Women Who Don’t Call It Rape

Posted on January 26, 2006 by Ampersand

The Happy Feminist, Feministe, and The Debate Link have been discussing (seemingly) clear-cut rape cases in which the victim herself doesn’t agree she was raped. Here’s one of the examples from The Happy Feminist’s time as a prosecutor:

Victim’s male acquaintance breaks into her apartment and grabs her. He is in a rage because she had refused to go out with him. He roughs her up a bit, including belting her across the face and throttling her. He then forces her at gunpoint to drive him to his house, where he keeps her overnight. He specifically tells her that he will shoot her if she tries to escape. He is distraught and talks repeatedly about how much he loves her. He talks about wanting to live with her in Mexico. Her survival strategy was to pretend to go along with his plans. She wanted to gain his trust. When he had sex with her that night, she “went along with it” in order to survive.

After finally escaping, she went to the police. She expected that he would prosecuted for kidnapping, assault and threatening. She was, however, shocked when I brought a rape charge against him. She didn’t feel that she had been raped because she had “gone along” with the sex. When I questioned her, however, she said that she had “gone along” with it because she thought (quite reasonably under the circumstances) that he would blow her brains out otherwise. But, to my shock, in her mind, she herself felt that it was not a rape because she had not resisted in any way.

In another of Happy Feminist’s examples, a woman is forced to have sex by her boyfriend, but doesn’t believe it’s rape because she’s had consensual sex with him on other occasions.

Why do some women not believe it’s rape unless she resisted – or not believe it’s rape when their husbands or boyfriends force them to have sex? There are lots of possible reasons, but let’s not forget the simple fact that women are part of our society. There are a lot of myths about rape which have currency in our society – all of society, not men exclusively. Neither being a woman nor being a rape victim will automatically prevent belief in those rape myths. As Happy writes:

Unless the woman locks herself up in a monastery for her own safety, remains unmarried and virginal all her life, and fights to the death if anyone breaks into the monastery to rape her, she is at risk of being considered somehow complicit if she is raped. I am not saying these are well thought-out positions among the public at large, but these are the general attitudes that one encounters in rape prosecutions even among the victims themselves, even in the most egregious cases.

Does saying that women can be raped, without labeling the event as “rape,” contradict the feminist belief that women must be believed, in all circumstances? Well, insofar as such a belief exists, it contradicts it. But I doubt that belief exists among many feminists today. I doubt any feminists believe that women are incapable of being mistaken about what the law says rape is, for example.

The idea of privileging women’s view is called “standpoint theory.” But as Elisabeth Anderson points out, standpoint theory has virtually always been contested within feminism:

In the case of feminist standpoint theory, too, critical reaction within feminist circles was powerfully transforming. Feminist critics observed that there could not be a single standpoint of women, since women are differently situated by other social positions, such as race, class, and sexual orientation–a point stressed by black feminist standpoint theorists, feminist empiricists, and feminist postmodernists alike (Collins 1990; Longino 1989; Lugones and Spelman 1986). These debates led to a consensus on two points concerning any viable version of standpoint epistemology (Wylie 2003, 28). First, it rejected “essentialism,” which entails a rejection of any claims that women or feminists do or ought to think alike. Second, it rejected the attribution of “automatic epistemic privilege” to any particular standpoint.

It’s also important to understand that when feminists have spoken of “believing women” regarding rape, that’s said in the context of how society has habitually refused to believe women. On another thread, Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff wrote something that is extremely applicable to this question (although Cheryl was writing in a different context).

…As feminist women we are not obligated to accept one another’s excuses, justifications, political interpretations or analyses of anything at all, that’s not what it means to believe women… We ARE obligated to believe another woman when she tells us she’s been fucking RAPED. Hello. And if we cannot find it in our hearts to believe her, then we are obligated to shut the hell up until we have more information. And why is that? Because we can *count* on it … count on it … that PLENTY of people are going to call her a liar anyway, without our help, that ALWAYS happens to rape victims, those calling her a liar don’t need our assist, which is why girls and women have continued to be raped in large numbers, by men, with impunity, from time immemorial (and still are). Feminism aimed to confront the way women are called liars for reporting their rapes and blamed for being raped. So. In part the solution to this problem of never believing rape victims was to simply believe them. Which is what feminists did and do. If we can’t believe a woman, then we reserve judgment pending further information, and we remain silent.

The point is, when feminists say women who have been raped must be believed, that’s in a specific context of counteracting the traditional belief that women habitually falsely accuse men of rape (in the words of Sir Matthew Hale, rape “is an accusation easy to be made, hard to be proved, but harder to be defended by the party accused, though innocent”). But nothing in that context applies to women who – due to loyalty to the rapist, or acceptance of rape myths, or ignorance of the law, or any other reason – don’t recognize their own rapes as rapes. It’s ridiculous to believe, as some anti-feminists have suggested, that “believing women” means feminists are obligated to give men who have in fact committed rape a pass whenever the victim isn’t sure it’s rape.

* * *

David at The Debate Link points to State v Rusk, a case discussed in one of his law school classes. From the victim’s testimony in that case:

“I was still begging him to please let, you know, let me leave. I said, ‘you can get a lot of other girls down there, for what you want,’ and he just kept saying, ‘no’; and then I was really scared, because I can’t describe, you know, what was said. It was more the look in his eyes; and I said, at that point — I didn’t know what to say; and I said, ‘If I do what you want, will you let me go without killing me?’ Because I didn’t know, at that point, what he was going to do; and I started to cry; and when I did, he put his hands on my throat, and started lightly to choke me; and I said, ‘If I do what you want, will you let me go?’ And he said, yes, and at that time, I proceeded to do what he wanted me to.”

In David’s class, all of the male students agreed this was unambiguously rape.

The women, however were split. They offered many of the same explanations that the woman in the first case presented–she didn’t actually resist, she could have done other things, and in this case that being “scared” wasn’t enough to make it rape. Again, I find this to be a relatively clear cut case. But why was it that the primary dissents came from the women in the classroom?

This pattern flies in the face of most recent feminist scholarship. They tell us that letting women tell their stories and privileging their perspectives will provide insights into criminal law that currently are missing. Classically, feminism posits that it is men that generally “don’t get” rape, or minimize it, or restrict applying it to only the most extreme cases. I don’t dispute that as a general matter, but these recent observations do seem to throw a wrench into the equation.

First of all, I think we need to be careful about assuming a pattern exists based on a single anecdote. As David acknowledges, this may have more to do with the environment of law school than with how men in general view rape.

Secondly, I think David’s argument about what “most recent feminist scholarship” says is a misunderstanding on David’s part. For example, feminist researcher Mary Koss has published a study which found that many women who are raped, do not identify what happened to them as rape (or at least, not as “definitely” rape). Koss’ findings were popularized in the book I Never Called It Rape; the title of the book is a reference to women who do not identify their own rape experiences as rape.

Among feminist researchers who study rape, Koss’s research is widely accepted. It is primarily anti-feminists, such as Christina Hoff Sommers and Katie Roiphe, who have argued that Koss’ findings in this regard contradict feminist beliefs. The anti-feminist arguments radically oversimplify what feminist standpoint theory says, and also ignore the ways that standpoint theory itself is contested within feminism.

David – who certainly isn’t an anti-feminist – acknowledges that standpoint theory has been heavily contested within feminism (although I think he’s mistaken when he says criticism of standpoint theory is mainly a third-wave thing). But David still sees harms in the privileging of women’s views over men’s within feminism. I do think there’s a serious discussion to be had there (David could certainly find some support for his view in the writings of bell hooks); many feminists believe that a feminist transformation of society will have to include a feminist transformation of how men think and act, and it’s hard to see how that can happen if men’s views are unwelcome in feminism.

But although that may be a legitimate discussion, it’s also a different discussion. The strongest case for including male views within feminism comes not from looking at how women have absorbed rape myths, but from issues relating to how the “cult of masculinity” harms and warps men (which leads in turn to some men harming women). I don’t think that framing the discussion of men’s place in feminism within a discussion of rape, as David has, is likely to be productive, or to reassure women who are skeptical of what, if anything, men can offer feminism.

* * *

There is one piece of news from the research on rape which I think is worth pointing out. In Mary Koss’ study of college women’s experiences, about three-fourths of the women who had been raped, did not identify their experience as “definitely” rape. That study took place in the mid-eighties, about two decades ago. A more recent study of college women’s experiences, conducted by the Federal government, found that about half of the women who had been raped, identified their experience as rape. If these results are comparable, that suggests that rape myths – such as “it’s not rape if I didn’t resist enough” or “it’s not rape if it’s my boyfriend” – may be less likely to be believed by women today, compared to 20 years ago. Let’s hope that trend continues.

[Edited to add the quote from Cheryl.]

Related link added in 2017: Why Are Women Reluctant to Use the Word Rape? – Flare

NOTE: This comments thread is reserved for feminist, pro-feminist, and feminist-friendly posters only. If you suspect you wouldn’t fit into Amp’s conception of “feminist, pro-feminist, or feminist-friendly,” then please don’t contribute to the comments following this post.
Posted in Mary Koss controversy, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 97 Comments

Partisan Thinkers Don't Use Reasoning

Posted on January 26, 2006 by Ampersand

A new study has used brainscans (specifically, fMRIs) to demonstrate that partisan Democrats and Republicans don’t use the areas of their brains associated with reasoning when faced with criticism of their candidate.

During the study, the partisans were given 18 sets of stimuli, six each regarding President George W. Bush, his challenger, Senator John Kerry, and politically neutral male control figures such as actor Tom Hanks. For each set of stimuli, partisans first read a statement from the target (Bush or Kerry). The first statement was followed by a second statement that documented a clear contradiction between the target’s words and deeds, generally suggesting that the candidate was dishonest or pandering.

Next, partisans were asked to consider the discrepancy, and then to rate the extent to which the person’s words and deeds were contradictory. Finally, they were presented with an exculpatory statement that might explain away the apparent contradiction, and asked to reconsider and again rate the extent to which the target’s words and deeds were contradictory.

Behavioral data showed a pattern of emotionally biased reasoning: partisans denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate that they had no difficulty detecting in the opposing candidate. Importantly, in both their behavioral and neural responses, Republicans and Democrats did not differ in the way they responded to contradictions for the neutral control targets, such as Hanks, but Democrats responded to Kerry as Republicans responded to Bush.

While reasoning about apparent contradictions for their own candidate, partisans showed activations throughout the orbital frontal cortex, indicating emotional processing and presumably emotion regulation strategies. There also were activations in areas of the brain associated with the experience of unpleasant emotions, the processing of emotion and conflict, and judgments of forgiveness and moral accountability.

Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning (as well as conscious efforts to suppress emotion).

Is anyone surprised?

I think there could be interesting follow-up studies done. In particular, fMRIs could be used to see if there are any educational backgrounds which make it more likely that students will using their dorsolateral prefrontal cortexes when they think about politics. For instance, does legal training help? Philosophical training? Debate?

Does listening to overtly partisan news sources (AirAmerica or Rush, say) make it more or less likely that subjects will use reasoning? How about mainstream news? Etc.

Incidently, the lead author of this study also writes novelty Christmas songs. Just goes to show, even someone who studies thinking for a living can slip up…

Hat tip: Cathy Young.

UPDATE: It’s worth noting, I think, that this study was only of male partisans. A follow-up study including women would need to be done to know if these results are applicable to female partisans. I suspect they are, however; I think partisanship makes everyone stupid.

Posted in Elections and politics, Whatever | 21 Comments

Who Wins Custody in Contested Divorce Cases?

Posted on January 23, 2006 by Ampersand

In the Boston Globe, “conservative/libertarian feminist” Cathy Young criticizes the empirical support for a recent PBS special about child abuse:

Thus, the reports cite the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s Gender Bias Study of 1989 as proof that fathers who seek custody receive it at least 70 percent of the time … even though this study does not distinguish custody disputes from cases in which the father got custody by mutual agreement. […] No mention is made of much larger, representative studies of divorcing couples (such as the one reported by Stanford University psychologist Eleanor Maccoby and Harvard law professor Robert Mnookin in the 1992 book ”Dividing the Child”) showing that far fewer fathers than mothers get the custodial arrangements they want.

I haven’t seen the PBS special, nor all the evidence Cathy reviews, so I can’t comment on Cathy’s larger points. But I can safely say that Cathy displays a double-standard in the quoted paragraph. It’s true that Dividing the Child found that “far fewer fathers than mothers get the custodial arrangements they want,” but by putting it that way, Cathy fails to distinguish between custody disputes which reached an out-of-court settlement – what you might call “custody by mutual agreement” – and custody disputes in which the Court made the decision. (Also, scroll down to the update – Cathy’s description of the Massachusetts Study is dubious as well).

Here’s a quote from Dividing the Child (it’s a bit long – but if you don’t want to read the whole thing, make sure you at least read the first and final paragraphs):

We have found that although mothers receive sole physical custody in the vast majority of cases, the proportion of joint or father custody outcomes approaches 50 percent for high-conflict families. At first blush, this finding would appear to disprove allegations that the California divorce process reflects and perpetuates gender bias. Why, after all, shouldn’t a 50-50 distribution of outcomes suggest gender neutrality?

Both advocates for women’s rights and advocates for fathers’ rights would probably reject this reading of our findings, and in fact the presence or absence of gender bias in the legal process is not so simple to establish. A fathers’ rights group might well argue that since the overall gender ratio in cases where there are conflicting requests is 2 to 1, the law in action still reflects a maternal presumption. Why, after all, would fathers who conceded custody at lower levels of the conflict pyramid have settled for less than they wanted if they believed they had a 50 percent chance? Advocates for women, on the other hand, would counter that our findings demonstrate that escalation of legal conflict over custody clearly operates to the benefit of fathers. As we demonstrated in Chapter 3 before divorce mothers are the primary caretakers of children far more often than men. Thus, a 50-50 distribution of outcomes should be considered neither fair nor neutral. Rather, a “fair” distribution of outcomes should reflect differences in the care-taking base rate for mothers and fathers.

Alternatively, suppose that, on the merits, custody claims of mothers were, on the average, no stronger than the claims of fathers. (Imagine a judge going into her chambers and flipping a coin in all contested cases.) The outcome ratios might still vary by conflict level if most mothers simply cared more about the custodial outcomes than most fathers, and were therefore more prepared to escalate the conflict to a higher level rather than settle for less than their preferred custodial alternative. Because it takes time and energy to work one’s way up the conflict pyramid, this would imply that only in a small minority of families would the father be prepared to pay the price, even though those who did so might have a 50 percent chance of prevailing.

But one thing does seem reasonably clear: our finding that the gender ratio of custody decrees at the top approaches 50-50 even though the overall ratio among conflicted cases is closer to 2 to 1 in favor of mothers demonstrates neither the presence nor the absence of gender bias.

So when the Massachusetts Supreme Court study fails to distinguish between “custody by mutual agreement” and “custody disputes,” (or did it? see the update below) Cathy says that’s bad and wrong. But when Cathy herself cites a study to prove overwhelming male disadvantage, but lumps in “custody by mutual agreement” with cases decided by Judges – even though the Judges’ decisions were 50/50 between mothers and fathers – is that any better?

[UPDATE (posted 5:30pm Tuesday): It appears I may have misunderstood the Maccoby and Mnookin quote I posted – how embarrassing! When they say “fathers who conceded custody at lower levels of the conflict pyramid,” they are referring to fathers who choose not to appeal after losing custody in a lower court. Counting all cases, mothers win twice as often as fathers; counting only those cases in which neither party settled for the lower court decision, fathers had about a 50/50 chance of winning.. Unfortunately, I can’t find my darned copy of the book, so I can’t settle this for sure today.

So Cathy’s citation of the Maccoby and Mnookin study may not be as bad as I thought. Nonetheless, the caveat that fathers who don’t give up early in the process get what they want 50% of the time is still a rather important thing for Cathy to have left out. And the following paragraph that I wrote is still good:]

Maccoby and Mnookin explicitly say that their study doesn’t prove or disprove bias against fathers (or against mothers); if Cathy is going to quote their work to suggest Court bias against fathers, she should at least let her readers know that the researchers had a more nuanced view of their results.

Cathy also wrote:

In the same vein, Lasseur’s report is supplemented by a letter signed by ”98 professionals” who support the film’s conclusions … but a number of those ”professionals” are feminist activists, including National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy.

Cathy claims it’s not fair to call her an “anti-feminist,” and I don’t. But I find it odd that a self-identified feminist has so much contempt for feminism that if any feminist activists (many of whom have spent years or decades involved with abuse issues) sign a letter, that is in Cathy’s analysis ipso facto reason to dismiss the entire letter. Maybe next time Cathy should take a moment to examine her own idealogical biases.

(Curtsy: Family Scholars Blog.)

UPDATE: Cathy’s description of the Massachusetts Study’s methods appears to be misleading. Here’s what the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s Gender Bias Study reported (source).

We began our investigation of child custody aware of a common perception that there is a bias in favor of women in these decisions. Our research contradicted this perception. Although mothers more frequently get primary physical custody of children following divorce, this practice does not reflect bias but rather the agreement of the parties and the fact that, in most families, mothers have been the primary caretakers of children. Fathers who actively seek custody obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 70% of the time. Reports indicate, however, that in some cases perceptions of gender bias may discourage fathers from seeking custody and stereotypes about fathers may sometimes affect case outcomes. In general, our evidence suggests that the courts hold higher standards for mothers than fathers in custody determinations.

And then, from page 831 (this quote is the “long version” of the above summary quote):

Although perceptions of bias that discourage fathers from seeking custody are a concern, the outcome of cases in which custody is contested provides a more direct source of information about possible judicial gender bias. We heard testimony from George Kelly, a representative of Concerned Fathers, that in contested custody cases, mothers are awarded physical custody over 90% of the time. Mr. Kelly was unable to provide substantiation, however, and our own investigation revealed a very different picture.

The statewide sample of attorneys who responded to the family law survey had collectively represented fathers seeking custody in over 2,100 cases in the last 5 years. They reported that the fathers obtained primary physical custody in 29% of the cases, and joint physical custody in an additional 65% of the cases. Thus, when fathers actively sought physical custody, mothers obtained primary physical custody in only 7% of cases. The attorneys reported that the fathers had been primary caretakers in 29% of the cases in which they had sought custody.

The preliminary findings of the Middlesex Divorce Research Group relitigation study show a similarly high rate of paternal success, but fewer awards of joint physical custody. In their sample of 700 cases in Middlesex County between 1978 and 1984, fathers had sought custody in 57 cases (8.14% of the sample). In two-thirds of the cases in which fathers sought custody, they received primary physical custody (42% in which fathers were awarded sole legal and sole physical custody, plus 25% in which fathers were awarded joint legal and primary physical custody). Joint physical and joint legal custody was awarded in 3.5% of cases. In 11% of the cases, mothers received primary physical and joint legal custody; in 12%, mothers were awarded sole legal and physical custody; other custodial arrangements were ordered in the remaining cases. Thus, when fathers sought custody, mothers received primary physical custody in fewer than one-quarter of the cases in the Middlesex study. Information about which parent had been the primary caretaker was not available for the Middlesex cases.

These trends were apparent in an earlier study of a sample of 500 Middlesex County cases filed between 1978 and 1981. Fathers had sought sole custody in about 8% of the cases. They received sole custody in 41% of those cases, and joint custody in 38%. In 5% of the cases, custody went to someone other than a parent. In instances in which fathers sought sole custody, mothers received sole custody in only 15% of the cases (Phear et al., 1983).

These statistics may be a surprise to many. They are, however, consistent with findings in other states. A study of court records in Los Angeles County, California, in 1977 found that fathers who sought sole custody obtained it in 63% of the cases (up from a success rate of 37% in 1972) (Weitzman, 1985, p. 233). A nationwide survey of all reported appellate decisions in child custody cases in 1982 found that fathers obtained custody in 51% of the cases, up from an estimated 10% in 1980 (Atkinson, 1984).

The high success rate of fathers does not by itself establish gender bias against women. Additional evidence, however, indicates that women may be less able to afford the lawyers and experts needed in contested custody cases (see “Family Law Overview”) and that, in contested cases, different and stricter standards are applied to mothers.

The Massachusetts Study clearly distinguished between cases where there was “agreement of the parties” and cases in which “fathers… actively seek custody.” Cathy’s claim that “this study does not distinguish custody disputes from cases in which the father got custody by mutual agreement” is exactly the opposite of the truth.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I haven’t watched the documentary or researched every reference in Cathy’s column; I’ve basically just looked at one paragraph. However, in that single paragraph, there are important errors and omissions. My guess is that she trusted second-hand sources that she shouldn’t have, but whatever; the real point is, given the errors we know Cathy has made, none of this column’s claims should be trusted without independent verification.

UPDATE 2: Liznotes has some more comments.

Posted in Anti-feminists and their pals, Families structures, divorce, etc | 33 Comments

Link Farm and Open Thread #7

Posted on January 23, 2006 by Ampersand

What I’ve been reading lately. As always, you are invited to post whatever you want here, including links to your own posts.

In Defense of Sex Positive Feminism
Bitch | Lab defends “sex positive feminism” from a variety of blogger critiques. I have a lot of sympathy for this article – especially the frustration at people who criticize alleged statements of sex positive feminists without actually providing quotes or links. At the same time, I will never like the term “sex positive,” because of the implication that feminists who don’t share those views are “sex negative.”

Jill Fisks an Interview With Anti-Feminist Kate O’Bierne

Changing Jobs from Writer to Janitor
A true-life redemptive tale. As Amber says, it’s very long, “but well-written, so it’s a quick read.”

GenderGeek Discusses Her Past Life As A Christian Fundimentalist

The church, in retrospect, taught me a great deal about how the patriarchy shakes down. I saw that single women were at the bottom of the hierarchy, with marriage a shortcut to power and status within the congregation. I saw many young women, a few years older than myself, rushing to marry young men they barely knew, ablaze with certainty in the gracious provision of a matchmaker deity. I saw women told to avoid the intellectual and spiritual temptations of an Oxford education….

More on The Myth of The Opt-Out Revolution

Showtime Wants To Pick Up Arrested Development
But only if series creator Mitch Hurwitz comes along, and Hurwitz may want to get off this roller-coaster.

On Governor Tim Kaine’s “Discomfort” With The Anti-Gay Legislation He Plans To Sign Anyway

Atrios Gets It Right On Choice For Men

It’s a Big Fat Revolution
If you haven’t yet read Nomy Lamm’s stunningly good, multifacited essay on fat acceptance, you should.

A Sane Position on Iran
At Body and Soul, of course.

Women Are Not Baby-Machines
Redneck Mother relates her own painful reproductive history to her committment to abortion rights.

New Blog To Watch: Feminist Law Professors

Teen Oral Sex Isn’t As One-Sided As We’ve Been Told
There’s been a lot of concern about an “epidemic” of teen girls giving – but not receiving – oral sex. But the research shows that girls are actually a bit more likely to recieve than to give, for whatever that’s worth.

This Is The Title Of The Story, Which Is Also Found Several Times In The Story Itself
This classic recursive short story (very short!) is well worth your time, if you haven’t already read it.

Giving Up On Abortion Rights: All Costs, Few Benefits
Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money questions the current strategy among many (usually male) liberals.

Shorter Peter Morris
Who knew that if you become a father, there’s a chance that one of those icky girls would be born? And that’s just for starters.

Analysis of the Ayotte Decision
Over at ACSBlog, Jennifer Brown of Legal Momentum nutshells the Ayotte decision. Things definitely didn’t go as bad as they might have – I’m grateful this was decided before O’Connor departs.

Medical Innovations Reported In The Canadian Medical Association Journal
“We describe the off-label use of a recreational device (the Super Soaker Max-D 5000) in the alleviation of a socially emergent ear condition…” Via Sisyphus Shrugged.

Groundbreaking Research From The British Medical Journal

A search of the medical and other scientific literature through Google, Google Scholar, and Medline using the keywords “teaspoon”, “spoon”, “workplace”, “loss” and “attrition” revealed nothing about the phenomenon of teaspoon loss. Lacking any guidance from previous researchers, we set out to answer the age old question “Where have all the bloody teaspoons gone?” We aimed to determine the overall rate of loss of teaspoons and the half life of teaspoons in our institute, whether teaspoons placed in communal tearooms were lost at a different rate from teaspoons placed in individual tearooms, and whether better quality teaspoons would be more attractive to spoon shifters or be more highly valued and respected and therefore move and disappear more slowly.

Be sure to scroll to the bottom and read the response letters. Via Riba Rambles, who has many more links along these lines.

Posted in Link farms | 121 Comments

Monday Baby Blogging: Wheeeeee!

Posted on January 23, 2006 by Ampersand

One of Sydney’s favorite things in the world is to sit in a spinning desk chair and, well, spin. She’ll climb into a chair and look hopefully up at any adult in the room, and say, “wee?”

Then once you’ve actually got her spinning, she’ll say “wheeeee! wheeeeeee!” with a huge grin on her face.
Continue reading →

Posted in Baby & kid blogging | 13 Comments

(Very) Basic Economics and Abortion

Posted on January 22, 2006 by Ampersand

I’ve been debating abortion a little on the comments of Post Tenebras Lux (from which I swiped the title of this post). I’m reposting some of my comments here. somewhat edited.

Xon wrote (in part):

If people know that they can get abortions without facing any legal consequences, then this will lead to more people having abortions than we would see when legal penalties are attached. Making abortion legal makes it “cost” less to the people who are considering it (legal risk is reduced almost entirely, the cost of the procedure comes down since it is no longer a black market good). Lower cost means higher demand. So we should expect to see more abortions performed after Roe v. Wade than we saw before. And what do we actually see? Bingo.

How successful has the war on drugs been at lowering demand for pot? How successful was prohibition at lowering demand for alcohol?

Let’s introduce another concept from (very) basic economics into the discussion: elasticity of demand. I’d argue that for pregnant women who don’t want to be mothers, the demand for abortion is extremely inelastic. If I’m correct, then raising the price of abortions – for instance, by making abortions illegal – will have a relatively small impact on demand.

The problem with before-and-after Roe v Wade abortion rate comparisons is that too many people mix up the rate of legal and reported abortions – which obviously went up post-Roe – with the rate of abortions. But in fact, there were about a million abortions a year in the US in the few years before Roe – about the same as there were in the few years just after Roe.

What we need, to lower abortion, is a substitute for abortion. Attacking the supply side won’t do much to lower abortion rates, but attacking the demand side can work. For instance, policies which push birth control on teenagers (including the importance of always using two types at once) so hard the teens get bruised. Countries like Belgium have used this sort of policy to have the lowest abortion rates in the world. I don’t understand why pro-lifers have so little interest in imitating that.

Lux comment-writer Matt Weber responded:

I’d say that legalization of drugs, coupled with the inevitable drop in price that would accompany it, would surely lead to more people taking them. What’s so hard to believe about that?

Nothing. But you’re not understanding the concept of elasticity of demand. If something has an inelastic demand, that doesn’t mean that making it more expensive won’t have any effect on demand, just that the effect won’t be especially large.

Look, let’s say we ban drinking alcohol. That will lower demand for alcohol – but there will still be a huge demand remaining, and the black market will be substantial. That’s because demand for alcohol is pretty inelastic; you can raise the cost a lot, and people will still want it. People want alcohol very badly.

Compare that to banning RCA brand alarm clocks. Such a ban would probably be totally successful, because the demand for RCA alarms is very flexible; people will switch to Sony or Panisonic alarms and never notice the difference. Pretty much no one wants an RCA alarm badly.

Which would you guess the demand for abortion is more like – the demand for alcohol, or the demand for RCA alarms? I’d say the former. Women who want abortions often desparately want one; they’ll take on substantial trouble, risk and expense to get one.

Will you lower demand on the margins by banning abortion? Of course. But it won’t make a very big difference, because the demand for abortion is pretty inelastic.

The countries in the world with the lowest abortion rates are countries where abortion is legal – without exception. No country has ever succeeded in getting to a really low abortion rate by banning abortion.

Do you believe in the marketplace or not? If you do, then you have to admit that when the demand is high enough, the market mostly finds a way around barriers – and that includes legal barriers.

The only way to have a really low abortion rate is to lower demand, rather than banning supply. That means pushing birth control on teens as if it were oxygen, and also providing painfully generous welfare support for single mothers.

Will that have negative side effects? Maybe. But if pro-lifers are serious about lowering the abortion rate, they should be willing to consider the trade-offs. What good is an “idealogically correct” approach to lowering abortion rates, if it doesn’t actually work very well compared to other methods?

For the record though, I have no idea how an accurate statistic regarding the number of illegal abortions might be compiled.

One method is to do a representative sample survey and ask women if they’ve had an abortion. This will lead to an underestimate of the true number of abortions, since people are strongly motivated to lie about having committed illegal acts (and even where it’s legal, many women prefer not to admit having had an abortion), but it’ll at least give you a baseline to work from.

Xon responded:

My own understanding is that abortions occurred far less frequently pre Roe v. Wade, and I am not aware of anything that would support the “one million a year” number you presented. But I’m open to your evidence, bored as my inner philosopher may become (I can usually keep him under control if I need to).

Dammit, why must it always come down to evidence! :-P

Although measuring something as hidden as illegal abortions is always difficult, the best pre-Roe scholarly assessment came to a figure of about a million abortions a year (“…prior to the adoption of more moderate abortion laws in 1967, there were 1 million abortions annually nationwide, of which 8000 were legal.” From Christopher Tietze, “Abortion on request: its consequences for population trends and public health,” Seminars in Psychiatry 1970;2:375-381, quoted in JAMA December 9, 1992).

Another option is to look at what happens to birth rates; a sudden, large increase in abortions should lead to a corresponding sudden decline in the birth rate. So if Roe caused a big jump in abortions in its first few years, we’d see it as a decline in the birthrate. So what actually happened after Roe was passed?

      Year  Births   Birthrate

      1973  3,136,965   14.9
      1974  3,159,958   14.9
      1975  3,144,198   14.8
      1976  3,167,788   14.8
      1977  3,326,632   15.4
      1978  3,333,279   15.3
      1979  3,494,398   15.9
      1980  3,612,258   15.9

Similarly, what happened when Poland banned abortions in the 1990s? If pro-life policies reduce abortion significantly, there would have been a spike in Poland’s birthrate. But Poland’s birth rate remained steady. (See Reproductive Health Matters (Volume 10, Issue 19 , May 2002): “The restrictive abortion law in Poland has not increased the number of births.”)

My own argument against abortion is hardly an economic one. It is a moral argument. Abortion should be illegal because it is prima facie a form of murder (i.e., unjustified killing of a human being). There may very well be other, better ways to actually decrease its occurence, and I’m open to such suggestions. But it should be illegal on top of those other ways, for the simple fact that murder ought to be illegal regardless of the deterring effects of its illegality.

There are three questions this brings up, in my view.

First of all, has the pro-life movement actually been proposing that we treat abortion as if it were murder?

I’d say not. The most recent federal partial-birth abortion ban, for example, said that mothers absolutely cannot be punished for their part in abortion; doctors could be punished by a fine.

Is there anyone in the world willing to endorse this policy for a murdered five year old child? A mother hires a hit man to kill her five-year-old child; if that happens, should we have a law saying that no matter what the mother cannot be punished, and the most that happens to the hit man is a fine?

The argument that pro-lifers can’t consider what is practical, because of their unshakable moral commitment to treating abortion as murder, falls apart when we look at the laws pro-lifers propose.

Second question: Is the “let’s do it both ways” plan viable, or are abortion reduction strategies a binary, one-or-the-other choice?

I’d say it’s one or the other. The U.S. has a two party system; no matter how nuanced our personal positions, the real choice we make is between column D and column R. One party supports policies that have actually led to low abortion rates in the real world, but opposes a ban. The other party opposes policies that have actually led to low abortion rates, but supports a ban. And that’s our choice.

And it’s a choice that matters in the real world. If the US had an abortion rate as low as Belgium’s, that would mean something between 700,000 and 800,000 fewer abortions a year, according to my seat-of-the-pants calculations.

Which brings me to my third question. In a system that forces us to choose between one or the other, which is better: 700,000 murders potentially prevented, or 700,000 murders not prevented plus an official statement calling abortion murder?

I don’t know what Xon’s position is. But the pro-life movement as a whole clearly favors the latter policy. And I find that incomprehensible. Putting abstract principle above 700,000 lives doesn’t seem like a supportable position, to me, and certainly undermines the pro-life claim to be motivated only by caring about what happens to babies.

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights | 183 Comments

Pro-Marriage Equality Ruling in Maryland

Posted on January 21, 2006 by Ampersand

From Gay City News:

A Baltimore trial judge ruled in favor of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking same-sex marriage in Maryland on January 20. The ruling by Circuit Judge M. Brooke Murdock found that a statute banning same-sex marriages violated the Equal Rights Amendment of the Maryland Constitution, which forbids the state from discriminating on the basis of sex. […]

Focusing “strict scrutiny” on the marriage ban, Murdock wrote, “There is no apparent compelling state interest in a statutory prohibition of same-sex marriage discriminating, on the basis of sex, against those individuals whose gender is identical to their intended spouses. Indeed, this Court is unable to even find that the prohibition of same-sex marriage rationally relates to a legitimate state interest.”

Thus, according to Murdock, the state failed even to meet the lowest legal hurdle for justifying a ban on gay marriage.

This pleases me immensely, not just because it’s a victory, but because judge based her decision on a theory of sex discrimination.

Of course, this is a lower court, so it doesn’t mean that much; the decision has been stayed pending appeals. The big question is, will anti-marriage-equality forces manage to push through a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage before the Maryland Supreme Court ever hears the case? Amending the Maryland Constitution is not especially hard (at least, not compared to Massachusetts) – 60% of both houses of the state legislature must approve of the amendment, and once that happens a majority of the voters has to vote for it – so, unfortunately, marriage equality opponents have a pretty good shot. The Maryland House of Reps will be holding hearings January 31st to discuss this court ruling; no doubt someone will propose a Constitutional amendment at that time.

One sliver of hope: the Maryland state legislature is dominated by Democrats (House: 98-43, Senate: 33-14), so maybe there’s a small chance of defeating the anti-SSM amendment, or at least slow-tracking it.

Judge Murdock’s decision can be read here (pdf file).

UPDATE: Here’s a Washington Post article on the reaction among Maryland’s politicians. Shorter version of story: Democrats are fightened and hoping that the Maryland Supreme Court will overturn this decision (what wonderful allies Democrats are!); the Republicans are delighted and hoping that a ballot measure constitutional amendment will bring their voters to the polls. It’s not clear what the Maryland Supreme Court will decide on this issue.

Posted in Same-Sex Marriage | 14 Comments

Tomorrow is Blog For Choice Day!

Posted on January 21, 2006 by Ampersand

I’ve got to pay more attention…. well, better late than never. Click on the image for details.

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights | 4 Comments

Link Farm and Open Thread #6

Posted on January 21, 2006 by Ampersand

You know the drill, folks – here’s some of what I’ve been reading lately, in no particular order. Please feel free to comment on these links, or to post your own links (including your own stuff, if you want!), or to just discuss whatever the heck you want to discuss.

It Won’t Be The Same
Lauren of Feministe is calling it quits. Damn, damn, damn, damn. I mean, best wishes to Lauren and all – but, at the same time, damn, damn, damn, damn.

The Seventh Carnival of the Feminists!

Because Nothing Illustrates The Extent of Homophobia Like Maps
Daddy, Papa and Me illustrates the growth of homophobia – and homo-friendliness – since same-sex marriage moved onto the national agenda. Trey also has some predictions for the future. I think this is an excellent post, but we should also remember that the gay-friendly coasts represent a much bigger share of the US population than their modest square miles indicate.

Report: Women and Children in an Insecure World
This report attempts to summarize the harm done to women worldwide by abuse, rape, and war.

Disputed Study Finds Low Rates Of Prison Rape
I’d be delighted if it turns out that prison rape really is rare; but, alas, there’s a good chance that this new study is bullshit.

Boy Brains and Girl Brains
Lindsey comments on the latest “boy brains” article, this time one from The New Republic. The article in question (which is behind a sign-up barrier) claims that teachers have to adapt to teaching to the biologically different brains of boys – but also has a few examples of schools that have been perfectly successful at teaching boys without using different methods for them, or having lower expectations. If boys have biologically different brains, shouldn’t that be the case universally?

You Know What I Love About Barry Windsor Smith?
It’s the way he draws tall grass.

Personhood: Is a Fetus a Person?
Excellent essay outlining the pro-choice position on personhood. I don’t agree with every bit of it, but it’s a good read and a good summary.

Yet Another Depression/Abortion Study
The latest abortion-causes-depression study, this time from New Zealand. I’ve read the study, and it’s better than past studies which have made similar claims; this one deserves to be taken seriously (although it’s been criticized). Nonetheless – and as the authors admit – the study doesn’t make the comparison that matters most, between mental illness among women with unwanted pregnancies who gave birth, and mental illness among women with unwanted pregnancies who had abortions.

Abortion Doesn’t Cause Depression, Stigma Causes Depression
[Curtsy: I Wish I Was Ern Malley.]

Or Maybe It’s Children That Cause Depression
[Curtsy: Whinging in New Zealand.]

The Religious Right Is More Opposed To Freedom Than The Religious Left
Well, that’s what I think, anyhow. I’ve been debating the question with some folks in the comments of Cathy Young’s blog.

Lies, Coercion, and Disrespect: Crisis Pregnancy Centers At Work
Jill at Feministe critiques the Crisis Pregnancy Center movement. Check out Stone Court, too: God Wants You To Lie.

Bashing Feminists
Elizabeth Anderson catches the New York Times spreading the “Mackinnon says all sex is rape” slander.

Here’s a measure of how much a group is despised: how much malicious absurdity can one ascribe to its members and still be taken as a credible source on what they say and do? With respect to feminists, the answer is quite a lot.

Elizabeth Anderson is one of my favorite feminists in the blogosphere. Check out her concise and lethal critique of Christina Hoff Sommers’ boy-crisis anti-feminism, and also her discussion of feminist epistemology and its critics. And her defense of the Kelo decision, while not feminism-related, is excellent.

More on Child Support
Excellent post by Amanda at Pandagon, partly bouncing off recent posts here at “Alas.”

Anyway, the other thing I find fascinating about this myth that women trap men with sex and babies is it’s such a reversal of reality”“in the real world, the people whose options are more likely to be severely limited by childbearing are women than men.

Read the comments, too – it’s good to be reminded that some divorced dads remain decent guys.

Mothers Don’t Get To Assume That Parenthood Is Just Writing Checks

…Men and women are operating from very different sets of assumptions. The women are assuming that if they choose to have a child they will be an active caregiver, that the child will be with them, and that they will have to at least try to provide the many kinds of support that every child needs in order to thrive. They are also facing the hard fact that they may have to provide some or all of these things themselves, all on their own.

The men are acknowledging that they may have little or no control over whether an unplanned child is born. From there, they appear to assume that they won’t be around for any actual child-rearing, or even for a relationship with the child. The men are laying claim to the privilege of continuing their regular life, writing a check once a month and being done with it.

Tom DeLay Denies All Charges (As Told by Dr. Suess)
Scroll down to the January 16th entry to read it. It’s great, trust me.

Life In Prison For a Pound and a Half of Pot

Caitlin Flanagan Reviews The Rainbow Party

In addition to the predictable, outraged criticism that this vile book has received, there is a question of veracity: as many readers have noted, wouldn’t the different colors of lipstick smear together, destroying the desired rainbow effect? Not once, however, has another question been posed: How many boys could successfully receive seven blowjobs in an hour? Surely even the adolescent male at the peak of his sexual prime needs at least a few minutes to reload. One would assume that the first transaction would be completed at light speed, that the second might take a bit longer — and that by the fourth or fifth even the horniest tenth-grader might display some real staying power. But asking questions like these will automatically preclude you from entering the current oral-sex hysteria….

Air American Fails To Support Fat Activism

Oops. My Bad.
It turns out I was wrong to call it “The Mo Movie Measure.”

The Argument For A Working Families Party In Oregon
Really excellent, pro-fusion-party essay.

Posted in Link farms | 14 Comments

TV News from TV Gal

Posted on January 19, 2006 by Ampersand

Over at TV Gal, a Fox Entertainment executive is quoted saying that Arrested Development still has a chance:

“I have to be frank with you, it is highly unlikely the show is coming back. But no definitive, final answer has been made on that,” he said.

“Basically we’ll wind up looking at where our development is,” he later added. “We’ll wind up seeing what those four episodes (airing Feb. 10 as a season finale) do. We anticipate those four episodes will be populated by the loyal audience and we’re in dialogue with Mitch all the time.”

Bur of course, those last four episodes are being aired in a two-hour lump opposite the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. So when he says we’ll be “Seeing what those four episodes do,” he means “we’ve driven the final nail into the coffin.”

In other Fox news, Malcolm in the Middle has been canceled (I like the show, but yeah, it’s time); Sam’s murderer on Reunion, had it not been canceled, would probably have been Sam’s daughter; Prison Break will return March 20th; and there are unverified rumors that Futurama will get a new season.

Non-Fox bits of news from TV Gal: Gilmore Girls is going to be back next season, but it looks like writer/creator Amy Sherman-Palladino may move on to a new project. I hope this won’t be like the last two Joss-less seasons of Buffy. (Then again, the West Wing has been great this season – and there is simply no show on TV with more kick-ass, powerful female characters. Although I’m now dying of curiosity to see how they write the Leo character out of the show.)

In the “that sounds interesting” category, “Farscape creator Rockne O’Bannon is developing Cult, about a TV show that’s twisting the lives of its audience, starring Matthew Bomer.” I have no idea who Bomer is, but I loved Farscape (after the terrible first season).

And in the “say it ain’t so, Joe” category, “Ellen DeGeneres and her brother Vance are concocting a live-action comedy called My Dog Sparky, depicting contemporary American family life from the point of view of the family dog, who will be voiced by Ellen.” I really, really want to like Ellen – I loved her old sit-com, and her stand-up act – but Sparky sounds like it would have to climb long and high to reach “vomit-worthy” level.

Finally, an interesting story about when Monty Python sued ABC for broadcasting edited versions of Flying Circus.

Posted in Popular (and unpopular) culture | 9 Comments