On Nader, Gore and Bush in 2000

Posted on March 16, 2004 by PinkDreamPoppies

The injustices and justices (and Justices) of the 2000 Presidential election will likely be debated for years to come. Hopefully as time goes by, things will settle down some as the repercussions of the event are less immediate and the partisan stakes feel less important. Eventually the debate will be an intellectual one held chiefly between Presidential scholars and history majors. History will judge the extent of Ralph Nader’s role in the election and, if history is fair, that judgment will be different than the one commonly passed today. There are many who believe that Nader’s campaign was largely, if not quite solely, responsible for Bush’s winning the 2000 election. At its heart this argument is predicated on one key false assumption and is, much more importantly, contemptuous of democracy and of the complaints made by the Green party and its supporters.

The false assumption is that all of the people who voted for Nader would have, if Nader hadn’t run, voted for Al Gore. Aside from there being a small degree of ideological overlap between the Green and Democratic parties, there’s no evidence that this is the case. Considering the rightward drift of the Democratic party under the Presidency of Bill Clinton, it’s not entirely unreasonable to believe that some of those voters who voted for the Green party would have stayed home rather than vote for a party they believed to be ideologically identical to its opposition. The so-called “spoiling effect” of Nader’s run is an intellectual exercise that is interesting to contemplate but cannot be proven. Even exit polls that asked voters to rank the candidates in order of preference cannot prove how many of Nader’s voters would have voted for Gore because, again, it’s not certain how many of those voters would have even been to the polling booths in the first place if Nader hadn’t been running. The Democratic party, after all, had little to offer them.

It could be argued that, considering that George W. Bush’s official margin of victory was 537 votes, it’s possible to assume that a handful of Nader’s voters could have swung the election to Gore’s favor this misses the underlying nature of the argument blaming Nader for Gore’s loss: it’s glib dismissal of the Green party’s concerns for partisan points. Every vote cast for Nader was, on some level, an indictment of both the Republican party and of the rightward drift of the Democratic party. To Green party voters, there wasn’t a difference between the alternative candidates they were being offered and so they exercised their democratic right to vote for who they felt best represented them. In response, Democrats who complain that Nader lost the election for Gore are saying that the Green party thwarted their attempt to beat those dastardly Republicans by voting their conscience. The view of these Democrats is that their candidate and their party, rather than their ideology, must win the election; no matter how conservative Gore was he had to win because he wasn’t a Republican and progressive desires or complaints of a rightward drift be damned. Should no third party candidate ever run because he or she might prevent the “correct” big party candidate from winning? That wouldn’t be democracy and yet that’s what many Democrats seem to wish for.

In essence, the Democratic party has only itself to blame for Gore losing the 2000 election. It did little enough to appeal to progressive voters and so shouldn’t sulk when it didn’t get enough of the progressive vote..

Posted in Elections and politics | 18 Comments

Why I Loathe Clinton and the Democrats

Posted on March 12, 2004 by Ampersand

An interesting article in Mother Jones magazine argues that Clinton, like Bush, lied about Iraq and WMDs:

In a November 1997 Sunday morning appearance on ABC, Defense Secretary William Cohen held up a five-pound bag of sugar for the cameras to dramatize the threat of Iraqi anthrax: “This amount of anthrax could be spread over a city — let’s say the size of Washington. It would destroy at least half the population of that city. One breath and you are likely to face death within five days.”

“It could wipe out populations of whole countries!” Cokie Roberts gasped as Cohen described the Iraqi arsenal. “Millions, millions,” Cohen responded, “if it were properly dispersed.”

A year later, at a nationally televised town hall meeting on Iraq at Ohio State University, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright brought home the dangers: “Iraq is a long way from Ohio, but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face. The evidence is strong that Iraq continues to hide prohibited weapons and materials.”

These claims from the Clinton team, we now know, were every bit as wrong as the exaggerated assertions of the Bush administration.

The primary evidence the article examines is the Clinton administration’s use of the testimony of Iraqi defector Hussein Kamel.

As evidence of the threat, Clinton solemnly recounted the defector’s tale: “In 1995, Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law, and the chief organizer of Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more.” Kamel’s defection was similarly invoked virtually every time a senior Clinton policy maker addressed the Iraq issue during the inspections crises of 1997-98. Sandy Berger said it “forced [Iraq] to reveal additional weapons stockpiles and production capacity it had insisted it did not have.” Madeleine Albright said it “marked a turning point” in Saddam’s efforts at deception. And William Cohen said that as a result, “Iraq confessed to having materials and munitions it had lied about for years.”

Bits of Kamel’s testimony were used for years – in both the Clinton and Bush administrations – to argue that Iraq presented a great danger due to its WMDs. What neither administration told us is that Kamel had testified that Iraq no longer had any WMDs. (I’ve previously blogged about Kamel in the context of criticizing the Bush administration.)

Did Clinton (or Bush) know for certain that Iraq had no WMDs? Maybe, maybe not. But they did know for certain that the Kamel testimony they used as evidence directly contradicted Kamel’s own statements – and they kept this obviously relevant fact hidden from us. Clinton and his underlings deliberately chose to deceive the American people.

Why? Apparently, because they had to keep the sanctions going. To back down would be “letting Saddam win”; it would be appearing less than totally manly. Never mind that hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis were being killed by the sanctions; never mind that it was obvious that the sanctions had totally failed to force Saddam out of power; never mind that the US was developing a deserved reputation the world over as a butcher of Iraqis. All that really mattered is that Clinton not appear to back down. All that really mattered is that Clinton’s dick continue to appear bigger than Saddam’s.

And that, folks, was what it was all about.

I’ve noticed a certain attitude among progressives that we should forget what happened. It’s a dead issue now, after all. Let’s all unite in defeating Bush and part of that is pretending that things weren’t horrible under the Clinton adminstration, and that the White House wasn’t full of sick monsters who vomited hate and pissed child murder even before Bush was sworn in to office.

The hell with that.

Fuck Clinton, fuck Gore, fuck those democrats who refuse to hold them accountable, and fuck everyone who used lies to support inhuman policies. I only hope that there is a hell, so they can all burn in it..

90 Comments

Woman charged with murder for refusing c-section

Posted on March 12, 2004 by Ampersand

Eugene Volokh points to an AP story about a woman who, according to prosecutors, refused to have a c-section because she didn’t want to be left with a scar. Although neither Eugene or any of the other bloggers I’ve read have mentioned this, the woman says the story is not true.

In a jailhouse interview with KSL Newsradio 1160, Ms Rowland denied she had been advised to have a C-section with the twins.

“I’ve never refused a C-section. I’ve already had two prior C-sections. Why would I say something like that?” Ms Rowland said.

The facts of this case are, for now, too muddled to draw any conclusions from. The prosecutors say that her objections to a c-section were purely cosmetic, but a nurse claims Ms Rowland said the doctors planned to cut her “from breast bone to pubic bone”; if Ms Rowland had been given that impression, then she’d have more than cosmetic reasons to fear the operation. Ms. Rowland’s lawyer says she suffers from mental illness, and Ms. Rowland herself says she never turned down a c-section at all.

Like a law professor quoted in the AP story, I’m concerned about the precedent this case could set.

The case could affect abortion rights and open the door to the prosecution of mothers who smoke or don’t follow their obstetrician’s diet, said Marguerite Driessen, a law professor at Brigham Young University.

“It’s very troubling to have somebody come in and say we’re going to charge this mother for murder because we don’t like the choices she made,” she said.

Eugene Volokh’s discussion is very worth reading:

A really tough issue: On the one hand, I’m skittish about any legal requirement that someone get surgery, even to save her child’s life. On the other hand, parents do rightly have a legal obligation to take care of their children, and it may well be that this obligation does extend even to going under the knife. Thought experiment: Should the law be able to force a parent — on pain of a murder conviction — to donate bone marrow to save a child’s life? Should it be able to do so, but only on pain of conviction of a lesser offense, such as involuntary manslaughter or child neglect? […]

I suspect that most (though not all) people would hesitate to find a woman guilty of murder when she aborts a child at gestational age 9 months because carrying the child (or having a caesarean) would cause her to, say, be permanently paralyzed, or would involve even a 25% chance of her dying. The question is whether the same should apply when we’re dealing with a caesarean, a serious surgical procedure and one that sometimes does lead to death and always leads to a nontrivial and somewhat painful recovery, but nonetheless one that in the overwhelming majority of all cases doesn’t cause death or serious permanent injury.

Finally, does it matter that medicine is an inexact science, and that a woman may well sincerely distrust her doctors’ assurances that (1) a caesarean is needed to save the child’s life, and (2) a caesarean would be safe for her? Is that another reason to leave the issue entirely up to the mother? Or would we say what the law often says as to parents’ other duties: Even if you sincerely believe that your child will get better if you just pray over him, instead of taking him to surgery, you may still be held liable at least for involuntary manslaughter (negligent homicide) even if not murder (reckless, knowing, or intentional homicide)?

As far as Eugene’s analogies go, I think the bone marrow example is far more on-target than the prayer case; a parent asked to take their child to the doctor in addition to praying, is not being asked to go under the knife himself.

* * *

If the woman was mentally ill – and that seems like a reasonable possibility – then I have to wonder, did anyone at any of the three hospitals she visited attempt to offer her treatment for her illness? And is putting her on trial – rather than getting her treatment now – really the appropriate public policy response?

* * *

It’s interesting to compare this case to a case I blogged about in January: A hospital sought (and got) a court order to perform a c-section on an unwilling woman, in order to save the infant. Fortunately, the woman left that hospital before they could enforce the court order. She wound up giving birth in another hospital, and gave birth to a healthy baby..

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights | 16 Comments

The problem of living without pain.

Posted on March 12, 2004 by Ampersand

Very interesting article about a girl born with a rare genetic defect that prevents her from feeling physical pain. Although I had realized in the abstract that feeling pain is necessary for self-protection, I hadn’t really considered the specifics. For instance, the girl’s self-explorations destroyed one eye and permanently damaged another before her parents realized that she had to be outfitted with goggles. (To bad the article is written in a gross faux-touching style.)

Donna at NoodleFood considers how this little girl’s case might apply to Peter Singer’s utilitarian philosophy, which is all about minimizing pain:

For Singer, she can still experience happiness. Yet the harms this small child routinely does herself demonstrates the great value of pain to human and animal life. Although particular pains are certainly experienced as unquestioningly bad, our capacity to feel pain provides an enormous protection against injury. So achieving the utilitarian goal of minimizing or eliminating pain would actually be quite harmful to creatures.

Read (as, AATS, they say) the whole thing..

Posted in Disabled Rights & Issues, Site and Admin Stuff, Whatever | 11 Comments

Is Roe v. Wade in danger?

Posted on March 12, 2004 by Ampersand

The Feminist Majority Foundation sent me a fundraising email which claimed that “The fate of Roe still hangs by ONE VOTE on the Supreme Court.”

The FMF is lying. Currently, the Supreme Court is 3-6 in favor of Roe (or, to be technical, in favor of Casey) (The three anti-Roe votes are Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia). The “fate of Roe” hangs by two votes, not one.

As much as I admire the FMF, lying in a fundraising appeal is unethical and inexcusable.

* * *

So how “in danger” is Roe? Well, if Bush wins re-election, and if two of the current votes for Roe retire (O’Conner and Stevens are plausible possibilities), then it’s possible that Roe could be overturned. Bush could replace O’Conner and Stevens with pro-lifers.

Or could he? The Senate Democrats would probably filibuster an overtly pro-life Supreme Court nominee. But they might not have the numbers to sustain a filibuster; in 2004, more Senate Democrats than Republicans are up for re-election, making it likely that Senate Republicans will increase their majority.

At one time, I thought that Bush would probably not choose to seat justices who would overturn Roe, because such a ruling would probably benefit democrats in many elections (including the 2008 presidential election). However, the last few years of watching President Bush govern has convinced me that whatever else I dislike about Bush, he doesn’t lack for political courage. On issues from pre-emptive invasion to ridiculously huge tax cuts, Bush has been willing to take extreme steps; he might well do the same on abortion.

Overall, I can’t dismiss the possibility that a Bush re-election could lead to Roe v Wade being overturned.

Of course, even if Roe is overturned, that won’t mean that abortion will be illegal nationwide. It’ll be outlawed in some states, and many states that won’t outlaw it will pass laws making it much harder to obtain abortions (look for laws to be passed forbidding married women from getting an abortion without their husband’s permission, for example). Still, some states – mostly in the Northeast and Northwest, where women have higher status – will continue to have legal abortion.

So even if Roe is overturned, abortion won’t be outlawed entirely. It will be outlawed enough, however, to significantly worsen the lives and reduce the freedom of many American girls and women. That alone is reason enough to vote for John Kerry, in my book.

(If we’re really lucky, Kerry will be elected and get a chance to replace Rehnquist with a pro-choice justice. However, that’s pretty unlikely; Rehnquist wouldn’t voluntarily retire with a Democrat in the White House).

* * *

UPDATE: You know, I can’t beleive I forgot to post this bit of news, which was what has brought the issue to mind this week: It turns out that Roe v Wade was very nearly overturned in 1992., in the Casey decision.

As the late Justice Blackmun’s private papers, which were just released last week, show, Rehnquist had put together a five-member majority for overturning Roe and had actually written a draft of his majority opinion when Justice Kennedy switched sides.

Which makes me awfully glad that Bork, who almost certainly would have voted to overturn Roe, was turned down by the Senate. Kennedy, you’ll recall, was nominated after Bork’s rejection..

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights | 10 Comments

How many housewives die on the job?

Posted on March 12, 2004 by Ampersand

In an earlier post, criticizing a men’s rights column by Glenn Sacks and Diana Thompson, I quoted the column’s statement that “On average, every day 17 [U.S. workers] die – 16 of them male.” In the comments to my post, Arbitrary Aardvark wrote:

I wanted to point out that i’m skeptical of the “16 of 17 work-related deaths are male.” Was there a source for the stat? I’m guessing that doesn’t include housewives killed by their husbands, and may be off in other aspects.

The sixteen of seventeen stat was probably calculated from Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers (pdf link). I’m pretty sure there’s some way of getting Glenn’s numbers from that data (probably by using an average of multiple years).

As for including housewives, that’s an interesting idea. However, I have no idea how you’d do that – I don’t know that anyone’s put that data together.

But let’s try bullshitting it. (And I’m quite serious about that – the statistical speculation that fills this post is total bullshit, and I’m not going to pretend that these numbers would be defensible in any serious policy discussion. This is for entertainment purposes only, folks.)

In 2000 (most recent year I found – probably the numbers have dropped a bit since then, especially for male victims), 440 men and 1247 women were murdered by spouses, ex-spouses and boyfriends or girlfriends. About 70% of women who live with their husbands have jobs aside from being housewives; put another way, 30% of wives could be described as full-time housewives. If 30% of the 1247 women murdered by intimates in 2001 were housewives, then that’s 374 housewives murdered.

According to the official statistics, in 2000 there were 5,471 male and 449 female workplace deaths. If we included 374 murdered housewives when counting workplace deaths (and ignoring the question of househusbands dying on the job each year), then there were 5,471 male and 823 female workplace deaths in 2000. That changes the stat a little, but overall it’s clear that men are still the predominate victims.

Of course, that “374” number is total nonsense – for instance, it may be that housewives are more or less likely to be murdered than other intimates, in which case the 30% number is wrong. And what about girlfriends? And what about housewives who are murdered on the job by someone other than a husband or boyfriend?

Also, I suspect that most housewives who die on the job aren’t murder victims. Murder deaths are relatively uncommon; what’s much more common is deaths due to car and truck accidents. How many housewives and stay at home mothers are killed each year in traffic accidents that occur while they’re “on the job” (driving to school or the grocery store, etc)?

I doubt the data even exists. In 2000, there were 6,495 fatal accidents a year involving female drivers (and 15,323 involving male drivers). If we assume that housewives are no more or less likely to die while driving than other women, then about 1,949 housewives died while driving a car in 2000. How many of those 1,949 were “on the job,” it’s impossible to say.

Still, what the heck. Let’s add those 1,949 women to the workplace death total (probably nearly all the driving done by housewives is related to their work, anyhow). Counting that along with our bullshit stat for housewives murdered each year, there were 5,471 male and 2,772 female workplace deaths in 2000. Male deaths still predominate, but the difference is less extreme.

However, I suspect that housewives are actually less likely to die while driving than most women. Why? Because the typical housewife is probably between the ages of 25 and 49, which are the least likely ages for a driver to get into a car crash (drivers below 20 and above 75 years old are the most likely to be in an accident). Plus, housewives are especially likely to be driving with children in the car, and my anecdotal observation is that parents with children in the car are especially cautious drivers.

But then again, even if we could count the number of full-time housewives who die in auto accidents on the job, that wouldn’t tell us everything. How many housewives die in household accidents, for instance? I don’t even know where to look.

What about parents who aren’t stay-at-homers but who nonetheless die while doing some home or child related work, or while driving to or from housework-or-child-related chores? If we’re including housewives when counting on-the-job deaths, shouldn’t we also count those who die in the course of their part-time job as a housewife (or househusband?)

Plus, what about the husbands and fathers who die each year trying to clean the gutters or driving Junior to school? (Men do less of the housework-related driving, but then again men are on average much worse drivers than women, so maybe they get into more housework-related car accidents despite driving less.)

* * *

Anyhow, it may make sense to consider “paid job deaths” and “housewife deaths” separately. The solution to paid job deaths is better funding of OSHA, going after unsafe employers, and above all unionizing. None of these solutions really apply to housewives and SAHPs (stay-at-home parents), and that’s a good reason not to conflate the two problems. Perhaps workers and housewives should be counted separately, in this instance.

What’s disturbing to me, is that housewives aren’t being counted at all. How many housewives, househusbands and SAHPs die accidentally each year should be something that someone keeps track of – but as far as I can tell, no one does..

Posted in Feminism, sexism, etc | 6 Comments

The Weirdness of Singin' in The Rain

Posted on March 11, 2004 by Ampersand

Singin’ in the Rain is one of the few classic old musicals I adore. (I love musicals, but I prefer the modern stuff – I’m a sucker for anything Sondheim). I was watching it for the nth time the other day, when I noticed yet another example of how deeply weird this film is.

I’m not talking about the totally surreal “Gotta Dance” sequence, which is the most striking example of weirdness (a film set in the fifties set within a film set in the 1700s in a film which is itself set in the 1920s). Nor am I pointing out that the famous “Singin’ in the Rain” dance sequence actually takes place in a downpour made of milk (showed up on the cameras better than water would have). No, I’m talking about an interesting way the script plays with the standard conventions of musicals.

In musicals, songs come in one of two types: First is the “hey, kids, let’s put on a show” song, in which the character performs a song. The second type is the “expression of what’s in my heart” song, in which the actor sings, but the character herself isn’t actually supposed to be literally singing.

In Singin’ in the Rain, for example, the title song isn’t something the main character (played by Gene Kelly) performs on stage; it’s a spontaneous expression of his heart, performed on a rainy street as he walks home.

Or is it?

Think of the ending: good-hearted-but-unknown actress Kathy Selden (played by a very cute Debbie Reynalds) is forced to sing hidden behind a curtain, so that evil-but-famous Lina Lamont (played by a wonderfully nasty Jean Hagen) can lip-synch to Kathy’s singing and thus pretend to have a wonderful singing voice. “What are you going to sing?” the bandleader asks. “What song?” Lina hisses to Kathy (hidden behind the curtain). “Singin’in the Rain,” Kathy whispers back. “Singin’in the Rain,” Lina tells the bandleader.

So the band starts playing “Singin’in the Rain” – clearly, they all know it – and Kathy sings it while Lina (who clearly knows the words and tune) lip-synchs. And I’m left going: Whaaaa?

Just a few scenes ago, this song was presented as if it were a spontaneous display of what’s in Don Lockwood’s (Gene Kelly’s) heart. Now, it’s suddenly an old standard – everyone knows it, Lila, Kathy, the bandleader, the entire band.

Just a nice bit of genre-play in an already wonderfully weird movie.

(Actually, this particular kind of genre play takes place twice in the movie; in the bit I describe above, and also during the “Good Morning” sequence)..

Posted in Popular (and unpopular) culture | 9 Comments

Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage without Public Meetings in Oregon

Posted on March 11, 2004 by Ampersand

There was some interesting debate about the process by which same-sex marriage was legalized here in Portland, Oregon. Jack Bog objected to the process, leading to an interesting debate in his comments (including some comments by local politico Randy Leonard and (towards the end of the thread) some comments by me). The One True b!X took the opposite view. (Links via Long Story, Short Pier).

The issue is, should the County Commissioners have held a public meeting or two on the issue before announcing their decision? I’m not sure.

The Multnomah County Commissioners were legally within their rights to decide the rules for issuing marriage licenses without holding a public meeting. The controversy is whether they should, as a matter of principle, have held a public meeting or two anyhow.

I’m sympathetic to the “open government” philosophy, but I’m even more sympathetic to the need for equal rights for same-sex couples. If the county commissioners had used the open process some folks have called for, there’s a chance that gay-rights opponents could have gotten a pre-emptive injunction blocking same-sex licenses being issued. As The Oregonian commented after a judge turned down an after-the-fact injunction, “Monday’s ruling showed again that it’s harder to stop something that’s already happening than to prevent something that hasn’t happened yet.”

If anti-gay forces had gotten a pre-emptive injunction against gay marriage, then the fight for equal rights in Oregon would have proceeded as it did in Massachusetts: it wouldn’t have happened unless the state’s highest court made it happen. That would have been a needless gift to the anti-gay forces, who would have turned the issue into one of hysterically shouting about “judicial tyranny!” and “activist judges!”

As it is, this decision was made by local elected officials, driven by pressure from a pro-gay lobbying group and by lesbian and gay couples eager to marry. (The Oregonian published a nice description of the process by which the decision happened, secret meetings and all).

As a matter of strategy, the fight for gay rights is far better off when the initial decision to issue same-sex marriage licenses comes from a local official (as in Portland and in San Francisco), rather than from a high-court judge. The anti-gays are happiest when they can oppose gay rights by screaming “judicial fiat!”; let’s deny them that pleasure as much as we can.

Perhaps more importantly, getting gay marriage made legal at once (even if it might not stay legal forever), and the resulting news footage of happy newlyweds, has put a human face on the issue that only heartless people will not be moved by. While some opponents of gay marriage are driven by their boundless hatred and venom, in the end I really think that most people, when they come to see gay marriage as a human issue rather than an abstract issue, will come down on the side of fairness, equality and freedom. Putting a human face on this issue is the best possible strategy for gay rights – and it’s not only good strategy, it’s the truth.

Has same-sex marriage lost a supporter or two due to the county commissioners’ approach? Maybe. But I think the potential gains far outweigh the losses, in this case..

Posted in Same-Sex Marriage | 3 Comments

Libertarian Purity Test

Posted on March 11, 2004 by Ampersand

Lots of folks have been taking this Libertarian Purity Test. I’m oddly proud to say that I scored a six out of a possible 160 – which is to say, I’m less than one-fourteenth the libertarian Will Baude is, and less than a third as libertarian as Matthew Ygelsias.

I would have scored a bit higher if there had been more questions designed to appeal to left-wing libertarian impulse. Not a word was asked about reproductive rights, for instance, nor much about gay rights. The questions towards the end of the test, designed to weed out all but the really hard-core libertarians, are frightening to contemplate (do you want a privatized judiciary?).

As it is, though, I’m glad to see that I’m one of the very lowest scorers so far (Evangelcial Outpost is keeping a tally)..

Posted in Elections and politics, Libertarianism | 39 Comments

Hearing different voices

Posted on March 10, 2004 by PinkDreamPoppies
“I hate flowers.”

“Why?”

“Because the only ones you ever see that aren’t misshapen are in photographs.” The speaker pauses. “And they stink. They’re cloying.”

“Hm… I always liked the way the petals felt.”

When most people read they hear the written words spoken in their minds. A disembodied vocal of authors, narrators, and characters fills their minds’ ear acting out plays and essays, novels and poems. Blogs are composed with words and so are no exception to the rule, so chances are that you’re hearing a voice right now.

Sometimes the voices that readers hear are the voices of actual people. Mothers speak with familiar tones in letters to their children, and stories traded between friends are still heard as though over the phone even if read alone in silence. Some actors, even, can take over a character so that no matter what voice readers may have heard before they cannot help but hear the actor’s now. How many Harry Potter fans will always hear Alan Rickman when they read Severus Snape? How long with Lawrence Olivier be Hamlet?

Usually, though, the voices people hear are new, unique, and private. Each reader hears his or her own version of a character’s voice that is created from the reader’s perception of the character’s gender, age, race, ethnicity, personality, history, and personal appearance and how these things interact to create a whole person. These perceptions on the part of the reader can be the difference between a sympathetic character and one the reader hopes gets side-swiped by a bus. Everyone bring prejudices to the table while reading; people will inflict their views of blacks and whites and hispanics or men and women or the rich and the poor on the characters.

“I hate flowers,” the man says.

“Why?” the woman asks.

“Because the only ones you ever see that aren’t misshapen are in photographs.” He pauses. “And they stink. They’re cloying.”

“Hm…” she says, “I always liked the way the petals felt.”

It’s not just characters that people’s views effect, though. The reader’s views of people and their various types will also have an effect on the way that the reader views the author and the author’s intentions. A book or article written by a white woman will be viewed differently than a book or article written by a black man even if the content of the book or article doesn’t change significantly, or even at all. A book about growing old that is written by a teenager will probably be viewed as more artificial, more constructed, than one written by a sixty-year-old even if the words themselves remain the same. (Alternatively, the teenager might be praised as some sort of genius of insight while the sixty-year-old might be criticized for wasting people’s time with the minutiae of life as a senior citizen.)

In a sense, readers construct voices to read with for authors in the same way that they do with characters. If the reader believes that all senior citizens are crotchety and sarcastic then a book with a picture of a wrinkle-bedecked person on the dust jacket will be read in a voice that drips sarcasm and shrilly screams between the lines for you to cut your hair and get off the lawn. The author’s tone is constructed from the reader’s perception of what the author might or must be like.

Works published by anonymous authors are not immune to these forces of imagination and projection. Even though a reader may not have a byline or an authorial picture to attach the work to, the reader will still make certain assumptions about the author’s personality and history and will respond accordingly. In effect, though the author has no tone of voice but the one that the words themselves suggest, the reader will construct a tone and pitch based on what they think the author is like even without much evidence to back that claim up.

These factors can be observed with a good degree of regularity here in the blogosphere. An off-handed remark by Glenn Reynolds about liberals needing to be rounded up and shot is more likely to be viewed as a joke by his conservative readers, because of their perception of him as a fair-minded and well-balanced individual, and is more likely to be taken at face-value by liberals, because of their perception of him as some sort of fire-breathing extremist. A comment by Atrios along similar lines but concerning conservatives would have similar reactions but with reversed party lines. (And, yes, I’m horribly stereotyping, but you get the point.)

It is a revelation to compare the Don Quixote of Pierre Menard with that of Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes, for example, wrote the following (Part I, Chapter IX):

…truth, whose mother is history, rivals of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and advisor to the present, and the future’s counselor.

This catalogue of attributes, written in the seventeenth century, and written by the “ingenious layman” Miguel de Cervantes, is mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes:

…truth, whose mother is history, rivals of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and advisor to the present, and the future’s counselor.

History, the mother of truth!–the idea is staggering. Menard, a contemporary of William James, defines history as not as a delving into reality but as the very fount of reality. Historical truth, for Menard, is not “what happened”; it is what we believe happened. The final phrase–exemplar and advisor to the present, and the future’s counselor–are brazenly pragmatic.

The contrast in styles is equally striking. The archaic style of Menard–who is, in addition, not a native speaker of the language in which he writes–is somewhat affected. Not so the style of his precursor, who employs the Spanish of the time with complete naturalness.

From “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” by Jorge Luis Borges

In her post in response to my first post about the Crucifixion, Jeanne d’Arc at Body and Soul wrote:

PinkDreamPoppies wrote a post recently wondering why some people in the conservative Christian church she grew up in were so obsessed with the crucifixion.

The only problem with this sentence is that I’m not a “she.” I didn’t correct it at the time because it’s my personal opinion that gender is mutable and ultimately irrelevant, but her comment made me think and remember. One of the first comments in response to my first-ever post at Alas (kinda), A Comment on Rape and “She Asked For It,” was from Cleis of Sappho’s Breathing who said:

Great post, Poppies.

Oh, and Poppies is a guy? Who knew?

[Emphasis hers.]

I suppose that that’s what I get for naming myself PinkDreamPoppies. It makes me wonder, though: what voice do people hear when they read my posts? How much of a difference does it make to rAnDoMp0sTeR if he or she views me as a female instead of as a male? Have there been readers who agreed with me or disagreed with me or misread something I said based entirely on their perception of my sex?

When I was eleven I had long hair and delicate wrists and skin as yet unpocked by puberty. I had baby fat to round my cheeks and make my lips look full. This is how I look as I wait in front of my middle school for the late bus to arrive and take me away from the boys I’m waiting with. They’re skater boys who listen to the right music and say the right words; they’re as hip as middle schoolers can get. They’re older with buzzcuts and acne, JNCO jeans and Nirvana t-shirts, textures and lines that speak of age and maleness. I don’t like them. I’m afraid they’ll hurt me.

One of them, the obnoxious one who has bad teeth, wanders over to me. He asks me a question, and when I reply I blush because I’m not used to speaking to people. Whenever I read things out loud in class the butterflies in my stomach makes the tears in my eyes quiver. The boy with the bad teeth asks me another question. This time when I answer, I’m not nervous because I’m speaking but because he’s put his arm around me. I don’t like the way he’s cupping my shoulder. I’m afraid he’s going to hurt me.

He’s trying hard to be charming, I can tell. He keeps smiling his yellow smile and making his voice be charming. I think he’s trying to win my trust in the way that the mob bosses always do before they shoot the wiseguy who crossed them. Maybe he’ll ask me if I want to smoke. His hand would get more insistent then, his arm a little more pressing, guiding me over to the shed behind the track where the teachers can’t see what the kids are doing. That’s when he’ll hurt me. I’m afraid to show him that I don’t trust him, though, so my mouth answers his questions while my mind hopes he goes away.

As the bus arrives one of the boy’s friends, one that knows who I am, mentions to him that my name is Adam. The hand goes away.

Unfortunately, there are certain perceptions of what it’s okay for men and women to say, think, and do and for some people it is so unacceptable for people of the “wrong” gender to do the “wrong” thing that their view of a specific action can be altered depending on what gender they think is performing it. I wonder how many men liked George Elliot’s novels who would have hated them had they know she wasn’t a man?

This doesn’t apply solely to the written word. Colors of lipstick that are sexy when on a woman’s lips can be decidedly unsexy when on a man’s. A man or woman who was attractive enough to make out with can suddenly become disgusting when it’s discovered that the man or woman is not what they appear to be. Football can be a national pastime until women want to play, then it’s comedy. Men can’t dress or decorate unless they’re gay and thus “half woman, anyway.” Need I even mention the wage gap?

I’d been a regular at the website for nearly a year when I performed my experiment: the internet is blind, meaning that people I meet there don’t know anything about me but what I tell them, so if I told them I was female I could see how they reacted to someone who behaved in the same way but was female.

When I started the experiment I had a core group of ten or so friends who I chatted with on a regular basis and a core group of maybe ten or so people who were most certainly not my friends. There was another group of people who didn’t really feel one way or the other about me.

As I said, I did everything I could to not change my behavior. I would show up as my male self about half the time and as my female self about half the time. At the end of one month of doing this, some members of my original core group of friends hated female-me while still being friends with male-me, some members of the original core group of not-friends were close to female-me without having changed toward male-me, and a substantial number of people who hadn’t given a wit about me before were friends of mine, now.

I never was able to figure out if changing genders had inspired people’s altered behavior or if it was just the fact that I was starting over with a “blank slate.”

People needn’t wonder about any internet person’s gender, though, if they know where to look.

A new computer program can tell whether a book was written by a man or a woman. The simple scan of key words and syntax is around 80% accurate on both fiction and non-fiction.

The program’s success seems to confirm the stereotypical perception of differences in male and female language use. Crudely put, men talk more about objects, and women more about relationships.

Female writers use more pronouns (I, you, she, their, myself), say the program’s developers, Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, and colleagues. Males prefer words that identify or determine nouns (a, the, that) and words that quantify them (one, two, more).

From Nature. The study itself can be found here (PDF). A program that uses a rough version of Koppel et al’s algorithm can be found here.

This raises other questions, though, about what whether or not those differences in the way that men and women write are created by social forces or are biological forces. However, that’s the subject of another post.

So how much changes for you?

“I hate flowers,” the woman says.

“Why?” the man asks.

“Because the only ones you ever see that aren’t misshapen are in photographs.” She pauses. “And they stink. They’re cloying.”

“Hm…” he says, “I always liked the way the petals felt.”

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