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.
Grace:
I appreciate the ethical framework you’ve put forward. However, I think it is lacking an explanation of who is supposed to decide whether the stakes justifies the method, and also on what basis they are supposed to make that decision.
The inference I pick up from others is that individuals themselves are able to make that decision. However, I’m not sure how someone can claim to have the moral authority to unilaterally decide that their own concerns outweigh the harm they are choosing to inflict on others.
This is where the nonviolence approach of Gandhi can show its moral character. The non-cooporation wasn’t just about causing harm (economic or political) to others to put pressure them to reassess their position, but it was also was about sacrificing ones’ own interets as part of the demonstration of commitment. Part of the point was that their opponents would be burdened with guilt of the harm to both parties for not behaving in a more reasonable fashion.
I found this point interesting, because from what I’ve observed from all sides of politics is that it’s usually those who are responding with “I don’t care” to their opponents who are the ones all to eager to raise the coercion to the next level.
desipis:
Like any act of coercion, it gets judged in the court of public opinion. If it includes arrestable offenses, it may get judged by the usual sequence in that arena: officer, prosecutor, judge/jury.
Certainly Gandhi’s methods operated on that level, but personally I suspect that they operated more effectively on a level of realpolitik: “Well, we can’t shoot them, Prime Minister! They’re all unarmed and not acting aggressively and the media is taking pictures! We’d get pilloried in the press, and they’d win the war for public opinion!”
Grace
But my standard is not, and has never been for a moment, “thou-shalt-never-offend-others.” That’s a ridiculous caricature; I know that you’re used to anti-feminist spaces in which stupid caricatures of feminism are normal, but try and do better on this blog, please. You can’t possibly be so unobservant that you think ANYONE here believes in “thou-shalt-never-offend-others.” Are you really so lacking in decent arguments that you have to resort to obviously dishonest strawmen?
It should go without saying – but apparently you need it said: 1) Saying “not on my blog” is enormously different from saying “never,” 2) saying “this blog isn’t the place to discuss [for example] scientific racism” is enormously different from saying “never-offend-others,” and 3) this blog’s rules are hardly “the feminist rulebook.” That I need to spell this out depresses me.
Regarding a more interesting point – can you explain what’s wrong with a double-standard for when it’s acceptable to give offense? If Charlie Brown walks up to my saintly grandma in Shul and say “you’re a fucking asshole!,” and if Linus walks up to a Klansman leading a KKK rally and says “you’re a fucking asshole,” I will definitely judge the former but not the latter unacceptable behavior. That’s an exaggerated example to illustrate the point, which is: Giving offense is acceptable, or not, depending on the context.
Exactly what is offensive, and what kinds of giving offense are acceptable, is debatable territory. It is, in fact, a major portion of any social change debate, because what we’re really discussing is “what is socially acceptable?,” and that’s where most social change takes place. Is joining a club that excludes Jews socially acceptable? Is protesting that club socially acceptable? The more Jews in the 50s and 60s were able to persuade people that the answers to those questions were “no” and “yes” respectively (note the double-standard there!), the more they had won the debate. And the underlying debate – “which is socially unacceptable, to be Jewish or to be openly anti-Semitic” – was a debate worth having, and worth winning.
desipis:
You may be right. Maybe the understanding of and the rhetoric surrounding masculinity has changed sufficiently that hypermasculine doesn’t serve anymore. I don’t agree with either of your alternatives—distorted masculinity hits closer to the mark for me, though I’m also not sure that I buy into that one either. Still, this might have been a worth while conversation to have. Instead you took it in the direction of straw-man snark and accusation, and I’m just not interested in following you there. Or in hearing what you might have to say should decide to come back.
Edited for clarity.
I think you’re coming at this backwards.
You should start with a general rule–“giving offense is bad,” or perhaps “free speech is fine irrespective of offense.” Then, of course, you have to justify your rule in the first place. And then after that, you start making exceptions, again as general as possible, so “free speech is fine irrespective of offense” might include “except in locations where we have specifically agreed that people will prioritize politeness and lack of offense over freedom of speech.”
And then you test the rule, and you try to figure out where the boundaries of the rule actually are, and how the rule will be evaluated.
Here’s why: Coming at it that way forces you to look at your exceptions and identify them as such. Relating them all back to a general rule (as much as possible) makes it harder to get trapped blindly in an issue-selected field. Is it rude to go around yelling “Jesus is a false Messiah?” Well, that depends: is it rude to go around yelling “Only Jesus Saves?” The more general you get, the more you become able to see similarities and talk about the real issues.
So if you just look at grandmothers and Nazis, and if you start from “double standards are OK,” then you can reach a bad conclusion. But if you start from general rules, try to make exceptions, and then test them out, then you come to realize that it is almost impossible to stop people from being rude to grandmothers* while allowing them to be rude to Nazis, unless you want to impose some sort of dictatorial “speech is offensive if I say it is” kind of rule.**
Because when you say “can you explain what’s wrong with a double-standard for when it’s acceptable to give offense?” the answer is “because double standards are always bad.” The proper situation isn’t a “just because” double standard, it’s a complex set of rules which produces different results for different facts.
* And I didn’t even ask “what about Nazi grandmothers?” yet! :)
**Here’s what history shows: The more that you put things in the “just because I say so” category, the more you change incentives. As you increase the level of dictatorial fiat it becomes a lot less profitable for people to actually spend effort seeking to justify their views, and to convince people of the validity of their perspective. Instead, they spend their effort trying to get in the dictator’s seat, (at which point the validity becomes moot.) That leads to a net decrease in social benefit. It’s a lot like regulatory capture.
Ampersand,
I apologise if my comment is taken to be aimed at the ban itself. I don’t have a problem with you proscribing certain topics. My comment was intended to be about the content of the discussions prior to the ban. I had originally framed that comment differently, but rewrote it to avoid bringing those topics up.
Yes, the phrasing “thou-shalt-never-offend-others” does overstate the argument quite a bit. It probably should have been qualified a bit, something like “thou-shalt-never-offend-those-people-in-that-way”. The point was my argument in those discussions was one of bringing in context and circumstance as to whether it was reasonable. The rebuttal was that nope, that sort of offense is never acceptable. Now when we’re talking about a different group of people being offended, suddenly people are bringing up context and circumstance in justification. That double standard was the point I was attempting to get at (rather poorly) in that comment. But I can drop the point if you’d rather avoid bringing up those old discussions.
I would tend to see both as unacceptable.
Gin-and-whiskey covers some points on this, so I’ll try not to double-up.
One key problem is that it makes it impossible to distinguish offense (or justification) that’s motivated by genuine ethical/moral concern and offense that is motivated by petty personal or political goals. This in turn provides opportunity for people to engage in all sorts of poor behaviour and just claim a double-standard/those-people-deserved-it defense. Put bluntly it facilitates bullying and harassment. It creates implicit permission for people to arbitrarily declare a victim as being in some group that it’s socially acceptable to abuse. Part of the reason the term social justice warrior came about is the perception that many people are just in it for the fight, and are using ‘social justice’ as a cover.
Another aspect is that it seems rather alien, for those ideologically inclined to argue for equality and dignity for all, to choose groups of people and decide that “it’s OK to go out of your way to offend those people”. I don’t see holding or expressing opposing views or ideals as justificiation for lobbing offense. Surely the centuries of religious wars has shown the importance of being about to live civily along side those who hold different and conflicting values to our own.
Grace,
So, basically a free-for-all against any socially unpopular groups then? Surely there’s got to be more to the ethics of it than that.
Interesting: Rock, Paper, Scissors of PC Victimology. I don’t know enough about all the specific instances the writer talks about to know whether I agree with him or not, but I appreciate his willingness to say what he wants to say this straightforwardly.
Richard – I agree with calls for civility, but that article is incredibly unfair. (And I realize that you said you didn’t know about the specifics, so I’m not assuming you agree with him, obviously).
From the article:
Wait, so writing “It is definitely not time for ‘all the gay people’ and ‘all the people of color’ to set aside their own battle for equality in order to fight for straight, white women now” is “hate”? Because that seems to me like criticism. If that sentence is his first example of the two minutes of hate, I wonder if any criticism of all of Arquette’s statement would have been acceptable to him. (Reading this article, it’s obvious that he himself doesn’t practice mild language in his own criticism of others.)
It gets worse when he talks about trans people. It’s true that SOME pro-trans people have said horrible things, including threats, to TERFS – but he doesn’t mention that the same is true in reverse. He paints a one-sided picture of those horrible mean evil trans people, when the actual event is a fight in which some folks on both sides have said horrible things.
Similarly, he talks about a story in which a journalist discovered that a businesswoman was a closeted trans women, and was going to out the woman as trans in his story. She committed suicide. But in Tablet magazine’s version of the story, he left out that the journalist was going to involuntarily out the woman, in order to make the subsequent anger from pro-trans voices seem unjustified and irrational. To me, that just seems like lying.
Thanks for this, Amp. I actually remembered after I posted the link that I did know the details of the journalist and the trans woman. But I was on my way to work by then. This is the first chance I’ve had–I’m on my phone–to post and say now that I have remembered, I think the piece is just plain reprehensible.
Not to mention that (though saying very bad things about your opponent, wishing torturous death on them, etc., is bad regardless) the positions of the two camps are not analogous.
Trans people want full inclusion and respect in society and to not be misgendered.
TERFs want to exclude, disrespect, and misgender them.
One group is the aggressor here, and it’s not trans folk.
—Myca
desipis:
When you do something which is not legal (like marching and obstructing traffic without a permit, for instance, or trying to vote when you are banned from doing so, both of which tactics Gandhi used), then, yes, you’re going to get judged in the court of public opinion on the question of whether it was ethical to break the law in order to do what you did.
This is one reason that it’s more difficult for marginalized groups to work outside of the legal system; they’re less likely to win on the question “was it okay to break the law in this way?”
Similar calculus applies to actions which are strictly legal but rude, etc.
I don’t understand your question about “the ethics of it”. Each person brings her own ethics to a given decision, and even if we chance to think similarly, all of our ethical systems differ at least slightly, in the same way that we all have slightly different idiolects.
Are you asking for a method to decide when it’s okay to engage in an act of coercion? There are many ways to approach it, but VERY briefly and sloppily, a good place to start might be the doctrine of competing harms, that it’s permissible to do something ordinarily forbidden if, by doing that thing, you avert a greater evil. (The cases I use with my students are that it’s generally okay to swerve across the center line in a No Passing zone to avoid a kid on a tricycle, and it’s generally okay to shoot someone to stop them from shooting at you.) But there are many other ways to approach it, and the devil is in the details, as always.
Does that clarify anything?
Grace
Yes. That’s the process in action. Black and transgender card played, insta-retraction given. Nevermind that picking at illustrative anecdotes doesn’t damage or represent a credible engagement with an argument.
Seems to me like an it’s an Orwell reference, not a literal accusation.
Irrelevant. He’s talking about an “attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate” through identity. Now they both say nasty stuff, but have terfs ever no-platformed someone for advocating transexuality? It doesn’t cut both ways, feminism isn’t an ‘identity’ in the way transexuality is.
Or not agreeing with you. The guy links to a full account where he explicitly says ‘Hannan never threatened to “out” Dr. V as transgender, as many of his outraged critics now allege.’ Why are you lying about the story?
Pete Patriot:
Since we’ve dragged the Grantland story back in, for people who want context, here are a few links, including the apology and failure analysis by Grantland’s Editor-in-Chief, an analysis by another ESPN writer, Christina Kahrl, an article at Deadspin which has a good collection of links to other pieces about the Grantland story, and the response of ESPN’s own ombudsman.
Caleb Hannan did out Vanderbilt, to one of her investors. Here’s Grantland Editor-in-Chief Bill Simmons:
It appears that Caleb Hannan did not say to Vanderbilt, “I am going to out you”, no. He was simply going to write a piece of long-form, in-depth journalism focusing on Vanderbilt and her invention, and toward the end of the reporting process, asked her words to this effect: “Hey, I just discovered that you’re a closeted transsexual. Any comment?” This from a sports reporter in an industry which routinely doesn’t even follow its own industry’s standard on such simple things as pronouns. Hannan may not have put it in so many words, and maybe his editorial staff would have caught it and stopped it, but Vanderbilt’s smart-money bet was that she was going to be outed. Hannan could have ameliorated that fear in his conversation with Vanderbilt had he understood his topic better, but as the story itself makes plain, he didn’t.
For further thoughtful and careful analysis, see the links above, and note how the language and phrasing compare to the one-sided screed in the link Richard posted.
Grace
Grace,
Feminism, and progressive in general, typically explores morality by starting off with various foundation values (e.g. equality) and then applying that to human reality to determine whether various things are moral or not (e.g. discriminating against people on the basis of race leads to inequality, therefore it is bad). If feminists are going to claim that causing emotional harm to people is a justified and ethical thing to do in particular circumstances, then I would expect that there is a reason-based and ideally well-evidenced argument to support that claim. All I’ve seen so far is a visceral they deserve it.*
I don’t think it’s sufficient to merely rely on a subjective and collective gut-feel for what is right and wrong. Feminism is a movement that is constantly attempting to examine unconscious biases. It’s also a movement who’s advocates like to indulge in language that is emotionally evocative, and conduct that exacerbates the psychology of in-group/out-group dynamics. I would expect such a movement to be self-aware to realise that the merits of engaging in offense causing behaviour is not well governed by subjective feelings on the matter.
If we take the Caleb Hannan case as an example, regardless of whether he stepped over the line of ethical journalism, there’s something disturbingly ironic about people purporting to be concerned about mental wellbeing all the while lobbing vitrolic hate at another human being. It might feel good to do it; such verbal vengange might feel like justice. I’m just not sure reason supports such feelings.
* The term victim-blaming comes to mind here.
I don’t see why it’s worthwhile talking about either feminists in particular or trans activists in particular when you’re discussing this disturbing irony. American political discourse is full of people, on every side, who use incredible vitriol when talking about their perceived enemies. This is true of feminists, of anti-feminists, of MRAs, of gun fans, of gun control fans, of the pro-life, of the pro-choice, of Republicans, of Democrats, of Libertarians, of Socialists, and I could go on forever. Since the internet first gained effective indexing tools, I have literally never followed any widespread political controversy without seeing both the side I agreed with and the side I disagree with engaging in vitriol. And virtually everyone using vitriol on all sides of all these debates would not only say that they are concerned with wellbeing, but I’d bet most of them would say so with genuine sincerity. (That’s a meaningless bet, since there’s no way to objectively measure sincerity, but I meant it sincerely, and I can’t prove that either. :-p )
I also am bothered by your choice of the Caleb Hannan case as an example of inappropriate vitriol. This wasn’t a case of “she criticized video games and that pisses me off” or “he wrote a short story that I think is sexist,” where it’s reasonable to say that being infuriated by what the person did is disproportionate and unreasonable. This is a case where a journalist abused his position, did an unambiguously terrible thing to another person’s life, and that seemingly led to a tragic suicide. In other words, this is a case where it’s unfair to expect that no one will get infuriated.
Your criticism seems to imply that trans people – many of whom know too well the fear of being involuntarily outed, many of who are themselves survivors of suicidal thoughts – should be saints who never, ever react in anger, not even in response to a genuinely extraordinary and extreme provocation. I think that you’re being unreasonable.
Ampersand,
The reason I focused on feminists/progressives is that those are the people who populate this blog. I wouldn’t expect the people here to come up with arguments to justify things from the gun-toting conservative perspective.
Yes. As someone with views that span the political spectrum I’ve been on the recieving end of it from people of just about every political position. And it’s all largely an unproductive, if not destructive, waste of energy.
That the suicide was a tragedy is incontestable, however I think it’s a giant leap to conclude that it was Hannan’s discovery and request for comment on the trans issue that was the key causative factor in the suicide. This was a person who built a business that was seemingly based on fraud and a story filled with grandious lies. The apparent pre-existing mental instablity and the unravelling of the lies that were underpinning the quest for glory appear to be much stronger candidates for triggering the suicide. The later being a quite legitiate thing for a journalist to write about.
I think it’s also arguable that the fact the fruadster was a transwomen, as key motiviation to the name and identity change, was a sufficiently integral part of the story to be included. That point aside, I think it’s clear that it’s grossly unfair to attempt to lay the blame for a suicide on a journalist because they didn’t tread as lightly as they could have on the trans issue.
No, not at all. Being angry is perfectly understandable. I just still hold people as responsible for their actions, even when they are angry. Being motivated by understable anger might make actions forgiveable, but it doesn’t make them acceptable. I also don’t think anger justifies being verbally abusive.
I also think it’s a tad precious to call that article “extraordinary and extreme provocation”.
And yet, you don’t focus on criticizing MRAs and anti-feminists when you write comments at blogs populated by MRAs and anti-feminists. This makes your concern with civility seem more like tribalism than like sincere concern.
“A tad precious” is empty verbiage, not an argument. I explained why I thought the journalist’s actions (including but not limited to the article) were extraordinary and extreme: They included involuntarily outing a trans person, and that trans person subsequently committed suicide.
Are you saying that’s not an extraordinary and extreme thing? If so, prove it by linking to a bunch of other examples of professional journalists involuntarily outing trans subjects who then committed suicide. Otherwise, take your obnoxious “a tad precious” and shove it up a bull’s ass where it belongs.
I agree that stating unequivocally that the journalist was the cause of the suicide would be a mistake; but of course, I didn’t do that.
Well, unless they’re a journalist who outs a trans person to at least one investor. In that case, far from holding the journalist responsible for his actions, you make excuses and blame the victim.
Regarding people who say mean things, I’m not sure what it means to “hold people as responsible.”
If someone actually made a threat against the journalist in a legally actionable sense, then I’d be in favor of holding them legally responsible for their act, although I’d also be in favor of judicial mercy (for instance, community service instead of jail time) if it was a one-time transgression that didn’t lead to lasting harm. However, and unfortunately, the legal system generally refuses to take threats delivered over the internet seriously.
If someone said something that isn’t a legal threat but is horribly uncivil, like “I hope you die under a train, you scum,” then I don’t approve, but I’m not going to hold it against them that they said something horrible in response to extraordinary provocation. No one’s perfect, and I don’t see what purpose holding that against someone for years serves. If someone was critical of the journalist’s action with strong language (“you have done an immoral thing and I hope you feel terrible”), well, I honestly believe the journalist has earned strong criticism through his bad judgement and bad acts.
Finally, don’t ignore that in this case, the angry reaction did good. Without the angry reaction, Grantland wouldn’t have known it did anything wrong. Instead, the story grew and generated a great deal of attention within journalistic circles, and led to many journalists learning that outing a trans person against their will is extremely serious business, and not to be done without extraordinary justification. That’s a good thing.
The Ombudsman at ESPN speaks to that:
One more thought; I think that framing a problem like horrible things people say on Twitter and other social media as a matter of individual responsibility may not be helpful.
The big problem created by social media isn’t that any one person says something horrible; it’s that it becomes waaaay too easy for hundreds of people to say something horrible to a single person. In some cases – mainly, it seems, when feminist women like Anita Sarkeesian speak out – the abuse can go on for literally years.
In the case of the Grantland story, I think the growing backlash against the story in the form of criticisms (including heated criticisms) and asking “why the hell did you publish it?” did good. But I don’t think the all-too-many people who directly contacted the article writer with threats or horrible “I hope you die under a bus” statements did good. On the contrary, they were harmful. Any professional writer can shrug off one such message – hell, even I sometimes get messages like that – but shrugging off hundreds is harder.
But I’m not convinced that an “individual responsibility” approach is the right way to try and prevent or mitigate this sort of unplanned group mobbing. But I don’t know what else would work. For one thing, I rarely hear about such events until after they’re already over. Is there any internet group that monitors such events in real time, do you know?
Is there any internet group that monitors such events in real time, do you know?
Yes, but it’s Twitter and the effects of their monitoring are simply “more horrible things.” ;)
I admit, I do always enjoy the irony of commenters on this blog trying to convince some of us that there is no place for uncivil language, when engaging in one of the politest comment sections I know. :) Like, clearly we understand that it’s a very situational argument, not carte blanche.
On a different note, an interesting analysis on the ACA case.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/03/03/good-textualism-vs-bad-textualism/
I’m really torn on this one.
I like the ACA and it seems pretty clear to me that Congress’ error here was just that–an error. Obviously the legislature intended the ACA to go into action; obviously the legislature did not intend for this provision to be a problem. The legislature didn’t even know about this, or at least didn’t act like they knew.
But.
But we have a whole shitload of principles which are based on one rule: “the law says what it says.” Legislatures can talk about it beforehand; you can compromise vocally or silently; you can amend it or not; in the end the law says what it says.
And sometimes “what the law says” is wrong, or bad , or unconstitutional, or erroneous.
When that happens, the other principle is that “amendment by the legislature is the solution to bad drafting.”
So: although I like the ADA I am not sure that I support the liberal viewpoint here. The law seems pretty clear: the only way to get around it is to “interpret” the law to say something other than what it actually says.
And while that may be OK for this particular situation, it throws a huge wrench into the general principles of how we look at things. I’m not a fan.
G&W,
Do you think it’s a mistake or do you think the plaintiffs are taking both the definition of “State” and the section out of context?
For people interested in following the King arguments, I’d suggest reading Scotusblog today.
I think that attempts to overturn Congress’ clear intent and understanding of a law through statutory interpretation by the Courts should have a very high bar to clear. The people who want to overturn the ACA should have to provide, not merely a possible alternative reading of the text, but proof that their interpretation is a completely unambiguous interpretation of a text that cannot be read in any other way. I don’t believe that what’s going on here comes close to jumping that “unambiguous” bar.
Yes, but this is supposed to be based on a reading of the entire law, not on a single phrase taken out of context. Reading that one phrase in a way that turns the law, taken as a whole, into nonsense and gibberish is not what is legally required, nor is it a coherent or reasonable way for the Courts to interpret laws.
As Justice Kagen pointed out during oral arguments today, a “qualified individual” for buying insurance on an Exchange must be someone who “resides in the State that established the Exchange.” Bit if the only way for a state to “establish” an exchange is to create it on its own, as Republicans claim, then that means there are NO “qualified individuals” who can buy insurance from the Federal exchanges. So – if we interpret terms the way ACA opponents are claiming – the federally-created exchanges created by the ACA to sell insurance, may absolutely not sell insurance to anyone.
If the Supreme Court goes with that claim, what we’ll be looking at is not a fair-minded application of the text of the law, interpreted in full context. Rather, we’ll be looking at five Conservatives grasping at straws to overturn a law that they’re unable to overturn by legitimate means.
One more point: Even if Republicans win this case, that doesn’t destroy the ACA. It just means that people in hard-red states are badly, badly screwed, because they’ll be paying taxes to cover a law that will only benefit people who live in states which have established state-run exchanges.
Of course, any state with a Federal exchange can get out of that problem by establishing their own exchange. I’m sure that’s what Oregon would do (second try for the win!). But unfortunately, some red states will chose not to take that solution. Leaving them paying taxes for a program that they’re refusing to benefit from.
I started off thinking that the plaintiffs were just being picky, but I’ve regretfully (since I like the ACA) come to think that the plaintiffs are correct.
Problem is, I have no interest in personally spending the huge amount of time which it would take (at a minimum) to attempt to read the damn thing myself. So with some exceptions, admittedly I am–unusually for legal stuff–forced to go on reports.
That said, I just checked myself and section 1304(d) (this section is titled “Related Definitions”) says
1304(d) STATE.—In this title, the term ‘‘State’’ means each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia.
To put that in context (in case folks might wonder if it is in an irrelevant subparagraph,) just before that you see
1304(c) SECRETARY.—In this title, the term ‘‘Secretary’’ means the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
So personally, not only do I think that the plaintiffs are NOT taking it out of context, but I am sort of shocked that someone (not you specifically, but other writers I have read) would even use the term “taking out of context” to describe something which is in the definitions section.
Part of the reason I thought the plaintiffs were wrong originally is that I believed the descriptions which the pro-ACA folks were saying, but the more that I read the actual language at issue the more that the pro-ACA side sounds like a really bad spin job.
G&W, I was referring to a phrase from Section 36B(b) of the Tax Code, not to 1304(d).
Quoting Robert Weiner on ScotusBlog:
Nicholas Bagley over at The Incidental Economist, linked in the Alas blogroll, has been covering this pretty heavily–here’s the ACA tag, although I note it’s missing at least one post (the most recent one, from today, about a precedent that would align with the people wanting to overturn the federal exchange tax credits). Despite the name of the blog, he is a lawyer. (Edit: he’s one of many writers at the blog, and some of the others are economists, hence the name.)
I believe G&W was referring to my comment, Amp.
Ampersand,
Suicide is an extreme outcome. Public revealing that someone is transexual/transgender without their consent is certaintly significant provocation to that person. Posthumously revealing someone is transexual/transgender is hardly the same thing. It certainly isn’t extraorinary and extreme provocation to the many people who didn’t even know Dr V (but chose to hurl abuse at Hannan).
I’m not what my posting history at other sites has to do with the arguments I put forward here. In regards to offensive behaviour, I don’t really recall encountering serious arguments justifying being deliberately offensive in order to socially pressure people. The only time recently I’ve encountered other people making such arguments was to do with gamergate. For the record I was rather critical of the behaviour of people within the gamergate community. Hell, I even argued that boycotts and economic pressure were uncalled for.
Anyway, I think I’ll abandon the discussion since it’s headed that way.
gin-and-whiskey,
I read through a bit of the act, and made the following observations:
* The tax credits are unambiguously restricted to people who meet two requirements:
a) have qualified health plans; and
b) enrolled in the plans through a section 1311 exchange
* Section 1311 exchanges are unambiguously restricted to being entities created by one of the 50 states or DC. I can’t find anything that is even suggestive of the existance of a federally run exchange in the text of act.
* A combination of 1&2 would mean the tax credits are unavailable to people who enrolled in plans through federal exchanges, and hence to anyone in a state without a state exchange.
I don’t have much knowledge of US jurisprudence. However, I would be surprised if the court permitted itself to exclude particular parts of legislation simply because they had impractical outcomes. I do have a few questions though:
1) Is the economic pressure of denying tax credits to states that don’t set up exchanges likely to be seen as unconstitutional incursion on the independance of the states? I know this would be in murky waters if it occured in other common law federations.
2) If so, could the court rule the restriction of the tax credit to plans enrolled through exchanges as invalid, but the rest of the act (i.e tax credits for any qualified health plans) as still valid without that term? Or does the US supreme court typically react with more coarse actions (e.g. invalidation of the whole act) in situtations where it finds constitutional problems?
Desipis,
As I understand it, there is, pragmatically, no single answer for “how does the Supreme Court interpret things.” Because one of the things that the members of the Supreme Court are arguing over is, which standard should be used to decide? They work by precedent, but it’s up to them to decide which precedents are applicable to any particular case.
But they are certainly free to rule that the plaintiffs are correct in their reading of the legislation, but that makes that portion of the legislation unconstitutional and null and void. Some of the questions Justice Kennedy asked during oral arguments yesterday imply he’s considering that approach, and Kennedy is one of the Justices likely to be a swing vote on this case, so what he thinks might matter enormously.
Probably at least four of the Justices – the more liberal ones – would say that this case should be decided by the Chevron test, named after a 1984 case. The Chevron test is for deciding when an agency (in this case, the IRS) has interpreted an ambiguous law in a permissible manner.
So if the Court decides (as you have) that there is no ambiguity at all in the legislation, that ends things. (Part 1). But if the Court thinks that there is ambiguity, then if the IRS’s interpretation is reasonable, then the Court is supposed to defer to the agency’s interpretation. (Part 2).
However, it’s also well established that the Court isn’t supposed to consider phrases in isolation, but in the context of the legislation as a whole. This is where I think your interpretation goes wrong. If an isolated sentence says “all birdies are forbidden in the park,” but the legislation as a whole is about playing sports, then it doesn’t matter how clearly that sentence in isolation seems to refer to wildlife, because read in context it only makes sense if it’s talking about badminton equipment.
Section 1321(c) of the act says that if the State elects not to establish an “Exchange,” the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall “establish and operate such Exchange.” There is nothing anywhere in the act stating that these Exchanges established by the Secretary are to be treated any differently from other Exchanges.
Ampersand has summarized the issue effectively. The State’s position is that the statute is something like this:
1. All children shall bring to the field trip a home-packed lunch prepared by their parents.
2. If a child’s parents do not provide a lunch, the school may provide a lunch.
3. Itinerary: At 12:30, the children shall eat their home-packed lunch.
Per the State’s argument, the Challenger’s position is analogous to claiming that this set of rules prohibits the children from (2) from eating because the lunch they have in front of them isn’t “home-packed.” The State argues that this might satisfy a strictly literal “Amelia Bedelia” reading of the statute, but that it fails to take into account the overall context of the statute as a whole- which makes little to no sense if you accept the Challenger’s reading.
Ampersand,
I missed that part when going through it the first time. I can see how that can create some ambiguity.
Opinions, please. Is this law firm site satire? Or real?
http://devrieslegal.com/jacksonville_staugustine_attorneys/
Some of the attorneys looks normal. But then you read the profile of this one, in particular the last 2 lines…
http://devrieslegal.com/erinsbaggettesq/
It’s a real firm.
Go to http://www.flabar.org and type her name (Erin Baggett) into the search for attorneys thing on the right-hand side. If you then click on her name, it shows she works for that firm.
At first I thought this was one of those fake law firm sites using real attorneys’ names and profile photos, but indeed, the Florida Bar lists Ms. Baggett’s firm at that URL. I mean, if it works for them, I guess?
The Supreme Court has also decided things by taking a look at the history of a bill as it went though the legislative process. In this case there was originally language in the bill explictly permitting such tax credits – which was taken out in later versions. We’ll see if that has any impact.
I hate to say it but there’s a lot of ways that the Supremes can look at a bill, and I suspect they’ll pick the tests that fulfill their pre-determined biases.
Well, shit. I had better start offering coconut milk too, or I’ll be left behind.
Maybe you could get away with soothing music and aromatherapy?
Don’t the fresh baked cookies count as aromatherapy?
-Jut
Of course, there’s another thing the bill lacks–any kind of sense that Congress is withholding tax credits in order to coerce state participation. That’s a pretty big punishment, billions of dollars in tax credits–if it was meant to scare states into participating, shouldn’t somebody have mentioned it before the lawsuit was filed?
On a related note, here’s a brief discussion of an article that goes through a bunch of incongruities resulting from the assumption that the federally-operated exchanges should be considered separately from the state-operated exchanges. Edit: here’s another such discussion, a little easier for me to understand as a layperson.
I make a damned good cookie, as it happens. It’s one of my specialties. But the thought of serving it with coconut water and without cold milk is just wrong. Horribly wrong.
What I really want is to have a full size commercial espresso machine at work so i can offer espresso to clients. but that would be bad. I once traded legal services for “unlimited espresso drinks for a month” at a local place, which turned out to be “three triples a day.” It was great while it lasted but probably almost killed me.
To be fair, they serve it with coconut milk, not coconut water (which is good because coconut water is foul).
There are a lot of Italians running around in my field–everywhere I’ve ever worked has had a top-of-the-line (home-sized) espresso machine, complete with textbook-esque manual. It’s probably good for my blood pressure that I can’t stand pure espresso: mocha lattes are as hardcore as I get.
Since this is an open thread: one of the weird quirks of fanfiction is the strange little subgenres that appear across a wide swathe of stories about very different canons. Just about any fandom you can think of has at least one coffee shop alternate universe, where the characters are cast as the employees and customers of a quaint coffee shop. No, I don’t know why either…
G&W:
We get by here with a Kurig, since it can do tea and a bunch of other stuff too. I’m actually not crazy about it, but everyone else in the office seems to love it.
Harlequin:
What, you don’t like drinking things that taste disturbingly like saliva?
:P
—Myca
My partner and I have had a different take.
Our firm would be called “The Bar.”
We would dispense legal advice and adult beverages on neatly drawn-up “Retainer” cocktail napkins.
By 2018, we would receive a bunch of free advertising by appearing on Bar Rescue. Business should really take off by then.
-Jut
It’s the “oh, is there grass in this?” effect that really got to me. (I mean, like, lawns, not our friendly local mind-altering substances.) I didn’t expect it to taste so…green.
In a midlife crisis, I actually bought an old used commercial-sized machine from–wouldn’t you know it–an Italian used car dealer. I fixed it up with new gaskets and such over the course of months. It sits on my counter at home. It’s self-limiting because the sucker takes 35 minutes to heat up to temp, so I can only use it on weekends. I’m actually more of a cappucino drinker; they were triple capps and not triple espressos.
I had one and tossed it. The K-cup coffee was old, weak (unless you use the 4 or 6 oz. size), and never hot enough. And it’s bloody expensive at $0.50/cup. Hell, my local coffee shop will sell me a 20 oz refill of freshly brewed organic fair trade coffee for $1.50, which is the same price as 18 oz of Keurig coffee.
Admittedly they can be better if you use refillable filters. They hold a lot more coffee and you can get your own roast, so they improve things considerably. Still not worth it to me, though, but I’d feel differently if I wasn’t a block from a coffee shop.
Honestly it is hard to beat an electric kettle, a high quality thermos, and a cone filter.
That’s where you’ve got it wrong. For those of us who wholeheartedly believe in the concept behind Cap’n Binky’s Blend, that machine is exactly what’s called for. Here’s what you do:
1) Turn it on. You’ll never turn it off again.
2) Brew your coffee.
3) Continue to add water and/or coffee as necessary.
It’s been well reviewed by such luminaries as Jonathan Bing, Master Cheesemaker of Twombly Town and the esteemed Professor Wurzle.
Harlequin:
Harlequin, if we achieved consensus that any amount of uncivility were ever permissible, in the seconds that follow, there would be anarchy. Anarchy, I tell you! Rains of hell toads! Dogs and cats living together! Dogs and cats living with the hell toads! Armageddon!
Those commenters maintain the dykes between civilization and a maelstrom of rudeness and armageddon.
Thank you, dyke-maintainers!
(Wait. That didn’t sound quite right…)
Grace
desipis:
Ah. You thought I was articulating a feminist framework.
I wasn’t. I was sketching a framework available to anyone. No matter what ethical code you specify, there will always be exceptions. Otherwise, ethical behavior could be reduced to algorithms.
We have a system of laws. But, because people love to game the system to their own benefit, the system is always being tested. Sometimes, if the issue is important enough, you need to step outside of it (peaceful marches which create traffic problems, for instance). Sometimes the system absorbs the new technique to reduce the disruption (parade permits, advance notice, police presence). If the disruption is reduced far enough, then the technique is no longer effective, and if the point you’re making is important enough, you have to find a new technique.
Who decides if it’s important enough? Lots of people, as I glossed above. When the system of laws fails, other systems become dominant — social and cultural and interpersonal systems. That’s what I meant when I said that if you act outside of the law, you get tried in a court of law and/or the court of public opinion.
Grace
gin-and-whiskey:
If you hadn’t been so miserly, all these years, you could have been raking in the wealthy clients all these years, and would never have had to learn those hard business lessons. Boutique legal services. But it’s too late, now. Someone got there ahead of you.
I notice, however, that no one has attempted boutique law enforcement.
At least, not in the United States. (Ahem.)
Grace
grace:
Naturally there will be underlying framework to which a broader group of people can ascribe (e.g. freedom of speech, etc). However, shouldn’t feminists have a higher level framework based on feminist values? Shouldn’t feminists acting in the social or political arena conduct themselves in a manner consistent with feminist values?
Apropos nothing (since this is an open thread and I’m too lazy to do the work to write a top level post): Some interesting recent articles on the nature of the supposed hiatus in global warming:
Here’s one showing that if you take a bunch of climate models and look at which ones have short term variation in phase with the observed short term variation, the models accurately predict the hiatus:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n9/full/nclimate2310.html
Here’s another one showing that if you look at the 15 year (short-term) trends in global mean temperature over the last 120 years of model runs, that the residuals of the model trends and the observation trends have a normal distribution centered around zero:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7536/full/nature14117.html
That one also shows that the internal short term variability dominates the range of behavior of the models (as opposed to differences in the parametrization of the models).
Here are some blog posts and articles about the papers:
(the first one)
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/07/models-that-predict-pause.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-accurate-when-reflecting-natural-cycles.html
(The second one)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150202114636.htm
http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/models-dont-over-estimate-warming/
desipis:
Sure. It’s just not what I was talking about.
Setting that aside for a moment, I think that as you think about feminists, you may have cause-and-effect reversed. Feminism is not a faith system. I did not call myself a feminist and then seek to discover what that means, and therefore how I should act. I am a feminist (among other things) as a result of a long-running, messy process of observation, thought, and discussion, through which I have discovered (so far) that what many feminists say makes a lot of sense and is important and worthwhile, and that helps to drive how I choose to apportion my time and energy. There is no feminist dogma. There are no feminist articles of faith. Which is why, when people who don’t understand feminists try to Generalize About Feminism, or talk about “feminist values” even if there’s no attempt to be adversarial, it can often seem laughable to feminists.
Grace
Jesus, I just found out that ANOTHER one of my long time friends is getting divorced. That makes three friends who have told me in the last three months. And one more is already talking about it “when the kids go to college” which is, as they say, not a good sign. I thought that most of us were well past the problem phase by now, 15+ years…. Guess not. Sigh.
Well, yes, and no. Obviously, yes, acting in ways consistent with feminist values is good.
But that doesn’t establish that every single act of self-examination is always good. Sometimes you can overdo trying to be perfect in your values. Is actively scrutinizing every little decision for feminist perfection, actually a useful way to accomplish feminist goals?
What about the problem of people finding the whole thing exhausting and then having no energy left for get-out-the-vote or volunteering? What about the problem of people feeling that feminism is asking them for a level of perfection they can never live up to? And if we encourage people to constantly criticize each other for failing to be perfect, would that lead to the myriad problems of call-out culture?
An interesting set of links relating to public shaming, pile-ons, and the like. Mostly bought up by a recent book So You’ve been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson. And mostly written by that same Jon Ronson, it seems. But they’re interesting and are, at least IMO, worth a collective read.
How One Stupid Tweet Ruined Justine Sacco’s Life (NYT)
(by Jon Ronson)
Jon Ronson: How A Tweet Can Ruin Your Life (book excerpt.)
‘Overnight, everything I loved was gone’: the internet shaming of Lindsey Stone (also by Ronson.)
The Guardian book review of ROnson’s book.
How can we fight online shaming campaigns? (Scott Aaronson, Shtetl-Optimized)
Unsurprisingly, some of the responses focus on Adria Richards, which span a spectrum from the
“it was not her fault, and she is basically blameless” category, , at Shakesville, (note that this includes Richards’ comments about what’s going on)
To the “of course it was mostly her fault and it’s ridiculous for her to keep claiming martyr status, though she didn’t deserve the results, which were horrible and out of proportion” category, at Simple Justice,
And the “doesn’t it suck for everyone involved, so why is the book exclusively focusing on the developers who got fired (and rehired) but not Richards, who remains a jobless pariah? That doesn’t seem fair at all” category, at the Reality Based Community.
Read and enjoy.
Another one for the list…
College student suspended for tweets he wrote about Curt Schilling’s teenage daughter | USA Today High School Sports | USA Today High School Sports
(Schilling is a baseball player, I guess.)
The two people who Schilling named in his blog post have taken down their twitter accounts. I can’t say I feel bad for them at all.
As for Richards, what she did was slightly wrong because it was disproportionate, but the reaction to her has been primarily a misogynistic hatefest. A lot of guys who ordinarily feel constrained from expressing their hatred of smart, pretty women suddenly feel like they’ve been granted permission to be vile. How dare she not know her place!
The flip side of Internet pile-ons:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/find-dancing-man#.maBwROoVo
@Amp, Curt Schilling is a former top MLB pitcher now best known for driving his game studio into the ground and taking millions in Rhode Island tax dollars with it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/business/curt-schilling-rhode-island-and-the-fall-of-38-studios.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Regarding Schilling, that’s too bad, but it sure sounds like Rhode Island should have known better.
Regarding the “find dancingman,” thanks for the link! I’d wish some of the emphasis was less on “tons of beautiful babes” – but overall it’s nice people pushing back against meanness, and that makes me happy.
Ampersand:
I saw a lot of anti-feminism or perhaps more specifically anti-social-authoritarianism based comments aimed at Richards. I didn’t see much in the way of anti-woman rhetoric though, and while it may have occured I doubt it was the primary motive behind the strong response to her actions.
Ampersand:
I’d think not. Yet that’s what feminists seem to be in the habit of doing to other people. What’s bad for the goose is bad for the gander, no?
desipis:
Oh, rest assured, we do it to ourselves, too. In fact third-wave feminism was in some sense a reaction to second-wave feminism’s major problems.
The first step in any attempt to fix a situation has to be to identify the problem. When you do that, and other people keep telling you that it’s not a problem, or you’ve done it wrong, you get a lot of practice defining the problem, and pointing out examples.
Grace
Well, I certainly agree that feminists criticize each other a LOT.
But I’ve been trying to get out of the habit of “scrutinizing every little decision,” for the reasons I mentioned above.
I can imagine it might “seem” that way to you, but your sample is biased, since you see the times feminists speak but not the times we choose not to speak.
I actually am constantly deciding NOT to criticize things, to let things go, etc. Sometimes I respond to something on Twitter or whereever because I’m in the mood for an argument and I’ve got ten minutes until it’s time to go to work. But there are also many, many more times where I decide NOT to respond to something I disagree with, because I don’t feel like I have the energy, or the time, or the pleasure and/or productivity of the argument seems unlikely to be great enough to repay the effort, or I’m just not in the mood.
I’d guess that most feminists would say something similar.
No, it definitely occurred. Even Jon Ronson, a journalist who worked hard to paint Richards as an inhuman monster, wrote:
Not to mention the tweets, of which there were thousands:
I don’t doubt that if you asked those guys, they would deny being motivated by misogyny and racism. But I think they were.
More subtly, however, I think that there’s something bizarre and suspicious about how Richards is constantly painted as the instigator of an internet hate mob, rather than as its victim. There’s no way to know for sure, but I’m skeptical that a white man would have gotten the same unjust treatment.
Richards is a very difficult comparator: she is in many minority groups (black, woman, jewish, as she notes) but also seems to score very high on the self-righteous scale. Most people would probably be saying something like “I think that I was well inside the bounds of acceptable behavior. But in retrospect I probably didn’t make the ideal call out of my various options,” at which point they become a relative non target and folks move on. Richards comes across more like “I’d do it again tomorrow, so long as I wouldn’t get personally attacked again, because I was 100% right” and that makes her extraordinarily dislikeable to many folks. Especially since she is–by evidence and her own claims–someone who is attuned to what she is saying and presenting, so she doesn’t get much of a benefit of the doubt w/r/t “Oh, she didn’t mean it that way.”
Obviously there’s misogyny and other hatred involved too, though.
As with above, this is partly the outcome of an argumentative choice.
When shit went down, the Richards-defender camp (which obviously includes Richards) had two basic options, the “everyone hurts” and the “either/or:”
They could concede that perhaps “mistakes were made” on both sides: sure, probably the firings were unfair, but look at what is happening to her; it is also unfair. Everyone hurts. Be sympathetic.
Alternatively, they could claim that Richards basically did nothing wrong, and that most/all of the fallout concern should be focused on her: the firings were conscious actions; she was just fine; if you’re going to be sympathetic do so to her.
#2 is a argumentative gamble: when you set up an either/or (as you did in your quote above) then you need to land on the right side of it. Richards didn’t: many people who were forced to choose tended not to choose her side.
Too late to edit it, but I should clarify that “obviously there’s misogyny and other hatred involved too, though” is a gross misstatement. Let me try it again:
There’s a ton of stuff which is directed at Richards, most of which is far over the line of acceptability and much of which is based on some very base and appalling sentiment.
That much is clear and I don’t mean to suggest otherwise.
Also, on a completely different topic,
http://pulptastic.com/33-signs-that-were-vandalised-hilarious-responses-ever/
These are funny.
Edited to add: This was written as a response to G&W’s comment #168, but before I read G&W’s comment 169 – it was crossposted with that comment. If I had read 169 first, the tone of my response would have been considerably less frustrated. –Amp
G&W, Richards did come across as aggressively unsympathetic and unrepentant in a couple of articles by a seemingly hostile journalist that came out about a week ago; I don’t think that article can retroactively explain the attitudes of the last two years. (At the time, two years ago, Richards said that she was hoping Hank would get his job back.)
No one is “forced to choose” a side in terms of who to sympathize with, Hank or Richards; it is 100% possible to both think Richards didn’t act perfectly, and think what was done to her was vile. Claiming that she is somehow forcing people to choose one or the other is just illogical and untrue. Is she holding a gun to your head? No? Then she’s not forcing you. If you want to say that she didn’t behave perfectly but what was done to her was inexcusable and disgusting, you entirely have that choice.
You’re basically saying that because Richards isn’t sweet and nice and taking blame after two years of being a target, and two years of unemployment, people are “forced to choose” a side. Screw that victim-blaming nonsense. The people responsible for the hate-mob attacks on Richards are the people who have participated in the mob, and if someone find that difficult to discern, then that’s their fault, not Richards’.
And that isn’t the same as saying Richards bears no blame. As I’ve said before, I don’t think that starting with posting a photo was the right thing to do. It was disproportionate and wrong. But it was also – like Hank’s joke – extremely minor misbehavior, the sort of thing that should be forgiven and forgotten after two years. Instead, people are still holding it against her, and now they’re adding that she sounded unsympathetic in a new interview to the list of sins that allegedly justify something in how she’s been treated.
Ampersand:
You use the word “I” a lot in that paragraph. Do you ever consider if the person you’re criticising has the energy, or the time, or the pleasure, etc to deal with your criticism? Do you ever consider that the burden you’re placing on the person you’re criticising is greater than the potential gain from their reaction to it? Or is your decision making process purely focused on yourself?
This is the problem that I think causes the backlash against people like Richards. Some feminists don’t act as if the person they are criticising is a human with their own goals and aspirations that are equally as valid as feminist goals. They treat the target of their criticism as objects to be poked and prodded, to be manipulated into an idealised form. Alternatively, if they protest and try to claim the validity of their own interests and pursue a compromise, they are to be rejected, excluded into an outgroup, labelled as an other (sexist, racist, misogynist, etc), and dehumanised. Not suprisingly, some people have a problem with this.
I’ll certainly agree that those tweets are obnoxious and unjustified. I think it’s a real stretch to claim insight into someone’s motivation on the basis of a tweet. At most I think you can conclude that they have a perception that Richards (or her supporters) is vulnerable to being provoked by racially/sexually derogatory language, and that their concern for racial/sexual issues is less than their concern over the dog-piling on people making jokes. In a sense I suspect they’re people “advocating for social change” who decided that speaking politely wasn’t going to achieve anything.
Of course dealing with diverse perspectives on such issues is difficult, so it’s probably just easier to shuffle those people into some outgroup that’s permissable to ignore or hate with a convenient label.
The hostility and nastiness in the manner you asked me that was so crass and overstated that it’s actually funny, given the context.
To answer your question, of course I include “would this be too hurtful to the person I’m responding to?” in what I weigh when I decide to respond or not. (I even thought about it while writing this paragraph.)
Since we’re asking each other personal questions, let me ask: Why do you feel compelled to defend the internet hate mob that viciously attacked Richards? What makes you take the side of haters and bullies?
Really? Why not? A tweet is someone’s own words. It’s not like we’re talking about subtle policy analysis of a Supreme Court decision, in which we should assume there’s a lot more nuance than can fit into a tweet. We’re talking about the decision to say “you cunt, I hope you fall and die” or not, which is not all that nuanced a decision, frankly.
When someone tweets “you cunt, I hope you fall and die,” it’s not unfair to think that’s motivated by misogyny; when someone tweets “what kind of bizarre racial mix is that?,” it’s not a stretch to think the tweet motivated by racism.
It’s interesting to see how far you’ve come from a few days ago, when you wrote “I just still hold people as responsible for their actions, even when they are angry.” Now you’re saying that it’s unfair to hold racists and misogynists responsible for their actions. Which is it?
I think your insight here is basically right on target. They are people who think “she’s a Black woman, so probably she’s vulnerable to being hurt by racist language, or sexist language, so that’s what I’ll use.”
The weird thing is, you don’t see how that thought is, in and of itself, evidence of misogynistic and/or racist motivations.
It’s as if you watched the famous Chevy Chase/Richard Prior “Word Association” sketch, and responded “Chase’s character wasn’t being racist – he was just choosing to use racist words because he saw that Prior’s character was Black and thought that racist words would be an effective way of provoking.” Well, yes. And?
Edited to add:
Well, on the one hand, you’re right, in that everyone is more than the worse things they ever said or did. Sure, these people were motivated by misogyny and/or racism in what they tweeted, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t also have other motivations and other aspects to their personalities. Maybe they’ll someday come to regret what they’ve said.
But on the other hand, you seem to be saying that to acknowledge that basic humanity of people who are hateful, misogynistic, and racist trolls, we should refrain from acknowledging their misogyny and racism. I don’t think that’s true, and I don’t think that’s a good idea. They chose to act like misogynistic, racist assholes, and it’s reasonable to think of them that way until they choose to act in another fashion.
G&W, those signs are hilarious. The Darth Vader one especially cracked me up, for some reason.
I’ll respond to it with this caveat ;)
In all fairness, I don’t get that from his interpretations of what she said, I get that from his quotes of what she said. It certainly seems like he’s not her fan, but I don’t see anyone suggesting that he’s lying about the quotes, so his own hostility isn’t necessarily at issue.
No, though it may help.
I vaguely remember that detail, though I don’t recall the context or language with specificity. I’m sure you are right. Out of curiosity (not disagreement) I’d like to reread it if you have a link.
I realize you were frustrated when you wrote this but even so it seems like a strange response: I’m not using “force” in the coercive-violence sense here, as was perfectly obvious.
She and a lot of her defenders set up the dialogue primarily as one where there was a “right” party and a “wrong” party. As a conversational tactic, that has the effect of forcing (not with a gun, but mentally) people to commit to one side or another. This is no surprise, right? The more you demand the more likely you are to have folks join the other side.
I just did! And so did pretty much every post I linked to. But I have spent more time thinking about it than most folks.
Well, she wasn’t sweet and nice in the first place, which is arguably a big part of the issue; and she doesn’t seem to have changed. But in any case, there’s a big difference between “sweet and nice” and what I was discussing.
Great example!
Some folks argue that discussing Richards’ contributions to her own downfall are “victim blaming” and therefore wholly improper. And it’s a magic word, right? After all, there is no such thing as “acceptable victim blaming.” If conduct is “victim blaming” then it’s simply wrong, and needs to stop.
But the effect on people who hear those arguments is that they become more polarized: either they agree that it’s “victim blaming” and are likely to stop blaming her entirely; or they disagree with you and decide that she’s even more culpable. That phrasing will deter people from taking the moderate view, because you make it difficult for them to use the “well, it was partly her fault” as a balance to “…but mostly she didn’t deserve what happened.”
Here, on this blog, with you, I’m happy to ignore the polarizing aspects: I can say “I think your use of victim blaming here is a bit improper, unless you are specifically limiting it to the hate-mob shit.” In the real world conversation where those nuances might not get across, I would probably be forced to choose a side: Do I “stand with Adria Richards?” , or not?
yup.
The main difference between Richards and Hank, of course, is that Hank promptly posted a mea culpa and apologized, acknowledging his misbehavior. Richards did not–even now she doesn’t think it was a mistake.
It’s hard to say how things would have gone down then if Richards had done the same, but I personally suspect that it would have been pretty different. And it’s hard to say how things would have gone down now had Richards taken a different stance now, but I also suspect that it would have been pretty different. When I read the interview I was amazed that there seemed to be no concessions; I thought “wow, she is really doubling down here.”
I recognize that what happened to her was wrong and wholly inappropriate, but honestly I tend to have a bit less empathy for folks who I perceive as unpleasant–and who I think, based on their own writings, would probably be disinclined to give me much benefit of the doubt. It doesn’t justify it, but it makes me less inclined to add it to my list of battles that I fight.
A post and comment thread discussing the psychological impacts of video games that I found pretty interesting. (I knew there was no link to violence, but I hadn’t heard the other stuff.) The author is anonymous, but at least on first Glenn’s their opinions seem reasonable and well-informed. (Some discussion of a certain large blowup in the world of gaming also appears.)
here’s the comment Richards posted to Hank.
Similar, maybe, to what I was saying to RonF in another thread: if we had been discussing a minor internet blowup, I think it could be relevant that Richards didn’t and doesn’t seem repentant. But the attacks were so wildly disproportionate to her actions that it seems hard to believe that it would have made any difference if she’d apologized with the appropriate amount of demonstrated contrition.
Edit: to clarify that analogy, I meant my comments that gender disparity in jobs might never reach zero due to intrinsic traits, but that the amount of sexism is way overwhelming any signal from that. It may exist, but the problem looks very similar either way.
I guess we’ll agree to disagree, then. It seems to me that the hate-mob folks were motivated by the large public dislike; and that the public dislike was motivated by what Richards did and said before, during, and after the incident. I think her subsequent blog post was relevant (this is the one she references in her comment to Hank.) And her tweets. Or subsequent commentary. And so on.
I mean, it’s possible that all of the hate-mob shit would have gone down basically the same way, if she had acted differently. I know absolutely zero hate-mobbers, so I can’t really do much but guess. But I’m not sure why that possibility seems so likely as to have the alternatives “hard to believe,” since Richards comes across as so much of a die-hard SJW she’s almost a caricature; if you were to describe all this to someone who didn’t know her you’d probably be accused of making up a straw feminist.
G&W: Pretty much, what Harlequin said.
Harlequin: Thanks as well for the link to that post and comment thread, which was really interesting.
The fact that anti-woman hate-mobs – such as the ones attacking Anita Sarkeesian, Caroline Criado-Perez, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, Kathy Sierra, and others – have “gone down basically the same way” is pretty absolute evidence that the mob acts exactly the same way regardless of how fucking contrite the victim acts.
ETA:
This is the just world fallacy.
Not to mention that once you’re dealing with an internet-anti-woman-hate-mob, apologizing may actually make things worse, in that it will teach the mobbers that death threats, rape threats, and doxxing are effective ways to reach their goals. Thus, even reasonable people who feel regret for their actions may feel like they need to stand firm so as to stop the machine.
—Myca
In fact, I’m going to try doubling down here. Maybe I’m wrong.
G&W, do you know of any instances where a public mea culpa by an attacked woman stopped the mob?
I’m specifying woman since I consider the recent hate-fest against women online qualitatively different than the standard internet pile-on.
—Myca
Lots of men in the relevant corporations feel that a woman could knock them down and out in that way if she wanted to. Lots of men value their careers – some people, for instance, commit suicide if they lose their big job or lose their medical or law license or the like. It’s important to them.
Richards was kind of flexing her muscles with that kind of thing. Unfortunately, she was not a coder herself and didn’t have much value as a programming evangelist to her company (her one job was to “build bridges” and she didn’t do it), so she also got fired.
If a man goes to HR and says that a woman told an off-color joke and he feels uncomfortable, good things are not going to happen to him. Really. And the situation is at least perceived to be different for women.
So I assume that men are responding the same way women respond when they feel a man is “flexing his muscles”. Like raping a woman or beating the living crap out of her. The Duke “Rapists” certainly had a lot of crap flung their way, as an example, and I have heard worse stories about what has happened to such men. Sometimes a lot worse than death threats.
So whether you want to argue that it’s just a bunch of crap that women have more leverage in certain ways, that is the PERCEPTION among many men in the relevant corporations today. They are truly afraid of it. And I guess the one guy that she “told on” actually did lose his job.
If you want to understand it, there’s your starting point.
I said “Anita Sarkeesian, Caroline Criado-Perez, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, Kathy Sierra, and others.”
Here are some more examples. Trigger warning for over-the-top vile misogyny and racism:
Fan-harassed writer Jennifer Hepler leaves BioWare • Eurogamer.net
Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry: ‘I will not accept online misogyny’ | Music | The Guardian
Page o’ Hate | Skepchick
Oregon Mom Challenges Facebook on Rape Posts, Becomes Target for Threats – ABC News
Monstrous online harassment of Zerlina Maxwell after she self-identifies as a rape survivor on Hannity’s TV show
I don’t know all of those people, but I’m confused: Are you selecting for people who have apologized and who have not been subsequently left alone or had a serious reduction in harassment? Because it almost seems like you’re selecting people based on the opposite traits, which wouldn’t actually show anything.
I think that Richards could have headed off a lot of this by acting differently early on. Plenty of people are public (Richards had, what, 9000 followers?) and plenty of people do bad things, and plenty of times the mob moves on. I concede that once the ball was firmly in hate-mob territory that it would have been too late to stop it from rolling pretty far. But I also think that the current speed is also related to Richards’ current behavior.
I don’t think the world is fallaciously just, for chrissakes. I only think that there is a link between Richards’ behavior and her outcomes. There’s a difference.
This is an excellent argument, to be sure. But Amp is talking as if the hate mobs are data-independent; they don’t have “goals” per se other than “cause damage” (which is why they don’t care about achieving them.) That is why nothing you can do or say will make them stop: facts are largely irrelevant. You seem to be suggesting that the hate mobs are responsive to information: facts are largely relevant. To use a political analogy, it’s like the difference between “nothing we can do will stop terrorism” versus “terrorists may be mostly crazy but they pick targets and do cost/benefit just like everyone else; we can affect what they do.”
Personally I agree with you about the risks of concessions, though it seems to me that the argument “choose not to make concessions” includes an acknowledgment that they might produce a benefit.
Frieden, you are someone who sees someone being beaten, over and over, by a mob. And you rush over, and look, and see that the victim is a black woman. So you immediately begin making excuses for the mob and explaining why the woman deserved it because she spat her gum out on the sidewalk. You’re being vastly disproportionate. Yes, spitting gum on the sidewalk is wrong, but it doesn’t explain or excuse the mob beating.
Do you really think that hearing a report that someone tweeted a photo is ethically equivalent to hearing a report of “raping a woman or beating the living crap out of her”? What happened to the Duke “rapists” was disgusting and wrong because they were innocent, not because it’s wrong to be angry at rapists. In contrast, the mob hate against Richards is inexcusable even if Richards did exactly what she’s accused of doing.
And don’t imply that most men would act the same way in similar circumstances. We’ve almost all had fears of losing a job (male or female) – but most men don’t act like the guys attacking Richards (or Sarkeesian, Criado-Perez, Quinn, Wu, Sierra, etc etc etc….), and would not do so under any circumstances. The majority of men – even though we all have internalized sexism and racism to deal with – simply never sink that low. Your attempt to suggest that how the hate mobs act is understandable because “women have more leverage in certain ways” is horribly sexist against men.
You realize that “stop the mob in its tracks once it’s already begun” is not what I’m arguing, right?
That said: I haven’t dug into this sort of thing enough to know of any instances where there actually was an early, public, mea culpa by an attacked woman, much less enough of those instances to derive any conclusions. (ETA: I’m sure they exist, of course. I just don’t know of them.) To say “early apologies don’t work” seems like we’d need to actually find some early apologies.
I certainly concede I may be wrong. It’s my impression that early crisis management works elsewhere, though I also concede that it depends on the degree to which “the recent hate-fest against women online [is] qualitatively different than the standard internet pile-on.”
Do you know of a few instances where folks have made an early public mea culpa, whether or not it has worked?
My point is that some of these people did things that were arguably bad, as Richards did, but some of them didn’t. (Only the most ridiculous anti-feminist would say that it’s morally wrong to announce an intention to critique video games, or to campaign to put a woman’s face on currency). Yet all of them were attacked by hate mobs in exactly the same way. What they have in common is that they are all women who stood up in public. That – not bad behavior – is what they all have in common, and what they were targeted for.
There is, and looking at the other examples shows what the link is: she stood up in public. That’s it. (Being a feminist woman seems to make these sorts of attacks more likely, but it sometimes happens to non-feminist women too.)
The rest of your claims you have absolutely no evidence for, and unless you actually produce some evidence, I’ll continue thinking they’re nonsense.
Amp,
I’ve already said (many times!) that the hate mobs are bad in general, so we’re not arguing about that.
And I’ve already said that the hate mobs are bad as applied to Richards, so we’re not arguing about that, either.
The only things we’re seemingly arguing about are
1) Whether Richards in particular is at all responsible for part of the outcome in her case; and/or
2) Whether (and to what degree) hate mobs are affected by what people do/say in general.
That isn’t some nasty anti-woman pro-hate-mob position. But it feels like you’re reacting as if it is. Not sure why. Maybe you’re equating me and Frieden?
G&W: Now I’m confused. Was your comment #189 a response to my comment #188?
GNW:
and GNW:
There’s really not a conflict here.
Surely it’s reasonable to say that mobs are responsive to some information.
Let’s examine the GamerGate folks … do they have goals other than causing damage to women in general and Zoe Quinn in particular? Sort of, but unless you’re hopelessly naive, no, not really. Certainly not in terms of their attack on Zoe Quinn.
Are they responsive to information? Sure. They seize on anything Zoe does and use it to harass her further. Check out the reviews for Depression Quest on Steam. When I checked last (which was a couple months ago) it was largely 1-star reviews referencing her romantic life.
There’s no conflict there.
Understanding that “new information is valuable if it can be used to further harassment” is crucial to understanding how hate-mobs work.
—Myca
Er… OK. That’s a perfectly valid point. It’s not the opposing point, though.
Sure.
That’s something they all have in common. But since they ALSO have “female” in common with all women who and up in public and were NOT attacked, it may not be the causal commonality.
It may happen to women who take a certain perspective, even one which should protected (like, say, “advocating for a woman on currency.”) Perhaps your version of “stand up in public” is merely shorthand for something else….?
But of course there are plenty of women with public personae (including Richards herself, pre-attack) who don’t get attacked like that, and who don’t get doxxed, and so on. I mean, really: all those women in public NOT getting attacked to this level, and they’re irrelevant? How are they not relevant to look at causation?
I don’t really feel concerned with your “nonsense” conclusion. The theory of “it’s all about women being punished for opining in public, unrelated to behavior or what they say” is part political statement, part factual.
But you don’t seem especially able to consider the other side on this issue, and you don’t seem at all open to a middle ground here, so it’s also a very extreme version of that theory (womanhood is the issue, speech is irrelevant), which, if I were to attribute it to someone, folks might well mock as a straw. I don’t know why you don’t come off it a bit.
You brought up the metaphor of terrorism before. Using that metaphor: Not 100% of Western civilians who travel into territory where ISIS is operating have been kidnapped by ISIS. But it would be mistaken to argue that therefore ISIS is not targeting Western civilians for kidnappings.
I’ve been considering your arguments, and those made by others here. Just because I’m not persuaded, doesn’t justify your claim that I haven’t considered what you’ve said.
As well as summing up my position as “womanhood is the issue, speech is irrelevant,” you also summed it up as “it’s all about women being punished for opining in public, unrelated to behavior or what they say.” But of course, “opining in public” is a form of “behavior” and of “what they say,” and it makes no sense to claim I’ve said both that women are punished for “opining in public” but “speech is irrelevant”. Besides, I just said that it IS related to “what they say” (when I wrote that feminists are more likely to be targeted).
In other words, they’d be mocked as strawmen because they ARE strawmen.
ETA: Finally, I’d be open to a “middle ground” if it was persuasively argued, used evidence, and showed a familiarity with the issue. But I’m not open to a middle ground merely because it is the middle ground. Middle grounds are not more likely to be correct than other grounds are.
Yes yes yes yes yes.
I want this tattooed across my shoulders in gothic script.
—Myca
What they have in common is their class position and exploitation of social media to gain support from other feminist activists. I think there is an enormous class element in these twitterstorms.
G&W, I’m still not sure what your comment #189 was in reference to. But to clarify, I DON’T think you’re putting forward a “pro-hate-mob position,” and it wasn’t my intent to say or imply such a thing, or to equate you and Frieden. Sorry if that was unclear.
Also to clarify, I’m not saying that nothing the person says matters – obviously, the women are being targeted based in part on what they say. I just see no evidence that expressing repentance would make a difference.
I don’t know if any of you have been watching John Oliver’s HBO show, but it’s pretty great, and they always put the centerpiece analysis up on YouTube the next day. I don’t know any other show that can do an approximately 15-minute piece that is both consistently entertaining and consistently educational; every one of them is amazing, and I always learn something new, even about topics I feel pretty well-informed about. (And sometimes the topics are things I didn’t know anything about–a few weeks ago, they did a piece on the way tobacco companies are suing entire countries in international court for attempting to control tobacco sales.) Here’s the most recent, a discussion of the citizenship and voting status of US territories, which totally blew my mind: I knew some of it, but certainly not all. It starts out with a hilarious (and long) montage of news anchors saying Sonia Sotomayor’s parents immigrated from…Puerto Rico.
Anyway: I know there’s a lot of stuff out there to watch, so this is just a pointer that those pieces are really, really worth it.
It looks like we’re just assuming different things.
The question is straightforward to describe:
Do hate-mobbers act like one type of angry folks: they get angry at something, but eventually redirect their anger to a better target if the original one makes good/apologizes/backs down/etc? And, that they are less incentivized to join a mob if the target has already done so?
Or do hate mobbers act like another type of angry folks: they maintain a critical mass of internal reinforcement, where the anger is maintained primarily by other group members, irrespective of whether the target makes good/apologizes/backs down/etc? And that their incentive to join a mob isn’t really reduced by the target’s changes?
Obviously the only way to REALLY know this either way–your side or mine–is to find multiple case s where that actually happened: where people both did something that started to make them a mob target and also then made good/apologized/backed down.
Problem is, I don’t personally know of those examples. It may be that they don’t exist: the type of people who get mobbed may also be the type who bravely respond with a “fuck you, mobbers” or who otherwise apologize. Or it may be that they DO exist–and that because it works, and stops/stalls mobs in the first place, we don’t hear about it.
But the middle ground I’m talking about isn’t just whether you or I are right. It’s about acknowledging that the lack of evidence is mutual. Unless you have those cases to proffer, that is–I don’t–in which case then one of us will be experimentally right, or wrong.
But absent the specific evidence, it’s just a bunch of guesses and speculation as to which aspects of the mobbers are similar to which other aspects of which other social groups.
Ampersand:
If those questions came off as hostile and nasty then I apologise. That was not my intent. I probably shouldn’t have framed those questions as being about you as I haven’t really seen you engaging in the sort of conduct I’m criticising.
I said the tweets were unjustifiably obnoxious. I’m not sure how that constitutes a defense. I’m not defending their conduct, and don’t have a problem with them being held accountable for being rude/offensive. I just disagree with the analysis of their motivation and hence social systems that lead to such behaviour.
What I don’t understand is why one group flinging viltrolic tweets to harass someone into submission is labeled political activism while another is labeled a hate mob.
Because I try to remain open minded about other peoples motivations?
Consider the way some feminists use nude protests. They’re getting naked in public. The simple conclusions it that they must be motivated by sexual exhibitionsm; getting off on their ability to force their nudity onto others. Why else would they do something other than for its own end?
If context is taken into consideration some other possibilities become clear. Maybe it’s a form of symbolism. Maybe it’s to provoke their opponents into making a political misstep. Maybe it’s just an extreme way of getting attention to their point of view. I think human behaviour is sufficiently complex enough that drawing conclusions on motivation on the basis of a tweet is highly speculative.
Ampersand@184:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/04/23/game-developers-get-a-lot-of-death-threats/
http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/15/4622252/plague-of-game-dev-harassment-erodes-industry-spurs-support-groups
http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/24/4552332/black-ops-2-developer-threatened-over-weapon-changes
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/gabe-newell-death-threat-dev-resigns/1100-6423099/
http://www.gamesradar.com/7-instances-where-gamers-threatened-kill-their-favorite-game-developers/
If there’s a common thread to the issue, I’m not sure ‘being female’ is part of it.
Edit: To put together that list I did a google search on the term “game developer death threats”. Interestingly, stories on 1 particular developer were at least 3/4 of all search results. Which leaves me wondering two things. Why did Brianna Wu get so much more media coverage? How did that overwealming bias in media coverage impact people’s perception of the problem?