C'mon without. C'mon within. You ain't seen nothing like Sydney Quinn

Posted on November 18, 2003 by Ampersand

I haven’t blogged a lot about my household, have I? I live in a large house with a bunch of my friends – there are seven of us, in total.

Except now it’s eight.

So welcome to our new housemate: Sydney Quinn Schlotte, daughter of my housemates Kim and Matt. All 20 inches, 7.74 pounds of her arrived last night (and it was about time!).

Although I know Kim felt that her pregnancy had gone on more than long enough, in some ways I’m going to miss living with Pregnant Lady. Not only does Pregnant Lady have various useful superpowers (the ability to leap very low objects in just a few hops, etc), but she makes conversations unique. Last week, I overheard Kim chattering merrily to two burley, nodding workmen (there to install our new furnace) about her cervix. That’s a memory that’ll still give me giggles years from now..

Posted in Baby & kid blogging | 21 Comments

Facets of Gender Identity

Posted on November 15, 2003 by Ampersand

Gender is getting more complex, and interesting, every year. Transsexuals used to be understood as “a man stuck in a woman’s body” or vice versa. Happily, that understanding of transsexuality and transgenderism is being replaced in practice by an understanding infinitely richer and more interesting.

Jasperboi – a transgendered writer who recently came out as a “female-bodied man” – suggests the following componants of gender:

  • Core identity (how you see yourself)
  • Biological sex (the ‘official’ opinion of who you are)
  • Sexual/romantic attractions (who you gravitate towards)
  • Sexual/romantic attractiveness (who gravitates toward you)
  • Gender expression (mannerisms, clothes, affinities, interests)
  • Social perception (what conclusions people tend to make of you)

So for Jasper it lines up like this:

  • Core identity Androgynous boy
  • Biological sex Female (and yes I do know my karyotype, I’m a child of the 80s!)
  • Sexual/romantic attractions Androgynous men, masculine gay men, feminine men, masculine women
  • Sexual/romantic attractiveness Gay men, lesbian women, very young straight women
  • Gender expression Androgynous pansy dandy butch
  • Social perception ???????/sir/ma’am/pretty boy/butch lesbian/barely legal gay boy/?????

Mine is a great deal less interesting than Jasper’s; but if I’m honest with myself, I can see there’s more complexity there than I might have imagined:

  • Core identity Male.
  • Biological sex Male
  • Sexual/romantic attractions Geeky women, butch women, talkative women
  • Sexual/romantic attractiveness Straight women with a history of depression, older gay men
  • Gender expression Pansy male
  • Social perception People who meet me but don’t know me well assume I’m gay about half the time. On the phone and online, people often assume I’m a woman. But then again, a bunch of the time people percieve me as the straight guy I am.

I love Jasper’s list – it’s a good tool for reminding us how gender is a collaboration between our selves and how the world sees us, and how for some folks it’s a good deal more complex than male and female.

To Jasper’s list, I might add a catogory for expressing how strongly connected to my sex I feel. I remember, years ago, reading a pro-transsexual essays asking non-transsexuals to imagine waking up and your body was suddenly the other sex. “Wouldn’t that feel horribly wrong?,” the essay asked, assuming my answer would be “yes.” But my answer actually was, “I don’t think it would matter.”

Of course, I can’t know without trying – but having searched my feelings, I’m pretty sure that my body’s sex just isn’t an important part of my self-identity. When I hear some transsexuals talk about how important it is for them to have a particular sexed body, I’m sympathetic, but I’m also bewildered; I can’t imagine caring so much about something so (to me) irrelevant.

Actually, I’ve often fantasized that the world might be better if people now and then randomly woke up the opposite sex. It would sort a lot of silly problems right out. (Of course, if I did wake up female, I’d regret the pay cut. :-p )

Jasper goes on to say:

Right now, a lot of transgender people feel a lot of pressure to squeeze our glorious diversity into a paradigm like Almanzo Man’s. We learn to say the right things to get us the credibility and validation we so desparately need to get by in the violent harshness of a transphobic, misogynist, homophobic society. I believe the rhetoric of “wrong body” is part of this – saying I am a man in a woman’s body is like saying I ought to be a male, but Nature screwed up. Why ought I to be a male? So my categories can look like Almanzo’s! So SRS is also part of this, sometimes at least, at least when it is done as an attempt to move people directly from “A” to “B.” As though such a thing could really be done, without creating just through the action of changing, a category “C.”

I reject that paradigm, which isn’t as easy to do as just saying “I reject that paradigm,” believe me! It is a constant, sometimes daily struggle against the current of the mainstream. Rather than saying I am a man trapped in a woman’s body, I say I am a female-bodied man. It is a small, but crucial difference. In my version, “female” is part of what I am, not something I wish to escape. And the odd thing is, I have found people find it harder to accept as plausible than the “trapped” scenario, which they are used to by now, thanks to the media. “But don’t you want a REAL male body?” Well even if I did, and even if I had the money and inclination to buy the best SRS a person can get, I’ll never have a “real” male body with a prostate and XY chromosomes. So why bother wanting it? Why not just accept myself not as a contradiction in terms, but as a complex being with varied facets?

There’s lots more – read the whole post here..

Posted in Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues | 73 Comments

Parade of Strawmen

Posted on November 15, 2003 by Ampersand

The Curmudgeonly Clerk – currently guest-blogging at Crescat Sententia – disagrees with both myself and PG of En Banc regarding a parade in Florida, in which parade organizers kicked out Veterans for expressing “patriotically incorrect” opinions about the war on Iraq.

Wait, no, that’s not true. The Curmudgeonly Clerk didn’t disagree with me, or with PG, for the most part; he just made up some strawmen to disagree with. From CC’s post:

Although I am firm believer in broad, nearly absolutist free speech rights, both Ampersand and PG are overlooking necessary corollaries of our constitutional speech rights—freedom of association and freedom from compelled speech….

What I think that Ampersand and PG fail to understand is that this situation is not about whether the VFW was entitled to squelch those with whom it disagrees… It is about whether the VFW could be compelled to convey a message that it finds offensive and distasteful…

It would be authoritarian to require the VFW to involuntarily adopt, associate with, or distribute a political or moral message with which it disagreed. To do so would be unconscionable, despicable even.

I entirely agree with all of that. And I never said or implied otherwise.

Of course the VFW is entirely within their rights to kick veterans out of their parade for expressing “patriotically incorrect” views. Of course this is an essential free speech right – just as newspaper editors have an essential free speech right to choose not to publish an article.

Nothing I or PG wrote can fairly be read as advocating forcing “the VFW to involuntarily adopt, associate with, or distribute a political or moral message with which it disagreed.” For CC to imply that either I or PG would advocate such a thing is unfair and untrue.

* * *

Here’s the thing.

The VFW, as a private group, has a first amendment right to organize a parade.

They also have a first amendment right to kick Veterans who state “patriotically incorrect” opinions out of their parade.

I in turn – as I’m sure CC would acknowledge – have a first amendment right to criticize the VFW for their decision.

CC apparently believes that if I utilize my first amendment right to criticize the VFW, I am advocating taking the VFW’s first amendment rights away. But CC is mistaken; just because I criticize how the VFW used their first amendment rights, it in no way follows that I think they shouldn’t have first amendment rights.

* * *

Unlearned Hand (also of En Banc) has also replied to CC. Unlearned attributes CC’s strawman reading to “the dangerous tunnel vision that comes from spending too much time with law and legal arguments.” Or, as the cliche goes, to someone holding a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

* * *

Also on Crescat Sententia, Will Baude – responding to Unlearned Hand’s response to CC – stages a defense of the parade organizer’s actions. (Unlearned Hand has also posted a response to Will, which I wholeheartedly endorse).

I’m afraid I’m unmoved. Baude points out that there are ways in which the parade organizers could sincerely believe that allowing a group called “Veterans Against the War” to march would be disrespectful to veterans.

I don’t question the organizer’s sincerity. I do question their views, and their methods.

Adina, in the comments to my previous post, stated it very well:

The people who organize Veteran’s Day Parades do so to honor veterans. When you decide to stop doing that, it stops being a Veteran’s Day parade, and just becomes a pro-war parade that happens to be held on Veteran’s Day.

I’m not arguing that this group had a “right” to participate: it was, after all, a private parade. I do, however, think that men and women who have served their country deserve, at the very least, to have their voices heard on the day dedicated to them. They’ve earned that much, if not more.

As I said earlier, I feel the parade was organized in bad faith; it’s not about honoring veterans, as it claims to be. It’s about honoring veterans with “patriotically correct” opinions.

Will writes “In other words, kicking people out of a parade because they don’t support what the parade does is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.”

I disagree. The reasonable thing for the parade’s organizers to do – if they really couldn’t abide a veteran’s parade which included a diversity of opinion – would have been to turn down the marchers when they applied to be in the parade. After all, it’s not difficult to infer what a group called “Veterans against the War” might stand for. How it is reasonable to accept their money and their application to march, only to kick them out once the parade had begun?

It’s not just that the organizers kicked out these veterans (although I find that bad enough); it also appears they went out of their way to do so in the most humiliating and hurtful manner imaginable. And that, to me, is not a “reasonable” act.

Nor do I accept Will’s implied assumption that using political ideology to select which veteran groups will or won’t be able to march in a parade honoring veterans is reasonable. Veterans are not being honored for their support of George Bush; they are being honored for their courage, and for the sacrifices they made for the sake of the nation. Since it is not reasonable to suppose that liberal veterans were not courageous and did not make sacrifices, I don’t think it’s reasonable for parade organizers to exclude people for expressing liberal views.

(Note that I am not denying that the VFW has a right to act in a way that I consider unreasonable.)

Will points out that the VFW didn’t kick out all anti-war Veterans, only those who spoke out. However, I don’t find “you can march with us, but if you disagree with our politics you better keep your damned mouth shut” to be a reasonable attitude.

On the contrary, I think that a better Veteran’s Day parade would want to honor all veterans for the sacrifice they made. And understanding and respecting that even honored veterans hold a diversity of views is, to my way of thinking, a far better way of honoring not only the veterans themselves, but of honoring the American ideals that veterans fought for.

POSTSCRIPT: Two further thoughts.

One, I should clarify that the title of this post – “Parade of Strawmen” – was a reference to CC’s post, not to Will’s.

Second, in my comments, The Arbitrary Aardvark wondered if the kicked-out veterans might have a breach of contract claim. I have no idea, but since so many bloggers of legal experts are watching this debate, I wonder if any of them have an opinion?.

Posted in Free speech, censorship, copyright law, etc. | 8 Comments

What is Ampersand reading today, you ask?

Posted on November 13, 2003 by Ampersand
  • John at Ludicrosity, unhappy with the pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy, divides the abortion dispute into nine overlapping perspectives. There are little things I disagree with (particularly a slam on Margaret Sanger which he doesn’t justify with links or evidence). On the whole, however, I think he does a good job.
  • Mark Kleiman compares Rush Limbaugh to another drug user, sentenced to thirteen years in prison after her child was stillborn:
    Of course, it’s obvious that homeless people with borderline mental retardation ought to be held strictly accountable for their actions, unlike multimillionaires with logorrhea and strong political connections.
  • “MINNEAPOLIS, MN – In a turn of events the 30-year-old characterized as ‘horrifying,’ Kevin Widmar announced Tuesday that his mother Lillian has discovered his weblog.” From The Onion, of course, and via Hot Buttered Death.
  • Burgen King apologizes to a mom harassed for breast-feeding.
  • Over on Open Source Politics, Earl Dunovant – who at night puts on a cape and mask and fights crime as Prometheus 6 – gives the idea that what Democrats dislike about Justice Brown is her race a beating.
  • Someone in the Democratic party has a pretty good sense of humor – to see a child’s-book version of the judicial filibusters controversy, check out Republican Senators and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night (it’s a pdf file). Via Prometheus 6.
  • You should read this impressive Tacitus post about depression in the army. Definitely the best post I’ve read on any blog in a while.

    donaldnazi.jpg

  • Rotten.com presents a copiously-illustrated essay of banned Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons, many of them quite racist. Even if you don’t want to read the whole thing, it’s entertaining just skimming through the pictures. Via scrubbles.net.
  • Marine with spotless 8-year record forced to leave intelligence. Why? Because he’s a liberal. No, seriously. Is it just me, or do many Conservatives have an outright contempt for freedom of speech – not to mention for any soldier who actually served in the military? Via Orcinus, who feels this is a harbinger of worse to come.
  • Drawing (to some degree) from her comments on this blog, Ms. Lauren at Feministe has written an excellent post discussing censorship and rape pornography. I don’t agree with Ms. Lauren entirely, but she makes a good case. She also links to an excellent Sex Roles article, providing an excellent “meta-analytic review of research that relates masculine ideology to sexual aggression.” (The link is down right now, but I’m posting it in the hope that it will recover.)
  • Worster Album Covers Ever II. In case round one wasn’t enough for you. My favorite is “The Reverend in Rhythm.”
  • Nathan Newman rightly demolishes the stupid whining of conservatives who claim to be oppressed by “PC” liberals on campus. Too many conservatives I met at PSU and UMASS were like this: whenever anyone criticized their views, they’d whine “I’ve been censored!” But conservatives who don’t speak because they fear criticism aren’t victims of PC thought police; they’re just cowards.
  • There’s something charming about this obituary for Richard Pearson, the Washington Post’s obituary editor, who once said “Everyone dies in the first graph of my stories, but I console myself with the thought that there are relatively few complaints from people I write about.” (Via Boing Boing.)
  • If that’s not enough death for you, then you should go explore GoodBye! The Journal of Contemporary Obituaries. Or, if you prefer your obituary writing in blog form (complete with hyperlinks), check out GoogObits. There’s hours of good browsing in them there death notices…
  • Thankfully, Merriam-Webster has announced that they have no intention of removing “McJob” ( “a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement”) from the print version of their dictionary – even though they already removed it from the online version. Via Boing Boing.
  • “Eros and Thanatos in L’affair Hilton.” A brilliant review of Paris Hilton’s sex tape, which is more of a cinematic masterpiece than you probably had imagined.
  • Do you know the name of the first American servicewoman to die in Iraq? Probably not, because she didn’t happen to be white, blonde, and middle class. Trish Wilson has the details.
  • Urban Legends for the 21st Century:
    …the babysitter was watching “Alias” when her cell phone played the first two verses of “Crazy In Love” by Beyonce Knowles. The babysitter dug the phone out of her bag to discover that she had received a text message reading:

    seria1_ki11a: im upstairs w/the chldrn youd betta come up MLOL*!!!!

    You should go read the whole thing. (Well, it gave me a giggle.).

  • I’m one of over three hundred bloggers currently compiled on the “Bloggers’ Political Compass” (I’m near the bottom left, unsurprisingly). Oddly, us lefties have arranged ourselves in a fairly tight line, while on the right they’re spread out quite a bit more – perhaps because of the split between conservatives and libertarians.

    Still, we do all arrange ourselves more-or-less on a straight line, which suggests that the single-dimensional liberal/conservative scale has more descriptive power than I want it to.

.

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights, Link farms | 13 Comments

Terri Schiavo and Theocracy

Posted on November 13, 2003 by Ampersand

The Terri Schiavo case continues to bother me – in particular, the question of precedent. The precedent that our most personal decisions – about reproduction, about designating our own guardians, about choosing our own families – can be arbitrarily decided by a public letter-writing campaign is awful. One of the most basic elements of freedom – that when it comes to extremely personal decisions of life, death, and family, people are allowed to make decisions that go against majority preferences – is under siege by right-wing Christians in Florida.

I think there’s a strong connection between the view that says that women must not make their own reproductive choices, and the view that Terri’s choice of Michael to make medical decisions when she shouldn’t be respected, and the view that lesbians and gay men must be forbidden an equal right to form families.

In all these case, what’s at issue is the right to make decisions that are contrary to the Christian right’s moral perspective. And while they’re happy enough to use the normal rule of law when it works in their favor (for instance, the current status quo forbidding equal marriage rights for lesbians and gays), they have no actual respect for democracy when it conflicts with what God tells them. The Light of Reason puts it well:

I find it curious that these people’s conception of God means that the very structure of our government should be disregarded, that the idea of an independent and coequal judiciary should be obliterated… and that legal norms should be utterly and completely destroyed because enough people on one given day happen to believe that their God told them to keep this woman “alive.”

For these folks, it has nothing to do with if Terri’s husband was abusive or not; Michael Schiavo could have been beating Terri up five times a day, and the Christian right would still overwhelmingly support him if he were calling for Terri to be kept alive indefinitely.

I think the precedent set by this case, if “Terri’s law” isn’t struck down by the courts, is awful. It’s saying that when a family, or a court, makes a decision the Christian right doesn’t agree with, right-wing legislators and governors have the right to overturn that decision by fiat.

If Jeb Bush has the right to undo the court’s decision in this case, why doesn’t he have the right to do the same thing the next time a Florida court makes a decision the Christian right doesn’t like? Maybe an abortion rights decision. Maybe a decision recognizing a lesbian couple’s right to adopt. Anytime a court goes against the Christian right, the governor will simply overturn the decision.

That’s theocracy for you, folks.

(And before anyone compares this to obscenity law, let me assure you – I would not approve of a law allowing a governor to overturn individual court decisions on obscenity on a case-by-case basis, thus making the legal rulings of the courts subserviant to the whims of the executive. It’s the way Christian fundimentalists have shown their contempt for the checks and balances of U.S. democracy, that makes the Terri Schiavo case so offensive.).

Posted in Terri Schiavo | 25 Comments

The Partial Birth Abortion ban

Posted on November 13, 2003 by Ampersand

I’m a bit late posting this, but what the heck. It’s a good op-ed from the Boston Globe describing how the PBA ban President Bush just signed would, if it became law, ban not just late-term abortions (as pro-lifers dishonestly claimed) but second-trimester abortions as well.

The bill, which imposes a maximum two-year jail sentence on the doctor and allows for further legal prosecution, describes the D&X procedure as risky and medically unjustified — claims most doctors dispute. A D&X, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman, and only the doctor, in consultation with the patient, based upon the woman’s particular circumstances, can make this decision.”

The two procedures differ only in where they take place — inside the woman’s uterus, or in the birth canal. Because the bill does not make that distinction, all dilation-and-extraction procedures are likely to fall under its restrictions.

In all abortions, “you certainly know that you will start with a living fetus and that it will be dead by the end of the procedure,” said Nebraska surgeon LeRoy Carhart, who opposes the bill. “But when you start a second-trimester abortion, you don’t know when the fetus will die. Every patient is different. If any part comes out before it dies, bang, I’m in jail. This law will ban all D&Es. It will change the number of safe places to have an abortion. This could close every abortion clinic in the US.”

Carhart is exaggerating in the last sentence – but he’s certainly right that the PBA ban, as written, applies to much more than late-term abortions. Pro-lifers who claim otherwise are either liars or, more often, have been duped by their leadership.

Fortunately, the ban is unconstitutional, and several lower courts have ruled that it cannot be carried out. Unfortunately, the bill (or future bills like it) could be made constitutional with just one Bush appointment to the Supreme Court.

(Via The Light of Reason)

(My other posts on partial-birth abortion.).

Posted in \"Partial Birth\" Abortion, Abortion & reproductive rights | 2 Comments

Right-wingers kick anti-war veterans out of parade

Posted on November 12, 2003 by Ampersand

This is pretty despicable.

TALLAHASSEE — A group of 30 military veterans critical of the war in Iraq hoped to use Tuesday’s Veterans Day parade to call attention to the increasingly deadly conflict but instead found themselves fighting for something much more fundamental.

Members of Veterans For Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War were yanked off a downtown Tallahassee street, directly in front of the Old Capitol, while marching in the holiday parade they had legitimately registered in.

As organizers allowed the parade to roll on — including veterans from various wars, several high school marching bands and even a group of young women from the local Hooters restaurant — the anti-war veterans were ordered onto sidewalks…

.

Posted in Free speech, censorship, copyright law, etc., Iraq | 66 Comments

Let's all get pussified!

Posted on November 12, 2003 by Ampersand

So Kim du Toit wrote a much-linked essay decrying “The Pussification of the Western Male”. I haven’t responded to it, because it seems pointless. The du Toits of the world have always been with us; before my parents were born, people like du Toit were panicking over the exact same thing. (That’s why the Boy Scouts were originally created, to counteract the alleged feminization of the Western male all those decades ago).

For me, arguing about if “pussification” of the Western male is taking place would be like arguing about if Jesus Christ was lord. It might be entertaining, but there’s absolutely zero chance of changing any minds. Du Toit is coming from a position of faith, not a position of evidence.

Frankly, I hope that du Toit’s right, and that the West is being hopelessly pussified.

Pretty much every evil thing in this world can be laid at the feet of non-pussified men; the sooner every last male is pussified, the better, as far as I’m concerned. (Yes, I’m aware that many non-pussified men have done a lot of good by joining the army and protecting the pussified men and the women from the invasions and deprivations of other non-pussified men. But that’s a dubious argument in favor of non-pussified men; if there were no non-pussified men at all, then the protection of non-pussified men would never have been necessary.)

Let me tell you, the Nazi party was anti-pussy. The kids who beat me up in the schoolyard were anti-pussy. The guys who killed Matthew Shepherd were anti-pussy. The KKK was anti-pussy – by bravely getting together in mobs and killing individual black people, they proved what men they were. The crusaders were not pussies, and neither were the Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor. Jack the Ripper was no pussy. Truman was no pussy, and if you don’t believe it just visit Hiroshima. Andrew Jackson wasn’t a pussy, either.

Hitler: not a pussy.

Stalin: not a pussy.

Charles Manson: not a pussy.

Wouldn’t it have been great if all these guys had been through pussification, though? Wouldn’t history have been immeasurably improved if they were “objectively pro-pussy”?

The man who beats his wife is anti-pussy. The man who teaches his son to fear being seen as a pussy, is anti-pussy. The frat house guy who participates in a rape because he just has to score, because otherwise he’s a pussy – is anti-pussy.

Saddam was all about not being seen as a pussy, which is why he so resisted backing down even when that would have been the most rational course of action. George W. Bush is all about not being seen as a pussy, which is why he was so determined to invade Iraq in the first place. (Whenever someone says that we must stand tough in foreign policy to “maintain credibility,” that’s a code-word for “we don’t want to be pussies”).

Frankly, when every man in this world is too much of a pussy to hit his wife, to bash another gay, to value macho posturing above peacemaking, and to pass on to his son a fear of being seen as a pussy – well, then, this world will be much, much closer to paradise.

I read some Christian blog (sorry, lost the link) which was complaining about all those pussified imagines of Jesus Christ – you know, the ones with long hair and doe eyes, maybe smiling gently on some children at play or some other pussy bullshit like that.

In response, let me say:

Hey, God, you pussy!

Pussify us, please God!

Please, bless us with pussification! As much pussification as possible, as soon as possiible! Blessed be thy hallowed pussification!

Pussify us, O Lord, so that thy pussified Kingdom may come!

Amen.

* * *

That said, several people have been less dismissive than me, and have written good and interesting rebuttals to du Toit.

The funniest I’ve read is Philosoraptor’s “The duToitification of the Western Conservative.”

Feministe provides a very well-thought feminist rebuttal.

And so does Avedon Carol, in her essay “The Wimpification of Conservatives.”

Sara at Diotima also has an interesting reply, although I don’t agree with everything she writes. For example:

I mean, “hunting, racing our cars and motorcycles, smoking, flirting with women at the office, getting into fistfights over women, shooting criminals” are the ideal male activities? These are what defines a “real man?” I don’t think so. Occasionally, Mr. du Toit hits on what I think are genuine masculine virtues. It does have something to do with bravery and integrity, for example, but most of the time he just seems to latch on to characteristics that appeal to a man’s baser desires.

Okay, I agree that basing manliness on hunting and fistfights is dumb, but what about bravery and integrity are particularly masculine virtues? Surely these are equally desirable traits no matter what a person’s sex is, so why connect them to masculinity at all?.

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 57 Comments

The IWF's big success – 80 whole people!

Posted on November 12, 2003 by Ampersand

Speaking of Sara, I congratulate her on being quoted (and photographed!) in an IWF publicity pamphlet (.pdf link), and also for being compared to Betty Friedan and Gloria Stienem. (I know the pamphlet is from back in February, but I didn’t read it until today).

But the pamphlet itself is pretty funny. For instance, it proudly notes that “over 80 students and professors were in attendance at the University of Chicago event” to listen to anti-feminist uber-nit-picker Chistina Hoff Sommers.

“Over 80”? At a campus as conservative as Chicago? [Note: Apparently Chicago ain’t as liberal as its reputation. See “update 2,” below.]

How lame can they get?

Seriously – when the Guerilla Girls appeared at Lewis & Clark last year, the auditorium was standing room only – and that was an auditorium that could fit hundreds. Similarly, when I saw Catherine MacKinnon speak at Oberlin, the hall was packed. At Portland State University, every Take Back the Night march I saw drew hundreds of students.

Meanwhile, the IWF – with far more funding than any student feminist organization could even dream of – thinks it’s a big success if they can dredge up 80 people for an appearance by their intellectual leader.

Elsewhere, the pamphlet breathlessly reports that the IWF has formed organizations not only at Chicago, but also at Harvard Law, Columbia, and Penn State. Wow – four whole campuses. (Apparently the “SheThinks.org” campaign for a IWF campus presence was a bigger failure than even I had imagined).

And these are the people who constantly tell feminists that our movement is unpopular. At least the feminist movement actually exists, which is more than I can say for the anti-feminists. If the Olin Foudation stopped pouring unearned money into the anti-feminist movement, the IWF would dry up and blow away within a week.

UPDATE: An Alas reader who attended the Chicago event informs me that they deliberately kept the advertising for the event low-key and non-controversial, in order to have a quiet and intelligent event. If so, then the organizers – which is to say, Sara at Diotima – should be congratulated, not criticized, for their approach.

UPDATE 2: A few people – including Allen in my comments this morning, and Will Baude more recently – have pointed out that Chicago is not as conservative as I assumed from its reputation. Will, in particular, makes a good argument that the IWF actually did pretty well in Chicago, compared to the turn-outs that other conservative student groups muster:

In other words, the argument that Chicago’s a conservative campus where conservative speakers should draw adoring crowds like liberals do at Oberlin fails, and it fails on its own terms. No conservative group at Chicago enjoys packed auditoriums the way that Amp envisions.

Fair enough; I stand corrected. My congratulations to Sara on an event that was apparently well-organized. (For what it’s worth, had I been in Chicago, I certainly would have attended).

That said, I don’t think the campus presence that shethinks.org established (after several years, the campus chapters can still be counted on my fingers) is very impressive. Given how often anti-feminists, including Sara, have criticized feminism for allegedly being unpopular on campus, I think it’s fair to note that feminism remains vastly more popular on campus than their own movement.

(By the way, Will, MacKinnon isn’t a liberal – she’s far more radical than that. And the crowd at Oberlin wasn’t “adoring” – many of the folks there, including myself, were liberal feminists who disagreed with her strongly.).

Posted in Anti-feminists and their pals | 12 Comments

Even the smartest anti-feminists are sometimes amazingly clueless…

Posted on November 12, 2003 by Ampersand

Sara at Diotima comments on this Womens Enews article:

Ms. Caiazza brings it back to the tired old argument that all we need is high-quality, universal child care; she “wonders if those women who are choosing between careers and children feel forced to do so by the weakness of the U.S. culture’s commitment to high-quality and affordable child care,” an argument that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense given that the women who are leaving the workforce for the home, women like those profiled in the NYT Magazine two weeks ago, are financially well off and presumably would be able to afford good child care. It does not seem to occur to Ms. Caiazza that staying home with the kids is a choice that women might actually want to make.

A few comments.

  1. “Tired old argument” is a right-wing code phrase for “I have no logical response to this argument, so I’m just going to turn my nose up at it.” Anyhow, criticizing something you disagree with by calling it a “tired old argument” doesn’t even rise to the level of being a tired old argument – it’s just a thoughtless cliché.
  2. Sara’s argument – that a few “financially well off” women profiled in the Times don’t need access to high-quality child care, therefore the child care issue is moot – is groundless. As Sara must realize, the folks the Times wrote about are not a representative sample. (“If people need money for child care, can’t they just get a grant from the Olin Foundation?,” one imagines Sara’s IWF chums asking.)
  3. Logically, it is perfectly possible that some women choose between career and home because they lack access to high-quality childcare (for instance, women who choose not to have children, or who delay having children until their incomes are higher).
  4. Sara’s final accusation – “It does not seem to occur to Ms. Caiazza that staying home with the kids is a choice that women might actually want to make” – isn’t supported by a quote from Ms. Caiazza. This isn’t surprising, because no such quote exists. Of course, making up doubtful claims about feminists is a typical anti-feminist tactic, but I’m disappointed to see it on Diotima.

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Posted in Anti-feminists and their pals | 10 Comments