(This post is a copy of an email I just sent to Glenn Sacks. Glenn Sacks is the host of “His Side,” a men’s rights radio show. Tonight’s guest was Hugo Schwyzer. I thought Hugo did a terrific job, but I won’t comment further on that here – I figure that Hugo will probably post about it on his own blog, so if I’ve got anything to say about that I can wait and post it in Hugo’s comments.) ((In 2005, most people – me included – were still being fooled by Hugo’s act. Mea culpa, mea culpa.))
(More “Alas” posts on the Mary Koss “controversy.”)
Glenn –
Thanks for letting me speak on your show tonight! It was fun. If I ever call again, I’ll try to be more eloquent.
After I hung up, you described Mary Koss’ study – and, specifically, her finding in the 80s that 1 in 4 women had been victims of rape or attempted rape – as “discredited.” I have to wonder – what does the word “discredited” mean to you?
Usually, when talking about an academic study, a “discredited” study is one whose findings have been disproven by later studies, and which is no longer cited in peer-reviewed journals.
In contrast, Koss’ major findings have, as I imagine you know, been supported by many recent studies, including two nationwide studies conducted by the Federal government. As for citations, this past May I looked up Koss’ two Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology reports on the “ISI Web of Science Citation Index.” At that time, 611 articles came up that cited one or both articles since 1992; the most recent citation was less than a week old. I skimmed the first few pages, and as far as I could tell the citations were respectful, not cautionary or dismissive.
Of course, Koss has published facets of her study in many places besides those two articles. My guess is that a complete search for citations of all Koss’ publications based on this study, would find well over a thousand citations.
I realize, of course, that Koss’ work has been widely criticized in non-peer-reviewed publications by anti-feminists and men’s rights advocates. However, surely that alone doesn’t make it fair to call an academic study “discredited”! Koss’ major findings have been replicated, and her work continues to be frequently cited in peer-reviewed journals. By any reasonable standard for judging academic work, that’s just the opposite of being discredited.
Barry
[Update: Edited to correct the spelling of Glenn’s name. Sorry ’bout that, Glenn!]
Of course I’ll blog about it tomorrow afternoon! In the meantime, Amp, thanks for your call — your point about the struggle not being a zero-sum game was most welcome. Nice to put a voice to the name I know!
And great points about this study as well. Radio is a tough format; everything is so damned fast!
Cheers
H
I still cannot figure out what they hope to gain by insisting that rape is slightly less common than Koss’s study indicates. Okay, so what if we find one day that only 1 in 5 women has been sexually assaulted. Does this mean anti-rape campaigns are a sham? If 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 people had a car stolen, we sure as hell wouldn’t be quibbling over the numbers, but would be looking for solutions.
I think “debunkers” typically decide to count date rape as not “real” rape and thus diminish Koss’ figures by 80-90 percent.
The debunkers also discount attempted rape. If a woman was assaulted, but able to get away, it doesn’t “count”.
Amanda:
I fear that what they think they have to gain is explained by the simple fact that they are not acting in good faith. I try to keep conversations civil with people who repeat the hatchet-jobs on Koss (most of them copied, directly or ultimately, out of Katie Roiphe’s hatchet-job in The Morning After), but a lot of them are more interested in indiscriminately throwing mud on the survey (and therefore not having to discuss how prevalent rape is at all) than they are in finding out what the truth of the matter might be.
The standard-issue attack that Koss includes sex while intoxicated, for example, is completely trivial: Koss went ahead and ran the numbers over again with those cases excluded, and found that 1 in 5 college women had suffered rape or attempted rape if you stuck to a definition based only on direct force or threats of violence. Anyone who was honestly interested in the possible limitation of Koss’s figures or in making sure that feminists base their arguments on careful and accurate use of social science results could have found this out by reading either Koss’s primary articles or reports such as I Never Called It Rape. But they don’t, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that many of the people who do this–and certainly those who do it in print–are just a bit more interested in cooking up an excuse to dismiss feminist analyses of rape than they are in finding out the truth.
A lot of the attacks on the Koss study are, quite frankly, nut much different from the tactics that rapists’ defenders use against individual survivors in the courtroom: discredit the woman who is sitting there telling you what happened to her as crazy, slutty, unscrupulous, hysterical, etc., and you don’t have to deal with the hard question of figuring out what exactly did happen. It’s slime-and-defend without regard for the truth, whether used to dismiss personal testimony or statistical research.
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Good point, Rad Geek. I guess as usual I do better at understanding some people if I remember they are arguing in bad faith, like the majority of “pro-lifers” do.
Of course, even the “can’t count intoxication” argument strikes me as being really disingenous. I would say that raping drunk women happens all the time. There’s borderline cases, of course, but plenty of men prey on drunk women full well intending to rape and then try to pass it off as bad drunk sex.
Amanda:
Good points. I definitely agree with you that this line of criticism is bunkum. For one, it rules out a lot of indisputable non-borderline cases of rape in which men rape women after they have passed out or been physically disabled by alcohol or date-rape drugs. For two, the criticism is usually based on distortions of Koss’s question–which was not whether the woman ever had sex while she was drunk / intoxicated, but whether a man had ever had sex with her when she didn’t want to, after he had given her drugs or alcohol. That’s pretty clearly a predatory dynamic, but Koss’s critics prefer to whitewash it by changing the question. And for three, it seems to be part of a larger pattern of acting as if feminists have to rule anything that passes for normal het male dating behavior as therefore out of bounds for criticism. To hell with that!
It’s just also worth pointing out, I think, that even if you concede all the cases they complain about, the numbers stay very close to what they were, whether in Koss’s study or in later studies such as the National Violence Against Women Survey, and that these numbers are very easy to find, and that the Men’s Rights bully-boys and professional antifeminists don’t bother to even look around for 5 minutes to check them out. Not everyone who’s skeptical of Koss’s findings acts like this, but many of them are very clearly interested in dismissing entirely by innuendo and armchair speculation, rather than looking at the readily available data. And that’s pretty indicative of how they are approaching the subject.
“I guess as usual I do better at understanding some people if I remember they are arguing in bad faith, like the majority of “pro-lifers”? do.”
Does a gratuitous slam at (roughly) half the population of the United States, on a different topic altogether, really advance your case? Just askin’.
I don’t know why men’s rights advocates attack Koss’ work; however, the main reason I would be concerned with its accuracy or lack thereof (I have no opinion) is that it is very difficult to discuss questions of public policy without good data.
I can see one very good reason that feminists should be skeptical of work that finds high values for rape without extremely solid empirical backing. That reason is this simple, plausible, scenario: say your movement has spent ten years investing political and intellectual capital defending a study that finds 33% of all women have been raped as of a particular date. Then another social scientist comes along and, with better data and/or methodology, finds a significantly lower incidence – say 15%, as of the date ten years later.
Now, anti-feminists are going to argue “see? the problem is real, but it’s halved over the last ten years, so obviously your belief that the problem is integrally connected to the patriarchy is overblown”. And you’re pretty much screwed as far as responses; you can’t turn around and say the old study was crap, because you’ve been defending it like Omaha Beach all this time. You can’t say the new study is crap, because its got better data/methodology than the one you’ve been fighting for.
So that’s why, in my book anyway, feminists ought to be the ones turning the most skeptical eye on any study that supports their worldview – they can’t afford to invest in the defense of things that turn out to be untrue (again, not saying Koss isn’t true – I just don’t know). In the general case, it’s why any scientist ought to be most suspicious of data that supports his/her hypothesis.
Robert, the numbers are good. And if you were a feminist who offered a sympathetic ear to victims of sexual assault, you wouldn’t be surprised one bit at them. And I’m not roaming around trying to get people who think that I should be punished for fornication with pregnancy to like me. Sorry.
Rad Geek, on top of it, some sexual predators also enter into situations where women feel safe to imbibe and join the party looking for women who are maybe not completely incapacitated but surely had too many to put up a good fight. That’s roughly the situation that happened to me–friend’s birthday party, thought I was amongst friends, not really drunk but not sober either, ugh. Luckily, the sex crimes department here is stellar or the assailant would have gotten away with arguing that a clearly non-consensual encounter was in fact consensual.
“And I’m not roaming around trying to get people who think that I should be punished for fornication with pregnancy to like me.”
You are certainly entitled to treat other people as you see fit.
The broad political grouping that I find myself a part of has adopted a different approach. We don’t all agree on everything, but we have agreed to support one another on the issues that we do agree on. And, as part of our compact, we each try our best to refrain from casting aspersions at one another – so I don’t call my bozo fundamentalist friends bozos, for example. It makes coalition building much more effective, as we’re able to reach out to groups with whom we have any common ground at all.
Other political groupings adopt a different strategy – one where ideological purity on a wide range of issues is required before there can be any cooperation, mutual respect, or basic courtesy. This prevents idiosyncrasy and heresy from infecting the loyal troops; you can’t be infected by the evil meme if you drive off the memebearers with vitriol.
So far, my side has taken control of the government, is setting the national and regional agenda on many-to-most of the items that are important to us, and is daily making huge inroads on the popular culture.
How’s your side doing?
Robert, I’ll believe you are making “huge inroads on the popular culture” when Fox starts showing only family-friendly programming and the news. Popular culture hasn’t changed a whit, and it’s precisely the demographic that shrieks about family values that puts its dollars down on keeping it from changing. As for abortion, the vast majority of Americans want it to remain legal as long as it’s available to them personally, so no worries there. For the rest, well, I suppose I can always immigrate to Israel if my kids are still school-age when your “side” starts making everybody pray to Jesus before cookie and juice break.
College is one of the most dangerous places for women in terms of sexual assault, actually, so it’s unsurprising you see high numbers there. I was just reading an article in last month’s issue of Trial magazine (ATLA’s monthly mag) discussing safety issues on college campuses, and the extremely high risk of rape and other violence to college students.
You don’t agree on anything except what “feminists” think, right?
That, and making everyone pray to Jesus during cookie break. (Punishing women who have sex with pregnancy is only a 90% consensus item. The other 10% also want to impose pregnancy via in-vitro injections on women who think about sex.)
Unless they’re black or Mexican, of course, in which case, abort away!
Honestly. Do the mental cartoons you have drawn of people who think differently than you give you comfort? Because they’re sure not adding much to the attractiveness of your ideas to neutral or undecided parties.
For every one abortion opponent who actually worries about babies and works to increase women’s access to birth control, the only known way to reduce the abortion rate, there seem to be 100 people who just say if you pay, you play. There are a handful of pro-lifers who actually believe in life and work against war and poverty. But I’m not going to pretend they are a significant percentage of the movement, and neither should you.
As one of those pro-lifers whom Amanda describes as rare, I’m afraid I have to agree with her characterization. Those of us who see the struggle against abortion as part of a larger struggle to make all life sacred (rather than as a single overriding issue) are rarer than we’d like to be.
Hugo, in your recent post at your blog about the four types of groups that make up the “men’s movement” (which post I enjoyed very much, by the way), you mention the PKers and similar groups. Those are evangelical men who believe in a culture of life, if not as consistently as you might like, and who have a Christ-centered ethic. Do you think that these millions of men (and their millions of wives) are pro-life because they want to “punish [Amanda] for fornication” ?
It’s possible in observing the “other” on any particular issue to find a wide variety of motivations. There are people who are pro-choice because, although they weep for lost babies, they believe that women must have autonomy over their bodies. There are people who are pro-choice because they think fetuses are relatively unimportant compared to individual freedom. There are people who are pro-choice because they think the world is overpopulated and they support anything that lowers the number of live births. There are pro-choicers who hate all life and worship Satan and want the human species to end in death and blood. (Not too many of the last group, I hope.) And of course there are lots of other motivations.
Picking the least savory alternative, and presenting it as the monolithic whole, is an effective tactic in demonizing the enemy. However, I don’t think it’s a very effective tactic if the aim is to have discourse, to find truths in the thoughts of others, or to build support for a particular political position. I’m a pro-life moderate, and I’m not going to build bridges to moderate pro-choicers, or convince wavering pro-lifers, by ranting about the blood-drinking feminist priesthood of death.
That would simply be childish.
Robert, you’ve expressed plenty of opinions that make it all too clear that you are one of those who has trouble disentangling “pro-life” from controlling women. But I did offer that there are a handful who don’t. But they are a small group because, well, that’s not what this is about, is it?
I write about abortion constantly. I have only had one or two commenters–ever–that have managed to make a pro-life argument without invoking the need to rein in women’s selfishness as their primary motivation.
Of course, as I said before, the acid test for who actually wants to save babies and doesn’t really care what women do in bed is their support for cheap, accessible birth control and widespread sex education. If women don’t get pregnant to begin with, they don’t have abortions. Simple as that.
But I just don’t see Operation Rescue and all those other groups, and I see very, very, very, very few “pro-lifers” actually out there advocating policies that would reduce the abortion rate. Mostly it’s just a “you pay, you play” attitude that treats pregnancy as rightful punishment for sluttiness.
Robert, I’ve met pro-lifers with a wide variety of motives. One of the reasons I am uncomfortable with some pro-lifers is that, as Amanda suggests, the pro-life movement is a vehicle for their hostility towards sexual freedom for women. But it would be grossly unfair to say that that describes all, or even most, pro-lifers. Opposition to abortion is rooted in many things, and the pro-life movement is more diverse than we often give it credit for being.
I don’t blog much about abortion anymore; I’m in a self-imposed period of silence on the issue. I am, however, clear that greater male responsibility and self-control is a key component in the struggle both for women’s liberation and to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies (and abortions.) And it is there I am choosing to put my energy.
Amp, these math questions are getting harder.
Robert, your analogy is illogical. You’re comparing how people within “the broad political grouping that [you] find [yourself] part of” treat each other, to how Amanda treats you. Unless you’re claiming that Amanda should view you as part of Amanda’s own broad political grouping, your comparison is apples and oranges.
A more logical comparison would ask, how does Amanda treats people within her own broad political grouping who disagree with her on abortion? (For instance, how does she treat Hugo?) Or, alternatively, you should ask myself and Amanda how the broad political grouping you are part of treats people like, well, me and Amanda – do they universally treat us with “mutual respect” and “basic courtesy,” or do many of your fellow-travelors call us baby-killers and feminazis?
It’s also worth remembering that there used to be a strong pro-choice movement within the Republican party. They left because they were purposely and consciously maginalized and chased out by Reagan conservatives. (One longtime pro-choice Republican activist wrote a book on what she percieved as her expulsion from the party.) Do you suppose those folks would generally agree that Republican pro-lifers are open to dissent?
* * *
I’d never argue against basic courtesy. But I do think some ideological purity – at least when it comes to basic questions, like “are you against bigotry” – can be a good thing. Conservative and Republican victories, Robert, are based strongly on the fact that even those members of the alliance who do not personally favor bigotry against queers are more than willing to ally themselves with those who do.
I don’t think there’s any serious question that hatred and fear of gays was an important part of the 2004 Republican strategy. I’m not saying that all members of your political alliance hate queers in their hearts. However, I don’t think that a courtious, tolorant alliance with bigots is something to be proud of.
Hugo:
“I am, however, clear that greater male responsibility and self-control is a key component”
Hear, hear.
Amp:
(How do you do that neat box thing?)
“Unless you’re claiming that Amanda should view you as part of Amanda’s own broad political grouping, your comparison is apples and oranges.”
You are right, Amanda should not view me as part of her broad political grouping. She should instead view me as someone who potentially can be convinced that on some areas, there is sufficient agreement that we could work together. For example, although I am moderately pro-life, I am not in favor of every abortion restriction under the sun, or even most abortion restrictions under the sun. If someone were to treat me civilly and work from an assumption that I was a decent human being instead of a caricatured mass of seething misogynist evil, they might get my vote on some of these questions.
However, you’re right, my analogy is flawed. I should have built my example around outreach to people not unalterably in opposition, rather than people already somewhat allied. My bad.
“I don’t think there’s any serious question that hatred and fear of gays was an important part of the 2004 Republican strategy”
You can certainly make the case that the Republican openness about opposition to same-sex marriage had strategic implications. On the other hand, it reflected no change in what the party has believed for the last hundred years, so it’s hard to see it as a strategic choice; more an implication of something that has always been true. (Just as the Democrats have always pretended to endorse the same values, or occasionally genuinely endorsed them, in order to pander for the exact same gay-marriage-opposing votes. But that’s different, right?)
Similarly, your claim that “conservative and Republican victories…are based strongly on the fact that even those members of the alliance who do not personally favor bigotry against queers are more than willing to ally themselves with those who do” is in fact a descriptor of the Democrats, more than the Republicans.
It was the Democratic presidential candidate who kept referring to gay members of the opposition party’s family, in an attempt to stir antigay animus against him. That was sickening. If he had won, then progressives and Democrats would be coat-tailing their way to victory on the backs of an outright appeal to homophobia. (An appeal which fell flat, because the people it was meant to undermine support for Bush amongst do not in fact, by and large, “hate” gays the way that Kerry’s advisors think they do.)
It was Democrats in Hawaii who attempted to use an antigay smear against the Linda Lingle, the Republican gubernatorial candidate. (http://davidhogberg.blogspot.com/2002_10_27_davidhogberg_archive.html#85619016) Also contemptible.
It was the Democratic Party itself running ads making thinly-veiled insinuations of homosexuality against Montana senate candidate Mike Taylor; cowardly AND contemptible. (http://thesmokinggun.com/archive/taylorad1.html)
In the South Carolina races a Democratic candidate sought to tar Rudy Guiliani (and by extension, Republican candidate Lindsey Graham) by deriding the fact that Guiliani had moved in with “two gay men and a Shih Tzu”. (http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/4373331.htm)
Let’s stop here. These are the results from the first hit on a Google search for “democratic gay-bashing 2004”. You probably have motivation to search harder than I did for instances of the Republicans doing the same; all I found was Bill Simon in California running an ad accusing Democrats of using the public schools to teach acceptance of homosexuality.
The idea that the Democratic party, or the progressive cause outside the gay advocacy area proper, is “cleaner” somehow is palpably absurd, and demonstrably false. The conservative side were not the ones running “your candidate is a faggy hairdresser” ads, my friend.
So I don’t think that you have any room to point fingers about alliances. I suppose you personally can fall back on “but I voted for Kucinich, so what the Democrats do is immaterial, because I speak for an ideologically pure splinter” – and that’s fair enough. But from the recurringly dismal vote totals for “progressive” candidates, most of you voted for the Democrat, not for the pure-hearted homophilic progressive candidates.
Homophobia is as homophobia does. Your homophobes are just a little less honest than our homophobes are.
I would say, for the record, that both Amp and Amanda have been immensely courteous to me ever since we all got to know each other very well over the Amy Richards story last summer. We held — and continue to hold — divergent views on abortion and other faith-related affairs. But that doesn’t stop us from being kind and it doesn’t stop us from working well together on other issues.
But Robert, I cannot see how there’s any reason to put minor restrictions on abortion access unless your purpose is merely to vet out who “deserves” an abortion and who deserves to be punished for having sex.
I can think of lots of reasons that we might put restrictions on abortions that have nothing to do with deciding who “deserves” one, or with your apparent belief that everyone is plotting to punish you for having intercourse. Barring someone from aborting ten minutes before parturition has nothing to do with selection or punishment.
That aside, if the issue is so important to you, why are you focusing on what I won’t agree with you on, instead of what I will agree on? I’m keen on cutting taxes; if I find someone who agrees that we should kill the estate tax, but who also thinks that high income tax rates are groovy, it seems to me that the intelligent thing to do is to sign them up with my inter-the-death-tax movement, and try to convince them on the other questions. I suppose if I was you, I’d first demand to know why they wanted to punish me for making money.
Barring someone from aborting ten minutes before parturition has nothing to do with selection or punishment.
You continue to indulge in this kind of insulting hyperbole, despite the epic volumes of bandwidth spilled here and elsewhere on the folly of imagining that the majority of abortions are frivolous affairs, or that a “ten minute” abortion, would somehow be a spontaneous affair embarked upon by a mythical psychotic monster-woman who –out of the blue !– suddenly wanted her offspring dead for no reason.
Yet you continue to feign misunderstanding as to why someone like Amanda would not want to join you on your anti-tax crusade, or whatever.
You’re a lousy listener, Robert. Perhaps that’s the main reason why.
Amanda said that she could not conceive of a reason for abortion restriction that did not involve deciding who got an abortion or controlling women’s sexuality. I obliged her with one.
Are there more modest examples? Sure. I wanted something with absolute clarity, to avoid a nitpicking digression.
As I made no claim about the reasonableness, applicability, or universality of my example, your critique on those grounds fails.
Now, I didn’t get that impression. It didn’t seem to me that he was trying to stir up “anti-gay” feelings. It seemed to me that he was trying to point out that by discriminating against gays, they weren’t discriminating against some faceless group of people. That they would also be discriminating against their own families, friends, and loved ones. It is much easier for folks to hate anonymous groups of people they don’t know or care about. Is is harder to hate when it becomes more personal, when you actually know members of the group, when they aren’t some faceless “them”.
As to the topic: I do not understand the fixation on trying to discredit Koss’ study. What difference does it make if the rate is not 1 in 4? So what if the numbers are different? Is there some magical cut off point in the numbers when it becomes something that doesn’t need fixing or attention? If the incidence of rape is 1 in 4, then there is a problem. But if the numbers are lower, 1 in 8, 1 in 20, then rape really isn’t a problem and women just need to stop whining about it I guess.
Robert. The little box thing showed up in the preview of this message when I used ” < blockquote > < / blockquote > “. Note the spaces need to be removed.
Well, that was annoying. In the preview the way to do the boxy thing showed up, really. Use “blockquote” just like you would ” i ” if you were going to make italics.
Sorry.
Got it. Cool. Thanks! One of these days I’ll figure out this HTML thingamajig; I’m still trying to figure out how to get my LPs to play in this cupholder thing on my computer.
Your view on Kerry’s comment could be valid. That wasn’t the impression I got; the formulation was vague. Appeals to bias sometimes are; so are legitimate arguments. Hard to say for sure, but I’ll concede that it’s possible that your interpretation is in fact what he meant.
I wouldn’t bet money on it, though.
Use an urban legend to make your point, then brag about how said urban legend contains “absolute clarity.”
[snort] Yeah, that’ll enhance your cred for sure, Robert.
I used an extreme example to make a point maximally clear: there are restrictions on abortions that would not strike even (most) pro-choicers as being about attacking reproductive autonomy, or punishing sexuality.
I am sorry that the example appears to have done the opposite, at least for one person.
Robert, use the html “blockquote” command to get those cool quote things when posting comments on “Alas.” (While you’re at it, consider using “a href”command to make your links look nicer! If you’re using Firefox, I can recommend an extension to make to make using HTML in comments more automated).
[Whoops – sorry, the above paragraph is now moot!]
First of all, it seems to me that you implied I don’t criticize Democrats for homophobia. If that’s what you’re implying, then you’re mistaken. In the last election cycle, I criticized Democratic party homophobia multiple times – and specifically Kerry’s cowardly back-stabbing of queers – on this blog and in other forums.
More generally, it strikes me that you’ve proved my point quite well. I ask you about homophobia amongst your allies – and all you can talk about in response is Democratic homophobes. Yes, there are among the Democrats both homophobes and those who use homophobia as an election tactic, and that’s reprehensible. I share your contempt for them (although I don’t agree with every particular example you came up with).
But I’m concerned more about equal rights than I am about people saying nasty things. The latter is a legitimate concern, but it seems to me to be also a less pressing concern. My primary reason for loathing your party’s homophobia isn’t that some local Republican I never heard of said something disgusting. That matters, but it’s not why I loathe your willingness to align yourself with hateful bigots.
What matters most to me is that the conservative movement is constantly proposing anti-gay, discriminatory laws that would, if implemented, make queers even less equal than they already are. We saw this in the last election cycle, when many conservatives used anti-SSM ballot measures as a way of putting broader laws – laws that outlaw civil unions and, in some cases, contractual supports, between same-sex couples – in a bunch of states. These ballot measure movements were also an attempt to help GOP candidates, of course, and were overwhelmingly supported by the GOP. (Among Democrats, too many democrats supported them – especially those democrats in red states, surprise surprise – but many Democrats also opposed them. The progressive movement – that is, liberal democrats and people to their left – were overwhelmingly against the ballot measures.)
Here in Oregon (the place I know in the most detail), conservatives used the most disgusting anti-gay lies they could find in support of their ballot measure – they argued that gays wanted to use schools as a way of recruiting children to “the gay lifestyle.” They used the same tactic with Measure 9 a few years ago; and with a different measure a few years before that; and a different one a few years before that. The details change, but the Conservative goal of using the law to discriminate against queers does not.
I think Kerry is political coward who, while not personally homophobic (he voted against DOMA), appealed to homophobia in an attempt to be electable. That alone was enough to cause me to criticize him in harsh terms. Nonetheless, the Conservative movement – which constantly proposes and supports anti-queer legislation – is, if you’re concerned with substance and not just tit-for-tat partisan accusations – clearly much worse than Kerry.
Bottom line: If conservatives didn’t exist, these anti-queer laws wouldn’t keep on getting proposed in any seriousness, and would never be passed.
You’re absolutely no different from someone who isn’t personally anti-Semitic but is willing to ally himself with a movement that largely supports and proposes laws that discriminate against Jews. Pointing out that a few members of the opposing party have said anti-Semitic things doesn’t make your position more defensible.
I’m afraid I don’t agree that “gays” are a group in the same sense that Jews are a group. (You’re not going to get essentialist about homosexuality on me, are you?) So the comparison is facially invalid.
But I’ll concede the point regarding the identity of the people proposing legislation that makes life harder for gay people. I wish we wouldn’t do that, by and large.
I’m afraid I don’t agree that “gays”? are a group in the same sense that Jews are a group. (You’re not going to get essentialist about homosexuality on me, are you?) So the comparison is facially invalid.
Robert, I am sorry, but I don’t understand the comment above. How are “gays” not a group in the sense that “Jews” are a group?
Define the group “gays” for me, please, mousehounde.
(Not meaning to be rhetorical – it matters very much what you say.)
Robert, I understand that you think the cookie break thing is hilarious, but you’re in a position to be. Those of us in minority religious groups tend to the folks you describe as “your side” at their word when they talk about Christian America and putting God back in the public schools and goverment.
What is the state interest in barring abortion ten minutes before birth? How would it be enforced? On what legal theory would you be able to say, 24 hours before, no problemo, ten minutes, it’s murder? (And what’s up with the pro-lifers who do not think women should be jailed as murderesses for aborting?)
I wish we wouldn’t do that, by and large.
Yeah, it sucks when people are bigots, mostly.
It was your joke.
It is my understanding that elective abortion is legally barred past the 24th week except in cases of health risk to the mother; third trimester abortions are not considered elective. So the same state interest, enforcement options, and legal theory would be operative whether we’re talking 30 weeks or T minus 600 seconds. There’s a legal barrier to the hypothetical urban-legend crazed pregnant woman who changes her mind at the last minute.
They have a nuanced position and beliefs regarding a subject they find troubling and difficult.
Define the group “gays”? for me, please, mousehounde.
(Not meaning to be rhetorical – it matters very much what you say.)
The group “gays” are people who are homosexual. I am not sure how else to define it. How do you define the group “gays”? Am I missing something?
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Who is a homosexual? Someone who has sexual contact exclusively with people of their own gender? Sometimes with people of their own gender? Once with people of their own gender? Every ten years they have a stray thought that same-sex neighbor XYZ is a handsome fellow/lass? One time they had a wet dream about actor/actress ABC?
What’s the definition of being a homosexual? (There are about a thousand other questions to ask besides those first five.) I don’t need you to write a thousand answers, a few should suffice.
So, basically you are not going to tell me why you think “gays” as a group are different from “Jews” as a group. Which kinda seems like your question to me *was* rhetorical and you never meant to answer or had one.
Let us say that for this particular question “why you think “gays” as a group are different from “Jews” as a group” I would define “gays” as Someone who has sexual contact exclusively with people of their own gender .Will that make it easier? Or am I setting myself up for another round of 5 questions?
Robert:
What is a Jew?
Is it someone who self-identifies as Jewish? Is it someone with Jewish parents? How about an atheist with Jewish parents? What if the Jewish parents were Jewish by conversion, rather than birth? What about a Jew who has converted to Catholicism? What about a born Catholic whose parents were both Jewish before converting to Catholicism? What about a born Christian who converts to Judaism? What about a convert to Judaism who is recognized as a Jew by reform congregations, but not by orthodox congregations?
* * *
Anyhow, if it would make you any happier, you can change my analogy to “reform Jews” or “wiccans” or “protestants” and I think it still works the same. (Well, you’d have to change the word “anti-semitism” to something appropriate, but you know what I mean.)
But thanks for conceding that there is a real difference between our movements in terms of who is proposing (and, sometimes, passing) anti-queer legislation.
Robert, you’re just appealing to the “women are hysterical and selfish” argument for banning abortion by coughing up a mythical woman who decides to abort mid-labor. That wouldn’t happen and is the sort of red herring to bolster the argument that women cannot make their own decisions (after all, they’d kill a baby in the birth canal!) so perhaps we can introduce all sorts of other legislation to force them to make the “correct” decision.
Pretty much. Here’s another clue, Robert: After all this time and all the words that have been exchanged on this subject, pretending not to get why feminists consider this sort of game insulting– simply serves to magnify the original insult.
Also, if you really wanted to “build bridges” between the pro life and pro choice movements, why wouldn’t you want the cornerstone of your “ten minute” crusade replaced by –oh, I don’t know– some kind of massive private campaign to bolster WIC, or Head Start, or to shore up access to safe, affordable and effective birth control ?
Okay, it isn’t as excitingly gory as shouting the alarm for the law to save innocents from “ten minute” psycho-killer-whore-mommies, but it would prove your sincerity, as opposed to proving your fondness for sensationalistic b.s. disguised as a call for “unity.” The more your model is based upon red herrings and upon a punitive approach to sex and motherhood, the less reason any feminist has to take your pledges of goodwill sincerely.
I guess I’ll focus my response to Mousehounde & Amp (&&?), since they’re the ones who are apparently actually reading what I’m writing.
Mousehounde:
That’ll do nicely. I wasn’t trying to be a dick; I didn’t want to make an assumption about your definition and then end up with a side argument about how the definition I was using showed my intention of putting gays into camps where they’d be forced to endure last-second abortions while being served Jesus-shaped cookies, or something.
Let’s use Catholics rather than Jews, since I am one, so any offense I generate can be deflected with the “I am allowed to offend myself” shield.
Crap. I gotta go start the kids’ school. I will continue answering your question later this morning.
OK. So how are gays not a group in the same sense that Catholics are a group?
The set of people who “[have] sexual contact exclusively with people of their own gender”, let’s call A.
The set of people who define themselves as Catholic, let’s call B.
Set B has a common philosophy. There is some disagreement within the set about the philosophy – debate and dissent, etc. – but all adult members of the group are passingly familiar with the philosophy. Set A does not have a common philosophy.
Set B has a common spiritual culture. Set A does not have a common spiritual culture.
Set B believes in the transmission of membership in the set to descendants. A member of set B with offspring generally attempts to instill the tenets of set B membership into the offspring. Set A members do not attempt to transmit membership to the next generation.
Set B believes in the evangelization of membership to non-members. Set A does not believe in the evangelization of membership.
Set B has an extensive formal history of existence as a defined group. Set A could aspire to such a history and may achieve it in the future, but does not have it at this point in time.
Membership in set B is defined in nonbehavioral terms. Membership in set A is defined in behavioral terms. A single change in behavior is not generally sufficient to disenroll someone from set B; it is sufficient to disenroll someone from set A.
Membership in set B is expressed in group terms. A person who says “I am a Catholic” means that they are a member of the organization. Membership in set A is expressed in individual terms. A person who says “I am gay” is describing their individual self.
There are other substantive differences, but this is already long enough.
In short, members of set B are part of an actual existing structure. Members of set A are being grouped discursively, for purposes of description and taxonomy, but are not actually part of an entity larger than themselves.
And that’s why I’d say that gays are not members of a group in the same sense that Catholics are a member of a group.
Robert is comparing “Set A” (people who have sex exclusively with members of the same sex) with “Set B” (Roman Catholics). The contrast is supposed to show that there is some relevant sense in which Catholic people are grouped together in a way that gay people are not. Unfortunately, I find the putative contrasts confusing. I also don’t understand what they have to do with the context in which Robert brought the comparison up. So let’s look a bit closer at it. Here are some different types of contrasts that Robert makes, a bit out of order:
1. The group (does/does not) have a formal history of existence as a defined group:
I’m not entirely sure what Robert means here. The idea that there is a distinct group of people–the gay ones–goes back at least to the late 18th century, and the modern language of homosexuality was firmly in place more than 100 years ago (unfortunately, not in the context we might like; it was used to pick out people falsely believed to have a common psychosexual disorder). That’s at least as good a stretch of history as, say, “Americans” (there weren’t any until 1788) or “Christian fundamentalists” (early 20th century) have. Since sexual orientation, as a notion, has been around, and been an important part of how people talk about themselves for several generations now I don’t see any salient differences between the two. It’s not like “gay” was a neologism we just made up last Thursday.
2. Membership is/is not centrally coordinated:
I don’t know what you mean here. It’s true that a person who identifies herself as a Catholic is, inter alia, saying something about a formal organization (that she is a member of it). And it’s true that who and who is not a member of that organization is coordinated by a central authority, or by a centralized structure of authority. But that’s certainly not all that she’s doing–she’s also, as you said, stating that, inter alia, she personally adheres to the articles of the Catholic faith, participates in the sacraments of the Church, etc. Which of these two descriptions is the primary function of the statement “I am a Catholic”? Well, I don’t know. I imagine it depends on the context in which it’s uttered. (If you say, “I’m a Catholic, so of course I believe that abortion is wrong,” I imagine that the second function is more important; if you say, “I’m a Catholic, so I need to be at Mass on Sunday and can’t go with you to the picnic” then I imagine that the first function is more important.)
It’s true that a person who says “I am gay” is only saying something of the latter sort, not anything of the former sort–there isn’t any centralized organization to appeal to. But so what? What follows from this? It’s true of Catholics, but that doesn’t extend even to other denominations or religions (there is no central institutional structure for Pentacostals, or Christians, or Muslims, or Jews). Surely the particular bureaucratic details of how the Roman Catholic Church works are not a significant issue here.
3. Membership (does/does not) derive from adherence to a common framework of beliefs and practices:
Sure; this is indeed a point of contrast between Catholics and gay people. But see the discussion below.
4. Membership is/is not defined in behavioral terms:
I think this, actually, has got to be false. It is in direct contradiction, in particular, to the contrasts made under heading 1. Being a Catholic essentially involves facts about your behavior: for example, if you stop believing in God, you are no longer a Catholic; if you convert to Islam you are no longer a Catholic; if you withdraw from all Church sacraments, you are no longer a Catholic. (If you take one common interpretation of canon 1398, then if you have or procure an abortion you are also by that very fact no longer a Catholic.)
So what hinges on this question, anyway? Well, Robert will have to say more about his purposes in giving the list of contrasts before I can say anything definitively–and if what I say here does not represent Robert’s views, then I look forward to being corrected–but one reason that people commonly make a distinction like this is to argue something like: “Look, homophobia is importantly different from common examples of politicized hatred such as racism or misogyny because whether homophobic attitudes are wrong or not, you can avoid homophobia just by not sleeping with members of your own sex.” That is true and it is important, but it’s not a point of difference between Catholicism and homosexuality: Catholics have always been able to escape persecution just by converting to a different denomination or different religion. (I don’t think, incidentally, that any important ethical consequences follow from this distinction. Religious persecution and homophobia are both wrong, and just as wrong as racism and misogyny are. The difference is only important to understanding the differing nature of the oppression, not its oppressiveness.) In this respect, members of persecuted religious groups and gay people are more alike one another than either is like victims of racism or misogyny: we could avoid it, by denying an absolutely essential part of our lives in order to pass and so pacify the bashers. But why in the hell should we have to?
On the other hand, Robert might have wanted to stick with Type 3 differences–even though his (false) claim of the Type 4 differences contradicts it–because of another conventional tack he might try to take: the status of people-who-only-have-sex-with-people-of-the-same-sex as a group is hard to pin down because those people, unlike “Catholics,” don’t necessarily have anything intellectually or culturally in common with one another, and don’t participate in any kind of common formal organization as in the Type 2 contrasts. True; but so what? “Black people” (or even a more restricted grouping such as “African-Americans”) certainly are not defined as a group by adherence to any common beliefs or spiritual culture (they don’t evangelize, and the fact that they transmit membership to their children has nothing to do with their intent in the matter). There is no formal Black organization and no centralized coordination of membership. But no-one could reasonably argue that, for example, Black people in America don’t constitute a single group that have something importantly in common. What they have in common, if nothing else, is how they are (have been) treated. Racism just means making race politically relevant; even though most everything racists say about Black people’s alleged common traits is false, the legacy of racist political power in the United States is such that Black people do have something importantly in common with each other–they were all treated as niggers. In this respect, gay people are more like victims of racism and misogyny than they are like victims of religious persecution: what we have in common is, mainly, that we are all treated like fags and dykes. Our commonalities as a group are defined more by the attitudes and practices of the people around us than by anything positive attribute that we all have on our own. But so what? Why in the world would anyone think that groupings mainly imposed by outside pressures are somehow less real or less politically relevant than groupings that come from commonalities we bring to the table ourselves? Certainly this isn’t true in the case of race; why would it be true in the case of sexuality?
(N.B.: I actually reject the definition, stipulated at the beginning of this discussion, of “gay” as meaning “a person who only has sex with members of the same gender”. In fact, exclusive sexual contact with members of the same gender is neither necessary nor sufficient for being gay: for one, you can be gay and a virgin; for two, you can be gay and closeted and have heterosexual sexual contact; for three, for the same reasons, you could be heterosexual and due to unusual circumstances end up only having sexual contact with members of the same sex. Further, I think it’s actually a mistake to define bisexual people out of being “gay”; certainly, as a bisexual man, I am treated like a faggot by homophobes regardless of the fact that I also am sexually and romantically attracted to women. But I’ve set that aside here; I don’t think that much important hinges on the differences between “gay men and lesbians” as a class and “men and women who only have sexual contact with members of the same gender” as a class, and this was a stipulative definition that Robert agreed to, not something that he insisted on, anyway.)
Wow. I felt bad for writing a novel, but now, not so much. Nice analysis, but slightly off the mark.
I’m not intending to draw my distinction into the broad areas you address. I was attempting to answer a very narrow question – why is the group-type of “gay” different than the group type of (originally) “Jew”. That question itself arose in response to Amp’s contention that “[I’m] absolutely no different from someone who isn’t personally anti-Semitic but is willing to ally himself with a movement that largely supports and proposes laws that discriminate against Jews.” I don’t think you can directly analogize gays to Jews in this fashion because they aren’t the same kind of grouping, and said so, yielding the question about group types.
Well, by that logic, you can’t directly analogize anything to anything else, since by definition analogies compare two things that are not identical.
The question is, do you have any morally relevant reason that supporting a group that proposes anti-semitic laws is not comparable to supporting a group that proposes anti-queer laws?
None of the differences you point out, in any way that I can see, are morally relevant to what I was talking about. None of your differences logically support the conclusion “it’s bad to legally discriminate against Catholics but okay to legally discriminate against queers.” The lack of a central organization doesn’t make discrimination acceptable; the lack of a common body of beliefs doesn’t make discrimination acceptable; etc.. (Note, by the way, that Jews don’t have a central organization nor a universally-shared belief system, unless you’re saying atheist Jews are not Jewish. So by your system of classification, Jews are in some ways more like gays than like Catholics. As RadGeek pointed out).
To your credit, I’m not even sure you’d be willing to say that “laws discriminating against queers are acceptable but laws discriminating against Jews are not.” And yet, if you’re not willing to say such a thing – and to support it with a logical argument – then you have no basis for dismissing my analogy.
Laws discriminating against queers may or may not be acceptable; depends on the law. Laws discriminating against Jews are not acceptable (with a very narrow exception for laws not facially intended to discriminate against Jews but which uphold a compelling state interest – the best example I can think of is lame but realistic; a one-horse town could have a rule that the magistrate has to work weekends because it’s a tourist town and lots of cases come in over the weekend; that’s not intended to bar a Jew from the job, but working on Saturday is a bona fide job requirement, so too bad for the Jews.)
The argument I would muster is that laws that discriminate against queers are in their essence laws that penalize a behavior. Behaviors have consequences, and it may be legitimate to discourage or bar a particular set of consequences by being punitive toward a particular behavior. That punitive law may impact queers exclusively, or it may impact them to a greater degree than it does the other members of society; if the state interest is legitimate, however, then I don’t have a problem with the law.
As an example, there are laws against having sex in public parks. There is a legitimate state interest; the parks are for everyone to use, people having sex tends to drive out other uses, ergo, no sex in the parks. In the bad old days, this law impacted queers far more than straights, because queers had fewer places to go; too bad for the queers. This law is valid and I don’t have a problem with it.
Then there are laws against consensual adult homosexual sodomy. These laws go directly against queers, but there is no legitimate state interest; the state is not in the business of upholding a particular sexual framework. So that kind of law is unacceptable; too bad for the prudes.
There are some laws where the ground is muddier. Adoption laws, for instance. We have decided, in our infinite wisdom, to give the state considerable power over the adoptive process. I don’t think that a law that automatically bars a gay couple from adoption is a good law. But, I have no problem with a law that allows adoption personnel to factor parental sexual morality into the equation – call it a no-swingers clause. If that law has disparate impact against homosexuals or heterosexuals, I don’t mind.
With all of that said, I am basically not in agreement with my party on many of the laws that it would like to pass at the state level, and with some of the laws at the federal level. However, I am not a single-issue person. I am more concerned with the overall level of freedom a particular party is going to deliver in the legislative and judicial arena. I think leftish parties are going to deliver considerably less net freedom, and rightish parties considerably more, and so I can live with the negatives on my side of the fence.
Robert, you’re defending (occasional) discrimination by citing instances that aren’t actually discriminatory. By definition, discrimination targets a specific group based on that group’s characteristics. “No sex in parks” does not discriminate against gays. “No sex in the park between people of the same gender only,” on the other hand, does. “You must work on Sundays” isn’t discrimination, either (I know Catholics who won’t work on Sunday, and I’m sure there are many Jews who do); “You cannot go to [place of worship] while you work here” is.
As for adoption laws, it’s pretty clear (to me, at any rate) that banning a couple from adopting just because they’re gay is discrimination–at least, until somebody proves gays and lesbians can’t be as good parents as heterosexuals, and somehow I doubt that’ll happen. “You can’t be a parent if you aren’t in a monogamous relationship” doesn’t discriminate against same-sex couples, but it’d still be a really bad law.
I think that leftish parties are going to deliver considerably less net freedom, and rightish parties considerably more…
I suppose you’re right, if “freedom” means that you have no responsibility for anyone but yourself, but that’s not the way I define it.
I think that leftish parties are going to deliver considerably less net freedom, and rightish parties considerably more…
It’s not just a question of which laws are on the books, but how market forces act to permit or restrain access to the law depending on one’s class status. I think both Democrats and Republicans fall down in this regard, which is why I am no longer a fan of either. The appearance of “Freedom” often turns out to be “Freedom for those who can afford it.”
but working on Saturday is a bona fide job requirement, so too bad for the Jews.
Hmmm… let’s follow this concept to a logical continuation:
A pharmacist refuses to hand a customer birth control pills, on religious grounds.
The pharmacist’s bona fide job is to dispense pills, not indulge his/her religious beliefs at another’s expense.
Too bad for the pharmacist, I guess. Maybe he or she could get a job with the priesthood.
(Sorry, Amp. I couldn’t resist.)
>>And, as part of our compact, we each try our best to refrain from casting aspersions at one another – so I don’t call my bozo fundamentalist friends bozos, for example. It makes coalition building much more effective, as we’re able to reach out to groups with whom we have any common ground at all. …
So far, my side has taken control of the government, is setting the national and regional agenda on many-to-most of the items that are important to us, and is daily making huge inroads on the popular culture.>>
…If your side includes those currently in control of the government, then your side includes Karen “Abortion=Terrorism” Hughes and Karl “Morally Bankrupt Assberet” Rove. And the–visible, popular, and influential–cheerleaders for your side include Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter, who said that liberals should be spoken to with a baseball bat and that the terrorists should have flown a plane into the NYT offices.
Your side certainly isn’t respectful towards moderates and those with differing beliefs. Not if pro-choice conservatives like my Republican governor can be equated with Bin Laden. Not if the opposition deserves to be beaten senseless or blown up.
I don’t think our various factions are any better at respecting each other or our common enemy, but the Republicans certainly aren’t an example of respecful coalition-building and mature dispute.
So the strategy of vicious hatred towards those of different beliefs doesn’t seem to be so ineffective. In fact, if we want to take control, set agendas, and make inroads on popular culture (if censorship really counts), we should be much more vitriolic and much less tolerant.
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