Odd thought

Posted on September 18, 2003 by Ampersand

Hey, if nothing goes wrong, I’ll be a co-homeowner about eight hours from now.

UPDATE: Nothing went wrong..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 16 Comments

NOW's endorsement of Moseley Braun

Posted on September 18, 2003 by Ampersand

So the New York Times has editorialized against NOW’s decision to endorse long-shot candidate Carol Moseley Braun for president.

From the Times’ editorial:

There is a place in the American political system for symbolic candidacies that advance important principles. But it is hard to see a principle that distinguishes Ms. Braun’s candidacy, other than perhaps the right of a tarnished former official to seek the nation’s highest office.

Is it really that “hard to see” the important principle that the Presidency shouldn’t be a white-men-only club? As Moseley Braun has said, it’s time to rip the “men only” sign off the Oval Office’s door. Since the Times sees the value in symbolic candidates, they should have no problem seeing the symbolic value of a black woman running for the nation’s hightest office.

Well, maybe it is hard to see why ripping that “men only” sign down is an “important principle” – if you’re a member of the exclusive club of white men who has reached the highest ranks at the Times.

There are a number of replies to the Times posted on NOW’s websites. NOWPAC has a detailed – and I think sometimes over-the-top – response. Here’s one of the good bits:

Moseley Braun is polling even with John Edwards among Democratic and leaning Democratic registered voters, and ahead of Graham, Kucinich, Sharpton and Wesley Clark (CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll, August 25-26), which puts her in the middle of the pack. She has performed extremely well in the Democratic debates, and brings an important perspective on the issues to the table. But none of this seems to matter to The New York Times. The important question is this: would a man with her experience at the local, state, national and international levels be dismissed so cavalierly by the Times?

Despite her poll numbers and her outstanding performance in the debates, which has drawn appreciative commentary from many quarters, The New York Times trivialized Carol Moseley Braun’s seriousness as a candidate, NOW’s and NWPC’s endorsement, feminism, and women in general by assuming that the candidacy of an African-American woman cannot be serious. What more does Moseley Braun need to do to be considered just as serious as the male candidates? Oh, that’s right, raise more money, but without the help of women’s organizations.

Kim Gandy, the president of NOW, wrote a short response which the Times printed. What I enjoyed more, though, was the page of responses from other folks to the Times. This, for example, comes from a letter by Virginia Kallianes of New York:

Having credible female candidates in any political race ensures that issues will be raised in a serious manner that would never be raised by other candidates. […] The important issues that your editorial plays down—such as pay equity and reproductive choice—as merely “women’s issues” are crucial for all Americans, more so now than ever. Yet without a female candidate in the mix, these issues would likely receive only lip service from an all-male line-up.

Throughout the history of women’s activism, feminists have been trivialized by the mainstream public. To their credit, feminist political groups ignore this condescension and forge forward. Not surprising, when they support women in political roles, they are damned if they do … and damned if they don’t. When feminist groups endorse a woman candidate, they are criticized: “They are only endorsing her because she is a woman, not on her merits; they can’t be taken seriously.” When they don’t endorse a woman candidate, they are criticized: “How can they endorse a male candidate and not the female candidate? How do they expect voters to take women candidates seriously if the women’s groups themselves don’t endorse woman candidates?”

American women are tired of the litany: “Sure we would support a women for president, but … it’s not the right time, she’s not the right candidate, it’s not the right race, she’s taking someone else’s opportunity,” and so forth. But, how could a political group still consider itself legitimate and not endorse a candidate who it has supported through prior campaigns and who has a strong record on the issues it espouses! And, if feminist groups are not upfront supporting women candidates, who else will?

From Gay Bruhn, president of Illinois NOW:

Our 1966 charter declares, “The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.” We don’t do that by catering to mainstream publications. We do that by altering the course of the mainstream by inserting our presence—women’s presence, women’s perspective—into the course of the waters that would otherwise tumble over us unheeding. We are the rock in the stream, not the smoothly inoffensive pebbles at the bottom, ground down by public opinion—or the opinion of The New York Times.

In this race, Carol Moseley Braun—black, female, credible, qualified—is another rock in the stream. She deserves our support, we are proud to give it to her, and we will not be moved.

And this letter from Irene Weiser of New York:

Silly? For endorsing a candidate who speaks for our nation’s children who increasingly go to bed hungry, attend ill-equipped schools and lack health insurance? For endorsing a candidate who cares that every year as many women and children die as a result of family violence as were killed in the World Trade Center? For endorsing a candidate who understands the concerns of working women nationwide?

What’s silly is that the other candidates don’t speak of these issues more often.

Serious issues. Serious NOW. Silly, sexist, New York Times.

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Posted in Elections and politics | 11 Comments

Some stuff Ampersand has recently read

Posted on September 18, 2003 by Ampersand
  • Quote: “Nanny and Me: For your caregiver and child—courses in Spanish that lovingly teach your Latina nanny the customs and daily practices of Jewish culture.” – Found on a Gymboree bulliten board in L.A., quoted in The Atlantic Monthly.
  • Check out “Nobody Died When Clinton Lied,” a website of anti-Bush signs an anonymous “freewayblogger” has been displaying on the I-5 in California. My favorite: “Dulce et Decorum est por Haliburton Mori,” which translated means “It is sweet and proper to die for Haliburton.”
  • Pretty good comic strip (is it still a strip if it’s a page long?) in the New York Times making fun of the RIAA lawsuits. Via Boing Boing.
  • Mudron of the Pants Press Sketchblog posts a nice (if gory) illustration s/he has drawn of a scene from Peter Pan.
  • Emma at The Oregon Blog has a good, multi-part interview up with Phil Busse, progressive candidate for mayor of Portland.
  • Quote: “We’re not only dismantling our schools and services, we’re doing it before a fascinated nation. Oregon is now on the narrow edge between being a state and being a Fox-TV reality show.” – David Sarasohn (quoted on The Oregon Blog).
  • Jeremy at Refference has posted the first two parts of a discussion of “Why Aesthetics Matter” – and more specifically, why we should use aesthetic reasoning in politics. It’s interesting stuff, although I find the discussion of abortion politics in part II unconvincing. Via Crescat Sententia.
  • Whisky Bar (which I’ve just added to the moderately right-wing section of my blogroll) links to a good New York Times op-ed on Israel/Palestine, and has an even better discussion of the op-ed. If Israel doesn’t find an acceptable way to disentangle itself from Palestine quickly, the issue will switch from “Palestinian independence” to “one vote per citizen for everyone Israel rules over.” And Israel will like that debate even less than it likes the current debate.

    Frankly, I’d prefer advocating for Israel extending citizenship to everyone in the occupied territories. Lefty advocacy for a Palestinian state sometimes seems counterproductive; I understand advocating for Palestinian freedom, and yet it seems unlikely that a Palestinian state would be one with many freedoms for women or homosexuals.

  • Trish Wilson has a new home for her blog. Update your bookmarks and sidebars!
  • I think I’m done posting about the Record Industry for now. But go ahead and check out this excellent post on the subject at John & Belle Have a Blog, as well as this equally good followup. S/he is arguing – and I agree – that the current industry is very inefficient at delivering music to consumers.
  • Y’all remember the Nike case – in which Nike was sued for false advertising over their claims that their third-world workers are treated well? Nike has now settled out of court, agreeing to pay $1.5 million to the Fair Labor Association to make the lawsuit go away.
  • It’s tempting to respond to Matt Yglesias’ criticism of NOW for (gasp!) endorsing Carol Moseley-Braun for president, but Matt’s post so lacks any reasoning or argument that there’s nothing to rebut. Perhaps Matt just considers his own views self-evident?

    I blogged earlier why I thought the NOW endorsement makes sense. NOW’s Kim Gandy points out two additional reasons I hadn’t considered; first, that Moseley-Braun’s presence may help with getting out the black female vote, which helps all democrats (I’m not sure this will work, but I guess it’s worth a shot); and second, that having Moseley-Braun in the campaign and the debates forces the other candidates to address NOW’s issues more than they would otherwise.

  • Kieran at Crooked Timber has a brilliant response to the “Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae.” thing that’s been floating around.
  • Confined Space has a good post about the amendment to the Texas constitution limiting medical malpractice awards, or as Molly Ivans calls it, th e”Polluters and Predators Protection Act.” Via Nathan Newman.
  • Would you like to be able to see through even the smoothest fallaciloquence? Would you like to know if your pigritude is overdone, or if you’re merely mitescent these days? Check out the Compendium of Lost Words, a list of over 400 rarely-used English words. Via Green Fairy.
  • This Esquire article, about the media and public reaction to the folks who jumped from the World Trade Center on 9/11 – and, in particular, about one famous photo of a jumper – was absolutely fascinating. I read it a few days ago, and it keeps coming back to my thoughts. Via Crescat Sententia.
  • Another quote from that Atlantic review of Arlie Hochchild’s new book:
    In a capitalist society work dictates the schedules, the deadlines, the urgency; product life cycles supersede family life cycles at every turn. … In a study Hochschild did at Amerco, a Fortune 500 company, she found that many employees with twenty or more years at the company were on their second or third marriages. “To these employed,” she wrote, “work was their rock, their major source of security. They were getting their pink slips at home.”

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Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 13 Comments

The Ninth Circuit's decision to delay the CA election

Posted on September 18, 2003 by Ampersand

This op-ed in the LA Times, by one of the lawyers who was on the winning side in the Ninth Circuit’s decision to delay the recall election, has some pretty good stats explaining why the decision mattered..

Experts estimate that 40,000 votes would not be counted with punch-card machines that otherwise would be tallied in the recall. This, many believe, would be larger than the likely margin of victory in the election.

Additionally, minority voters would be disproportionately affected, because the counties using punch-card machines have a larger percentage of racial minorities than counties using more advanced technology.[…]

The 9th Circuit properly held that it would violate equal protection for voters in these counties to have a far greater chance that their votes would not be counted just because they lived in their counties.

Let’s hope this is the start of a trend… it would be bad news for conservatives if ballot machines in minority areas actually counted every vote.

For more on this subject, check out this good American Prospect gloat-fest by Sean Willentz..

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Help me with a cartoon (again!)

Posted on September 16, 2003 by Ampersand

cowboy.gif

Sorry I haven’t been posting much this week – I’m busy with, well, stuff. Including that drawing you see above, which is a rough sketch of a paid illustration I’m working on for a magazine.

Here’s the thing: the cowboys seated at the table are being played by President Truman, Mel Gibson, and President Nixon. I’m planning to redo the Gibson face from scratch, so ignore that one. But do any of y’all have suggestions for what I could do to make Truman or Nixon more recognizable?

One thing that would help, of course, would be if I removed the cowboy hats. But the scene has to be recognizable as a western, and I think the hats help with that.

Ideas?.

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 25 Comments

A bit more on the music industry

Posted on September 14, 2003 by Ampersand

Tyler Cowen of the Volokh Conspiracy links to the same article I linked to Friday – the one showing that over 99% of the money left over after all expenses and other parties have been paid, goes to the label, and less than 1% of the money goes to the band – and argues that this shows how important copyright is:

A good argument for copyright in music You’ve just earned a $250,000 advance for your rock band, and you don’t see any real profit from it. Why not? Read this post to find out why. The money gets soaked up by managers, agents, recording expenses, marketing costs, lawyers, studios, and so on.

Plus $750,000 gets soaked up in pure profit for the record label.

In fact musical artists often end up owing their music companies. The indicated post is an anti-music company screed, but it is (unintentionally) one of the better arguments for copyright I have seen. True, most musical artists never see much copyright income, it gets grabbed by other parties along the way. But without copyright income the artists would be deeply, deeply in debt, or more realistically would never have the chance to record in the first place.

Say what? In the example given, it’s very unlikely the artists will ever see any copyright income. Why? Because they don’t own the copyright to their works – the record label does. Under “work for hire” laws, the label, not the artist, is the legal creator and copyright owner. And decades from now – when the artists might want to make a little pin money rerecording their old songs – they might not be able to, because the copyright owner will still be the record label.

Regarding an industry I’m more familiar with – comics – I can think of several instances in which copyright hurt the interests of creators. Steve Gerber, for instance, ended up being unable to publish works featuring his best creation – Howard the Duck – for years and years, because Howard’s copyright was owned by Marvel Comics. Had Howard the Duck not been copyrighted, Steve Gerber could have done his own version of the comic book – one that would certainly have been a better, more entertaining comic book than Marvel’s version. It seems to me that consumers would have benefited, too.

My point is not to be anti-copyright – I actually agree with Tyler Cowan, who (if I’m reading him correctly) approves of the general idea of copyright law but disagrees with how they’re currently implemented. My point, rather, is that when two negotiating parties are enormously unequal, then copyright (and all the protections copyright entails) will inevitably wind up in the hands of the stronger party – and that party is usually not the artist.

Meanwhile, at Crescat Sententia, Will Baude responds to me about the “deal memo” bands often sign. Just to review things, here’s how Steven Albini describes the “deal memo”:

What [the label’s representatives] do is present the band with a letter of intent, or “deal memo,” which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on. The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little memo, is that it is, for all legal purposes, a binding document. That is, once the band signs it, they are under obligation to conclude a deal with the label. If the label presents them with a contract that the band don’t want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength. These letters never have any terms of expiration, so the band remain bound by the deal memo until a contract is signed, no matter how long that takes. The band cannot sign to another laborer or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens. Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed.

Will doesn’t believe this could be true, unless there’s a secret cartel:

Now it’s possible that there’s some secret cartel among record labels to keep deal terms shitty. If so, then why I graduate from law school (or at least when I finish first-year contracts) I’ll start my own record label, and I’ll offer big royalties to the bands and non-shitty contracts and steal everybody away from the evil labels. If things are as bad as Ampersand says this shouldn’t be too hard.

I didn’t realize that you had so much ready money at hand, Will. Since you do, however, may I suggest that you start your own comic book publishing label as well? I’ve got some stuff I can submit to you.

As for a “secret cartel,” it’s no secret – it’s just capitalism at work. There are a very limited number of labels who can provide access to a national audience (radio play, nationwide distribution of CDs, etc). There is a virtually unlimited number of young bands full of members who are sick of flipping burgers for a living and who are starving for a chance to reach a nationwide audience. Simple supply and demand would suggest that bands will be willing to accept very lousy terms indeed.

Add to that the realities of the situation. On one side, there’s a very wealthy record label, run by smart, business-knowledgeable executives, with its own legal team and decades of experience writing contracts. On the other side is a band of folks desperate not to blow their only chance at making a living creating music instead of flipping burgers, none of whom know anything about contract law, none of whom have any real business experience.

I’m really confused about the legal rule that could cause a “deal memo” to force an artist to sign a particular contract. If it specifies a particular time period or term under which the artist must sign the contract, well that’s a bad memo to sign (and any band thrilled to sign a memo that bad is asking for trouble).

No, they’re asking for access to the nationwide networks that puts songs on the radio and CDs on the store shelves. And they have a better grasp of the reality than you do, Will: they realize that if they don’t take that access on the record labels’ terms, then they won’t get access at all.

And if it doesn’t specify anything at all, then I find it hard to imagine why the band couldn’t insist that they will sign a contract, but just . . . a different contract.

Why would the label agree to a different contract, Will? The label isn’t losing anything by waiting. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the label’s preferred contract, after all. And it’s not like the band insisting on “a different contract” can go sign with the competition – the band gave up that right when they signed the deal memo.

Incidentally, when a band signs a “deal memo” does it also make the label sign a “deal memo?” That is, why can’t the band use its stand-off bargaining power just as well as the label can in this sort of time-limited standoff equilibrium? If record companies really do represent a cartel, then a symmetric “deal memo” would probably be advantageous to the band. [This is because absent a deal memo, a contract will be signed whenever either side gets desperate. A band is likely to get desperate first, since it doesn’t have any money yet. This only works if all record companies represent a monolithic face. If they don’t, then a deal memo hurts the band a lot more, but there’s much less explanation for why the bands would sign the deal memo in the first place.]

With all due respect, Will, this passage suggests to me – more than anything I’ve read lately – the enormous chasm separating libertarians from reality. There is no such thing as a “symmetric deal memo,” and never will be. A symmetric deal memo would not only forbid the band from working with any other labels until a contract is signed, it would forbid the label from working with any other bands until a contract is signed.

And yes, if that was the case, then certainly signing such a memo would be to the band’s advantage. But that’s not the case and never will be – no record label will ever offer a “symmetric” deal memo. There’s no reason for a record label to agree to terms that bad – only artists are expected to do that.

You ask “why can’t the band use its stand-off bargaining power just as well as the label can in this sort of time-limited standoff equilibrium?” The answer to your question is, the band has no “stand-off bargaining power.” It doesn’t matter to the label if they sign the band or not, because there are a thousand more bands waiting in line.

That’s what so many libertarians seem incapable of understanding – in the real world, contracts are negotiated from very unequal positions, in which the party with the power sets the terms.

Will also brings up an argument about the minimum wage. He’s wrong, of course, but that’s a matter for another post.

Finally, I should point out that Will and I agree on one thing – Napster and similar programs should not be outlawed. They have a perfectly legitimate, legal use – exchanging free music and other files that are either uncopyrighted, or that are intended for free distribution by the copyright owner. The fact that Napster has illegal uses shouldn’t make the existence of Napster illegal. After all, trucks can be used to smuggle – but no one argues that we should therefore outlaw the trucking industry..

Posted in Free speech, censorship, copyright law, etc., Popular (and unpopular) culture | 23 Comments

Saturday Notes

Posted on September 13, 2003 by Ampersand
  • Hey, have you noticed I don’t post much on weekends? That’s because I’m usually at work all weekend. (Have I mentioned I’m a wedding coordinator?)
  • There have been a few replies to my recent posts on the RIAA; check out Will Baude and Bitch Has “Word”, who disagree with me, and I Protest, who thinks I don’t go far enough.
  • Hopefully I’ll be a homeowner by a week from now. You can view some photos of my I-hope-house-to-be here.
  • Sappho’s Breathing has many good posts – I liked Politics and the petty sexism of progressive men, in particular.
  • I’ve always thought the Bush family – Nazi connections story was too boring to be worth paying attention to, because it was the sort of thing only folks who babbled about black helicopters and the like care about. I was mistaken. Orcinus has a very sensible four posts on the subject – start here.
  • Speaking of Orcinus, it was a question from Orcinus which led Shock and Awe to research this excellent history of the phrase “identity politics.”
  • Not content to attack UNFPA, some pro-lifers are now launching an attack on UNICEF. Their basic goal, I think, is to attack and destroy any organization that actually does any good for women and children anywhere in the world.
  • Paul Krugman has written an attack on anti-tax politics which you’ll probably find wonderful and enlightening if you’re a lefty, annoying and simplistic if yo’re a righty. I enjoyed it a lot. (via blueheron)

Have a nice weekend, folks..

Posted in Link farms | 19 Comments

How record labels exploit bands

Posted on September 12, 2003 by Ampersand

In an earlier posting, I wrote that one reason I have very little sympathy for the whining of major record producers about how Napster “steals” from artists is that, by and large, the money from record sales never goes to the artists. Instead, the record companies use their overwhelmingly superior bargaining position to force artists to sign recording contracts which overwhelmingly favor the company.

Will Baude responded:

While Ampersand may think that one shouldn’t use one’s market muscle to extract the terms the market will bear, I’m not so convinced. RIAA, remember, actually provides benefits to people with whom it signs contracts– our bajillion dollar entertainment industry is highly dependent on marketing and reduced transaction costs and lots of other things.

I don’t disagree with Will that the RIAA (or, rather, the labels the RIAA represents) provides benefits to artists. I do think those benefits are ridiculously disproportionate to the value artists provide. Steven Albini, best known for producing Nirvana’s “In Utero,” provides a useful description of both the process and the money.

First, before a contract is ever signed, a “deal memo” is signed, stating that the band members and the label have agreed to sign a contract at some future point. What bands usually don’t realize is that once they’ve signed the deal memo, they have signed away all their options; they must sign a deal with that label, which may or may not bear any resemblance to what was discussed when the “deal memo” was signed. And if they don’t, they will lose all rights to perform and record, potentially forever.

Of course, a band could just refuse to sign the “deal memo” until they talk to a lawyer… but the band knows perfectly well that there are a thousand other bands who would be thrilled to sign the memo without making a fuss. Besides, they think, it’s just a memo – how binding could it be?

But once a band signs with a record company, if they do well, then they’ll make tons of money, right?

Not exactly. As Albini points out – and he provides the detailed numbers – in a typical case, virtually all the money goes to the label, not to the artists. For instance, if the artists grosses $3 million dollars, that translates to $750,000 of profit for the record label. How much does a band member get? $4031.25.

But not really. Because the band is also $14,000 in debt to the record company. So for a deal which gave the label $750,000 profit, the band profits approximately $5,000. Put another way, after all expenses are accounted for, and everyone but the band and the label has been paid, of the remaining money 99.4% is paid to the label; the remainder is paid to the artists.

And that’s if the band did really, really well.

(Remember that, the next time someone tells you that when you illegally download music, the person being hurt is the artist. As David Draiman, lead singer of Disturbed, says, the RIAA is fighting for corporate profits, not to help artists).

And that’s not the end of it. Because the band has signed away ownership of their own work, forever. So in ten or twenty years time, when the band is no longer hot enough for a major label to bother with, maybe the band members could make a little bit of money by selling self-published CDs of their songs. Too bad – the label owns the copyright, and will keep the songs out of print forever rather than letting the artists self-publish.

Do I think that makes it not stealing to illegally download music? No. But if our goal is to increase justice in the recording industry, there are many more important fights than protecting the labels’ right to prevent people from hearing artists’ music.

  1. For instance, work-for-hire laws (the legal fiction which allow labels who have never created anything to become the legal “creators” of music) should be abolished entirely. Nothing the labels bring to the negotiation process justifies taking creatorship of the work away from the artists.
  2. There should be a legal limit – say, four months – on how long a band can be held in limbo because an agreement cannot be reached – especially before the labels have actually paid out a single cent, but have only signed a “deal memo.” If a band and a label can’t reach agreement, the just thing for them to do is part ways – not for the label to legally push the band out of existence.
  3. It should not be legal for labels to use contracts and copyright as a way of keeping music out of print and unavailable to consumers indefinitely. This practice doesn’t benefit consumers, doesn’t encourage creativity, and goes against the original purpose of copyright laws.
  4. Exclusive publishing agreements – in which an artist agrees to publish not only a current album, but all future albums, with a particular label – should be abolished. These publishing agreements are anti-competitive; they give the labels the right to negotiate with as many artists as they want, while artists are robbed of the right to shop around and get the best deal the market will offer them.
  5. More generally, all of the applicable rights that Scott McCloud proposed for cartoonists ought to be legally secured for all creators working with publishers or labels. By no means will doing this rob labels of their ability to make a profit; but it will rob labels of their ability to take such a disproportionate share of the benefits and profits away from artists.

I’m just spitballing ideas here – perhaps some of the specific proposals wouldn’t be so great in practice. My point is, if our concern is eliminating injustice in the recording industry, the deprivations of Kazaa really shouldn’t be that high up on our priority list. Compared to how labels screw over artists, Kazaa is unimportant.

Isn’t it wrong to use the law to alter the balance of power in negotiations? No, I don’t think so. Minimum wage laws, for example, prevent employers from using their greater negotiating power to force people to work for a dollar an hour (in the US, at least). The recognition that vastly unequal negotiating positions lead to unjust outcomes, and in some cases ought be legislated against, increases fairness in the marketplace..

Posted in Free speech, censorship, copyright law, etc., Popular (and unpopular) culture | 27 Comments

Interesting-sounding book about RAWA

Posted on September 12, 2003 by Ampersand

The Maryland Sun has an interesting profile of Anne Brodsky, an American woman who has spent years studying and working with RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.

One day in the spring of 2000 in her dining room in Baltimore’s Hunting Ridge, Brodsky heard visitors from Afghanistan tell of their secret efforts to run schools for girls.

The women were visiting Baltimore to speak at the Feminist Expo, and they were invited to stay at her house by her then-partner. Listening to their stories, Brodsky realized they were the first revolutionary women she’d ever met, the first example of people she’d read about in her suburban youth. There she was, with these young women who were risking their lives because of what they believed in, and she was moved to join them.

She has met many members of the Revolutionary Association of the Women in Afghanistan (RAWA) since that day. They are women who fight with words and deeds for equal rights in Afghanistan.

Photographs after the American bombing of Kabul that toppled the Taliban government showed women in the Afghan capital shedding their required burqas, the veil covering all but a woman’s eyes. Coverage of the bombing at the time showed women freed by the same campaign to capture Osama bin Laden. The U.S. war against terrorism moved on to Iraq, but the battle for women in Afghanistan is hardly over. Last week, another school for girls in rural Logar province was set afire and the doors padlocked. Many women continue to wear the veil for their own safety and, for many, the dream of education remains dim.

Brodsky couldn’t find a publisher when she first sent out her book proposal. Then, after 9/11, publishers suddenly became interested in the struggle for women’s rights in Afghanistan. The book, With All Our Strength, was published this past April by Routledge.

This summer, Brod- sky returned to Afghanistan and saw malls, shops and warlords’ houses under construction. The roads were less rutted but still unpaved. Teachers earn $30 a month, far less than their $100 monthly rent, and unemployed lawyers drove taxis. One of the most positive things she saw was that everyone seemed to be taking a class; she saw even a guard in front of a store reading a book.

The changes are superficial, she says women told her. The colors of the leaves may change, they said, but the roots of the tree still needed to be fertilized.

Before the war, 90 percent of women in Afghanistan wore the traditional covering garb. Now 70 percent wear it. The people in charge are no better than the hated Taliban, Brodsky says, only different. A new report by Human Rights Watch said increased violence by gunmen and warlords against girls and women, especially in southeast Afghanistan, is endangering gains made under the new government.

The response of RAWA women is hopeful pessimism. “They are uncompromising in their values and stand and continue to see the benefit of working one school, one person at a time,” she says.

“They all say they will not see it in their lifetimes,” she says.

.

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A comment on rape and "she asked for it" by Pink Dream Poppies

Posted on September 11, 2003 by Ampersand
What follows is something that Alas reader Pink Dream Poppies posted in the comments of an earlier post. You can consult that post to see the full context of PDP’s comments; however, I think it can be read fairly well on its own. And is well worth reading. –Amp

Erica,

If you had written this series of posts about nine months ago, I probably would have agreed with a lot of what you said. Over time, though, my opinion has changed drastically (in large part because of this very blog and dicussions in its comment threads), and I’d like to take a moment to write about what made my mind change.

I used to have an idea of male sexuality similar to the one that you seem to have. My theory went that men were biologically “wired’ in a way that is different from the way in which women are “wired”; men, in my way of thinking, were naturally more aggressive, more assertive, less able to control their raging hormones, and more horny. I based this on a lot of things ranging from the fact that I’d never seen a girl play a really aggressive sport like football to the fact that I’d never heard a girl boast about how often she masturbated. The more “masculine” guys I knew, the burly guys who drank a lot and pushed people around and otherwise acted like the “men” on television, were also the ones who were most likely to be accused of rape.

I thought that girls who dressed in a “slutty” way didn’t necessarily deserve to be raped, but they certainly weren’t doing anything to keep it from happening. Another way to put it might be that they weren’t “asking for it,” as the saying goes, but they were raising the subject for the asking. I based this theorum on my own reaction to girls who dressed in “slutty” clothing (I wanted to have sex with them), and my observation that the girls who wore “slutty” clothing were also the girls most likely to say that they’d been raped.

So, the “manly” guys, by my observations, were more likely to be rapists while the “slutty” girls were more likely to be rape victims. Thus, those “manly” men couldn’t help themselves but to rape the women who tempted them. When I factored into my theory that most of those people seemed to be into drinking and taking drugs, I came up with an equation that went a little like: guys who had a lot of testosterone + girls who showed off their bodies + drugs + alcohol = rape.

Then things started to happen… I found myself in the position of being very close friends with a woman who had been raped by her husband. It was an internet friendship, but I was no less effected by it. She spoke to me shortly after he did it and almost none of what she said fit in with my view of rape and rape victims. Eventually a part of my mind fell back on the idea that she’d been drinking, he’d been drinking, and … Something. I don’t know. A fuse was blown the moment she told me that her husband had raped her, but my mind wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge it yet. Just because a significant portion of my mental “house” had ceased to have power, I didn’t think it was necessary to venture into my basement and examine the way things had been strung together.

After that I started meeting more women who had been raped. Curiously enough, almost all of them had been raped while in their late twenties or early thirties, while they were sober, by people they knew and trusted, and when they were in comfortable and safe environments. Many of them were athletic, as well. I stumbled across this weblog (shortly after I stumbled across the entire concept of being a part of the progressive movement after I’d spent so much time being a conservative, but that’s a different topic entirely) and was fairly shortly ripped to shreds by bean (thanks, by the way) for some comments I made, was politely rebutted by Ampersand (also thanks, by the way), and stuck around to find out more about this whole feminism thing. I also started dating a young woman quite seriously.

The most important thing, though, was that I started thinking about myself. Once I had deconstructed the myth of the uncontrolable male, I was able to deconstruct a number of other myths.

The first thing I thought about was that I’d been tempted in the past to kiss a woman or grope a woman or have sex with a woman who didn’t want me to kiss/grope/have sex with her. Because I’d been tempted to commit sexual assault and rape, I reasoned, there must be a part of my male mind that was naturally inclined toward rape.

Um. Uh. What?

I’m also tempted to steal, lie, cheat, hurt, and kill. I don’t get some sort of pass when I do those things, so why would I get a pass if I decided one day to grab a woman’s bottom who didn’t want me touching her there? Because I’m a guy?

Let’s assume for a moment that men really are genetically more inclined to try to force sex with an unwilling partner than are women. Okay. So? People are also inclined to physically assault people who wrong them and defecate whenever they feel the need to. We have a term for not beating up others and not defecating in a hotel lobby because our bowels are full; it’s called being civilized. Children are potty trained, taught to not beat each other up, not to lie, not to steal, not to cheat, and not to interrupt while other people are speaking. I’ve yet to see someone argue that guys should be allowed to urinate in public because people are genetically inclined to urinate when the urge strikes them.

Perhaps, then, sexual urges are different for men, are less controllable than the need to urinate? It doesn’t take too much thought to dismiss this one. When was the last time you saw a man masturbating in the mall corridor? Personally, I’ve never seen it happen but I can guarantee you that there are a very large number of men who have been walking around in the mall and have really wanted to have an orgasm. If it’s not okay to masturbate in public, if the expectation is that men can control their sexual urges long enough to drive home, why is it okay (or at least “understandable”) for men to not control their urges and rape women?

Certainly it has something to do with the woman’s appearance, right? Well, no. If I said that it was a bit more understandable for a man to rape a woman if she was walking around in nothing but a bra and panties, I’d also be saying it was a bit more understandable for a man to masturbate in front of the Victoria’s Secret store display. Because the urge to masturbate and the urge to have sex are the same urge: the urge to have an orgasm. Guys who complain that they “haven’t scored in so long” aren’t having an urge for sex that’s not being fulfilled by their masturbatory habits; they’re wanting companionship, or conquest, or simply a change in the routine.

But hey, even if the masturbatory urge and the sexual urge are two different things, why should the conquering of one urge be considered insurmountable? Toddlers can be potty trained, I don’t see why men can’t learn how to just not have sex if their potential partner doesn’t want to have sex with them.

On a related note: burkhas aren’t exactly the most salacious things in the world, and yet rape is still rampant in parts of the world in which women are required to wear them. So maybe it’s the circumstances the woman puts herself in, or is put in? First of all, those are two different things so I’ll address them in turn.

Take a the proverbial girl wearing a sexy dress in a seedy part of town at midnight. If she gets raped, did she deserve it? No. A sexy woman in a sexy dress at night, or even a stark naked woman drunk in a bar at night, does not deserve to be raped. These situations should not be viewed as extreme circumstances under which the male mind is incapable of controlling itself. Those are not life-or-death situations; people are not insects that will die if they don’t mate so any man who sees a woman in a sexy dress in a seedy part of town and wants to have sex with her is not going to suffer by waiting until he gets home so he can masturbate.

Blueballs? Just to clear that up, just in case it needs clearing up: blueballs is rare, is a result of extremely prolonged stimulation, causes no permanent damage, and the pain caused by it is not alleviated by orgasm (in fact, if I remember correctly, orgasm is impossible).

Okay, so is that woman in the sexy dress doing everything she can to prevent being raped? Yes. Why? Because she shouldn’t have to do anything in order to not be raped. And no, that’s not an unrealistic, utopian view of the world. There is an expectation that people should be able to walk down the street at night without being shot, why is there not an expectation that women should be able to do whatever they want to do without being raped? (Interestingly enough, there’s no feeling that men wearing sexy clothes in seedy parts of town are tempting people to rape them.)

But what’s about your husband who didn’t lock up his bicycles and they ended up stolen? Isn’t he at fault, at least to an extent, for his bikes being stolen? No. Not legally and not morally. Leaving oneself open to attack of any form (theft, assault, etc.) does not make one culpable for said attack.

Morally, the decision to steal your husband’s bike was not a decision your husband made or had a hand in because your husband did not steal the bike. Did he contribute to it through his negligence? Perhaps, but he cannot be faulted for not locking up his bicycle because there was not a guarantee that his bicycle would be stolen.

Legally, your husband isn’t at fault for his bike being stolen because, again, he didn’t steal it. If you left the front door of your house wide open while you were on vacation, it would still be against the law for someone to walk off with your television.

(As I recall, rape is the only law in which mitigating factors between the accused and the victim can result in the charges being dismissed. Even in murder cases where children kill abusive parents, unless it’s in self-defence, the children are, I believe, still convicted of manslaughter.)

But all of this misses the point: a woman wearing a sexy dress is not equivalent to an unlocked bicycle or an open door. It doesn’t matter where she is or what she’s doing or what she’s wearing: there are no acceptable circumstances under which a woman (or a man, for that matter) may have her (or his) body violated against her (or his) will. And yes, I mean that to include circumstances like a super-model giving a lap-dance to a known sex-offender while they’re both on crack and sipping Jack Daniels. If he has sex with her and she says no and resists him, crack, jack, and record be damned: he raped her, and he deserves to be punished for it.

Because men can control their urges. Because women have the right to be women.

I meant this to be rational and well-stated, but I’ve decayed into ranting. There’s a lot more that I’d like to say, especially about the contributions our culture makes toward the high incidence of rape, but I need to take a few no-keyboard minutes first.

…

Just real quick: our society promotes an image of masculinity that encourages men to not control their sexual urges. It creates a mythical other-world in which a lone woman drunkenly dancing in a rural bar is seen as fair game rather than a human being with a right to chose her circumstances. She chose to be in that situation, she should also be able to choose how the situation develops and ends..

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