Another censorship followup: Child Porn and Rape Porn

Posted on August 14, 2003 by Ampersand

Some readers have asked me to explain this passage, from the post before this one, in more detail:

What censorship laws would I approve of?

Personally, I think that child porn and rape porn should be censored as heavily as possible (within the bounds of the Miller decision) and driven as far underground as possible. Allowing a market for child or rape porn (including “virtual” stuff) to flourish is wrong, because those markets encourage porn producers to harm real people.

Beyond that, I really don’t give a damn.

Avram responded:

By “virtual”, I assume you mean drawings and computer graphics where no actual people were involved as models, right? How does that encourage porn producers to harm real people?

And is “rape porn” depictions of actual rape, or just of people pretending to engage in rape? If the latter, again, where is the harm?

I suppose you could argue that such things encourage the viewers to go out and harm people, but you argued that it’s the producers who are doing the harm, and how exactly does that work?

The analogy I’d use is elephant ivory. Having a market for new elephant ivory is obviously a bad thing; it encourages poachers to kill elephants, leading to near-extinction.

What’s not so obvious is that having a legal market for old elephant ivory also encourages poachers to kill elephants. Why? Because in practice, it’s practically impossible to tell the difference between new and old elephant ivory. Therefore, if there’s a profitable market in old elephant ivory, that will motivate poachers to kill elephants and sell the new ivory, falsely claiming that it’s old ivory.

If we want to take as much of the profit out of poaching as possible, it’s not enough to just outlaw selling new elephant ivory. We also have to outlaw selling anything that’s in practice nearly impossible to distinguish from new elephant ivory.

Similarly, it’s not enough to outlaw possessing or selling “real” child porn – by which I mean, child pornography that was produced by actually sexually abusing real children. We also have to outlaw “virtual” child porn – that is, child-porn-like images so realistic that they’re indistinguishable from the real thing. If there’s a marketplace for material that’s for all practical purposes indistinguishable from real child porn, in practice that creates a market on which real child porn – falsely marketed as “virtual” – can be sold.

The same argument applies to rape porn (that is, photos or films depicting realistic-seeming rape scenes). If we want to outlaw people making money by selling films of real rapes, then we have to outlaw all rape porn.

To see why, imagine the police raid a porn producer’s studio and find tons of photos of children being raped. The porn producer says “sorry, I bought all of these from someone – I forget who – and he said he generated them on computer.” Suddenly, it becomes, for all practical purposes, impossible to enforce child-porn laws. I’m not willing to pay that price in order to protect the market viability of virtual child porn.

Lis wrote:

If prose and poetic descriptions are outlawed, there goes Romeo & Juliet, Lolita, and many autobiographies and romance novels. If you do allow such depictions, then what about illustrations? While it may not have been intended as arousing, Watchmen included at least one rape scene. And if you allow prose and comics, then why draw the line at computer-generated images?

I wouldn’t outlaw prose and poetic descriptions – the only “virtual” porn I’d outlaw is visual representations so realistic that they’re not easily distinguishable from the real thing, for the reasons I just described in my answer to Avram.

Also, I’m calling for this in the context of the Miller decision – which says that no work that, taken as a whole, has serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, can be obscene. So performances of Romeo and Juliet would be safe.

UPDATE: Reading the comments, I think I’d better clarify something (thanks, Charles and Kip!).

This post is not calling for an expansion of censorship laws. On the contrary, I’m saying the censorship laws should be narrowed, so that fewer works are deemed “obscene” and therefore lacking first amendment protection.

Under current law, all the stuff I talk about above is obscene – plus many more things besides, such as Demon Beast Invasion. What I’m advocating is that only rape porn and child porn (as defined in this post, above) should be censored; nothing else should be. I’m arguing for less censorship than we currently have, not more..

197 Comments

Censorship followup

Posted on August 14, 2003 by Ampersand

Jim of Unqualified Offerings responds to my previous entry thus:

Two notable dissents from the outrage have been raised by Ampersand and William Dwyer. Both argue that Castillo’s lawyers did a poor job defending their client. Ampersand further expresses a feminist approval of obscenity laws generally and their application to the comic in question – which is to say, contentment that a retail worker should spend 180 days in jail for selling a magazine to a grownup, pay a $4,000 fine out of his retail salary and record a felony conviction for an inflammatory charge on every job application he completes for the rest of his life.

* * *

Apparently Jim entirely missed the point of my previous post, which was

  1. the reason the jury found no serious artistic or literary merit in Demon Beast Invasion is that there was none to be found; and
  2. folks like Jim who think this ruling strips first amendment rights from the entire comics medium have misunderstood the decision, and are needlessly spreading panic. Contrary to Jim’s opinion, the sky has not fallen.

* * *

I’m not sure what Jim means by a “feminist” disapproval – as anyone who knows feminism knows, many feminists disagree about obscenity laws. (Try asking Nadine Strossen, the very feminist president of the ACLU, or Avadon Carol what they think).

More importantly, Jim’s putting words in my mouth. Of course, I don’t think Jesus Castillo deserves a felony on his record, a $4000 fine, or any jail time. I’d rather that Texas had never put Mr. Castillo on trial at all; as I said in my previous post, prosecuting this case was a waste of court time and taxpayer money.

The good news for Jesus Castillo is that Jim has again misunderstood the case. Mr. Castillo was sentenced to a year’s probation; assuming he doesn’t break probation, he won’t spend any time in jail. And his conviction is a misdemeanor, not a felony, so he’s spared reporting a felony conviction on future job applications. (I got this info from William Dwyer’s excellent post on the case, by the way – link via Jim).

Of course, $4000 is still way too high a fine (it certainly seems like a whopping sum to me – that’s a third of my annual income!), but compared to other miscarraiges of justice (innocent folks on death row, Patriot-Act-related travesties, etc) it doesn’t seem like a world-shattering injustice. And the good news (via Tom Tomorrow) is, the fine has been paid ” by customers of the shop and other local supporters.” (Good for them!)

* * *

It should be pointed out that first amendment crusaders like the CBLDF are part of the problem in Mr. Castillo’s case, not part of the solution. Without the drumbeat of first amendment crusaders demanding a courtroom fight, Mr. Castillo might have chosen to cop a plea, and would probably have gotten off with a $500 fine. Since he was clearly guilty under the law, that would have been the most sensible course for him to take.

It’s only because he went to trial (and because his lawyers failed to get a record of the sentencing hearing, making it impossible for Mr. Castillo to appeal his sentence) that he wound up being sentenced as harsly as he was

* * *

By the way, don’t any of the CBLDF’s donors and supporters care that the defense in this case seems to have been rather on the incompetant side? If I were a CBLDF donor, I’d be pissed off; those folks are definitely not getting their money’s worth.

* * *

More generally, what censorship laws would I approve of?

Personally, I think that child porn and rape porn should be censored as heavily as possible (within the bounds of the Miller decision) and driven as far underground as possible. Allowing a market for child or rape porn (including “virtual” stuff) to flourish is wrong, because those markets encourage porn producers to harm real people.

Beyond that, I really don’t give a damn. But for me, “not giving a damn” goes two ways. I don’t agitate for Demon Beast Invasion and its ilk to be censored; but neither am I going to panic and start screaming “comics have lost all first amendment protection!” when a piece of worthless porn crap with zero artistic merit like Demon Beast Invasion gets censored.

UPDATE: I’ve removed a couple of paragraphs speculating about how the fine could be paid, replaced by the good news that customers and local supporters have paid the fine. Thanks to Lis for providing that info in the comments. Also, to prevent confusion, I changed my wording in the final paragraph; see my exchange with Eli in the comments for details.

SECOND UPDATE: See this response to me from Jim at Unqualified Offerings. The area of disagreement between me and Jim has gotten much narrower.

I also very much agreed with this post of Jim’s, in which he calls for the comics press to investigate this case, and in particular investigate whether or not the $60,000 CBLDF defense screwed up the case..

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Free speech, censorship, copyright law, etc., Sex work, porn, etc | 63 Comments

Censorship: The Jesus Castillo case: No need to panic

Posted on August 13, 2003 by Ampersand

There’s lots of outrage in the comics blogosphere, because the Supreme Court declined to reconsider a finding that the comic book Demon Beast Invasion (issue two) is obscene. Jim at Unqualified Offerings writes:

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund provided expert witnesses to attest to the artistic and literary qualities of the comic in question. The DA told the jury that none of that mattered, because comic books have “always” been for children and the “adult” comic was therefore obscene by definition. The jury bought the argument and convicted, the trial judge let it stand and, last week, the US Supreme Court declined to review the case.

Peter David – the much-acclaimed writer who’s associated with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) – concurs:

On the facts of law alone, there’s no way they could have found guilty. Yet [the jury] did, in no time flat.[…]

A terrifyingly dangerous precedent has now been set. The Texas case essentially strips First Amendment protection from comics. There have been various instances in this country where titles as diverse as Spawn, Spider-Man and Elfquest have come under siege. None of those attacks ever went as far as this one. But with this law on the books, who knows how aggressive moralists can get in their pursuits to make sure that you won’t have the opportunity to buy whatever comics you want to buy.

Damn, sounds bad, doesn’t it? Fortunately, it’s bullshit.

First, despite Jim’s claim, he has no way of knowing what the jury bought or didn’t buy. It’s quite likely that they examined the comic book, listened to the testimony, and decided that Demon Beast Invasion was obscene.

To be obscene in the United States, a work needs to meet the three-part Miller standard. The Miller standard asks:

  • (a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, Roth, supra, at 489,
  • (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and
  • (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Much has been made of the two expert witnesses, who the defense called to try and establish that Demon Beast Invasion has “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” But it’s plausible that the jury decided that the testimony of the two experts simply wasn’t very credible. Frankly, from what I’ve read, I don’t find their arguments very convincing. (I say this despite the fact that one of the experts is a friend).

  • Both experts claimed that the worth of Demon Beast Invasion (issue two) couldn’t be judged without having also read issues one, three and four, but that’s not very plausible. After all, issue two was sold alone, as a distinct unit (the store didn’t even have the other issues available, according to the testimony of the Detective who bought the comic book). Comic books are sold in issues, and fans are entirely used to judging artistic merit by reading just one issue. Professionals do it too; it’s not unusual for comics to win awards based on only a single issue of a longer-running serial.
  • Both experts testified that Demon Beast Invasion reflected Japanese culture, and used themes that were common in works of Japanese literature (although one expert, Scott McCloud, admitted under cross-examination that Demon Beast Invasion issue two consists of “basically sex”). But inevitably, even the worse imaginable piece of crap will draw on themes and reflect something of its cultural context. That isn’t enough to show serious literary or artistic merit (unless one wishes to argue that all art, regardless of how awful it is, has such merit).
  • One expert, Professor Susan Napier, claimed that Demon Beast Invasion was beautifully drawn. I’ve seen artwork from DBI reproduced online, and from what I’ve seen it’s badly drawn hackwork. If I could recognize that, so could the jury.
  • I’ve seen several people – including Peter David and the CBLDF – claim that there was no testimony to contradict the expert testimony. But that’s simply not true – the policeman who bought the comic testified that he felt the comic had no serious artisitc worth, and met the requirements of US obscenity law. One could argue that his testimony shouldn’t have been allowed, because he’s not an expert – but in order to argue that, the CBLDF lawyers would have had to have made that objection during the trial. They did not. Maybe that was an error on the CBLDF’s part – but if so, they shouldn’t blame the jury.

The bottom line is, the jury believed their own eyes. They were given a comic book to read featuring demons variously seducing/raping humans; the comic had no characterization to speak of, lousy drawing, and had nothing to say. It was an empty-headed collection of mean-spirited, degrading sex scenes. It had no artistic merit – at least, not to anyone who doesn’t consider the idea of artistic worth to be more than a joke.

(And speaking frankly, it’s hard to imagine my friend the expert witness – who has very refined taste in comics, and has often pointed out to me this or that comic book that was artistically interesting or exciting in some way – ever saying to me, “hey, Barry, check out this issue of Demon Beast Invasion, it’s really good.”)

* * *

It’s also been claimed that this decision is dangerious because it sets a precedent that comic books are for kids, and therefore should be judged by a different standard than other media.

No such precedent was set. In fact, the court never ruled on that question one way or the other. Why not? Because the CBLDF’s lawyers, once again, failed to object to such testimony during the trial – and thereby gave up the right to argue that such testimony is or isn’t allowable.

So – for better or worse – the Dallas Court of Appeals’ decision (which is the one that carries the precedental weight) on this case doesn’t consider this question one way or the other.

* * *

The fact is, the court did not censor Demon Beast Invasion because it was a comic book. They censored Demon Beast Invasion because it is obscene and not protected by the first amendment. The idea that this decision puts Watchmen or Maus – or Peter David’s work, or my own – in any danger is absurd.

The problem for Peter David and the rest of the CBLDF crew is, Demon Beast Invasion is obviously obscene, misogynistic crap. It has no value of its own. No one’s life will be lessened because they lose the chance to read it, and the political and artistic discourse in the United States will if anything be improved by a lack of Demon Beast Invasion in the mix.

So instead, we get the slippery slope argument: This isn’t a case about Demon Beast Invasion! They’re going to take away first amendment rights from all comic books!

Get real. The jury found no artistic merit because there was none to find. If a comic book that actually had some artistic merit had been under issue – one of Robert Crumb’s pornographic comics, for example, or an issue of Naughty Bits – the defense would have had a much easier time, because then they could have made substantial, reasonable arguments for artistic merit.

But it’s unlikely that any Crumb comic would ever get to that point – because prosecutors and police don’t like losing cases, and don’t tend to pursue unwinnable cases. Which is almost certainly why the cop picked out Demon Beast Invasion, rather than picking out Crumb or Naughty Bits.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that all obscenity convictions are reasonable. There have been unreasonable decisions – and those are battles worth fighting. It’s true that an obscenity conviction like this one is a waste of courtroom time and taxpayer money. But it’s also true that defending Demon Beast Invasion is a waste of the CBLDF’s time and their contributors’ money.

And to claim that this decision – which says nothing more than that the same old obscenity laws that have always applied, still apply – has suddenly put all comic books in danger of widespread, arbitrary censorship is nonsense.

UPDATE: Whoops – I originally credited the decision to the Fifth circuit. Actually, the decision was made by the Dallas Court of Appeals (which is “technically, the court for the fifth of fourteen appellate judicial districts in the Texas state-court system”). I’ve updated the post above. Thanks to Beldar for providing this info in comments..

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Free speech, censorship, copyright law, etc., Same-Sex Marriage | 25 Comments

The problem with libertarianism

Posted on August 13, 2003 by Ampersand

I can’t resist quoting at length from this excellent Through the Looking Glass post…

A homeowner puts a UN flag on his front lawn. Some local bureaucrats tell him to take it off; having that flag is against the rules. He’s refused, and will probably wind up in court. If the local bureaucrats were government officials, libertarians would be all over this as an example of the silly excesses of the nanny state. But the bureaucrats are members of a private homeowner’s association, and some libertarians seem quite pleased…

What’s interesting here is that if the homeowner’s association were a formally constituted government body — say, a zoning board — the homeowner would face pretty much the same set of choices that he does against a private body: fight in court, petition the board to change its policies, or run for a seat on the board and start to work from the inside. And the argument that “he know about the association when he chose to buy his house” applies just as well to a zoning board. The main difference is that, as our libertarian commentators are quick to point out, there are restraints on government, like the first amendment, which do not apply to private bodies and cannot be used to defend against them.

Which all might give some people the feeling that there’s something ever so slightly wrong with libertarianism. (At least if you think it’s supposed be about empowering people and not corporations; if the latter, there’s no problem at all).

It’s worth it to read the whole post. (Via The Sideshow, whose post is also good reading).

I agree with the libertarians that freedom from government intrusion is a good thing – reproductive freedom, for example, and freedom from goverment censoring boards. But other freedoms matter as well – freedom from the threat of hunger and poverty, for example. Freedom from having a political process dominated entirely by the wealthy and by corporations. Freedom from discrimination. None of these freedoms, however, seem worth protecting to libertarians.

UPDATE: Will Baude responds and, unsurprisingly, disagrees. If the permalink doesn’t work for you, look for the entry dated August 13 2003.

UPDATE the SECOND: The blog Freespace disagrees with me, also..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 16 Comments

Interspecies Drag

Posted on August 13, 2003 by Ampersand

With help from Jake Squid, I now have access to a hard drive full of stuff I wrote years ago. This is an article I wrote for the late Anodyne Magazine. It’s a true story.

Interspecies Drag

by B. Deutsch

In a blue-collar town in Connecticut, there’s a supermarket, called Stew Leonard’s, which is three times larger than the largest supermarket you’ve ever seen. The food is high-quality and fairly inexpensive, the building is brightly lit and attractive, and the employees are the most helpful and friendly supermarket workers in the world. People drive miles out of their way to shop there, and tourists from other countries take snapshots. The story of Stew Leonard’s is the archetypical American saga: a milkman with only elbow grease and a dream, ends up with a mansion, thousands of employees and a decade in prison for sneaking unreported cash out of the country.

I was fifteen years old, and Stew was still years away from minimum-security disgrace, when his store hired me to be Daisy Duck. Although my parents, when they ordered me to find a job, probably hoped for employment with a more respectable wardrobe, in most ways playing a duck was the best job I’ve ever had. I still doggedly list the job on my resume in the vain hope that further duck-related work will turn up.

At Stew’s, I wore head-to-toe duck, with a giant head, yellow tights, immense orange feet and a name tag declaring me “Daisy Duck” (it’s amazing Disney didn’t sue). Dressed in this ridiculous fashion, I was instructed to wander around a supermarket playing with children, which is more worth doing than anything else I’ve ever been paid to do.

Although I shaved my legs for the job (Daisy would never have leg hair showing through, after all), I didn’t think of it as drag at first. Sure, Daisy was a girl and I’m a boy, but c’mon – Daisy’s a duck. Who thinks of waterfowl as having gender?
Continue reading →

Posted in Feminism, sexism, etc | 13 Comments

Some stuff Ampersand has read lately.

Posted on August 13, 2003 by Ampersand
  • In a wonderful post, Body and Soul discusses Bobby Kennedy’s ability to emphasize and persuade, and in passing responds to a post of mine about Dennis Kucinich. Alas, I must agree with Jeanne’s assessment of Kucinich.
  • Check out this impressive website (from the staff of Representative Henry Waxman) detailing how the Bush administration “manipulates, distorts, or interferes with” scientific research that contradicts right-wing ideology. Well worth your browsing time. (Via Tapped).
  • Martha Nussbaum’s article in the current Dissent, “Genocide in Gujarat,” is a must-read. Especially useful for readers like me, as a primer on issues of Hindu Nationalism and Hindu/Muslim conflict in India. Via Half the Sins of Mankind, who has an interesting discussion with a reader (including criticism of the Nussbaum essay)
  • In the last decade, over 300 young women in a border city of Mexico (Ciudad Juárez, near Texas) have been murdered by a serial killer, or more likely by multiple copycat killers. Amnesty International has investigted the Mexican government’s response to the killings, and is not impressed: “The pervasive failure of the authorities to address these cases is tantamount to tolerance of them.” Read the Amnesty report here, and a New York Times story here.
  • Groupthink Central reports on a growing surge of masculinity – or of something people like to call “masculinity,” anyway – on the right.
  • Over on Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein has an excellent post on the Jews being “God’s chosen people.” The “chosen people” schtick isn’t a statement of Jewish superiority; it’s more a way of saying, “God is picking on us.”
  • Speaking of Jews, Religion in the News points out the support of many on the right for bills that in effect make it legal for some employers to discriminate against Jews. This isn’t really news, of course, but it is ironic in light of all the recent fuss about alleged Democratic discrimination against Catholics.
  • An article by Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, “The Prisoner of Ramallah,” presents a positive portrait of Yassar Arafat – something I don’t think I’ve ever read before in my life. )Via Aron’s Israeli Peace Weblog.)
  • “Basic Income” is the proposal that every person in a country – no matter how rich or poor – should receive a basic, minimal level of income. Here’s an interview with Philippe Van Parijs, one of the more prominant supporters of Basic Income plans.
  • Two absolutely wonderful, ass-kicking, keyboard-pounding hypocrit-bashing posts from Real Live Preacher about Christianity and homosexuality: one that’s just indescribable, and one which argues that there’s no scriptural basis for homophobia. (Via Long story; short pier).
  • An interesting (and distressing, and depressing) MSNBC story about violent misogyny in Muslim immigrant ghettos of France. Influenced by the worse of Muslim fundimentalism, some Muslim men have been practicing beatings and gang-rapes to “punish” women and girls. Some female immigrants are organizing, lobbying for better police protection and organizing emergency housing.
  • This, umn, tribute to racing really cracked me up. It also cracked a couple of my firends up. Does that mean it’s really funny, or just that my friends and I are immature?
  • Amy at The Fifty Minute Hour has a message for “men who feel proud of themselves because their gender was enlightened enough to give women the vote: IT TOOK YOU DAMN LONG ENOUGH.”
  • Nathan Newman points out that privatizing military services has left US troops living in squalor. Praise the free market! Paul Krugman in the Times makes a similar argument.
  • Angry Bear does the math and finds that the “red states” – home of so much whining about federal spending – get more from Federal spending than they repay. In most “blue states,” the opposite is true.
  • The Head Heeb reports on an infuriating (but not too surprising) case from Botswana, in which a court ruled that there is no such thing as marital rape.
  • Some activists in San Francisco have hit on a funny anti-Starbucks protest: soaping up Starbucks windows and posting “closed” and “for lease” signs. (Via Boing Boing).
  • Mark Kleiman has an interesting post on prostitution and slavery. “To my mind, someone who pays for and uses the sexual services of a slave is morally — and, if I got to write the laws, would be legally — a rapist, since he has engaged in sexual relations with an unconsenting party. And in a country where sexual slavery is known to be an issue, I’d make that a crime of strict liability, as carnal knowledge of a minor is: the customer should be responsible for assuring himself that the person he’s about to have sex with has consented to it. ”
  • Joanna Grossman points out that a recent court decision in New York – regarding which parent decides when parents can’t agree on the child’s name – pretends to use a “best interest of the child” standard, but in effect discriminates against mothers.
  • Prometheus 6 is unsurprised by USA Today’s poll regarding the Bryant case, and so am I.
  • This story is all over the blogosphere, but for the benefit of my few readers who haven’t run into yet: Fox News is suing Al Franken. Why? Because Franken uses the words “fair and balanced” in the subtitle of his new book. Nice to see that the right-wing press has such a profound committment to free speech. (Via Making Light).

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Posted in Elections and politics, Link farms | 10 Comments

Help us with a windows XP problem, please!

Posted on August 11, 2003 by Ampersand

beancrash.jpgBean has a computer, running windows xp home edition, which has just recently started crashing constantly – often within a minute or less of boot-up. This is a problem.

The error says something about “the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service terminated unexpectedly” (see image to right).

If any Alas readers have any suggestions to post, or has a computer-maven pal they could ask to pretty please look at this post, we’d really appreciate it. (But please remember, we’re computer illiterates, so detailed step-by-step suggestions are especially appreciated!) Thanks!.

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 67 Comments

The same image in different times

Posted on August 11, 2003 by Ampersand

The folks at Little Green Footballs are in an uproar over a cartoon again. This recent cartoon, by American cartoonist Tony Auth…

Bears a disturbing resemblance to this one, a Nazi propoganda cartoon from the mid-1930s.

Some folks regard this as proof that the Tony Auth cartoon is “obvious, gut-churning antisemitism.” But I’m not convinced. The Nazi cartoon is unquestionably antisemitic, because it came out in a time when the star of David refered to Jews and to nothing else.

Since then, however, the State of Israel was born, and chose to put the star of David on its flag, as Israel’s official symbol. It is the Israelis – not antisemites – who in this case chose to transform the six-pointed star from a symbol representing Jews to a symbol representing a state and its policies. Once Israel had made that choice, the star of David became fair game for political cartoonists criticizing Israel.

Furthermore, it’s clear that Auth’s cartoon isn’t referring to Jews in general – it’s referring to the Security Fence, a particular policy of the Israeli goverment.

If Israel’s supporters find the politicization of the star of David antisemetic, then they should complain to Israel – not to Tony Auth.

UPDATE: Just ran across this post at Hatcher’s Hack, saying pretty much the same thing I said (but he posted it first). He concludes:

To force an anti-Semitic reading of Auth’s cartoon is to stretch the meaning of “anti-Semitism” to a nonsensical length. It diminishes complaints of real anti-Semitism.

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Posted in Anti-Semitism, Cartooning & comics, Palestine & Israel | 29 Comments

Some rare good news regarding prison rape

Posted on August 11, 2003 by Ampersand

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 passed congress last month and is fairly certain to be signed by President Bush. (An earlier version of the bill had a less stirring, but no doubt more realistic, name – the Prison Rape Reduction Act). To some extent, the bill – which allocates $60 million annually to research and discussion of the prison rape problem – is a case of “too little, years late,'” Still, better than nothing. From the Washington Post:

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which drew bipartisan support and was passed unanimously by Congress yesterday, establishes a system of grants and reforms that will cost $60 million a year. The centerpiece is an annual survey by the U.S. Department of Justice that will be the most sweeping study ever made of sexual assault in prisons, congressional sponsors and criminal justice experts said.

“It’s been a long, strange battle, but I think everyone has come to understand that a prison sentence in the United States should not include rape as added punishment,” said Rep. Frank R. Wolf, (R-Va.), a House co-sponsor of the bill, along with Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.).

The annual study, based on surveys from 10 percent of the nation’s 8,700 correctional institutions, including at least one in every state, will be analyzed by a commission. That panel, whose members have not been named, will establish national standards designed to prevent and prosecute prison rapes.

This will be (as far as I know) the first nationwide, representative study of prison rape. As such, it might add hugely to what we know about this problem. But will knowing more about exactly how many prison rapes happen each year really help prevent rapes, I wonder?

I’m curious as to what the panel’s recommendations will be. I’m not sure that prosecuting prison rapists will necessarily be effective – after all, in the end, all we’re doing is sending them back to prison, where they’ll rape again. But prevention is difficult. For instance, as this FindLaw article points out, the Supreme Court’s 1994 Farmer v. Brennon decision – which established that prisoners could sue prison administrations for allowing rapes to go on – had the unintended effect of encouraging wardens to turn a blind eye to rape (since if they didn’t know, they weren’t responsible).

My instinct is that the entire prison culture needs to be changed – and the way to do that is to hold the wardens of high-rape-incidence prisons responsible, regardless of what they claim to know. I don’t know if the political will exists for that solution, though..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 7 Comments

Elizabeth Anderson defines egalitarianism

Posted on August 11, 2003 by Ampersand

Demosthenes quotes from a Michael Waltzer interview, and in doing so reminded me that Waltzer wrote an article about Israel and Palestine that I admired and blogged about last October.

Reading the Waltzer interview led me in turn to Elizabeth Anderson’s essay, “What is the Point of Equality?” (Not online, sorry). Anderson argues that many academic philosophers – by framing the question of equality in terms of “unequal native talents” and the like – have missed the point. Here’s a passage I enjoyed:

What is the Point of Equality?

There must be a better way to conceive of the point of equality. To do so, it is helpful to recall how egalitarian political movements have historically conceived of their aims. What have been the inegalitarian systems that they have opposed? Inegalitarianism asserted the justice or necessity of basing social order on a hierarchy of human beings, ranked according to intrinsic worth. Inequality referred not so much to distributions of goods as to relations between superior and inferior persons. Those of superior rank were thought entitled to inflict violence on inferiors, to exclude or segregate them from social life, to treat them with contempt, to force them to obey’, work without reciprocation, and abandon their own cultures. These are what Iris Young has identified as the faces of oppression: marginalization, status hierarchy, domination, exploitation, and cultural imperialism. Such unequal social relations generate, and were thought to justify, inequalities in the distribution of freedoms, resources, and welfare. This is the core of inegalitarian ideologies of racism, sexism, nationalism, caste, class, and eugenics.

Egalitarian political movements oppose such hierarchies. They assert the equal moral worth of persons. This assertion does not mean that all have equal virtue or talent. Negatively, the claim repudiates distinctions or moral worth based on birth or social identity-on family membership, inherited social status, race, ethnicity, gender, or genes. There are no natural slaves, plebeians, or aristocrats. Positively, the claim assert that all competent adults are equally moral agents: everyone equally has the power to develop and exercise moral responsibility, to cooperate with others according to principles of justice, to shape and fulfill a conception of their good.”

Egalitarians base claims to social and political equality on the fact of universal moral equality. These claims also have a negative and a positive aspect. Negatively, egalitarians seek to abolish oppression – that is, forms or social relationship by which some people dominate, exploit, marginalize, demean, and inflict violence upon others. Diversities in socially ascribed identities, distinct roles in the division of labor, or differences in personal traits, whether these be neutral biological and psychological differences, valuable talents and virtues, or unfortunate disabilities and infirmities, never justify the unequal social relations listed above. Nothing can justify treating people in these ways, except just punishment for crimes and defense against violence. Positively, egalitarians seek a social order in which persons stand in relations of equality. They seek to live together in a democratic community as opposed to a hierarchical one. Democracy is here understood as collective self-determination by means of open discussion among equals, in accordance with rules acceptable to all. To stand as an equal before others in discussion means that one is entitled to participate, that others recognize an obligation to listen respectfully and respond to ones arguments, that no one need bow and scrape before others or represent themselves as inferior to others as a condition of having their claim heard.

Interesting stuff… and very relevant to current debates about same-sex marriage, in my opinion.

Relevant link: Check out the discussion on Half the Sins of Mankind, too (mostly of the Waltzer interview, but there’s a little bit about Elizabeth Anderson)...

Posted in Feminism, sexism, etc, Race, racism and related issues | 7 Comments