I think that’s the best Tardis dress I’ve ever seen. (I don’t know the name of the cosplayer, but her Facebook page is here.) (UPDATE: Her name is Sasha Trabane, and thanks to Daran for finding that.)
- Safe Space For Possibly Unpopular Thoughts on Feminism, Leftism — Crooked Timber
- Trading the Megaphone for the Gavel in Title IX Enforcement (Thanks, G&W!)
- Also the thought that men being hurt is okay or deserved so long as they’re being hurt at the hands of other men is pretty awful. Like, firstly, women police masculinity and enforce gender roles. But even if that weren’t true, are we really saying that we don’t care about people who are suffering because they happen to be the same gender as the people who set up the system that causes the suffering?
- A Jew in Paris | The American Conservative
- Did Falling Testosterone Affect Falling Crime? | Slate Star Codex The short answer is “no,” but (as the post points out) that just raises the question – why didn’t it?
- For Those of Us Who The World Is Not Ready, Qualified, Able, or Willing to Love: Happy Valentine’s Day –
- GOP’s Scott Walker so anti-science he can’t affirm Evolution | Informed Comment
- Drug Testing Welfare Users Is A Sham, But Not For The Reasons You Think | Slate Star Codex
- Obama’s “Limited” Perpetual War | The American Conservative
- The Revolution Will Not Be Plus-Sized | Tastefully Ratchet Amp’s comment: Although I thought about it for days, I don’t think I agree with this. The availability of clothing that fits well and is affordable is a basic necessity in our society, not the frivolous concern as this blog post paints it. And because the ability to look in a mirror and think there’s any positive value at all in what you see is one that has been systematically denied to fat people. The left should be advocating for both better clothing for fat people and better treatment of clothing workers; being in favor of the latter doesn’t require not advocating for the former.
- ‘I Just Had an Abortion’ – Wellness & Empowerment – EBONY
- Millennials living with parents: It’s harder to explain why young adults return home than you think.
- Anti-Feminist stereotypes about feminists haven’t changed much in 200 years, as these old political cartoons show.
- Who Should See Recordings From Police Bodycams? – The Atlantic
- “The acceptance of reason as an idol, on whose altar you sacrifice the earth, while you called it a slip loop, which I dropped over her face.” A Twitter account which mashes up John Norman’s Gor novels and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. (Via).
- The White House is taking a big step to let addicts get the medicine they need – Vox
- Obamacare is costing way less than expected – Vox
- CA: AG Harris Drops Appeal in Wake of Judge’s Suggestion Prosecutor be Tried for Perjury | The Open File
- Black teens who commit a few crimes go to jail as often as white teens who commit dozens – The Washington Post
- In ‘Mark of the Beast’ case, EEOC defends the religious liberty to belief it thereby proves to be factually untrue
- Could the Fast Food Industry Pay $15 an Hour? – Lawyers, Guns & Money
- Mike Huckabee: ISIL Beheadings Threaten U.S. More Than ‘Sunburn’ Of Climate Change | ThinkProgress
- My Fair Lady: A Series of Text Messages — Crooked Timber
- Why Have Jews in the U.K. Never Won a Reported Discrimination Case Against Non-Jewish Defendants? – Tablet Magazine (Note: This article is by David Schraub, who blogs at “The Debate Link” and has sometimes posted here at “Alas.”)
- Horrible Vanderbilt rape case shows how much we do have a “rape culture”
- Black Workers With Advanced Degrees, White Workers With B.A.’s Make Roughly the Same – COLORLINES
- “This was essentially a political trial designed to scare the bezeejuz out of anyone who goes anywhere near Anonymous”: Hullabaloo
Amp’s comment: I’m not saying there aren’t Democrats who are also fools. I am saying that no Democrat who was this blatantly anti-science would be a highly plausible contender for winning the primary and being the party’s candidate for President. See also Climate Change, of course.
Radical feminist Inna Shevchenko’s account of her attempted murder at the hands of Islamists. I have so much respect for this woman.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/inna-shevchenko-i-knew-copenhagen-attacks-were-coming-now-i-have-live-fear-death-1488175
I’m not trying to use this to put the boot in. Sociologically – after all the Sarkessian and Quinn and #gamergate drama, someone has actually tried to carry out a mass shooting while a famous radical feminist was giving a seminar, it’s the biggest news story in the world, and there’s barely a peep in the femisphere. What’s going on? Are a lot of the blogs just a US bubble?
From Kevin Drum: Defending Free Speech Doesn’t Require Solidarity With The Speech Itself
The post is about a month old, but it’s a good point. I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that some of the reactions to the Charlie Hebdo shootings were premised on “at last I get to say really awful things about Muslims! I’m not a bigot, I’m just ‘pro-free-speech!'”
It’s totally legitimate to defend the right to say awful, bigoted things, while still recognizing that they’re awful things, and thinking that perhaps the world would be a better place if they were not said.
—Myca
Also, Re #7:
It’s interesting. For a long time, the anti-vaccination folks were what you’d hit the left with if you wanted to make a facile “both sides do it” kind of false equivalency. But then the Measles outbreak hit, and Obama came out and said “The science is, you know, pretty indisputable. We’ve looked at this again and again. There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren’t reasons to not.”
And then, like clockwork, you had Chris Christie and Rand Paul pop out of the woodwork to say shit like, “not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others,” and, “I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”
And it’s not that the left doesn’t have its people with unscientific beliefs. Sure we do. But they’re generally not in positions like Rand or Christie. We don’t elevate them.
—Myca
Well, there is Robert Kennedy Jr.
According to this website it’s Sasha Trabane.
I’m not so sure. I think that merely being a Democrat gives you some science cred that you can afford to spend for the sake of bringing in a few oddball centrists. Rather like how Republicans are allowed to have dodged a draft or two because being Republicans makes them sufficiently war-tough.
While outright denial that humans descend from anything but other humans (or even more so, outright affirmation of a young earth) would indeed likely nix any Democrat’s presidential aspirations, they can still hedge to any point short of that, especially since that hedging can be phrased as the simple expression of religious beliefs.
Evolution in particular is a complicated one because it doesn’t much touch on public policy the way that climate change and vaccination do; no one’s clamoring for a Common Core With Creationism, so there’s not much for the president to do on the “issue” except wave one flag or another. (And of course to permit scientific grants for methodologies that imply the truth of evolution, but that’s always been a given; I don’t think even GWB ever got into hot water for not fighting biologists themselves.)
Regarding the issues of black people being treated worse:
We keep trying to fix this problem, but it is very very difficult to do.
A lot of the problem links to discretion. When you have discretion, people enact their conscious and unconscious biases, which is very difficult (largely impossible, with unconscious ones) to avoid.
Also, a lot of the problem links to the debate about when/where/how to distinguish between “what someone does” and “why they are doing it.” And this gets really complex when you try to figure out which equality you are aiming for. If Gene Greatlife and Harry Horriblelife are each accused of theft, is one of them more or less culpable? Is one of them more or less likely to re-offend? What if Harry and Gene are just kids?
This usually comes out to an issue of “which equality do you want to choose,” combined with a decision about “which things are considered to be personal, rather than societal.” But even those conflict. And often solution is usually “well, punish everyone equally and harshly” instead of “stop punishing people.” So we end up enacting things like mandatory minimums, which create their own, different, set of problems.
Anyway. Difficult stuff, though fascinating.
For folks who find that sort of thing interesting, I highly recommend hercules and the umpire, a very unusual blog written by a sitting federal judge, who often has very well written and well linked articles (and excellent high quality comments) on sentencing issues like that.
re: #20. Remember when I posted the Letter of the Beast from Recognition Systems and doubters sprung up claiming it was a hoax? Sweet vindication!
Sweet vindication for RonF, too, as he correctly stated the consequences of ignoring an employee’s religious freedom.
What an annoying unforeseen consequence of the biometric scanning business. Although I’d have more sympathy if their scanners didn’t suck. I can almost believe that those scanners are tools of Satan even if they can’t place or read the mark of the beast.
The fast food $15 link is… interesting.
The linked website basically says “of course they could do it; don’t be ridiculous.”
That website in turn links to a paper (or more accurately a “working paper”) which describes it.
That paper in turn–as with all such economic predictive stuff–rests on a bunch of assumptions. As the authors put it, “The set of assumptions underlying this
scenario are all realistic and derived from the existing relevant literature.” Whether or not you agree with the authors regarding any individual one of their assumptions, agreement becomes harder and harder as you grow to the entire set of linked assumptions. Saying “of course they can do it” without “… assuming these things happen and you make these choices and these tradeoffs” is like saying “of course you can live on minimum wage” without saying “…assuming these other things happen and you make these choices and these tradeoffs.”
Gov. Walker went to London to talk about trade with Wisconsin. He got asked “Are you comfortable with the idea of evolution? Do you believe in it? Do you accept it?” He answered “For me, I’m going to punt on that one as well. That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or another. So, I’m going to leave that up to you.”
Me, I’d have said “I’m comfortable with it. ‘Believe in it’ is not something I’d say ‘Yes’ to because evolution and natural selection are matters of science, not faith. I accept (to use your word) that it’s the mechanism by which species come into being and die out. I figure that God made people and that evolution and natural selection are the tools He used.” But Gov. Walker chose to duck it, apparently seeing it as not a political question. I’m guessing he’s trying to not offend the astonishingly large number of people who don’t believe that humans came about through the process of evolution. According to a Gallup poll, 46% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form in the last 10,000 years. Which is so incredible to me that I despair of our system of public education. And I caution you about getting too smug about that. According to that poll that would be 58% of Republicans, 39% of independents and 41% of Democrats think that’s true. So claims that the Democratic party is the “party of Science” are not all that strong.
But ducking it makes him a cautious politician. It does not make him “anti-science”. Show me where he’s made a statement or pursued a policy where he denies the truth of scientific discoveries or laws.
I’ve been on Professor Althouse’s blog a lot. She’s a law professor at UW-Madison (a.k.a. “The People’s Republic of Madison”) who voted for Pres. Obama twice and who has been keeping an eye on Gov. Walker (among many other interests). I first got interested in him when after he was first elected – an election in which the Wisconsin legislature turned majority-Republican for the first time in a very long time – a group of Democratic Wisconsin State Legislature members, showing a strong respect for democracy and the will of the people, fled to Illinois in order to prevent a legislative quorum from being achieved and thus denying the passage of legislation favored by the new Governor and Republican majority. That made the news here in the Chicago area.
Did you mean for #3 to link to a post about makeup?
Given that the words are a direct quote from it, I would presume so.
Indeed, what respect for democracy and the will of the people! They supported the views of the people who elected them by using the rules provided by their democratic body to attempt to prevent legislation they found abhorrent from being passed. The opposition did the same when, some time later, they called the vote on the bill with no warning to the Democrats, and allowing so little time to vote that many Democratic senators–and a few Republicans–were unable to even get their voting buttons to register.
More seriously, what happened in Wisconsin then was a clusterfuck of rather epic proportions, from both sides. (I was living in the Chicago area at the time too and remember being amused by the theatricality of the senators hiding out nearby, even as I was upset about the policy debate that was happening.) But placing all the blame for that clusterfuck on the shoulders of the Democrats is seriously biased. And the people of Wisconsin agreed; over the next two years they recalled three of those Democratic senators (all reelected) and nine Republicans (six reelected, three defeated), plus Governor Walker (reelected).
In not-really-related news, we all saw the amusing social media escapades of one Jeff Jackson, the only North Carolina state senator who showed up to the capital during an ice storm and proceeded to fake-pass a bunch of Democratic legislation, yes? My favorite bit is the Facebook status where he mentions he’s getting calls from lobbyists, because “[e]ven the false appearance of power gets their attention.”
Ruchama:
Sure? Kinda? I mean, it’s not like we elected him to something.
Like Amp said, it’s not that those on the left are perfect paragons of scientific rationality or anything … it’s just that we tend to sideline our goofballs, while it’s practically a job qualification on the right.
—Myca
Myca, it’s long been a maxim that there is no such thing as free speech unless it protects speech that people despise. After 240 years of American jurisprudence this should be so well established that it’s amazing that anyone has to write an article about it. But the existence of campus speech codes that seek to ban offensive speech tells us differently.
Harlequin:
My understanding of the quorum requirements of legislative bodies is that it’s a mechanism to keep an unrepresentative portion of that body from taking binding votes if a significant portion of that body cannot attend for one reason or another. I don’t believe they came about and were intended to be used by a group deliberately staying away from a session. I support that by noting that those same rules generally give someone authority to physically compel the attendance of absent members so as to make up a quorum, so there is clear intent that the business of the chamber should not be able to be blocked in such a fashion. Is what they did legal? Apparently. But that would appear to be an unintended side-effect of the law, not the reason why it was written.
But those laws were written before the advent of air travel and Interstates. The Wisconsin legislators got around that by travelling to another State, out of the jurisdiction of the Sargent-At-Arms of the legislature. Gov. Walker finally put an end to that by refusing to direct-deposit their pay checks, requiring them to physically show up in the State capitol building to get them.
Sure, but that’s not what I (or Kevin Drum, who I referenced) was writing about in my comment #2.
—Myca
The original intended purpose of the filibuster rule was to make sure that no bill could be passed when people still wanted to debate it. And it was intended to be rare – it literally was not used once in the first three decades of its existence.
Using the filibuster to create a routine supermajority requirement, as the Senate Republicans did for years before recently winning the Senate, was definitely not the original intended purpose of the filibuster. Yet I can’t recall you ever criticizing that. Am I mistaken?
As for what happened in Wisconsin (which made news nationally), I think doing it once was funny political theatrics – but only theatrics, because (as the Democrats surely knew) such a protest wouldn’t be sustainable. It was a delaying tactic, not a veto.
But if Democrats decided to use that loophole on the vast majority of substantial proposed legislation, and did so for years at a time, creating a veto on the majority’s ability to govern that had never been intended or imagined by the people who wrote the rules, then that would be a contemptible perversion of democracy. And they’d deserve contempt for that. As would any Republican minority that did the same thing.
Would you agree?
Thanks!
Amp,
RonF was talking about the quorum rule, not the filibuster rule.
Is there a connection there that I am missing?
-Jut
It seemed to me that Ron was stating generalizable principles, i.e., when he said
He seemed to be suggesting that it was a bad thing for a minority party to play with rules in order to thwart democracy and the will of the people by “denying the passage of legislation favored by” the majority.
Is there some strong moral reason why this moral principle should apply only when a quorum rule is being applied in a way the writers didn’t envision, in order to thwart democracy?
The Kevin Drum article–especially the Greenwald part which comprises most of it–seems entirely wrong.
Well, yes, it answers itself, though not in the way that he may think. Because, look: right there in his post is “God Hates Fags,” although he is, obviously, neither endorsing or promoting that viewpoint. So, yes: if there was a radical group killing people who wore “god hates Fags” t shirts, then I am 100% positive that people would include the phrase, and probably a picture of the disputed t-shirt. That’s part of why I think those newspapers who report on people being killed for cartoons, but don’t post them (even with a disavowal), are being abnormally sensitive.
Moreover, he analogizes to a single individual and not to a larger group of consistent terrorism. That gives rise to another reason to post the cartoons: as evidence of a refusal to be cowed by threats of violence, in an “I am Spartacus” sense.This is one of the more common reasons.
Greenwald is dead wrong when he tries to link ant-semitic speech as a comparison. Because hey, Charlie Hebdo itsef is no stranger to publishing things which are critical of jews or portray them in a bad light. And yes: if jewish groups started lobbying for, and subsequently killing, people for posting that sort of cartoon then I would not hesitate to post that one instead.
I don’t know if I’d say it’s exactly required. I join Scott Greenfield in thinking that most of the purported refusal to publish, irrespective of claims about “desire not to offend,” is more accurately based on cowardice, i.e. fear to stand up and demonstrate your allegiance to your belief at the moment and time where it counts.
Maybe you don’t want to publish one of the most super offensive ones, just because. But you can choose this one, if you want a recent Hebdo cover.
Or if you want to look at the original 12 cartoons which many of those same folks refused to publish and which ALSO got people killed, there’s this one, which pretty much sums it up. Or this one, or this one.
Because free speech is all about the margins of what is acceptable: if nobody is going to hate you for it, then it isn’t speech which really needs protection anyway.
And the real question is this: if you’re talking about images which (unlike Hebdo) are NOT designed to be inherently offensive, then the “I don’t want to offend people” is basically bullshit, assuming you credit the vast majority of the Muslim world with any reasonableness. If asked about the Nazi march in Skokie then I’d explain to my Jewish relatives (if they hadn’t already been supporters) that I supported the nazis because of the importance of free speech and not because they were Nazis who wanted me dead. And they would be OK with that.
Similarly, reasonable Muslims should, if necessary, concede that the importance of sending around an image of Mohammed at this time and place, in order to stand against violence and support free speech, would outweigh the minor issues raised by the single image. They should support it, not oppose it. If they can’t understand that, I do not credit their opinions as valid, and I assert that any claims that they support free speech are incorrect.
Whether it’s the Nazis in Skokie or Piss Christ in a museum or a picture of Mohammed, proper commitment to free speech means temporarily aligning yourself with speech that you hate.
Defending free speech requires defending free speech. Saying people should be able to publish what they want is maybe is a defence if elected lawmakers are attacking free speech. It’s not a defence if people are carrying out assassination campaigns to silence critics. The Jihadist with a Kalshnikov isn’t interest in your opinion, that’s why he’s using a Kalashnikov and not a ballot paper.
Shevchenko’s opinion:
Charlie Hebdo Paris massacre: Everyone says ‘Je Suis Charlie’ now, but where were they when my friends were alive?
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/charlie-hebdo-paris-massacre-je-suis-charlie-demos-are-too-late-save-my-friends-1483003
Two refutations of the attempts by Social Justice Warriors to smear as racists those who could not defend themselves on account of their murder are below. And yes, this was classic Social Justice Warrior tactics. Can they speak French? No. Do they understand French politics? No. Were they familiar with Hebdo? No. Did they have a blog / twitter account and willingness to draw very quick conclusions about a few images to get clicks from a breaking news story. Yes.
http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/olivier-tonneau/110115/charlie-hebdo-letter-my-british-friends
https://ricochet.media/en/292/lost-in-translation-charlie-hebdo-free-speech-and-the-unilingual-left
That probably did more to sway people than any anything. Papers and TV were showing images of cops being executed and hallways smeared with blood. Then when the issue was being produced they held debates on the merits of publication, and on release they blurred or refused to shown the Mohammed cover because of ‘offence’ and ‘editorial judgement’ (except Fox). And then when people hit the internet, they found it was very touching and completely innocuous. It was the least offensive thing about the whole incident, is just showed the insanity of the situation.
Then there’s stuff like this, which seems to me to be a perfect representation of Richard’s views:
https://thereviewonline.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/screen-shot-2015-02-01-at-11-24-23-am.png
How this should be done:
The Jewish Daily Forward magazine printing a Hebdo cartoon skewering Jews, and generally supporting free speech.
And
And indeed, many Muslims see the attack on Charlie as akin to the attempted assassination by ISIS of the Syrian revolution’s activist-cartoonist Raed Fares. While Western leftists scoffed at what they felt was the mawkish Princess-Di-style sentimentality of the Je suis Charlie meme, many Muslims in France and worldwide were perfectly happy to embrace the slogan. While the delicate flowers at the CBC and the Guardian were fretting over whether to reprint Charlie Hebdo drawings, Arab editorial cartoonists in Lebanon, Qatar and Egypt were made of much tougher stuff.(http://imgur.com/a/zd5rl/)
Re quorums and filibusters- The fact is that our legal system was created with both rules, and norms. On one hand, it ceases to function if we throw out the norms and proudly declare to those who criticize us, “Hey, we’re following all the rules! You have no right to complain!” On the other hand, if we’re going to throw out norms and seek shelter under literal adherence to only the rules, then both sides have to be allowed to do it.
And that’s why I think Obama should respond to the next government shutdown by deploying the entire Marine core to Antarctica, without gear, until he gets what he wants. It’s not technically illegal, so it’s ok, right?
Re free speech- If people are getting murdered for speaking, the only way to protect their free speech is to repeat what they were killed for saying. That’s not a moral statement- that’s a literal factual statement. Murder silences. Repeating the words of the dead undoes the silencing. Anything else you might choose to do might have value, but it falls well short of defending someone’s right to speak.
As for whether speech is hateful- I know that’s a subjective question. But we can’t allow the people who are offended by speech to be the only ones who get a vote on whether the speech is hateful. It’s not hard to figure out where that leads. From my perspective, I think it would be genuinely difficult to be more hateful than… every mainstream religion ever, including Islam. The hatefulness in your typical mainstream religion is mind blowing, unbelievable hatefulness that gets a free pass because, uh, I believe the term is “privilege.” To pick just one example that is popular in many (not all, but many) mainstream faiths and denominations, saying that you believe someone deserves to be placed into a “hell” that, whatever it’s specific characteristics might be, is a maximally awful experience that surpasses all other awful experiences and lasts for infinite duration, is literally a maximally hateful statement. Seriously, try to one-up it. Try to come up with a worse thing to wish on someone, to claim they deserve, than maximal agony for infinite time. I’m pretty sure that, by definition, you can’t do it.
Well, we NEED free speech and religious tolerance norms that accept people running around saying things like that. We have to go to our culture war with the religions we have, not the religions we want. And given that we’re going to tolerate the Bible and the Koran, Charle Hebdo certainly needs to squeak in as well.
Um, so, I was actually attempting to point out how one-sided RonF’s argument was by making a similarly (and deliberately) one-sided point of my own. I attempted to signpost that by starting the next paragraph with “More seriously…” but apparently that failed miserably, so, sorry :/
I do object to the idea that this was not respecting “the will of the people”, because it implies every representative has to represent the average vote of every person who voted for any member of the body they’re part of instead of just their constituents, which seems like a terrible idea. But, yeah. The rest of it, in the letter but not the spirit of the law, and I don’t actually support it as a technique, though as I said, I appreciated the theatricality of it at the time.
So,
1) first there was the Old System on campuses.
2) Then people pushed for some radical changes.
3) Then the OCR issued it’s letter-that-wasn’t-a-ruling-but-which-worked-like-one.
4) Then things changed in response to that letter, and many schools radically rewrote the laws on the ground w/r/t sexual assault, and also changed the ways they enforced them.
5) Then, perhaps motivated by general protests and perhaps by some of the more public problems, some serious pushback commenced.
6) Then in response to that pushback, legislators started making changes–some of which are, themselves, arguably problematic in their own right.
Now, here’s an Open Letter to a variety of governments, by a lot of people and a lot of women’s groups protesting at least some of the laws passed (or being considered) in response to the pushback.
This one might be worth adding to the link farm above; it just came out but is of fairly major import. I’ll analyze it in a separate post.
Does anyone have a source for the case in 2) where the kid was investigated for resembling someone else?
The article has nothing but “a small liberal arts college in Oregon” which isn’t much to go on.
yrs–
–Ben
This is the post on NASPA which describes (and introduces) the letter and it has some links and details. That’s a necessary read because the letter itself contains no links to the actual laws which they are complaining about, nor any quotes.
Some thoughts:
1) This letter isn’t exactly making mountains of molehills, but it is certainly making good use of the word “some” when it seems that “one or two” might suffice.
2) Mandatory reporting to police. This stuff is tricky. Here’s an example statute (note that the proposed law exempts mental health professionals and religious folks.) Actually, that’s the only such example there; is “some” actually “one?”
In any case I don’t think that answer is as clear as the letter suggests. Mandatory reporting would probably deter some reporting (bad,) but of course it would also vastly improve the effect and knowledge of reports (good.) The letter doesn’t seem to acknowledge any of the benefits.
My own take is that generally speaking this punishment is an issue which belongs with the experts; reporting is an overall benefit, and it doesn’t affect counseling or religious services. But it would be good to be able to get support and counseling without reports. IMO it would make sense to have a middle ground, where you could get an unlimited amount of support without a referral, but you can’t seek to punish or restrain someone unless the pros get involved.
2) Creation of rights for accused students without specifically creating rights for accusers. They’re right; this is dumb. Clearly if someone wants to hire an attorney on either side, they should be able to do so, it’s stupid to make it only for one side. (That said, in practice it’s not as bad as it looks. It doesn’t prevent a lawyer for the accuser, and in today’s climate it’s hard to imagine a college who would deny the accuser a right to one, if they asked.)
I note, however, that the letter generally argues against allowing people to hire an attorney, though as I think we all know, they’re most important for the accused. Which is bullshit. There’s no way that people can claim the due process mantle and keep a straight face while trying to find reasons that “full participation by an attorney” (in an attempt to cast some order on the kangaroo court) is a really bad idea.
3) Victims’ Rights to Obtain Supportive and Protective Interim Measures. Let’s distinguish here between helping and hurting: support for the accuseris good and requires no process. Protection (which is to say, punishment or restraint of the accused)requires process.
Even before a judge, civil restraining orders (with sworn testimony, limited judicial cross exams, and some appealability) are abused with some regularity. Giving conflict-adverse, OCR-shy, college administrators the right (or worse, the obligation) to impose protective measures on someone before a trial is a huge problem. I’m disappointed, though not surprised, that these folks are pushing for this. And there’s nary a mention or concession of any issues.
4) Use of the preponderance standard. Unsurprisingly they’re in favor of it here. They’re also against a general presumption of innocence. Here’s an interesting quote:
Which… what? These folks haven’t exactly been bending over backwards to ensure procedural fairness here.
But anyway: when you read that section it is clear they’re generally arguing against a presumption of innocence: what isn’t as obvious is that this change radically changes the amount of error and where it lands, so it hugely increases the likelihood of false accusations and false convictions above where they are now, especially if you lose other process protections like the ones they’re arguing against. Absent that straightforward acknowledgement it seems a bit–OK, more than a bit–tricky.
Also, they neglect to mention that, in court, the preponderance standard goes along with things like sworn testimony, cross, appeals, etc.
5) Right to appeal for convicted parties only. The way the letter frames it is misleading.
Here’s a real summary: The proposed laws would prevent an accuser from choosing a college forum to hear a dispute; losing in the chosen forum; and subsequently using a civil appeal to force the college to reverse its finding for the accused, and to force the college to punish the accused internally.
That doesn’t sound quite so unfair after all, does it? In fact, it’s a lot like the laws in my own state: Small claims actions are cheaper to file. Service is easier. Evidence and court rules are relaxed. There’s a magistrate, not a judge. As a result it’s a lot easier to sue someone in small claims (cheap and fast) and moreover, some folks think it’s a lot easier to win an iffy case.
But to balance the control given to the plaintiff, and to balance the power granted by choice of forum, only the defendant can appeal a small claims ruling.
What the letter writers don’t acknowledge is that the accuser has a choice of three forums: college; civil; and criminal. Nobody else can affect that choice (at least, not absent a mandatory reporting scheme.) If they elect to choose the most informal forum (college) then they may gain the benefits of that forum such as free representation, perhaps a biased outlook, and so on. However, if they don’t win in that forum then they lose the ability to appeal the limited results of that forum. But at all times, the accuser may make that choice.
Even the lost right of appeal isn’t controlling. In fact, the accuser may file a civil suit or press criminal charges even if they lose in college. College findings are evidence only, not determinative.
The accused has no choice of forum and can be forced to raise an unwilling defense. Even if the accused believes that the accusation is false, and that the conviction is wrongful, there’s no opportunity to demand sworn testimony, and so on. Even if the accused would rather be charged of a crime and have a day in court, he can’t make that happen. So it is reasonable, at least IMO, that in the limited context of an unwilling defendant in a college forum (the one with no real process, and untrained parties) only the accused has the right to appeal.
Again: reasonable minds can disagree on the application of the rule. But whatever you think of the ultimate outcome, this presentation isn’t especially honest or forthright, IMO.
Ben: I don’t think there is a source for that. Because of her official involvement with the case, she would be forbidden by federal law from revealing the identities of the parties (or so Cathy Young claimed on Twitter). So unless someone else has made the case public…
gin-and-whiskey:
If you have a good support service for assault victims in your area, then that’s pretty much what you’ve got now. I think pretty highly of the one in my area, and when I try to get victims to access those services, once of the things I tell them is, “They have a different function than we do. Our job is to investigate and prosecute the bad guy. Their job is to advocate for you. And they don’t tell us anything or pass along info to us. Their job is your welfare.”
So, I agree that you can sidestep a lot of the problems inherent in accusation and investigation by putting a firewall between support and investigation. If you have a competent police force and a competent support service, then mission accomplished.
Grace
I’m just curious if there’s any other reportage about the case at all. Not particularly concerned with figuring out the identity of the victims, just would like some corroboration.
I’ve searched without any success for other reports of this. But that doesn’t mean they’re not out there.
Amp – no, in fact I was referring to the specific issue of the misuse of the quorum rule. But you do make an interesting comparison. I would say that your comparison is wrong, though. The official Senate history of cloture and filibuster says
The frequency of its use would certainly seem to have increased over the years. But this does not say that its origin was limited to providing the ability to ensure that a bill had been thoroughly debated prior to consideration. According to this the ability to use it to delay or block consideration of a bill desired by a bare majority seems to have been part of its intent from the beginning.
An analogous consideration for a quorum rule would be to say that the intent of the rule was to give a minority the ability to block consideration of a bill by absenting themselves from the legislative sessions. Again, considering that there are generally provisions to compel the attendance of absent members, I don’t think that’s the case.
Harlequin, I will upon reflection accept your argument. When the House would block Pres. Obama’s legislative initiatives I would hear the argument that Pres. Obama was elected by the whole country and therefore the legislators should defer to him – which I countered by saying that each individual House member was elected to represent his or her own district, and that the will of said district was often specifically to oppose Obama’s ideas.
OTOH, it was certainly the will of the people that they actually execute their office – to show up for work!
Re: the Charlie Hedbo issue (and thanks for calling me on that Myca) – I would say that there was no need to republish the Mohammed cartoons purely to show solidarity with Charlie Hedbo. You can be in favor of free speech and show solidarity with the concept without repeating speech that someone else got killed for if the reason is that you don’t agree with the speech itself.
OTOH, I’m thinking that there IS a good reason to republish those cartoons, and it’s not “Yippee, we get to publish bad things about Muslims!” I think it’s useful because it reinforces an important issue – you can publish cartoons that various groups of people find offensive, but only one group contains a lot of people who would like to kill you for it – and a smaller but still finite number who may actually try. Something needs to be done about that. There are far too many apologists and denialists about this, and to destroy their influence and get people off the fence about that is to emphasize the point again and again and again.
Ron –
The origin of the filibuster in the US Senate comes decades (35 years) before the earliest example you cite. The rule change that created the filibuster was eliminating the “previous question” motion. (The previous question motion allowed a simple majority of the Senate to end debate on a motion.)
This was suggested by Vice President Burr (in his capacity as titular head of the Senate) in 1805 as part of Burr’s campaign for cleaner, simpler Senate rules. He wanted to eliminate rules that he thought were redundant or served no purpose, and he thought the previous question motion was such a rule, because it wasn’t ever used. The Senate voted to go with Burr’s clean-up plans in 1806. That was the rule change which made it possible to filibuster.
The intent of the rule change was not to create the filibuster, or to enable a minority of the senate to block legislation. In fact, it would be over three decades before anyone actually conducted a filibuster in the Senate. The intent was just to get rid of rules that were seen as unnecessary and serving no purpose. Since their purpose was only to eliminate no-consequence rules, had Burr and the 1806 Senate understood that by eliminating the previous question motion, they were making it possible for minorities to indefinitely block majorities from passing any laws at all, it seems extremely unlikely that they would have voted for it.
You can’t get around this by citing things that happened in the Senate decades later. (That said, even in the 1850s, you would not have found a majority of the Senate – and I suspect, not any Senators at all – who would have agreed to the proposition that the Senate minority should have a routine veto power over any legislation lacking a supermajority.)
Not to the very high and very responsive level which some folks believe is mandated by Title 9, I don’t think.
The real problem is that it can be very difficult to avoid people at college, so it can be hard to balance a desire to support the accuser without causing consequences to the accused.
My own preference would be to modify existing civil restraining order jurisprudence to allow it to cover the academic setting.
gin-and-whiskey:
You just carve out appropriate exceptions. We do this all the time in bail conditions when someone we have arrested for a domestic offense is being released:
—
“…and you shall stay 100 yards away from any place where said person might be.”
“But we work across the street from each other!”
“How far apart are they?”
“50 feet?”
writing “…except that when working at your current employer’s, you shall stay 15 yards away from any place where said person might be.” stops writing, looks at arrested person “And remember, you can still have no contact, direct or indirect.”
—
You can carve out exceptions for going to a specific class together, for working together, for transferring custody of children, all that sort of thing; it depends on the nature of the protection needed and the degree of carve-out. And if the subject of the restraining order wants to argue, they can file with the court to exercise their right to a hearing within five days.
It already covers the academic setting, so I’m guessing that you mean that you favor enabling academic authorities to have the authority of issuing and adjudicating restraining orders which would only have an effect at times and places under the aegis of the academic authority? But that doesn’t seem like an argument you would make, probably, so I’m not sure what you mean, here.
Grace
True dat ;)
In Mass. for example, there are certain specific chapters relating to certain types of domestic abuse, called “209A” orders. Those are also called “abuse prevention” orders. However, unlike normal orders, 209A orders are limited in application to (quotes from the statute):
They are often more powerful than harassment prevention orders and rather than having a college administrator do it there would be some advantages to permit a 209A to be possible (whether or not it was granted) in more college issues.
This is going to be completely old hat to Grace and a lot of other folks here probably, but this is something I hadn’t really given much thought to until my sister-in-law divorced her (emotionally and almost certainly physically) abusive husband a few years ago, and they were sorting out custody of their kids. She didn’t want him to know where she lived – still in the same town – so there was a court-appointed agreed-upon meeting site for exchange of the kids (and I think probably an order about him not following her, although I doubt anyone was around to enforce that; I assume that would have been an after-the-fact thing if he showed up at her new place, which as far as I know he hasn’t). There was a lot of thought that went into it to deal with these issues – I was impressed with how the court (and to a much lesser extent the police force) handled it.
Just an off-hand thought that Grace’s comment triggered; this is an open thread, so what the hell….
ETA – Not that the police did anything wrong, as far as I know. They just weren’t that involved in that process. They were certainly involved earlier on when he falsely accused her of abusing the kids in order to get more custody, and while I wish there could’ve been a charge brought against him (the claims were shown to be demonstrably false) at least they successfully showed it was bullshit.
Hey Ampersand – any news about how Robert’s been doing lately, and what’s shaping up re: his hopeful release date?
I was just thinking about Robert myself.
Via Skepchick (and thus, at one remove, via the Alas blogroll!), an interesting article about the time Marilyn vos Savant wrote about the Monty Hall problem and everybody freaked out. Some of it is misogynistic, which is why it was linked on Skepchick I think, but I personally was mostly amused at the nice illustration of how some people–even very smart, mathematically-minded people–can be so wrong about probability.
(I’ll say that I don’t quite like the way the problem is explained in the article, although it gets the demonstrations right. The most helpful explanation for me, as I was trying to figure it out why it worked that way, was this: Your intuitive sense is that the two unopened doors are identical. But that’s not true. All you know about the door you picked is that you picked it, while what you now know about the other unopened door is that the host could have chosen to open it, but didn’t. The informational asymmetry is what is different about the two options. ETA: The argument that the probability can’t change once you’ve made your selection is the mathematically rigorous one, I just mean that this idea about the informational asymmetry is what allowed me to reconcile the math with my own common sense.)
gin-and-whiskey:
Ah. This is a devil-in-the-details difference. In New Hampshire, if you have been on a date with someone, once, you are in a domestic relationship with them forevermore. Very straightforward. RSA 173-B.
Simply rooming together, however, does not make it a domestic situation (never mind that the law, as written, reads as though it does; the devil’s in case law, too).
Also, there’s Harassment, and Stalking, which are often useful even if it’s not domestic situation under the law.
Lee1:
The front lot at the local station is often used for this, here, because people can wait in a warm lobby, and because the front lot and the lobby are videotaped, and obviously there are police officers handy.
Hereabouts, we would often charge with False Report in such a situation, though we might not choose to for various reasons. One would be if we could demonstrate probable cause that it’s a false report, or clear and convincing evidence, but not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
The elements of False Report vary from place to place, and I’m sure there are many jurisdictions where it’s hard to charge, or it’s regarded as more of a nuisance than a serious crime, and so it’s deemed not worth the effort. Some rural jurisdictions out there have long response times to anything that’s not a violent felony in progress.
Grace
That’s pretty much the exact opposite of what domestic means.
Pete Patriot:
Welcome to Law 101, Pete. We’re also going to be practicing “swallowing camels and straining at gnats.” Also, “there will be a short quiz, next period.”
In seriousness, though, and leaving aside the literary references, that’s what the “Definitions” section of the law is for. The word means what the definitions say it means. In the instant case, until the beginning of this year, you’d have looked under 173-B, but now there’s 631:2-b:
(…which is exactly what you’ll find under 173-B, which also still exists. So under NH law, that sucker has been defined twice, identically. Double the definitional power!)
Judges have taken that definition to mean that if you do something romantic together, like a date, you’re “intimate partners”.
I don’t write ’em, and I don’t rule on ’em, and those who do don’t ask my advice. I just have to work with ’em, and so I know how they work.
Grace
(edited to fix the darn apostrophes)
I saw that Marilyn vos Savant article a few days ago. My favorite part of it is the people in the comments still arguing that she’s wrong.
Oh, and speaking of people not understanding probability, this one has been showing up in a lot of vaccine arguments: “Half the people who’ve gotten measles this year have been vaccinated, so that shows that vaccinated people are just as likely as unvaccinated people to get measles.”
On Facebook, someone posted this link and then several men started explaining how attributing this to sexism/mansplaining was almost certainly over-thinking things, because you see there was a much simpler explanation, which is that people don’t understand statistics, so invoking sexism was unnecessary.
I felt like we were in some kind of mansplaining fractal.
Earlier today, one of my coworkers cornered me, and asked me, in hushed tones, to confirm a Russian translation for him. He showed me a picture of a missile with the ole hammer and sickle, with “To be delivered personally to Obama” written on it. (“Обаме лично в руки”, literally, “in Obama’s hands, personally”)
Pretty scary stuff. Turns out, the American Ambassador has been tweeting the picture from Moscow, CNN has been talking about the Russian propaganda machine and threatening messages at the February 23rd parade, pundits have been discussing whether the missile could reach the US, etc…
I have to say, I was a bit puzzled. So in about 10 seconds, I found the original picture. That article is already quite misleading and inflammatory, but at least, it’s factual. Well, the American media sure ran with it.
A few things that their hard research failed to unveil. The rocket is a papier-mâché model carried by two members of one of Russia’s communist parties. Not one of the half-way sane ones, and not one enjoying even moderate support. Nope. The actual Stalinists. The banners are such that they would not have been allowed to march anywhere but straight to processing in the 80s. Not that they were allowed to march on the Red Square today, either, but that did not prevent CNN to mix the cropped image with shots of the actual Defender of the Motherland Day Parade, which somehow got translated into something much more sinister.
But what really got me rolling is that once I got home, I actually found the original CNN video that got picked up by everyone else. It contains the line, I kid you not:
“The Propaganda Machine is a very slick thing.”
No shit.
Grace:
In this case my understanding is that in addition to physical evidence countering his claim they also had a polygraph that suggested he was lying (I know that’s not the best evidence in the world…). The officer who was in touch with my sister-in-law about it said they were going to go forward with charges, but then he had some sort of medical condition (can’t for the life of me remember what it was) that took him off the job for a while, and it all just seemed to get forgotten. I was frustrated with how it just got dropped (as were my wife and sister-in-law, needless to say…).
This was in a decent-sized city (>200,000 people). Also, a nuisance? Not worth the effort? He was lying about her physically abusing her kids so she wouldn’t be able to have any contact with them for the next 12-14 years!
ETA: I’m sorry, Grace – obviously you weren’t personally advocating those positions, and I made it sound like you were. We were just really frustrated by the whole process, and continue to be frustrated that he still has partial custody after all that shit.
Ruchama and Elusis: I am wincing at, but amused by, all three of those comments. :)
In one comment thread on the vaccine thing, I actually went through the calculations, and found that, if 95% of people are vaccinated, and 97% of vaccinated people are immune to measles, and no unvaccinated people are immune to measles, and everybody has the same probability of being exposed to measles (all of which are slightly wrong, but close enough for rough calculations), then you’d expect something like 36% of the infected people to be people who were vaccinated, which is roughly what we’re seeing.
The percentage of vaccinated people who are immune is tough to measure, since there are a lot of adults who remember getting measles shots as kids, but the current recommendation for full coverage is that you get two shots, so people who just got the one shot as a kid and didn’t get a booster as an adult might not be as immune as they think. General guideline: if you were still in school, or even college, or somewhere else that required you to be up-to-date on shots, in 1991 or later, then you probably got the second one. If not, and you don’t remember getting a measles shot as an adult, then you probably need another one.
Lee1, no worries. I was speculating, and I could speculate some more, but of course it would be just that.
Grace
In a comment on my Reading Journal thread, G&W asked why I called terrorism “hyper masculine” and he provided some links to articles about women and terrorism by way of illustrating that terrorism is not something that only men engage in. That, of course, is true, but when I called terrorism hyper masculine I was referring more to the gendered nature of the ideology behind/driving terrorism rather than the genders of those who practice it. I don’t have the time to engage in a long debate about this, so I will for now point you to the book that shaped my thinking about this, The Demon Lover, by Robin Morgan.
Does anyone happen to remember where a discussion of who’s Jewish or not that I was in in comments here?
I’d told a friend that she wasn’t Jewish because her Jewish ancestry was on her father’s side and she wasn’t practicing Judaism. There were some comments about how definitions of being Jewish were more complex than I knew.
Nancy,
I think this is the thread you’re referring to.
https://amptoons.com/blog/2011/06/30/circumcision-like-everything-else-is-complicated/
Richard Jeffrey Newman says:
February 24, 2015 at 7:09 pm
In a comment on my Reading Journal thread, G&W asked why I called terrorism “hyper masculine” and he provided some links to articles about women and terrorism by way of illustrating that terrorism is not something that only men engage in. That, of course, is true, but when I called terrorism hyper masculine I was referring more to the gendered nature of the ideology behind/driving terrorism rather than the genders of those who practice it.
I won’t drag you into a long discussion about it, but I encourage you not to use the term if your goal is not to associate terrorism with maleness.
As for “the gendered nature of the ideology,” that’s basically the same thing. Whether or not it’s intentional, the tendency of some feminist writers to basically pick out nasty things and figure out ways to call them “male” doesn’t necessarily play in to long term goals very well (nor, to riff of Harlequin’s other thread, does that association do much to avoid the concept that feminists are problematic). Hatred, entitlement, frustration, heroism, love, and so on are not “male” attributes any more than killing people.
But I didn’t say that wasn’t my intention. What I said that I was not trying to imply that only men are terrorists, though the overwhelming majority of them are. I think the ideology of terrorism is gendered, and I think it does a great deal to obscure a full and honest understanding of what terrorism is when we avoid that.
That may be true, but how those things are organized into an ideology can very well be gendered, not because something is inherently and essentially masculine or feminine, but because ideology always comes from a point of view and points of view almost always contain within them the gendered biases, assumptions, etc. of those who have them.
I don’t have a problem with people seeing feminisms and/or feminists as problematic. It is/we are. Indeed, part of the whole point of feminist movement is to problematize what it means to lives in a male dominant society/culture, and I see no reason to apologize for that fact. This will, it is true, make some people angry; it will lead some people told decide I am not worth talking to; it will lead some people to decide that I have ingested far too much of, so to speak, “the feminist kool aid” and that I am now a self-hating man (or as someone on my blog put it not too long ago in a comment that I did not allow through, “a mangina”); but frankly that’s okay with me.
My own experience is that most of those people don’t really support the same things I support anyway. They might pay lip service to the idea, but when it comes to actually doing something, they’re a whole lot less interested. And while there are people with whom it might be easier to find common ground if I don’t use explicitly feminist rhetoric, or shorthand terminology, or whatever, those people—again, in my experience—tend to be willing to engage in real, substantive, discussion and debate; and I often actually prefer the struggle of dealing with the difficult rhetoric to glossing it over because that struggle, well engaged, tends to produce a respectful understanding, even if it does not produce agreement.
Anyway, that’s my position and my experience, but it is not a discussion I want to have much beyond this comment. I had actually logged on to post something about the adjunctification of education, which I will put up in a post in a few minutes.
Well, if we’re riffing off my other thread….:D Taking my point about terminology problems for outsiders when we’re not doing Feminism 101: RJN never used the term “male”. He used “masculine.” And there’s a long tradition in feminism of separating concepts of masculinity and femininity from male and female–placing them in the context of rigid traditional gender roles, but pointing out that real people have both masculine and feminine aspects. (And pointing out that, in the current environment, it is easier for women to express masculinity than for men to express femininity–and finding fault with that asymmetry.*)
I mean, I am not psychic, and it is possible that RJN meant what you said: no distinction between masculine and male. But as someone who spends a lot of my time talking to feminists, I heard “masculine” as signaling “the kind of posturing typically required for men in societies with rigid gender roles”, not just “men”.
*random question: do other people use the term asymmetry this way, or am I marking myself as a scientist? (I’ve probably told this story, but I was hanging out with some friends in Bandelier National Park, close to Los Alamos, and heard somebody behind us say, “They just used the word nontrivial, they must be scientists.” Which was true.)
ETA: This was crossposted with the above comment, but I think my point stands either way? That what you heard, and what I heard, were different based on what we’re used to hearing.
Harlequin:
I use the term asymmetry that way, but “nontrivial” is a scientifical sounding word, I agree. :-) These are also terms of non-scientists who get into certain types of internet arguments frequently, I think. Certainly, around my household we use the word “nontrivial” in casual conversation, and only one of us (Charles) is a scientist.
I agree with you – as feminists commonly use the term, RJN’s use of “masculine” was a term of art, and didn’t mean “all men.” To me, it seems fair for RJN to treat this space (Alas) as something other than a “feminism 101” space, and it’s reasonable for him to use some feminist terms of art here.
Both Amp and Harlequin are right in that I was using hypermasculine to mean something separate distinct from maleness, if by maleness we mean, simply, having a penis. I don’t treat this as a “feminism 101” space, but G&W’s “encouragement” (his word) not to use language that identifies negative things as somehow male (which is a somewhat reductive summary of his position, I know) is about something other than—or at least in addition to—the question of what kind of language you use in Feminism 101 versus a space like Alas.
It is also about—and this is not meant to characterize G&W personally (I don’t know him well enough to do that), or anyone else who comments on this blog who is not a feminist; this is an observation about what I see as the implications of the position he has taken more than once in discussions about race, sex, and gender—the discomfort that comes from being confronted with difficult and problematizing ideas, with being asked seriously to consider whether or not those ideas carry some truth and whether or not that truth is sufficiently compelling for you to act on it, even if acting on it might seem to go against your own (immediate) best interests. It is about not liking it when someone else applies a label to you that you didn’t choose yourself, that does not show you in the best of lights, but that nonetheless has the social/cultural/political currency to stick. It is about—and perhaps this relates to Harlequin’s post above—using instances where you, or people like you, or people you care about have been legitimately hurt by these ideas, by the people who profess these ideas, who advocate for laws and policies, etc. based on these ideas. I challenge anyone to show me a time when substantive, progressive social change has taken place because the people advocating for that change only ever spoke politely, never named what they wanted to change and the people and institutions who embodied whatever that thing was as what it was.
Obviously, there are moments when, strategically, tactically, it is wise to choose your words carefully, when it is wise to go out of your way not to offend. Doing that and not doing that are not mutually exclusive things. They each serve a (very different) purpose.
Well: I guess I am more tired than I thought I was of the discussions we’ve been having lately about the wisdom or lack thereof in treading or not treading carefully when discussing racism, sexism, transphobia, feminism, etc.
Sorry for the rant. I am going to do the dishes.
That isn’t how I see my objection. I usually feel like it’s more that people attempt to win arguments (or make points) through a circular use of semantic games, where you start by arbitrary claims and then that leads you to a new conclusion, and so on back to the circle where you take the first point as “demonstrated” or “101” or “basic” whatnot, without remembering, considering, or acknowledging that the point was wholly arbitrary in the first place.
It’s interesting that you say
“consider whether or not those ideas carry some truth”
Because I don’t find that you do the “or not” side. Your arguments often seem to be looking to explain the issue through a selected framing, without leaving open the possibility of a null hypothesis: that the idea isn’t true; is wrong; is inaccurate; etc.
What you seem to want as “consideration” is something that seems to me more like blind acceptance. The only way that one can demonstrate proper consideration of the perspective is by agreeing with it, or at the least agreeing that it is valid: but what if it isn’t valid, and one doesn’t agree?
In this case I felt no offense linking terrorism to “maleness.” It just seemed stupid, frankly, because it’s not necessary.
You maintain a goal of equality based feminism in which people reject gender assignments, do you not? The goal of “making fewer distinctions based on gender” will require, obviously, making fewer distinctions based on gender. When you have to do it (like when you’re talking about “shit men do to women,”) then so be it. When you don’t have to do it (like when you’re just trying to find descriptive language which isn’t intended to describe one sex in particular) then all things being equal, you should avoid using those terms.
Honestly, as I read this I am not sure which set of ideas you are talking about here. I am certainly a feminist, though of the “practical/literal” variety rather than the “theoretical/fluid” type. You being more of the second kind as far as I can see, it is no surprise that we often disagree about methods.
Of course I generally dislike use of pejorative labels. But that wasn’t what the protest was about.
Define that more reasonably, and I may take you up on that. Negotiation is what I do for a living; change happens and people get convinced in a lot of ways. Of course, your challenge as stated is incredibly narrow by combining very broad terms like “substantive” and “progressive” with immensely limited terms like “only ever” and “never,” but I think you knew that.
This is fucking hilarious.
http://jezebel.com/never-apologize-for-your-barbie-crucifix-young-sport-t-1688046710
Really? Even after several comments explaining that “masculinity” is not “maleness”, you persist in making this claim? The paragraph following that quote shows that you either didn’t read or didn’t understand or flat out ignored their very clear explanations that masculinity is not maleness.
I’m left both wondering why and speculating that it’s your need to win an argument at any cost. This is a thing that you do a lot.
We used to have a crucified Ken doll, which we carried around for years, over several moves. I think it got lost somewhere back in Massachusetts, though.
I think that we need to have a way to differentiate between “making an argument” and “explaining something to someone who is ignorant of it.” Because “masculinity is not maleness” isn’t an argument. It’s an explanation. It shouldn’t trip G&W’s ‘must win’ reflex. And yet.
It’s like saying that “nurturing is coded feminine in our culture.” Whether someone agrees with that or not, hopefully they’d understand that it’s a different statement than “women are more nurturing.” I mean, really, this isn’t that hard.
—Myca
Maybe I should have said, “need to be right at any cost, ” Myca.
So, open thread:
Given the kinds of questions they’re asking Gov. Walker lately, this may well be how the press is going to cover the New Hampshire primary for the 2016 election.
GIW @65:
I do not share your opinion. Understand that these young women had been playing a basketball game at Marian Catholic High School. There’s a crucifix on a wall in the gym. If Marian Catholic is like every other Catholic school I’ve been in, pretty much every room in the school without a toilet has a crucifix in it. After winning the game the team put their Barbie doll up on the crucifix, pointed at it and had their picture taken.
Marian Catholic was outraged, as well they might be. I fail to see what’s amusing about defacing, even only temporarily, a religious icon at a religious school – especially when you’re a guest there – and then having your team picture taken with everyone pointing at it in what could very well be interpreted as in a mocking fashion. It was stupid and disrespectful. Now, it’s not the crime of the century. Kids are prone to doing stupid and disrespectful things at time – but subsequent condemnation of such behavior is how they learn. Condemnation is what they got and what they very well deserved.
Let’s take a different example: say, “cowardice is an example of extreme femininity.” (unquestionably true, I think, insofar as femininity is not femaleness and insofar as cowardice meets the gender expression most commonly assigned to women. ) Or, “incompetence, especially for difficult tasks, especially for physical things.” (Same thing.)
These are, truly, linked to femininity-as-gender.
Those statements are, truly, obnoxious. At least in my opinion. And obviously untrue for a shit-ton of women. Sure, you could say something like “femininity is linked to cowardice and incompetence, which is a problem because it’s untrue,” but I sure as shit doubt you’d approve of someone merely referring to cowardice and incompetence as “feminine.”
Or, to make it a bit easier for you, consider that violence is also socially linked to “blackness,” or “islam,” or all sorts of things where all sorts of people would disapprove, hmm?
Maybe I’m wrong. Would you be fine with those, absent qualifiers? Even if you were talking about something as clear as terrorism where the “better” view was obvious and the “feminine” trait was even more detrimental, would you still be fine without qualifiers?
Based on this response, you should say “yes, screw the qualifiers. Everyone knows that femininity is not the same thing as being female. Blackness is merely a description of social expectations, not what it is actually like to be black. You can make whatever statements you want. Any fallout caused by the linking of the group-social moniker and the actual group itself is merely definitional and of no account.”
Is that, indeed, your response?
Yes, g&w, you’re 100% correct. Discussion over and you win. YOU WIN!
YOU WIN!!!!
Congratulations. Well deserved, sir.
G&W:
This is not actually a discussion I am much interested in getting involved in right now, but I have to point out that your phrasing:
is very different from Myca’s example:
.
To say that something is coded as feminine is not the same thing as saying it is an example of extreme femininity. You may very well say that I am arguing semantics, but the difference is real and since one is about a cultural abstraction, while the other is giving an example of how a specific behavior is interpreted, I think that difference matters.
So first, that was Jake Squid, not me.
Second, I think you’re confusing ‘stereotypes about a gender’ with the way certain actions are gendered.
For example, although I’d say that a stereotype about men is that they’re impatient and short-tempered, I’m not sure I think ‘impatience’ is coded as male-gendered in the same way ‘nurturing’ is coded female. Similarly, although I’d say that there is a stereotype about black people being violent, I wouldn’t say that violence is necessarily automatically coded as black.
—Myca
PS: Think of it as the difference between a description of the quality and a description of the object. “Water buffalo are furry” isn’t the same thing as “furry things are water buffalos.”
And, look (and this is an important point because literally everyone else participating seemed to have zero trouble understanding what RJN meant): I am explaining this to you, because you seem to not understand. I am not arguing with you about it, because your essential lack of understanding means that argument is pointless.
—Myca
A thing said in another thread reminded me of the Vanderbilt-Fisk bridge program, which might be of interest to some of you, both in a general sense and as an example of solutions that reduce inequality in STEM fields.
The basic idea of the program is this: there are people who are interested in pursuing Ph.D.s in STEM fields, but whose undergraduate institutions didn’t adequately prepare them to start a Ph.D. full time. The bridge program is a master’s degree program that’s intended to fill in those gaps and prepare the students for Ph.D. programs. The students are officially enrolled at Fisk, an HBU, but also are mentored by faculty at Vanderbilt, building connections to scientists who are well-known researchers in their fields. (There are also dedicated postdocs at Vanderbilt to mentor the students as well.) The students are then either fast-tracked into Ph.D. programs at Vanderbilt, or apply to other institutions around the country with the help of the faculty associated with the program.
One notable difference between the bridge program and traditional STEM grad programs is that the bridge program has no minimum required math GRE score. (In my field, physics, that minimum is generally 700 for any R1 school.) In one memorable talk I saw about the program, they pointed out that the only cutoff on the math GRE that would have excluded more failures than successes from their program was the fifth percentile.
And, I mean, a lot of these students are very successful–the program alumni have received multiple fellowships from the NSF and from NASA. So they’re not just taking students barely below the cutoff and nudging them barely above: they’re really turning out great researchers.
The thing the program does cut on, though, is “grit.” They contact the students’ mentors and ask for information on, like, how they handle challenges. Here’s a link (PDF) to an article about the grit aspect, which I’m sure explains it better than I could. The people working with the program note that the students get more individual attention than they might get other places, which also probably helps with student success. But their retention rate is 90%+, compared to ~50% for most traditional Ph.D. programs.
Most of the bridge program students (90%ish) are underrepresented minorities. And if you think women are underrepresented with STEM degrees, you should look at the breakdown by race: about 19% of physics Ph.D.s go to women, but the rate of black students earning Ph.D.s is a tenth of that.
There are some other bridge programs popping up, based on the Vanderbilt-Fisk model, but it’s still the oldest and largest. So, you know. Interesting stuff!
Wonder why? Because here’s a few quotes from your post:
“the hypermasculinity of terrorism,”
“the similarly hypermasculine Israeli occupation.”
“the question of how to step outside his hypermasculine logic”
With better phrasing at least the terrorism one would have made some sense–though the Israeli one would still be insensible, and the logic one would be confusing and poorly phrased.
Shit, ya think? I think it matters, too. And you did it poorly, which is why I pointed it out.
First of all: sorry to mix up the name on the quote; that was not intentional of course. If a mod could notate it I’d be obliged.
Next: I agree, of course, that things have different coding, as well as the “nurturing” example. And I didn’t say otherwise. I’m not sure why you would ignore the examples I gave and imply putative disagreement with something which I don’t actually disagree with.
I think violence often has black coding, right along with its “darkness,” but perhaps we simply disagree on the extent. Not worth arguing about. Perhaps you should respond to one of the other examples instead.
Yes, I realize how logic works. Though dude, if you’re going to exhibit your hypermasculine levels of logic here, at least follow a “description of an action” introduction with an action, willya?
I don’t dispute that coding exists, for chrissake, as should be perfectly clear. I disagree with the way RJN used language, in that particular post, which I thought was dumb and poorly phrased.
[shrug] I don’t understand your continued insistence on classifying this as “refusal to acknowledge an essential lack of understanding” rather than “disagreement.” And I’m scratching my head at the implication that “your online, similarly-minded, friends on an issue-focused bulletin board share your feelings” is much of a proof against disagreement–unless you imagine that all of your disagreements with radical right wingers stem from your sad lack of understanding. Seems pretty obnoxious, frankly.
Now you’re just running up the score. Just accept your win graciously and move on to the next contest. Don’t be a bad winner.
So, when RJN describes a thing as hypermasculine, here’s what I hear.
The people who are members of that thing have a strong need to show strength. They are likely to be aggressive or violent with less provocation than most would need. They also have a need to save face: in a negotiation, even if I get most of what I want, I’m likely to need to make a few concessions that will allow the leaders to humiliate me to their followers. But also, these people probably have a strong sense of themselves as protectors, particularly as selfless protectors willing to risk destruction to save the people they feel responsible for–so I will need to carefully contend with the impacts on their charges as well as the people in question.
Now, none of those things are particular to terrorism. But that General mindset may appear among terrorists just as well as it may appear among all sorts of other groups. And so when RJN used the term, it suggested to me a unifying mindset that can be used to explain a diverse set of behaviors–not just a pejorative association between a set of characteristics and a set of bad people who display them.
As to whether it’s relevant that everyone else here agrees…since part of this discussion is about whether RJN was using appropriate terms for his audience, it matters what his audience thinks, doesn’t it?
(After writing this comment, I’m having thoughts about masculine martyrdom via self-destruction vs feminine martyrdom via self-abnegation, and wishing I’d been able to make that distinction during a discussion about the movie Sucker Punch I had a few years ago. Oh well.)
Because Richard explained how he meant the words he said, and it was the same understanding that we all had. Which, incidentally, is also the plain meaning of the words.
Nobody is arguing with you about what he meant.
Several of us have tried to explain what he meant.
When someone utterly ignorant of the law comes into your office, and you explain the law to them, and they say “but that’s not how the law works,” what is your response? You’re the lawyer, they’re not. You went-to-school-for and therefore have-knowledge-about this specific thing. They do not. You’re flatly right. They’re flatly wrong.
You can try to explain to them, but when they insist on sticking their fingers in their ears and singing the la-la song … well … there’s not really a point in arguing.
So yeah, I’m with Jake Squid. Congratulations! You’ve won this argument which you also invented! Yaaaayyyy!
—Myca
I can see the idea of terrorism being hypermasculine, but lately (recent decades, I think) more terrorists are women. Might this change the gender connotations for terrorism?
I mean…I wouldn’t (and I don’t think Richard did) base the connotation on the actual genders of the terrorists. It’s more an ideology thing. So if nothing changed I would still call it hypermasculine, even if *all* the terrorists were women. You know? On the other hand, if the women coming in had a slightly different ideology and changed the way the terrorists operate, then I wouldn’t call it hypermasculine any more*, but that would be based on the change in ideology, not the gender change per se.
*I actually don’t know enough to know whether this is true, but I trust RJN to know what he’s talking about
Totally. Or alternately, the social connotations of femininity and masculinity could change such that it’s no longer coded masculine in any case.
—Myca
It’d be nice if feminists used this logic when dicussing things that other people say.
Do you have any examples where feminists didn’t, and persisted in that belief even after the meaning of the terms was explained? I’d be interested to read them.
Harlequin,
Thanks for describing how you read RJN’s mentions of hypermasculinity. I read them slightly differently, so I thought I’d share how I read them.
When I read RJN describe a specific novel in which an author explores the mindset of a particular fictional male terrorist, and RJN refers to the novel as revealing and critiquing the hypermasculinity of terrorism, I assume that the protagonist of the novel struggles with fears of not being “man enough” or a “real man” or something along those lines, and that committing himself to terrorism represents for him a proof of manliness, an exemplification of the traits he sees as masculine or as a rejection of the traits he sees as feminine. When he refers to the hypermasculine Israeli occupation I’m less clear what he means. Possibly that the occupation troops and settlers also engage in activities to prove their manliness and to reject femininity (although this reading seems to ignore/exclude female troops and settlers), possibly that the occupation forces engage in activities to deny the manliness of Palestinian men (casting other men as unmanly as a way of denigrating them is to my mind a hypermasculine trait, since it is dependent on the assumption that masculinity works in that particular fragile, threatened manner). When he refers to the hypermasculine logic of the protagonist, I assume he is referring to the logic of hypermasculinity that the protagonist engages in, not that he is implying that logic is only characteristic of he-men.
While I think that there are some women who engage in hypermasculinity, hypermasculinity is overwhelmingly a male activity.
I think focusing on the hypermasculinity aspect of terrorism probably does obscure the thought processes of female terrorists, and that certainly focusing on the mental and emotional structures that lead women to engage in terrorism is also worthwhile, but I think that pretending that the social/ mental/ and emotional structures of terrorism have nothing to do with masculinity (which is what I read g&w advocating for, specifically here: ” The goal of “making fewer distinctions based on gender” will require, obviously, making fewer distinctions based on gender.”), because if only we pretend that masculinity doesn’t exist it will go away is silly. We are all embedded in a system of ideas of masculinity and femininity. We can’t do anything but be unwittingly controlled by them if we aren’t allowed to identify them, think about them, talk about them, etc.
RJN:
There’s self-rationalising being an ass, and then there’s actual research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZiE_jcShXg
Nathaniel Branden talks about emotional issues and politics– he’s specifically talking about the Libertarian Party, which was growing at the time, but there’s a lot that generalizes.For example, what happens if someone who frames themself as an embattled outsider is in a political movement which is starting to get traction? Work on succeeding on some issues, or devote energy to infighting?
The lecture is kind, sensible, and funny.
I don’t think this is generalizable the way you’re making it, for at least three reasons: that one can use some intemperate language whilst politely doing fundraisers, too, rather than going to rallies–this study addressed actions, not language; that the findings apply, not to whole movements, but to the people in the most direct contact with opponents (the intemperate folks might fire up more activism from the politer folks, making the movement overall more successful); and that social change isn’t always made by kindly and calmly changing the minds of everybody who disagrees with you, but sometimes by being so loud that you can no longer be ignored. (If civil rights had waited on the majority of white people believing black people deserved equal treatment, the timeline would have looked very different.)
I’m annoyed at that article for referring to rally-attending as “typical” feminism and holding fundraising events as “atypical” feminism, but perhaps the person who wrote that has never been on some of the mailing lists I’ve been on…
Hmm. I attempted to delete my comment @86 and I see it didn’t take–anyway, I realized I wasn’t exactly honestly interested in the answer, so much as spoiling for a fight, so feel free to ignore it, desipis :)
Thanks for the link, desipis. I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading the actual study.
I will point out, though, that you have avoided answering my question, and I will also point out that even if the research is entirely accurate, it also does not answer my question: Has there ever been an instance of progressive social change–by which I do not mean left-wing per se, but rather of society and culture becoming more and more open to participation, etc. by traditionally excluded groups (some of whom might in fact be right wing)–in which the people advocating for that change only ever spoke politely, only ever took care not to hurt the feelings of, or otherwise alienate, the people who did not want that change?
As I said in a comment up above somewhere: there are always going to be questions of tactics and strategy; there are always going to be times when it is better to indulge in euphemism and/or calm reasoning and/or whatever-else rather than confrontation and rabble-rousing. These two things are not mutually exclusive.
People may disagree with my use of the term hypermasculine. It’s not a discussion I am interested in getting into because I have other things to spend my time on right now, but I am struck how the people in this conversation who are being very particular about the use of that word are the people who did not have a problem, who understood me to be talking not about men, but about an ideology that is connected to ideas of manhood that can be acted on, endorsed, or what-have-you by both men and women. Both you and G&W–though he is more nuanced about it than you are, I think–avoid the argument about the actual language and head right for the general principle that someone advocating for change ought to do her or his best not to offend those who are the ones in whom change is desired or those who might otherwise be allies.
That principle is what I find myself arguing against. I might be very interested in an actual discussion about the use of hypermasculine and whether or not that use has shifted over the years so that it indeed means something other than what I intended.
Charles:
Regarding women who are terrorists, I am just curious: Have you read The Demon Lover? I haven’t read the new edition, which apparently has some really interesting new material, but one of the chapters in the original edition had to do with the thought processes of women terrorists. Morgan calls them tokens. It is quite possible that her original analysis is out of date and perhaps not valid in the same way. The new edition is on my list of books to get. I just have no idea when I will get to it.
Richard Jeffrey Newman,
With regard to your unanswered question, lots of things have been put through by a peaceful political process.
The US social security system was put through politically in the 1930s. Germany was denazified via America programs after the war. The EC treaty was put through in Europe in the 1950s. The euro was put through in the EU in peaceful debate in the 1990s, despite peaceful objections by economics professors and many others. The British were almost embarrassed at the well-reasoned kindness of Gandhi in India. Many countries / ethnic groups have peacefully split up, and other countries have decided by peaceful vote not to split up (Quebec/Canada and Scottland/UK come to mind).
In fact, there are so many examples (two more popped into my head right now) that I wonder why you are even asking that question. Even in the very narrow area of identity politics that you may (in reality) be solely thinking about, I would suggest that many things have been put through DESPITE nasty people on the side that eventually puts the policy through.
On a completely different subject, an incredibly detailed critical review of Piketty’s Capital book, by someone who is, supposedly, also a good economist:
http://www.deirdremccloskey.org/docs/pdf/PikettyReviewEssay.pdf
It is very long but a fascinating read. I find it very difficult to understand which side is right. Pickety’s “High inequality is bad” argument sounds compelling. But then you read something like that review and it sounds a lot less compelling.
Also on a copmletely different note, I read with great interest a recently completed study on Anti-Semitism on campus, but was sorely disappointed. There is no definition of anti-semitism, which is to say that there’s no consistency-checking between respondents, and no way to know what, really, this means. It includes everything from “witnessing perceived bias” to much stronger stuff.
It is sort of funny that a paper with only one variable and such a wonky definition even tries to include a “multivariate analysis” paragraph:
What a disappointment. Equally disappointing is that the professors (not in the civil rights department, I guess) would push for university involvement in stamping it out. Whatever it is. Oh well.
RJN,
I haven’t read Demon Lover. I almost mentioned that in my comment, but the sentence in which I included it ended up too convoluted. I’m not actually sure where my understanding of hypermasculinity comes from. I think it is probably influenced by Sandra Bem’s Lenses of Gender, but I can’t recall if it is a term she even uses.
Frieden, most of your examples are top-down solutions implemented by people in power, particularly governments; I think RJN’s argument applies to people without official power agitating for social change, and of course different tactics are required in that case.
Also, Frieden, your examples are grossly ahistorical. You could toss in the passage of the Violence Against Women Act to your list, as long as you ignore more than a decade of Take Back the Night Marches and other forms of protest and activism that desipis wouldn’t approve of. For every one of your examples, there are equivalents. Social Security was preceded by the labor movement and the bonus army, etc. Denazification was preceded by the Second World War, which I’m led to believe was less than entirely polite (also denazification involved calling people out (as it were) for their involvement in genocide and crimes against humanity, two terms that Nazis would decry as being impolite and unfair). Your description of the Indian independence movement is a ridiculously inaccurate cartoon (and even the cartoon version of Gandhi still doesn’t meet RJN’s challenge).
The only one that might meet a part of the challenge would be the Euro, but that would require the Euro being a progressive social change. Also, the Euro was still advocated for by people who “named what they wanted to change”, so it clearly fails to meet RJN’s challenge.
Now, I’m sure that you are going to come back with the second step of the terrible two-step of terrific triviality and insist that “the nasty people” are only the tiny minority of protestors and activist who are obviously detrimental to the movement, not the massive numbers of activists and protestors who engage in confrontational tactics, but it is obvious that you also intend the first step of the two-step, which is that the nasty people are all of the activists who aren’t “the people advocating for that change [who] only ever spoke politely, never named what they wanted to change and the people and institutions who embodied whatever that thing was as what it was.”
The idea that the progressive laws of the 1960s were pushed through despite the noisy, unpleasant protestors and activists; that VAWA and anti-sexual harrassment laws were passed despite the strident, hairy-legged feminists; that marriage equality was achieved despite the drag queens and confrontational gay pride parades; that AIDS treatment and education research and funding was achieved despite the obnoxious ACT-UP protestors… That idea is so willfully ignorant, ahistorical and offensive that it beggars the imagination.
Thanks, Charles. You saved me the trouble of writing more or less the same thing in response to Frieden.
Frieden: I wonder why you equate the kinds of behavior I alluded to in my question—and I am taking this from the first time I posted in this thread—with nastiness:
It’s clear to me that Frieden and Charles S are talking past each other. It seems to me a terminology issue.
Frieden:
Frieden, Gandhi’s action was disruptive, in the same way that Richard was talking about. It was deliberately disruptive. Gandhi sought to make it untenable to use violence against his side by engaging in peaceful disruption, but make no mistake: he was deliberately causing problems. As Charles pointed out, all of your other examples also derived from people who got out and caused problems. They caused problems until it became less of a problem for the people in power to make enough concessions to make the problem go away.
There are ways to be disruptive without being unpleasant. There are ways to be obnoxious and irritating without being deliberately hurtful. And there are times when it’s appropriate to be deliberately hurtful, both emotionally and physically. If you’re trying to act ethically, then a higher level of coercion can only be justified by higher stakes.
In my experience, when one side can’t understand why the other side are being so difficult about something, it’s because the sides disagree about the size of the stakes. One of two dynamics is at play: (A) The one side is saying, “This is really important to me,” and the other side is saying, “But it shouldn’t be.” and (B) The one side is saying, “This is really important to me,” and the other side is saying, “I don’t care.”
In the former case, explanation, dialogue, emotional appeal, personal stories, and so on, can bring about a resolution, because the other side comes to understand better. In the latter case, it’s a different matter entirely: the one side has to find a way to make the other side care. One very effective way to do that is to raise the cost of not caring. Whether or not it’s ethical depends on a proportionality between the method (are you marching peacefully and embarrassing them, or are you mobilizing for war) and the stakes.
Grace
RJN:
There’s a reason for that. I understood what you were getting at by using the term ‘hyper-masculine’. I disagree with your use of the term, as I don’t think selecting particular attributes and taking them to excess while excising other attributes makes the end result the ‘hyper’ of the original. I would think a term such as ‘twisted-masculinity’ or ‘corrupted-masculinity’ would better convey the concept. Of course those terms wouldn’t facilitate as much of a misandric rush as implying that maculinity is just watered down terrorism.
However, that’s not why I chose to comment. What struck me was the double-standard between the assertion of a justification for causing offence when pursuing political goals and the thou-shalt-never-offend-others rule from elsewhere in the feminist rule book. (e.g. the topics that Ampersand has recently banned). The general argument seems to be it’s OK when we hurt people because we’re doing it for a righteous cause. Which all just leads me to the observation that “terrorism is hyper-feminism”.