely to occur in a household with a gun than in a household without a gun.
[Source: Kellermann, A.L. et al. Suicide in the home in relation to gun ownership. N Engl J Med, 327(7) Aug. 12, 1992:467-472.]
# The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home.
[Source: Kellermann, A.L. et al. Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home. N Engl J Med 329 (15) October 7, 1993: 1084-1091.
from this article.
So yes, presence of firearms in home = increased risk of suicide and homicide in the home. IIRC -- I can find the stats if you insist -- this is particularly the case for women, because women are usually killed by men who are close to them (lover or family member), while men are more often killed by men they don't know.
Almost all murders and most suicides are by men, so this is overwhelmingly a problem of *male* behavior.
Phil: If I had to make a guess, I'd wager that the vast majority of handguns that are in people's homes are never actually used for anything at all
I agree, where "used" means, you know, "used". What guns are primarily *for*, I will argue, is to make people *feel* more secure -- even while they actually decrease security on both an individual and a collective basis.
link to Tim Lambert.
Thanks, Bruce. I don't know that I want to make a lifestyle of this, though ...
But to get back to the question I have on the table before Brett (and OCSteve and Sebastian, or heck, anybody): in your *personal*, statistically insignificant RL experience, what are non-hunting firearms *actually used* for? "Actual use" in this case includes showing the weapon to someone you want to frighten (whether for defense or rape, robbery, etc.), as well as times the weapon is actually fired at someone.
The fact that most guns are never fired at anyone doesn't matter if their true purpose is safety equipment -- I've owned a number of fire extinguishers in my life, but only actually *used* one once.
But I think guns are very different than fire extinguishers, because my observation is that the pleasure of owning a gun is far more intense and personal than the pleasure of owning a fire extinguisher. Guns make people feel better, in a way that fire extinguishers do not. And of course, off-label use of fire extinguishers is fun *NOT THAT I'D KNOW ABOUT THAT FROM COLLEGE OR ANYTHING* but not actively homicidal.
I'm sorry, Sebastian, I cannot take Megan McArdle in general and that article in specific seriously.
women tend to choose poison everywhere, presumably because of some deep fear of disfigurement
Presumably?!? If that's the kind of thing she "presumes" -- about people with whom she has something in common, too, worse luck for us -- then I "presume" that the rest of her article is a farrago of half-baked nonsense pulled from the nether regions of a goat. Presumably.
Sebastian:
I am not dismissing McArdle because I have some "irrational dislike" for her. I am dismissing her because barely 2 sentences into her post she made a sweaping, mean-spirited statement of breathtaking stupidity. Why should I keep reading?
In the case of the simplest sort of violence, suicide (simplest because attacker=victim), there is *no doubt* that access to firearms increases the suicide rate -- because suicide by firearm usually *succeeds*. There are of course lot of other ways to kill yourself, but there are many fewer failed attempts by firearm.
Having firearms in the house increases the suicide rate not because it increases the household violence level, but because it increases the chance that a suicide attempt will be fatal. Mutans mutandis, the same factor should apply to other equations of violence -- firearms up the stakes and increase the likelihood of a fatal outcome.
Sebastian, I actually find it boggling that you've known so few people who have died by guns. This may just mean that you're younger than I thought -- I'm over 50, so it's not as though the few cases I know represent a very high rate.
An old woman, murdered in her home by a young man she knew (motive: robbery); a boy, accidentally killed playing with his father's hunting rifle; a man, suicide; a man, killed by a stranger, probably drug-related.
Dr. Morpheus: yours is not only the wrong question for the circumstances, it doesn't make any sense.
Did I ever say that there would be no violence without guns? No. Did I ever imply it? Again, No.
It is my understanding that one of the "features" of using machetes instead of guns is that it results in a larger number of wounded -- who need to be taken care of -- rather than dead, who can only be avenged. There are other "features", of course, including that machetes don't run out of ammo.
jrudkis:
When Dr. Science says this is a male issue rather than an American issue, it invites a review of the numbers to see which males are dangerous.
It is intended, even more, to invite those of you who are probably *not* homicidal to consider whether you are encouraging and supporting violence by other guys. Is there a culture of tolerance and admiration toward men who kill? -- only if they *have* to, of course. Do you think that men who are killers are more manly or masculine than men who forswear violence? Does the idea of giving up firearms seem almost ... castrating?
and on the latter:
A few brief comments, before I go do this thing we call "work":
It's an indictment of Scalia
I agree with Brett! We're talking about guns! bring my smelling salts.
publius, in your post you refer to: the Court’s tedious examination of dueling history books
Did they actually talk about the history of duelling? -- which is not IMHO irrelevant to the history of right to bear arms, not at all.
Otherwise -- what Bruce Baugh said, except that I personally do not know disabled people who've used guns for self-defense. But then, most of the disabled people I know are women.
Note: what Bruce Baugh said was:
I've said this before and will again: the very heart of the "widespread gun ownership checks tyranny" argument has been tested and failed completely.
For twenty years or more, political discourse in a whole lot of online forums was swamped by people telling the rest of us how the US was getting ever more tyrannical, and that the day would come when on some flimsy pretext the government would abandon habeaus corpus, engage in unlimited surveillance of everyone it felt like spying on, arrest people on arbitrary grounds and then abuse them any way the captors felt like, and so on.
It turns out they were right about that part.
They also told the rest of us that when this happened, they would rise up en masse. They would free unjustly held prisoners, put terror into the hearts of agents of tyranny, maybe even overthrow the tyrant him/herself. (As the '90s went on, the hypothetical tyrant was increasingly likely to be portrayed as a woman.) And did they? Did they hell.
There are no martyrs from the RKBA crowd. Their organizations sometimes join in efforts mostly initiated and staffed by others, but apart from objections to a handful of specific proposed restrictions on gun sales and such, one hears of no RKBA leadership on any of the rest. To the contrary, one hears a great deal of cheerleading for warmaking abroad and tyranny at home as long as all the right people get it, and one hears silence. Where are those freed prisoners? Nowhere. Where are those terrified agents? Nowhere. It was all the purest bloviation.
The reason I wondered if the dueling histories involved histories of dueling is that I have no doubt -- as someone who has studied that history -- that the Founders in general thought: citizens have a right to bear arms. It was a mark of invidious distinction to limit the bearing of arms to the aristocracy, and we as Englishmen are proud such was never our custom. [n.b.: not necessarily historically true, but they would have *said* it was.]
But also: women cannot and should not bear arms. Women cannot and should not be full citizens.
There is IMHO a connection between the well-known Swiss insistence that every male be in the Army, and the fact that Swiss women didn't get the vote until *1972*.
If you're going to go dragging in the original intentions of the Founders, then you have to acknowledge that for them the Right to Bear Arms was woven tightly into the idea of Male Citizenship and Male Honor. *Everyone* is cherry-picking, pulling out the parts of the Founders' original intention that you-all feel comfortable with -- but not all the other baggage it was wrapped up with. And IMHO still is.
It seems inarguable that prior to the 20th century, the right to bear arms was simply understood on its face to mean anyone could have a gun and the government couldn't say they can't
Well, I'm arguing against that.
I'm arguing that it was taken to mean that every *white male* could have a gun. It wasn't usually articulated so clearly, because it was generally understood that everyone who was anyone was a white male. For blacks and women to be generally armed was literally unthinkable.
The ostensible purpose of the RTBA, for the Founders down the line to Brett, is for self-defense and for a check on government power -- and they are not distinct functions, one is thought to flow out of the other. Free men who can defend themselves and their property (including their women) will naturally resist and if necessary overthrow tyranny -- that's the theory, that's what the Founders thought they had seen in the Revolution.
But as Bruce Baugh pointed out, the RTBA is an empirical failure as a check on tyranny. *It doesn't work*. I'm arguing that it also doesn't work for personal security: men with guns are not safer, nor are "their" women.
It is possible that if the RTBA were restricted to women, it *would* make people -- regardless of chromosome count -- safer. But that's even more implausible than Golda Meier's suggestion that the solution for a rape epidemic should be a curfew for men, not for women..
posted by Doctor Science at
8:48 PM
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0 comments
Friday, May 23, 2008
Macho Sue and reconstructing the hero
In the discussion at slactivist on the Appeasement Meme, I wrote:
It is simply not possible that these people are sincere
I must respectfully disagree, Fred.
IMHO they *are* sincere. It's not so much that they are ignorant of history, etc., as that they are filtering everything through a narrative. They are telling themselves anot story, and I think our own Praline has most accurately nailed it: Macho Sue:
Your crazy uncle/co-worker/President is telling himself a Macho Sue story, he's invoking Munich because he's re-imagined Winston Churchill as the Macho Sue star of WWII, the unshakable fighter who was right all along.
IMHO the parallels to "Left Behind" are exact. It doesn't matter to their fans that LaHaye & Jenkins have re-written or tossed out great swaths of the Bible -- "Left Behind" is a more satisfying, simple narrative for them, so when they do go to the Bible they will read it through the filter of "Left Behind".
I'm starting to think that what we need isn't logic, history, thought, or knowledge; what we need is better *stories*.
Fred picked that up and asked, Is there a third possibility, a way to get through to people using Macho Sue narratives? A great discussion is taking place, with some wonderful writing from Praline (Kit Whitfield) and others. My comment so far:
unless you can somehow create epiphanies on demand
We call that "story-telling". As Praline said, If people want heroes, give them better ones.
We need *better stories* -- not just in blogs, but books and movies and TV shows. And I think there's a specific need for better stories about men:
In the same way that Bush challenges people's manhood, B Clinton and Obama challenge people's principles - and men are supposed to be principled, so it can form an alternative template of manhood.
I've seen some tentative speculation that "Iron Man" could be the start of such a template, and that may have something to do with the film's huge and immediate popularity. I'm not sure yet, myself.
Over at her own blog, Praline writes about separating manhood from violence. I commented:
I think the problem is subtractive masculinity. If manhood is defined as "being a good person and male" it's easy to have role models like Atticus Finch. But if manhood is a virtue that women do not display, then only strength and violence will do. At the extreme, every other virtue becomes effete, unmanly, because it does not show you are a *man*.
I think the idea that men and women are complementary, "made to match" and balance each other, very easily slides over into subtractive masculinity.
It is simply not possible that these people are sincere
I must respectfully disagree, Fred.
IMHO they *are* sincere. It's not so much that they are ignorant of history, etc., as that they are filtering everything through a narrative. They are telling themselves anot story, and I think our own Praline has most accurately nailed it: Macho Sue:
The essential story structure of a Macho Sue tends to revolve around untouchable pride. If love means never having to say you're sorry, being Macho Sue means the whole of reality loves you. Typically, Macho Sue's storyline follows a certain trajectory: he begins by acting egregiously, picking or provoking fights and causing problems. However much the ensuing difficulties can be laid at his door, Macho Sue is not about to apologise, in any way. So the problems continue - only to be salvaged by some immense reversals that give the impression that he was right all along. The man he insulted turns out, suddenly, to be a bad guy. The woman who dislikes him falls into his strong arms when he solves a problem that is not the same problem he caused for her. People change their personalities, storylines shift and flip like a mechanical maze popping up new paths and lowering old gates in order to keep Macho Sue from ever, ever having to backtrack. As John Wayne says, 'Never say sorry - it's a sign of weakness.'
Your crazy uncle/co-worker/President is telling himself a Macho Sue story, he's invoking Munich because he's re-imagined Winston Churchill as the Macho Sue star of WWII, the unshakable fighter who was right all along.
IMHO the parallels to "Left Behind" are exact. It doesn't matter to their fans that LaHaye & Jenkins have re-written or tossed out great swaths of the Bible -- "Left Behind" is a more satisfying, simple narrative for them, so when they do go to the Bible they will read it through the filter of "Left Behind".
I'm starting to think that what we need isn't logic, history, thought, or knowledge; what we need is better *stories*.
Fred picked that up and asked, Is there a third possibility, a way to get through to people using Macho Sue narratives? A great discussion is taking place, with some wonderful writing from Praline (Kit Whitfield) and others. My comment so far:
unless you can somehow create epiphanies on demand
We call that "story-telling". As Praline said, If people want heroes, give them better ones.
We need *better stories* -- not just in blogs, but books and movies and TV shows. And I think there's a specific need for better stories about men:
In the same way that Bush challenges people's manhood, B Clinton and Obama challenge people's principles - and men are supposed to be principled, so it can form an alternative template of manhood.
I've seen some tentative speculation that "Iron Man" could be the start of such a template, and that may have something to do with the film's huge and immediate popularity. I'm not sure yet, myself.
Over at her own blog, Praline writes about separating manhood from violence. I commented:
I think the problem is subtractive masculinity. If manhood is defined as "being a good person and male" it's easy to have role models like Atticus Finch. But if manhood is a virtue that women do not display, then only strength and violence will do. At the extreme, every other virtue becomes effete, unmanly, because it does not show you are a *man*.
I think the idea that men and women are complementary, "made to match" and balance each other, very easily slides over into subtractive masculinity.
Labels: feminism, heroes, masculinity, slactivist, war
posted by Doctor Science at
8:12 PM
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0 comments
Friday, April 25, 2008
Breaking up with Pandagon
This is a brief statement, copied from a comment I left at Holly's post at feministe, "I Guess It's a Jungle in Here Too, Huh?.
I've been wondering about where Pam Spalding is, too.
I'm a regular commenter at Pandagon who doesn't have a feminist blog worthy of the name -- pretty much all I post on my blog are copies of comments I make on other people's blogs, to keep track of the conversations I'm in.
Last week I didn't have time to read all the 200+ comment threads where this was being discussed, so I decided to wimp out and follow Pam's lead, because I think of her as my link into the POC blogosphere. I thought, "as long as Pam's happy, I'll assume there's nothing I need to investigate in greater depth." But I've felt uncomfortable enough to make a point of commenting on other Pandagonian's posts more than Amanda's.
I know, I know, OK?
Anyway, Holly's post here has sealed the deal for me. Unless & until Pam -- for whom I still have enormous respect until proven otherwise -- gives me a persuasive reason to come back, I won't be commenting at Pandagon any more.
And for me this is a wrench that it isn't for most of you. You read the posts; I'm part of the community of commenters. This decision cuts me off from that community, and though some of the regulars are people I run into around the blogosphere, there are a number I can't count on encountering again. And *that's* why I'm crying.
Members of the Pandagon community, let me know where you're hanging, OK? I know I'll see Jes, Alara & Ginmar around, but for a lot of you I don't know where else you post or comment.
Every time I start trying to add to this post I start crying again, and I have to put in a day's work regardless, so I'm stopping here for now.
I've been wondering about where Pam Spalding is, too.
I'm a regular commenter at Pandagon who doesn't have a feminist blog worthy of the name -- pretty much all I post on my blog are copies of comments I make on other people's blogs, to keep track of the conversations I'm in.
Last week I didn't have time to read all the 200+ comment threads where this was being discussed, so I decided to wimp out and follow Pam's lead, because I think of her as my link into the POC blogosphere. I thought, "as long as Pam's happy, I'll assume there's nothing I need to investigate in greater depth." But I've felt uncomfortable enough to make a point of commenting on other Pandagonian's posts more than Amanda's.
I know, I know, OK?
Anyway, Holly's post here has sealed the deal for me. Unless & until Pam -- for whom I still have enormous respect until proven otherwise -- gives me a persuasive reason to come back, I won't be commenting at Pandagon any more.
And for me this is a wrench that it isn't for most of you. You read the posts; I'm part of the community of commenters. This decision cuts me off from that community, and though some of the regulars are people I run into around the blogosphere, there are a number I can't count on encountering again. And *that's* why I'm crying.
Members of the Pandagon community, let me know where you're hanging, OK? I know I'll see Jes, Alara & Ginmar around, but for a lot of you I don't know where else you post or comment.
Every time I start trying to add to this post I start crying again, and I have to put in a day's work regardless, so I'm stopping here for now.
Labels: blogcomment, feminism, pandagon, racism
posted by Doctor Science at
10:28 AM
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1 comments
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
The Right to Mock
In comments at a Pandagon post on Zombie Feminism, someone wrote:
It is for *us*. Mockery *must* begin at home, otherwise it’s bigotry.
You get to mock your own culture. You *must* mock — or at least acknowledge the bad, silly, arbitrary, or stupid aspects — your own culture. Once you’ve got a track record for mocking your own culture, you *might* — maybe — get a pass to mock someone else’s culture. But the chances are you won’t be very good at it, because only those really inside the culture know the most mockable bits.
Salman Rushdie gets to mock Islam. Madonna gets to mock Christianity. Rushdie may be cross-cultural enough to get a Christianity-mocking license, but Madonna doesn’t get to mock Islam because it’s not part of her psyche.
Here’s another way to put it: humor that is directed at the Other is an ingroup/outgroup marker, it gets us in the habit of being divisive and cruel. Humor that is directed at the *self*, at the ingroup, can be a road to self-understanding, to becoming *less* cruel.
Another other way to put it: Islamic culture helped shape Rushdie, and that means a small part of it belongs to him. Catholicism helped shape Madonna, and so part of it belongs to her. The culture in your head is *yours*, and you get to do whatever you want with it — including mock it.
It’s not as though mocking Islam is any less important than mocking Christianity, which is an extensively developed art form.and I said:
It is for *us*. Mockery *must* begin at home, otherwise it’s bigotry.
You get to mock your own culture. You *must* mock — or at least acknowledge the bad, silly, arbitrary, or stupid aspects — your own culture. Once you’ve got a track record for mocking your own culture, you *might* — maybe — get a pass to mock someone else’s culture. But the chances are you won’t be very good at it, because only those really inside the culture know the most mockable bits.
Salman Rushdie gets to mock Islam. Madonna gets to mock Christianity. Rushdie may be cross-cultural enough to get a Christianity-mocking license, but Madonna doesn’t get to mock Islam because it’s not part of her psyche.
Here’s another way to put it: humor that is directed at the Other is an ingroup/outgroup marker, it gets us in the habit of being divisive and cruel. Humor that is directed at the *self*, at the ingroup, can be a road to self-understanding, to becoming *less* cruel.
Another other way to put it: Islamic culture helped shape Rushdie, and that means a small part of it belongs to him. Catholicism helped shape Madonna, and so part of it belongs to her. The culture in your head is *yours*, and you get to do whatever you want with it — including mock it.
posted by Doctor Science at
6:46 PM
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0 comments
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Is rape a hate crime?
A record of my comments at Amanda's post on "Rape is the grown-up version of pulling pigtails", which started out talking about some of Ann Althouse's commenters but then got actually interesting.
One thing this has made clear to me, when compared to the very learned posts about hate crimes Orcinus often makes, is that the word “hate” in “hate crime” is a legal term of art. “Hate crimes” in the legal sense are a form of “terrorism”, and the perps don’t have to feel hate in the emotional sense, any more than the victims of terrorism have to feel “terror” (as opposed to, say, anxiety or anger or grief).
I suspect Dennis is correct, and many rapists don’t feel the emotion of hate. Nonetheless, rape may often be a “hate crime”, an attack on a person for being a member of a particular group, and with the goal of controlling that group as a whole.
The best blogging about hate crimes is probably by David Neiwert aka Orcinus. Here’s a post on why hate crimes are not thought crimes, for instance.
Making something a legal “Hate crime” is not thought-policing any more than defining first- versus second-degree murder is thought-policing. Hate crimes statutes do not change whether something was a crime at all, it just changes how the crime is prosecuted, punished, and categorized.
I don’t think anyone has thought yet about where the line between “hate crime” and “underlying crime” lies with regard to rape.
[warning: thinking things through here.] Rape with the motive & rhetoric of “keeping the bitches in their place” is IMHO (not a lawyer, blah blah) certainly a hate crime. Rape within a relationship probably doesn’t count as a hate crime, *but it functions as one*.
Most rape functions as a hate crime, because it is part of pervasive patterns that frighten and constrain particular groups of people (men in prison, all women). The sense of individual entitlement rapists have is of a piece with group entitlement. The personal *is* political.
So frex, a street harrasser (”hey lady! show us your tits!”) is to a rapist as a kid who hangs a noose on a whites-only tree is to an actual lyncher. The harrasser and the kid both have a sense of personal entitlement — this is *mine*, I can do what I want, you have to be nice to *me* — that is enforced by other members of their entitled group.
More info to consider about whether rape is usually a hate crime: Orcinus on how it feels to be the victim of a hate crime.
Similarities:
— parallel to the traditional (and not unreasonable) fear of rape victims that their sexuality will be dragged through the mud if they come forward.
Differences: Hate crime victims are not usually personally known to the perp(s); rape victims are usually known. Hate crimes often involve grotesque, excessive violence; rape doesn’t *usually* involve that level of escalation.
So, how ’bout we follow Orcinus’ current practice, and say “bias crime” instead of “hate crime”. One of the issues that’s not clear to me is what the default or simple mens rea of rape might be.
Some rapes are certainly bias crimes. What kind of rape is *not* a bias crime? Are bias crimes against women for being women covered under bias crime law? They certainly aren’t in practice. Are they so common that, even if law enforcement was willing, they can’t be enforced on a practical level?
Dennis asked:
Further, I don’t think it’s useful to elide the difference between bias crimes (Hate Crimes Class 1) and dehumanization crimes (Class 2, or Crimes of Hate). More strongly, I think it’s actively bad to say all Crimes of Hate are Hate Crimes, because that tends to conceal the political inside the personal.
Hate Crimes are structural, they reinforce each other, in a way that Crimes of Hate do not. That’s why it’s so hard to find examples of rapes that are not Hate Crimes: because the societal bias against women is so pervasive that an individual rapist doesn’t have to hate women very much extra, he doesn’t run the risk of standing out.
Not building on anything specific that's been said, just getting it out there (as I put together a blogcomment record for my own blog):
I hadn't realized until I went searching for a good link how much Orcinus and other people who track or study hate crimes use rape for calibration (or as a baseline?). Hate crimes are crimes that feel like rape, that have many of the same effects as rape, that are at least as bad as rape. I don't know if they're consciously thinking of rape as a hate crime, but it's there in the background -- as the most *familiar* hate crime, the one that's hardest to notice.
One thing this has made clear to me, when compared to the very learned posts about hate crimes Orcinus often makes, is that the word “hate” in “hate crime” is a legal term of art. “Hate crimes” in the legal sense are a form of “terrorism”, and the perps don’t have to feel hate in the emotional sense, any more than the victims of terrorism have to feel “terror” (as opposed to, say, anxiety or anger or grief).
I suspect Dennis is correct, and many rapists don’t feel the emotion of hate. Nonetheless, rape may often be a “hate crime”, an attack on a person for being a member of a particular group, and with the goal of controlling that group as a whole.
The best blogging about hate crimes is probably by David Neiwert aka Orcinus. Here’s a post on why hate crimes are not thought crimes, for instance.
Making something a legal “Hate crime” is not thought-policing any more than defining first- versus second-degree murder is thought-policing. Hate crimes statutes do not change whether something was a crime at all, it just changes how the crime is prosecuted, punished, and categorized.
I don’t think anyone has thought yet about where the line between “hate crime” and “underlying crime” lies with regard to rape.
[warning: thinking things through here.] Rape with the motive & rhetoric of “keeping the bitches in their place” is IMHO (not a lawyer, blah blah) certainly a hate crime. Rape within a relationship probably doesn’t count as a hate crime, *but it functions as one*.
Most rape functions as a hate crime, because it is part of pervasive patterns that frighten and constrain particular groups of people (men in prison, all women). The sense of individual entitlement rapists have is of a piece with group entitlement. The personal *is* political.
So frex, a street harrasser (”hey lady! show us your tits!”) is to a rapist as a kid who hangs a noose on a whites-only tree is to an actual lyncher. The harrasser and the kid both have a sense of personal entitlement — this is *mine*, I can do what I want, you have to be nice to *me* — that is enforced by other members of their entitled group.
More info to consider about whether rape is usually a hate crime: Orcinus on how it feels to be the victim of a hate crime.
Similarities:
Hate crimes can cause victims to view the world and people in it as malevolent and experience a reduced sense of controlNote that this implies that rape is not a simple, “parallel” crime like murder.
What we also know about the victims of bias crime is that they are substantially harmed well over and above what befalls victims of the simpler versions of the same crimes, perpetrated with ordinary motives (what is known as the underlying or “parallel” crime behind these acts, such as simple assault, vandalism or threatening); for instance, some studies have found that bias-crime victims often experience post-trauma psychological stress syndromes similar to those experienced by rape victims, because the sense of violation can be so profound. The result is a commingling of shame, fear and rage.
There is also a secondary level of victimization that can occur with hate crimes: they create a fear of exposure
— parallel to the traditional (and not unreasonable) fear of rape victims that their sexuality will be dragged through the mud if they come forward.
Differences: Hate crime victims are not usually personally known to the perp(s); rape victims are usually known. Hate crimes often involve grotesque, excessive violence; rape doesn’t *usually* involve that level of escalation.
So, how ’bout we follow Orcinus’ current practice, and say “bias crime” instead of “hate crime”. One of the issues that’s not clear to me is what the default or simple mens rea of rape might be.
Some rapes are certainly bias crimes. What kind of rape is *not* a bias crime? Are bias crimes against women for being women covered under bias crime law? They certainly aren’t in practice. Are they so common that, even if law enforcement was willing, they can’t be enforced on a practical level?
Dennis asked:
Is a hate crime a crime that relies on hatred or disenfranchisement of a class (be that class women, children, blacks, the poor, the elderly), or is a hate crime a crime that requires the dehumanization of an individual victim?My understanding is that hate crime in law is only the first. Pretty much *any* crime against a person falls under the second class.
Further, I don’t think it’s useful to elide the difference between bias crimes (Hate Crimes Class 1) and dehumanization crimes (Class 2, or Crimes of Hate). More strongly, I think it’s actively bad to say all Crimes of Hate are Hate Crimes, because that tends to conceal the political inside the personal.
Hate Crimes are structural, they reinforce each other, in a way that Crimes of Hate do not. That’s why it’s so hard to find examples of rapes that are not Hate Crimes: because the societal bias against women is so pervasive that an individual rapist doesn’t have to hate women very much extra, he doesn’t run the risk of standing out.
Not building on anything specific that's been said, just getting it out there (as I put together a blogcomment record for my own blog):
I hadn't realized until I went searching for a good link how much Orcinus and other people who track or study hate crimes use rape for calibration (or as a baseline?). Hate crimes are crimes that feel like rape, that have many of the same effects as rape, that are at least as bad as rape. I don't know if they're consciously thinking of rape as a hate crime, but it's there in the background -- as the most *familiar* hate crime, the one that's hardest to notice.
posted by Doctor Science at
7:16 PM
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0 comments
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Can this pattern be changed?
I just saw a print ad for Chuck and I finally snapped *ping*. I have *had* it with TV/movies pairing "regular guys" with superhot gals. (and yes, "Knocked Up", I'm looking at you. And "Beauty and the Geek".)
So I wonder -- is it possible to even imagine "regular gal" or even "smart but not good-looking or socially adept gal" with superhot guy, without the guy being a total douche? Is there any example of this besides Ugly Betty? Does it prove the rule?
Showrunners take note: "Ugly Betty" is both popular and critically acclaimed. Almost as though people *want* this sort of thing, even if you basically never give it to them.
eta: I have now been reminded that "Scarecrow and Mrs King" featured "regular gal" and "superhot guy", and it was *very* popular. "Remington Steele" was another possible example. That was a looong time ago, TV people.
Is this all part of the relentless quest for The Lost Demographic of Young Males? Or is it something in the zeitgeist?
So I wonder -- is it possible to even imagine "regular gal" or even "smart but not good-looking or socially adept gal" with superhot guy, without the guy being a total douche? Is there any example of this besides Ugly Betty? Does it prove the rule?
Showrunners take note: "Ugly Betty" is both popular and critically acclaimed. Almost as though people *want* this sort of thing, even if you basically never give it to them.
eta: I have now been reminded that "Scarecrow and Mrs King" featured "regular gal" and "superhot guy", and it was *very* popular. "Remington Steele" was another possible example. That was a looong time ago, TV people.
Is this all part of the relentless quest for The Lost Demographic of Young Males? Or is it something in the zeitgeist?
posted by Doctor Science at
7:51 AM
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0 comments
Friday, November 03, 2006
Feminism in unexpected places
Also: Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians and the importance of punctuation.
I don't actually know how I ended up here, but I recently came across an article by an Evangelical that I would say has a strongly feminist conclusion, though this guy doesn't seem to be particularly liberal in any other way. He's just a careful scholar who pays close attention to the text.
The text in question is from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 11. Paul is writing about the question of what kind of head-coverings are appropriate in Christian services.
In the King James Version, the verses read:
(You can compare various translations of this passage at Bible Gateway).
In my youthful Catholic education, I was taught that verse 10 meant that women should wear head-coverings in church lest the angels be tempted by their beauty -- which made no sense to my youthful mind, because one of the high points of dressing for Mass in those pre-Vatican II days was choosing which pretty veil I would wear.
Everyone who grew up in the 60s heard verse 14 quoted a *lot*, by people who truly believed it was unnatural for men to have long hair. It doesn't take much thinking, though, to see that the argument is patently bogus. If "nature" teaches anything, it's that human beings (especially men) have varying amounts of hair, which naturally grows to varying lengths.
Nonetheless, the traditional Christian interpretation is that long hair in a man is bad, while for a woman it is a "glory" -- though a glory that should be covered in Church. I myself have thought that this passage reflects Paul's messed-up-ness about sex: long hair is intrinsically (one might even say "naturally") sexy, and for a man to deliberately try to look sexy is bad, while for a woman it is good.
Then I came across a discussion of 1 Cor 11 which cited a novel interpretation. Evangelical scholar William Welty, following the turn-of-the-previous-century work of Katharine Bushnell, has done a word-by-word analysis of the "hair" passages and argues that Paul's intended meaning is almost the opposite of the traditional interpretation. So in Welty's translation v. 10 becomes:
As an aside, it's a sign of how much fundamentalists miss out that Noll, who taught for years at staunchly Evangelical Wheaton College, has now moved to Notre Dame to take up George Marsden's chair in History. Even 50 years ago it would have been unthinkable for America's greatest Evangelical scholar to teach at her greatest Catholic university, but the net result of this kind of religiously tolerant cross-pollination is great intellectual growth for all participants. Fundamentalists won't let themselves play in that pool, so they can't get the benefits.
Back to the Bible. Welty reads verses 13-15 as statements, not rhetorical questions:
You'd think it would be hard to get this translation and the KJV from the same Greek original, but you have to realize that all the earliest copies of the New Testament had no punctuation, and indeed no spaces between words -- here's a sample page from the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest and most important surviving examples, to give you an idea what it looks like.
The people at bibletexts.com asked linguist Alexander Lehrman for his opinion of Welty's translation, and he says:
What we have here, then, is at least a few scholars who are translating the Bible verses to mean pretty much the opposite of their traditional interpretation. How could they be correct? I mean, this text has been read carefully for over 1800 years, how could the traditional reading be that far wrong?
I won't talk about the obvious "that's why we call it the Patriarchy" factors, but will just point out the crucial aspect of punctuation.
Punctuation is a replacement for breath, for the voice. At this point we're all familiar with online communication, and how useful emoticons can be to convey tone and facial expressions in a cold stream of text. Punctuation is Emoticons 1.0, the first step in adding back the human feeling plain text lacks.
So how could people read clearly and accurately before punctuation? My guess is: aloud. Punctuation came in (900 CE, many hundreds of years after the New Testament was written) when enough people were used to reading texts by themselves, silently; before then most texts were intended to be read aloud, and read by someone who knew how it was supposed to sound.
I assume that when Paul wrote his Letter to the Corinthians he read it aloud -- he is very likely to have dictated it to a secretary or scribe. The trusted messenger he sent with the Letter to Corinth would have heard the letter aloud when Paul was working on it. In Corinth that messenger would have read the Letter aloud to the congregation there, probably more than once, and he would have known what kind of tone or emotion Paul intended in each line. When the Letter was copied and redistributed, those copies would have been read carried to various congregations and read aloud there by people who had heard the Letter read in Corinth, and so on through the world and years.
When you see a page like the Codex Sinaiticus (above) with the words all run together in a mass, it's not intended to be read silently, by a single person sitting alone. It's meant to be read aloud by someone who has already heard it read, who needs to be reminded of the exact wording but not of every detail of the presentation. It's like the difference between the text of Shakespeare's plays and Shaw's. Shakespeare included very few descriptions of actors, set, action, or props, not because he didn't think about such things but because he didn't have to. He knew what the play looked like, and so did the people working with him, they just needed to be reminded of the words. Shaw, though, wrote very detailed introductory descriptive paragraphs for his scenes, because he knew his plays would be put on by people he would never speak to, and he'd have to give them detailed descriptions when Shakespeare could get away with waving his hands "like this".
But though it's possible to transmit para-textual meaning -- emotion, sarcasm, asides -- without textual evidence like punctuation or emoticons, it's fragile: it depends on the ease with which all the messengers in the chain of readers can "get into" the emotion you're trying to convey. If Welty et al. are right about Paul's original meaning, then I guess that interpretation was lost fairly early on, because it was just too hard for generation after generation of (male) readers to say, "the woman should make up her own mind". A leader like Paul or Jesus can only push an idea so far, after that it depends on the ability of his followers to accurately hear what he's saying and pass it along.
I seem to have undergone a bit of topic drift here. To summarize:
1. St. Paul: possibly not as sexist as he's drawn.
2. Evangelicals: can read the Bible in critical and novel ways.
3. Reading the Bible: not as simple as all that.
4. Punctuation: your friend.
5. Feminism: all over the place.
I don't actually know how I ended up here, but I recently came across an article by an Evangelical that I would say has a strongly feminist conclusion, though this guy doesn't seem to be particularly liberal in any other way. He's just a careful scholar who pays close attention to the text.
The text in question is from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 11. Paul is writing about the question of what kind of head-coverings are appropriate in Christian services.
In the King James Version, the verses read:
4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head.
5 But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.
6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.
7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.
8 For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man.
9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
10 For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.
11 Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.
12 For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God.
13 Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?
14 Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?
15 But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.
(You can compare various translations of this passage at Bible Gateway).
In my youthful Catholic education, I was taught that verse 10 meant that women should wear head-coverings in church lest the angels be tempted by their beauty -- which made no sense to my youthful mind, because one of the high points of dressing for Mass in those pre-Vatican II days was choosing which pretty veil I would wear.
Everyone who grew up in the 60s heard verse 14 quoted a *lot*, by people who truly believed it was unnatural for men to have long hair. It doesn't take much thinking, though, to see that the argument is patently bogus. If "nature" teaches anything, it's that human beings (especially men) have varying amounts of hair, which naturally grows to varying lengths.
Nonetheless, the traditional Christian interpretation is that long hair in a man is bad, while for a woman it is a "glory" -- though a glory that should be covered in Church. I myself have thought that this passage reflects Paul's messed-up-ness about sex: long hair is intrinsically (one might even say "naturally") sexy, and for a man to deliberately try to look sexy is bad, while for a woman it is good.
Then I came across a discussion of 1 Cor 11 which cited a novel interpretation. Evangelical scholar William Welty, following the turn-of-the-previous-century work of Katharine Bushnell, has done a word-by-word analysis of the "hair" passages and argues that Paul's intended meaning is almost the opposite of the traditional interpretation. So in Welty's translation v. 10 becomes:
The woman ought to have authority over her own head because of her [guardian] angels-- that is, the woman's own conscience should be her guide. This is a pretty feminist conclusion, especially given that Welty doesn't seem to call himself a feminist, and he's certainly no leftist. But he is part of the non-fundamentalist Evangelical tradition, and I am not surprised to see that he got his M.Div. at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, also the alma mater of Mark Noll, perhaps the leading intellectual among American Evangelicals right now.
As an aside, it's a sign of how much fundamentalists miss out that Noll, who taught for years at staunchly Evangelical Wheaton College, has now moved to Notre Dame to take up George Marsden's chair in History. Even 50 years ago it would have been unthinkable for America's greatest Evangelical scholar to teach at her greatest Catholic university, but the net result of this kind of religiously tolerant cross-pollination is great intellectual growth for all participants. Fundamentalists won't let themselves play in that pool, so they can't get the benefits.
Back to the Bible. Welty reads verses 13-15 as statements, not rhetorical questions:
13 It is proper for a woman to pray to God without head coverings.
14 Nature in no way teaches on the one hand that if a man has hair it puts him to shame
15 nor does it teach on the other that a woman's hair is her glory. All of this is true because hair is given as a substitute for man-made coverings.
You'd think it would be hard to get this translation and the KJV from the same Greek original, but you have to realize that all the earliest copies of the New Testament had no punctuation, and indeed no spaces between words -- here's a sample page from the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest and most important surviving examples, to give you an idea what it looks like.
The people at bibletexts.com asked linguist Alexander Lehrman for his opinion of Welty's translation, and he says:
As far as I can tell, Welty is quite correct in treating verse 13 as an assertion, not a question (although that is not at all necessary: it may well be a rhetorical question). He is absolutely correct in interpreting verse 14 to mean "Nature itself does not teach you...," etc. The Greek verb komao does not mean "to have LONG hair," it means merely "to have hair (on one's head)." So the King James version represents a great distortion of the original, as does Waltke's interpretation. Most importantly, Welty's (i.e., Bushnell's) interpretation of verse 10 as something like "woman must have authority over her (own) head" is perfectly correct.
What we have here, then, is at least a few scholars who are translating the Bible verses to mean pretty much the opposite of their traditional interpretation. How could they be correct? I mean, this text has been read carefully for over 1800 years, how could the traditional reading be that far wrong?
I won't talk about the obvious "that's why we call it the Patriarchy" factors, but will just point out the crucial aspect of punctuation.
Punctuation is a replacement for breath, for the voice. At this point we're all familiar with online communication, and how useful emoticons can be to convey tone and facial expressions in a cold stream of text. Punctuation is Emoticons 1.0, the first step in adding back the human feeling plain text lacks.
So how could people read clearly and accurately before punctuation? My guess is: aloud. Punctuation came in (900 CE, many hundreds of years after the New Testament was written) when enough people were used to reading texts by themselves, silently; before then most texts were intended to be read aloud, and read by someone who knew how it was supposed to sound.
I assume that when Paul wrote his Letter to the Corinthians he read it aloud -- he is very likely to have dictated it to a secretary or scribe. The trusted messenger he sent with the Letter to Corinth would have heard the letter aloud when Paul was working on it. In Corinth that messenger would have read the Letter aloud to the congregation there, probably more than once, and he would have known what kind of tone or emotion Paul intended in each line. When the Letter was copied and redistributed, those copies would have been read carried to various congregations and read aloud there by people who had heard the Letter read in Corinth, and so on through the world and years.
When you see a page like the Codex Sinaiticus (above) with the words all run together in a mass, it's not intended to be read silently, by a single person sitting alone. It's meant to be read aloud by someone who has already heard it read, who needs to be reminded of the exact wording but not of every detail of the presentation. It's like the difference between the text of Shakespeare's plays and Shaw's. Shakespeare included very few descriptions of actors, set, action, or props, not because he didn't think about such things but because he didn't have to. He knew what the play looked like, and so did the people working with him, they just needed to be reminded of the words. Shaw, though, wrote very detailed introductory descriptive paragraphs for his scenes, because he knew his plays would be put on by people he would never speak to, and he'd have to give them detailed descriptions when Shakespeare could get away with waving his hands "like this".
But though it's possible to transmit para-textual meaning -- emotion, sarcasm, asides -- without textual evidence like punctuation or emoticons, it's fragile: it depends on the ease with which all the messengers in the chain of readers can "get into" the emotion you're trying to convey. If Welty et al. are right about Paul's original meaning, then I guess that interpretation was lost fairly early on, because it was just too hard for generation after generation of (male) readers to say, "the woman should make up her own mind". A leader like Paul or Jesus can only push an idea so far, after that it depends on the ability of his followers to accurately hear what he's saying and pass it along.
I seem to have undergone a bit of topic drift here. To summarize:
1. St. Paul: possibly not as sexist as he's drawn.
2. Evangelicals: can read the Bible in critical and novel ways.
3. Reading the Bible: not as simple as all that.
4. Punctuation: your friend.
5. Feminism: all over the place.
posted by Doctor Science at
10:06 PM
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4 comments
