Please feel free to use the comments for any purpose, including posting links to your own stuff or others’ stuff.
Abyss2hope presents Carnival Against Sexual Violence 26
This series — run solely by Marcella — is one of the best ongoing carnivals out there. She always finds tons of interesting links.
Retired Waif presents Disability Blog Carnival #18
The “We’re just like you!” edition, containing three times the average daily recommended dosage of delicious snark. :-)
The Hidden Side Of A Leaf presents Carnival of Feminists: 40th Edition
The book review edition!
Pandagon: Easy, Quick Action You Can Take Right Now To Help Katrina Survivors
And read this post by Sheelzebub, while you’re at it.
The Glasshouse: Why Most Moderate Pakistanis Now Dislike America
We in Pakistan also want to have liberty, freedom of speech and a rule of law. Why is it that the US Administration persists in supporting a despot who is denying us our basic rights as human beings?
It seems unlikely that Musharraf will be able to stay in power much longer; but the ill-will our support of Musharraf has created could last decades.
Abyss2Hope: Rape Victim Thrown In Jail; Pro-Life Jailer Withholds Emergency Contraception
A pregnant woman behind bars; for pro-lifers, this story must be a dream come true.
Cruella: British Courts Refuse To Prosecute Child Sex Abusers On Grounds Of “Consent”
In one case, a subsequent rape of a two-year-old would have been prevented if the court had put the rapist behind bars when it had the chance.
Black Looks: Walls Going Up All Over The World
Really excellent post; I had no idea how much of this was going on. Curtsy: Brownfemipower.
Brownfemipower: MLK, Radical Media, Media Justice, and Blogging
There’s no way I can describe this great post, so you should go read it. Koufax-nominaion for sure. Here’s a small sample:
The speech that was played was an earlier version of the “I have a Dream” speech. A crystal clear sound system lifted the deep measured voice of MLK throughout the hall. The speech was so clear, I thought for a good part of it that MLK had recorded it in a sound studio. But about half way through the speech MLK made a joke at which time, the entire congregation he was speaking to laughed in response. And it was then that I realized–the absolute clarity of his speech was due in large part to the absolute silence of his congregation. This sermon was given in the days before the March on Washington version of the Dream speech–which was when MLK flew out into the national spot light.
I could only imagine the intense feelings that must have wrapped around the congregation as this speech unfolded. The ecstasy of potential freedom, the sisterhood with the woman sitting next to you, the awe of knowing something amazing is happening right in front of you–all mixed, surely, with a healthy dose of fear.
Is Your Doctor Playing Judge?
A good — and scary — article in Self Magazine about Fundamentalist Doctors using their positions to try and deny care to pregnant women — even rape victims needing emergency contraception. If your religion prevents you from carrying out the job duties of an ER Doctor, then you shouldn’t be an ER doctor. Link via The Well Timed Period, which has an excellent post on the subject.
I See Invisible People: “Competence,” The Entitlement To Vote, and Disability
Photo: Me and Mikhaela Reid Drawing Each Other
When we started drawing, I was clean-shaven and Mikhaela wasn’t wearing glasses. Mikhaela, for those of you who don’t know, is a kick-ass political cartoonist; writing a review of her new book (which I thought was terrific) is on my “to do” list.
Taking Place: Duke Rape Case Demonstrates That Justice Isn’t Colorblind
There are plenty of cases of prosecution misconduct leading to black defendants being railroaded. So when are we going to see one of those prosecutors debarred?
Feminist Law Profs: New Study Shows Women Don’t Talk More Than Men
and
Echidne: New Study Shows Women Don’t Talk More Than Men
Both posts are good; the FLP post includes an up-to-date link list to the astounding blogging Language Log has done on this and related issues. (I really regret not thinking of nominating LL for a Koufax for best series last year.)
QuakerDave: Iraqi Baby Blogging and Darfur Baby Blogging.
Terrible Palsy: The other story from a ‘Pillow Angel’: Been there. Done that. Preferred to grow.
When [Peter] Singer wrote that, “Ashley is 9, but her mental age has never progressed beyond that of a 3-month-old. She cannot walk, talk, hold a toy or change her position in bed. Her parents are not sure she recognizes them. She is expected to have a normal lifespan, but her mental condition will never improve,” he has accepted the doctors’ eyeball assessment of Ashley without asking the obvious questions. What was their assessment based on? Has Ashley ever been offered a way of showing that she knows more than a 3-month-old baby? Only someone like me who has lain in a cot year after year hoping that someone would give her a chance can know the horror of being treated as if you were totally without conscious thought.
Rachel’s Tavern: How Not To Talk About African Relations With African Americans
Feminist Peace Network: Halliburton Sued by Women Alleging Sexual Harrassment and Rape
Jewish Circumcision: An Alternative Perspective
Good article arguing that Jews should stop performing circumcision on male infants, but also discussing the historic link between anti-circumcision movements and anti-semitism.
Prometheus 6: The He-Man Presidency (quoting Mark Dery)
The hidden costs of our overcompensatory hypermachismo are far worse than a few politicians slimed by pundits. The horror in Iraq has been protracted past the point of lunacy by George W.’s bring-it-on braggadocio, He-Ra unilateralism and damn-the-facts refusal to acknowledge mistakes — all hallmarks of a pathological masculinity that confuses diplomacy with weakness and arrogant rigidity with strength. It is founded not on a self-assured sense of what it is but on a neurotic loathing of what it secretly fears it may be: wussy. And it will go to the grave insisting on battering-ram stiffness (stay the course! don’t pull out!) as the truest mark of manhood.
Rachel’s Tavern: Teen Victim Of Racist Texas Hate Crime Commits Suicide
Kill Bigotry: History’s Hit Job On Thomas Paine
So why has Paine — who was intellectually essential to the American revolution, and in addition was genuinely anti-slavery and in favor of women’s rights — been honored so much less than some of our other “founding fathers”?
The Thinkery: Unmasculine Men Raising Boys, And Sexism In The Wall Street Journal
ZNet: Killer Lesbians Mauled By Killer Court & Media Wolfpack
The Trouble With Spikol: PETA Lectures Michale Moore For Being Fat
The odd thing is, even a fat person who has lost a lot of weight, is eating healthier, exercising more — as Moore has in fact done recently — still gets shit for being fat. Anti-fat bigots like to pretend it’s about health, but it’s really about their own sense of being morally and aesthetically superior to fat people. Curtsy: Gimp Parade.
The Joy of Autism: Attending Autreat.
Inhospitable and unsafe environments are those in which we seek to normalize and reward normal responses to tasks where the autistic response is never acknowledged, rewarded or accepted, thus valued. By never rewarding an autistic person for being autistic, we threaten their self-esteem and identity. Most will grow up being confused because every well-intentioned therapist was so “nice” to them. [Curtsy: Gimp Parade.]
Lew Rockwell: History If Iran Were America (And We Were Iran)
Curtsy: Pandagon.
May The Sanctity Of The Sink Prevail
An awesome high in the history of passive-aggressive housemates. Thanks to my housemate Bean for the tip.
Quote: Amanda Marcotte On The Miss New Jersey “Scandal”
The pageant officials are letting her keep her crown, but they’re no doubt reconsidering the advisability of having flesh and blood women compete and may be looking into using Real Dolls in the future.
The line of questions that defense attorneys are allowed to use against alleged victims who wake up to find someone using their body exploits unconsciousness the same way rapists do.
Washington Post: Good Critique Of Christina Hoff Sommers’ Book “The War Against Boys“
The Gimp Parade: 3 Perks To Using A Ventilator
Rudd Sound Bites: Anti-Fat Stereotypes In Children’s Books
Including a comments-section debate regarding Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter books. The Rudd people are odd; some of them seem honestly anti-sizism, but they don’t seem to realize that Rudd itself is chock full of anti-fat ideology.
Feministe: For Those Who Want Still More Discussion Of Male Circumcision
Larvatus Prodeo: How Often Do People Lie?
Hoyden About Town: School Holidays Are Part Of The Real World, Dammit!
Independent Gay Forum: Follow-Up Questions About Gays Reporters Should Ask Candidates
Or he could have asked, “But as you are no doubt aware former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman John Shalikashvili wrote a New York Times op-ed earlier this year reversing his previous anti-gay position and advocating the inclusion of openly gay and lesbian soldiers. Is your perception of the military’s needs more accurate than his?” Or he could more aggressively have asked, “To what extent is your position, like that of Gen. Peter Pace, based on a belief that homosexuality is immoral?”
Ezra Klein: The Health Of Nations Series
From a wonky perspective, Ezra’s blogging on universal health care are among the very best you’ll find in the blogosphere. Since we’ve discussed health care here recently, I thought some “Alas” readers might be interested in this series, focused on international comparisons.
The New Republic: What France Can Teach Us About Health Care
Obsidian Wings: The Majority Of American Voters Are Dangerously Out Of The Mainstream
A new poll shows that a bare majority of voters think Bush should be impeached, and that a strong majority want to see Cheney impeached. As Hilizoy says, who knew Kucinich is the mainstream?
Crooked Timber: Why Feminists Should Not Support The Basic Income
I don’t think I agree, but it’s certainly interesting enough to link to.
Republic of T: Waste Time Making A “Springfieldian” Image of Yourself!
Yes, it’s a Simpsons Movie promo.
Why do you call them pro-lifers? It’s been consistently demonstrated that they’re anti-life and anti-woman, and that their policies actually kill women.
Anybody have comments on the Cruella piece? I’d be particularly interested in comparisons between it and the Genarlow Wilson case. (Both issues have to do with statutory rape.)
Just for clarity, let’s not hijack this comments section; I’m looking for links to other places.
Re: Anti-Semitism, opposition to circumcision, and the Feministe thread
This is really frustrating to me, because 1) There has been (and is) real anti-semitic opposition to circumcision, and that should be recognized but, 2) Because of this, non-antisemitic opposition to abortion is often labeled antisemitic as an argumentative tactic. Kind of like how anyone who criticizes Israel must be an antisemite.
This happened an awful lot (or at least way more than I was comfortable with) in the recent thread over at Feministe, and I just recently pinpointed what bothered me so much about it.
To me, it has something to do with being able to speak about my experiences in an honest voice. I think that I, as a man who has been circumcised, and was circumcised for nonreligious reasons, should be able to say whatever the hell I want about what was done to me without some yahoo explaining why I need to modulate my tone so as not to offend.
I do think that circumcision is barbaric. I do think it’s child abuse. Does this make me an antisemite? I’m talking about something that happened to me.
—Myca
ps. Oh, and I’m looking for a place to put my Simpsons avatar to show it off now. Thanks for the link!
“ps. Oh, and I’m looking for a place to put my Simpsons avatar to show it off now. Thanks for the link!”
Toss it over to me in email, and I think I can put it up in comments. :-D
Myca:
I think opposition to routine infant male circumcision and opposition to religiously motivated male circumcision–and I oppose both–need to be framed and expressed in very different ways. The reasons for this have a lot to do with the kinds of cultural issues Mandolin outlined in her post of FGS. As long as your criticism of circumcision, of your experience of a particular circumcision practice, makes clear that you are talking about medical circumcision, then I don’t think it can be construed as antisemitic. However, for example, I can see how using the terms of critique that one brings to bear on medical cirumcision to critique religious circumcision might make the critique sound antisemitic even if there is no antisemitic intent.
Richard Jeffrey Newman:
Yeah you’re right, and a lot of people conflate the two, on both sides, but I guess I’m just tired of the idea that anti-circ means antisemite.
Come visit our new blog, Siren’s Chronicles, for:
That article about the walls was interesting. It sounds like a rather shortsighted solution, though I myself don’t have any better ones. These structures won’t stop anyone who is really determined, I suspect, nor will they cure the evil ones, and they will tick off a whole bunch of innocent people who don’t like being penned up like animals. On the plus side, graffitists will have something to write on.
I think I read somewhere that static fortifications really haven’t been invincible for the last 100 years. All right, it isn’t my field of expertise…Of course, with modern tech they won’t be entirely static. With advances in AI, eventually these walls might get the better of humans and take over. And I bet they won’t screw up the world any worse than us. Hey, there’s a story…but if someone else has already written it, I need to know who and where.
I am not entirely sure of the meaning of passive-aggressive, but the “Sanctity of the Sink” piece seemed anything but passive. Too clever to be passive, or something.
I always look forward to the linkfests.
“There are plenty of cases of prosecution misconduct leading to black defendants being railroaded. So when are we going to see one of those prosecutors debarred?”
Perhaps when the media and the feminist/anti-racist blogosphere start practically orgasming over the thought of a guilty verdict in one of those cases, and then largely refuse to accept the facts and admit they’re wrong when it later turns out the defendants are innocent.
Ain’t nothin’ can’t be put at the feet of marginilized movements in the blogosphere. I have it on good report that The Angry Black Woman is personally causing at least 100 cases of the gout in regions of the god-fearing south that haven’t even heard of the internet.
I meant to put this one up over here–Teen Victim Of Racist Texas Hate Crime Commits Suicide.
I guess I got sidelined.
What is this Angry Black Woman gout reference?
I’m just being sarcastic because I think The Chief is attributing more power to the feminist & anti-racist blogosphere than we actually posess.
Not sarcastic enough. The duke assholes did get away with rape, after all, and he’s still bitter.
Bitter, ginmar? The guys from Duke were declared innocent. I don’t think I’m the bitter one here.
So was OJ Simpson, except he actually had a trial. You can’t declare somebody innocent without a trial. However, seeing as you think anybody could issue a verdict, I declare that the Duke assholes got away with rape, and anybody who’s still whining about it is not happy that they got away with rape for God’s sake. Rape isn’t enough for you, is it? What else do you want?
ginmar, what would it take to make you change your mind?
Why? It’s not a theoretical situation, it’s reality, and you can’t change reality. Those guys had criminal pasts, reputations as sexists, and then there’s that violent email. I don’t bother with hypotheticals. Hypotheticals are for people who haven’t faced the hatred men have for women.
We’ll never know what happened. The media conspired to get these guys off the hook because of their race, class and gender. False reports to the police are same for rape as for other crimes. I think something happened to her. That she was sexually assaulted in some way. I also believe she was gang-raped as a teen. A boyfriend convinced her to report it to the police a few years later.
The attorney general in charge of the case who has seen far more of the evidence than you and I put together can declare them innocent. And he did.
Really burrows into you, doesn’t it?
Ahh that new opposing attorney general was put in place as a direct response to the media conspiracy that supported these rich, white males and ousted Nifong. I stick with the statistics. Only 2% of all crime reports are false.
Yeah, funny about how the new attorney general is another rich white man. Thanks Chief but rich white guys have to prove they’re trustworthy. This dipshit couldn’t declare these guys innocent without a trial.
Hypotheticals are important, because they help me understand why you have reached a different conclusion than he does. If you refuse to discuss hypotheticals, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to know what your position is.
Hypotheticals are a luxury when you’re discussing a real life case. Don’t waste my time.
I stick with the statistics. Only 2% of all crime reports are false.
Yes, meaning that of 50 rape reports you read about in the media, on average one is false. I nominate this one.
Well, of course YOU would, Robert.
If you have a different false report candidate that you’d like to nominate, I’m open minded. I don’t recall offhand how many news stories about rape I’ve read in my life; surely more than 50, although not many that were this famous. I don’t remember any of those turning out to be false reports, so we were due.
My basic inclination is to believe the accuser. I believed Juanita. Did you?
The reality is, Robert, you can’t take a pool of rape cases and say, “One of these must involve an innocent guy!” —-unless you’re an asshole who hates, fears, and distrusts women, that is.
Ahem.
Who’s wasting your time? Obviously you care whether people give a hoot about your opinion, or you’d not be posting it here, on the net, for all to see. If asking you to discuss, explain, or otherwise converse about your posted opinions is “wasting your time” then why are you here at all?
Hypotheticals are one tool to help distinguish rational, interesting, people from irrational, boring people. If one’s conclusions are unrelated to any particular set of facts, then one is firmly in the “irrational and thus irrelevant” camp. People whose minds can’t be changed aren’t worth talking to. Since I can’t tell rationality from a simple yes/no decision, the “what if…” questions are crucial.
[shrug] In your case I assumed you had reasons (you’ve never seemed irrational); I thought your reasons might be interesting; and I thought they might lead to an interesting discussion, which is why I asked.
Politely asking what factors you considered in reaching your conclusion, or what weight you gave them, or how far away your yes/no conclusion is from neutrality, is a conversational sign of respect, not an attack. It showed interest in your position. So can the snark, willya?
I don’t see how it can get much simpler, Sailorman. And I really could give a shit what you think about me, which you obviously want me to care about, what with that lengthy recitation.
It’s a real life case. I happen to know what a fake rape accusation looks like, so discussion about what would cause me to change my opinion about a REAL rape case is rediculous. Hint: in a lot of false rape accusations, there’s NO accused.
Asking me to hypothesize about a real case is asking me to fantasize about it for your benefit.
Um, no.
She reported TWO rapes to the police, both reluctantly. You probably think she claimed 2 out of 100 “false” reports to the police.
She reported TWO rapes to the police, both reluctantly. You probably think she claimed 2 out of 100 “false” reports to the police.
[Insulting line deleted.] I don’t know anything much about the earlier allegation, other than that she made it. I have no reason to doubt it; that her second allegation is false doesn’t prove anything.
And yes, Ginmar, if you have a pool of (randomly chosen) rape allegations, and it passes a certain size, and a portion of such allegations are known to be false, then it is probable-approaching-inevitable that there is at least one false report in the pool. This has nothing to do with who you hate or whether you are an asshole or not; it’s math. Replace “rape allegations” with “conservative politicians whom Robert loves” and “some allegations are false” with “some % of people are thieving child molesters”, and I will say that it is inevitable that you will find some child molesters. It’s a concept. It’s abstract. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you’re an asshole; it has to do with whether you are capable of rational thought about numbers.
For anyone interested – if it doesn’t waste their precious time, of course – it’s relatively easy to calculate the chance that a random pool has whatever characteristic you’re looking for. Say the chance is 2% that a given allegation is false. The chance that, in the entire pool, at least one allegation is false is 1 – (0.98 ^ n), where n is the size of the pool. One person, 2% chance. Two people, 4%, and so on, but it isn’t a linear expansion. (That 4% is actually 3.9something %.)
At a pool size of 35, it’s even odds that at least one allegation is false. At a pool size of 100, there’s a 92% chance that one allegation is false. At 150, it’s 95%. Not quite inevitable, but the way to bet.
Or you could actually listen to women [insulting line deleted]. Any hundred women may very well be telling a truth, but along comes you, thinking that you can decide what’s true and what’s not, not by actually listening to women—- [insulting line deleted]—–but by some arbitrary formula that has fuck-all to do with women. [Insulting line deleted.]
[I’m leaving parts of this intact because I think Ginmar has an interesting point to make about the implications of using hypotheticals to describe action about specifically contextualized cases.]
[Insulting post deleted.]
Well, I’ve been struggling with some sexual harassment in law enforcement posts, but I think I’ve been inspired out of my writers’ block by some of the amazing links posted here and some of the ahem, discussion here.
Ginmar, come on! You know what women have to say about their real life experiences will always be trumped by men’s theories, hypotheticals and studies. I’m finding that in my research on sexual harassment to be true there as well unfortunately.
Thanks for the links.
[Needlessly insulting post deleted.]
I know it’s the Duke rape case guys, but puh-lease.
I looked in on this conversation last night and didn’t have the energy to stop it. I’m leaving the escalation posts untouched (the one where Ginmar implies, but doesn’t say outright that Robert is an asshole; the one where Sailorman implies that Ginmar is both irrational and boring. Robert got his freebie in the other thread.).
Further personal attacks will be encutened.
(Don’t tempt me. I have access to both cute overload and free webspace, and I’m not afraid to use it!)
“For anyone interested – if it doesn’t waste their precious time, of course – it’s relatively easy to calculate the chance that a random pool has whatever characteristic you’re looking for. Say the chance is 2% that a given allegation is false. The chance that, in the entire pool, at least one allegation is false is 1 – (0.98 ^ n), where n is the size of the pool.”
Robert,
I think you’re using an incorrect starting figure here. 2% is the percentage of false rape accusations in totem, IIRC, starting with initial police reports. I think it’s problematic to assume that the pool will still be 2% when you’re talking about cases that have gotten far enough for us to hear about them, and particularly cases that have attracted sufficient media attention for us all to discuss them.
By the by, I misread your post and made an incorrect comment about it earlier. If you happend to catch it before I deleted it, you have my apologies. (Have them anyway.)
It doesn’t really matter what the exact %age is. If its nonzero, any large pool will have a good chance of having the rare characteristic. At 1/2 of one percent, n50 = 140. At 1/10 of one percent, n50 = 693.
I’m pretty sure that more than 1/10 of one percent of reported-and-processed rape allegations are false. That’s the one in a thousand level.
“Yes, meaning that of 50 rape reports you read about in the media, on average one is false. I nominate this one.”
Robert, you started out with this claim, which seems intended to be flip, but is inaccurate for reasons stated above. The set of rape cases in totem is not the same as the set of rape cases that enter the media. (Further, the set of rape cases chosen by the media is not the same as a “randomly chosen set of rape cases.”)
“If you have a different false report candidate that you’d like to nominate, I’m open minded”
You switch to this claim, which is still flip, but which introduces a different logical fallacy. It suggests that we have a defined pool (which we don’t) and that the nomination of one rape case as a false allegation is necessary for the vindication of another. This is untrue, in the same way that a slot machine can’t be “warmed up.” Your argument works in a general way if you’re talking about averages, but once you bring a particular rape case into it by suggesting that it must be a false accusation, or another one must be, you’re no longer using real statistics.
Then you go to this:
“And yes, Ginmar, if you have a pool of (randomly chosen) rape allegations, and it passes a certain size, and a portion of such allegations are known to be false, then it is probable-approaching-inevitable that there is at least one false report in the pool.”
This differs from the original claims, which were that 1 in 50 rape cases in the media is probably false (insupportable). And, secondly, that there must be a case nominated to be “the” false accusation, when we have neither a defined pool, nor a knowledge in reality of how many false rape accusations will be in that pool (though we can make an average guess).
Nevertheless, you imply that this new claim — which is correct, but which rests on different assumptions — supports your earlier, insupportable, claims.
“This has nothing to do with who you hate or whether you are an asshole or not; it’s math… It’s a concept. It’s abstract. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you’re an asshole; it has to do with whether you are capable of rational thought about numbers.”
Further, you imply that it is objective (it’s math) and that anyone who disagrees with you is incapable of rational thought about numbers.
Because of the way that you present your latter claim as if it is in support of your earlier two claims (when it is not), you suggest that therefore anyone who disagrees with your earlier two claims is refuting the objective and incapable of rational thought about numbers.
From what I understand, that 2%-false statistic generally refers to accusations which are maliciously false and does not include the other types of “false” and/or “incorrect” accusations (which are non-malicious and are therefore deliberately in scare quotes.)
For anyone interested – if it doesn’t waste their precious time, of course – it’s relatively easy to calculate the chance that a random pool has whatever characteristic you’re looking for. Say the chance is 2% that a given allegation is false. The chance that, in the entire pool, at least one allegation is false is 1 – (0.98 ^ n), where n is the size of the pool. One person, 2% chance. Two people, 4%, and so on, but it isn’t a linear expansion. (That 4% is actually 3.9something %.)
Let’s assume that number is correct. Don’t know if it is, but for the sake of argument, let’s do so. The pool of total rape accusations does not equal the total pool of rape accusations that we hear about, that reach the paper, that go to court, all or some of the above. That’s not a meaningless point–in one very famous example the population of voters was not the same as the population of voters with telephones, leading to some very collectible newspaper issues.
At a pool size of 35, it’s even odds that at least one allegation is false. At a pool size of 100, there’s a 92% chance that one allegation is false. At 150, it’s 95%. Not quite inevitable, but the way to bet.
And even if this were true, that would not indicate that any particular allegation was false. Although it looks as though there’d be more or less the same chance that any randomly chosen rape accusation from the pool of 150 would have the same chance of being false, I strongly suspect that’s not the case. It would hardly surprise me if there were, for instance, common characteristics of false rape accusations, and cases that displayed those characteristics would have a much higher chance of being false. You can’t just choose one out of the pool of 150 and say, “Well, statistically speaking one of these is false, so I guess it’s this one I’ve happened to notice!” Because choosing randomly your chances of choosing the one false accusation is in fact quite low.
To accurately choose the one putative false accusation, you’d have to actually look at the details of each case and compare them with other cases. To say any particular case must be false accusation because one of these here must be is…well, not a really good way of actually judging the case correctly.
The 2% figure is a misleading nonsequitur.
Whatever the figures are for false accusations, whether they’re 2% or 50% or .00001%, we’re not discussing rape cases as an aggregate, we’re discussing this rape case.
It’s a bit like seeing a bird fly past, and having an argument over whether or not it was blue.
“Well, I know that 4% of birds are blue”
“Yes, but we’ve only seen 10 birds today, so that one could not have been blue!”
“Ahh, but you’re not counting the birds that we missed. If we missed 96 brown birds, then this one must be blue!”
This is pretty useless when you could be discussing the actual bird.
In reference to the actual case, I think that the accused have been pretty thoroughly exonerated (and also that you don’t have to be some sort of misogynist jerk to think so), and that it’s unlikely that the accuser accused them maliciously, mental illness and prosecutorial misconduct being the likeliest candidates.
—Myca
Hautdesert – I agree with everything you wrote. Never said different.
Myca – I agree about the actual case – this is not a malicious false accusation on the part of the accuser. She’s sick, not bad; he’s bad. The situation needs to be handled accordingly. And yeah, you can’t use the statistical truth about a large group to say anything significant about an individual case – but as you note, you don’t need to for this case. It’s pretty obvious. The statistical argument is for knocking down the “I believe her because the false accusation rate is so low” clutched-straw.
And it’s worth repeating that this case does draw attention to the question of the extent of prosecutorial misconduct in many other cases (not just rape cases) whose railroaded accused weren’t educated and resourceful sons of privilege. I suspect there are a lot of men and women sitting in jail because a prosecutor decided to make some points and had some helpless targets in his sights. Nifong’s mistake was going after people too big for his britches. Maybe we’ll get some sunshine on prosecutorial action for a while, which is a good thing.
Myca, thank you, you said what I was trying to say much more clearly and succinctly.
No one was trying to say that because the percentage of false accusations was low this one must not be–the argument was made that because some were, this one might be, and ginmar made the very accurate remark that hypotheticals are useless when discussing any particular case, Myca said the same, and I said the same though less clearly.
Robert, I take it you are an expert on rape accusations and cases and have studied the accuser’s testimony very closely in this case? You have some reason to doubt the accuser in the Duke case beyond “she’s a slut and besides the case was dismissed”? You have access to actual hard data on the number of people falsely accused and convicted of rape? You can explain what the signs of a false accusation are, and in what ways this particular case matches those?
Or are you just sure in your heart that lots of people are languishing in jail who ought not to be and are the victims of malicious or sick women?
You have some reason to doubt the accuser in the Duke case beyond “she’s a slut and besides the case was dismissed”?
I’d rather you not refer to women as “sluts”, at least when you’re talking with me. If that’s how you feel about women in general, then this probably isn’t the blog for you to be hanging out at, but that’s between you and the moderators I suppose.
No, I don’t have any of the special skills or knowledge you referenced. Have I claimed them, or made any assertions that require them? I think that the DA who exonerated the Duke boys probably does have a lot of those skills, and he’s the expert on whose judgment I am relying.
Or are you just sure in your heart that lots of people are languishing in jail who ought not to be and are the victims of malicious or sick women?
I am sure, on a statistical basis, that there must be at least some “victims of malicious or sick women” in the prison system; it’s a big world.
Leaving out the redirection as to the source of the problem – I specifically singled out malicious prosecutors abusing their power against society’s most helpless members, and it is you who are dishonestly casting that as blaming women – then yes, I am pretty sure that there are a lot of people languishing in jail who didn’t commit the crimes they are accused of. Rape is one crime of many, and probably not one that is particularly high-ranking in terms of where bad convictions are coming from.
That’s not really a controversial statement, outside the very strongly authoritarian right (and even there people will admit it, but attempt to justify it by noting that most of the people in question are “bad guys” anyway, who must have done SOMETHING). Human systems are fallible. People lie. Lawyers cheat. Cops fake shit to make their numbers look good, or because they don’t like Mexicans/blacks/Poles. The inevitable result is miscarriages of justice; inevitable error times huge population equals significant numbers of unjustly-imprisoned people. If that is puzzling or objectionable to you, I’ll refer you to the last 40 years of liberal and leftist writing on criminal justice issues; they get a lot of theoretical stuff wrong but they’re the ones who have rooted out lots and lots and lots of bad justice.
What is new, at least for me, is the idea that the prosecutors might be part of the problem. As I said, it’s a question – but we need to ask whether Mike Nifong is an emblematic prosecutor who is typical of what goes on in the courthouses, or whether he’s a freak outlier and most all prosecutors are honest in their ministerial functions.
Having worked in prosecutor’s offices before….
They’re human like everyone else, but on average more conservative than the general population. They don’t carry guns, so they don’t have as much of the attracted-to-authority issues that police do (I used to hear a saying “anyone who wants to be a cop shouldn’t be allowed to be a cop.”) But they aren’t an average slice of lawyers.
Partly this is because the liberal lawyers get siphoned off to public defense. But more often it is simply that the court system is based on an (inaccurate) assumption that “justice will be done.”
It’s only sort of the prosecutor’s job to winnow out the chaff–they’re not juries, nor are they supposed to be. So prosecution inevitably involves charging, trying, and/or taking pleas from people who are not obviously guilty. It also involves close relationship with police (you gotta be friends with the police or they’ll screw you.) And it involves a firm belief that you’re “doing the right thing.” That combination tends to appeal more to conservatives.
In my experience it’s less of a problem with U.S. prosecutors, and more of a problem with state prosecutors.
The short conclusion is that there is definitely some unconscious bias going on. There are isolated instances of what may be conscious bias (a la Nifong) but those are rare.
A lot of it is framing. One of the most instructive experiences of my law career was actually in college. i was interning in a prosecutor’s office and a girl I knew was in the PD’s office. I ran into her on a case and it was crazy: from what I heard in my office, it was “100% obvious” to me that the defendant was guilty, lying, etc etc; from what she had heard it was “100% obvious” to her that the defendant was being railroaded, was innocent, etc. No malice on either side, but very different perspectives.
“I’d rather you not refer to women as “sluts”, at least when you’re talking with me. If that’s how you feel about women in general, then this probably isn’t the blog for you to be hanging out at, but that’s between you and the moderators I suppose.”
Robert, you have been warned repeatedly. You’ve insulted other posters here a number of times over the past two days. This is not a particularly egregious example of same, and I might not give it remark if it were outside the context of repeated insults and warnings. I left intact the text where you implied that Ginmar, Donna and Radfem were incapable of “thinking rationally about numbers,” for instance.
In this particular exchange, it’s possible to read haut’s comment toward you as an attack, and it certainly has that aspect. However, her comment has an implication for the political debate — it is clearly the case that many people who’ve attacked Mary Doe have done so by using her supposed sluttishness. Your response, while clever, lacks that root in the argument. I also note that within the course of a four comment exchange with haut, you not only insulted her, but also denied that you’d said things which you had clearly said.
However, the salient point here is that I’ve repeatedly asked you to back off from personal insult, and you have refused to do so. You’ve used up your cushion of good will for the nonce.
You are banned from the site for 24 hours.
[Edited for clarification.]
Sailor,
Those are interesting stories. I’d love to read more about your experiences with the system.
I’d rather you not refer to women as “sluts”, at least when you’re talking with me.
Robert, if your tactic for arguing is to misread and willfully misinterpret my statements so that you can take offence and act self-righteous, then you might want to re-examine that tactic. Getting the vapors over the use of a particular word isn’t in and of itself an argument.
I am interested in hard data, not general impressions that someone somewhere has been jailed unfairly. I don’t doubt that some have. If you’re going to argue, though, that any given case is based on a false accusation, then you really need to have hard data to back you up. You need to give actual, verifiable information–what do the clearly falsely prosecuted cases have in common? And what do they have in common with the case in question? What is the evidence in this particular case that proves the accusation is false? You say you’ve never claimed any such knowledge and are relying on the expertise of the DA in question–so what makes the DA more trustworthy than any other lawyer? And why argue on any other basis–which you have in fact been trying to do–and not just say, “Hey, I don’t know much about this but I believe the DA” and then explain why you believe this particular DA?
Also? The prosecutors in question would have nothing to prosecute without the initial accusations. The prosecutor’s job is to prosecute. Are some malicious? No doubt. I But once again, we are talking about one case in particular. Is there some reason to believe that this particular prosecutor is malicious? Hard data, not just “well, some prosecutors are malicious”? If you don’t have the data to back that claim up, then it’s hardly surprising that people won’t believe that claim.
However, her comment has an implication for the political debate — it is clearly the case that many people who’ve attacked Mary Doe have done so by using her supposed sluttishness.
That was pretty much the way I meant it. As far as it being an insult directed at Robert, it wasn’t–but there was certainly some anger on my part. There is precious little difference between “she’s sick and needs help, we can’t believe her” and “she’s a slut, we can’t believe her.” Just because one sentence uses less obviously offensive terms doesn’t mean it’s nicer. The reverse is also true.
This is not necessarily true. ‘Sleeping with a lot of people’ is not a direct indicator of disconnection from reality. Many forms of mental illness are direct indicators of disconnection from reality.
Not all reasons for disbelieving someone are equal. Some are invalid, some are valid. Some imply malicious intent, some imply honest error, some imply something else.
Last, although I think it would be clearly abelist to choose to disbelieve someone’s claims of rape because of a history of mental illness, I think that for most people (and the ‘most’ is just speculation, but for me anyhow) it’s a more post-facto thing in this case.
—Myca
This is the second or third time I’ve posted this online and many others have posted it so this is old news. I shouldn’t have to find it because it’s old news. According to the DOJ, 8% of reported rapes to the police are false but this is based on women who are inebriated during the rape and women who were acquainted with their rapists. It’s beyond me who came up with such sexist and crazy logic. It comes down to the same as any other crime, 2% or less considering how much hell women receive for reporting rape.
Well, Nifong conspired to withhold exculpatory evidence and did a number of other things in this case that ultimately got him disbarred. He hasn’t been convicted of malicious prosecution. But if going so far that they pull your law license isn’t a good indicator of rogue prosecutor I’m not sure what is.
The big difference between Nifong and AG cooper for me was that I haven’t heard anyone show a plausible reason why the AG would lie in his report. The most I’ve seen offered is an attack on Cooper for his race, gender and economic class. Nifong had motivation and has since taken action that lower his credibility. If the AG were paid/pressured to let the accused off why would he go as far as he did in his statement? He could much more easily have said “the evidence is unlikely to support a conviction” and dropped the charges.
also I want to point out that there are a lot of people that don’t realize that ‘false accusation’ implies that the accusation is maliciously false.
Which isn’t always accurate. Consider the police departments under investigation for skewing rape numbers to make themselves look good. Many rape reports weren’t investigated and labelled as false, on purpose. Without an investigation, one can’t determine if a report is true or false.
Yet it’s been done all over the country.
it surely isn’t always accurate. But the best data we have suggest that 2% is fairly reasonable across the board (not only for rape.) It may be 1%, it may be 3%, but we have to particular reason to think it is anything other than 2%.
You probably know this, but it’s not clear from your response: Malicious accusations represent the SMALLEST easily identifiable subset of accusations which are not factually and legally correct.
And on a more adorable note: here’s a picture of Myca as a Simpsons character!
(Sorry it took me a couple days to post this)
[/ban]
Why? It’s not a theoretical situation, it’s reality, and you can’t change reality. Those guys had criminal pasts, reputations as sexists, and then there’s that violent email. I don’t bother with hypotheticals. Hypotheticals are for people who haven’t faced the hatred men have for women.
Ginmar, a couple of questions. What were their criminal pasts? I missed that one. Was it anything involving violence or harassment?
The other question; IIRC, the violent email did not involve one of the defendants. So how does that get laid at the defendants’ feet?
I want to point out that there are a lot of people that don’t realize that ‘false accusation’ implies that the accusation is maliciously false.
Not only are 2% of reports maliciously false, it’s statistically been proven, beyond any shadow of a doubt, these reports are filed by lying, gold-digging sluts.
Preferably black.
Oops, I read Robert and most of the regular guys here’s minds.
C’mon, what’s the deal with the regular trolls here?
Why was my comment trollish? I honestly didn’t know the connotation/legal meaning until recently.
Moderator hat: attempt civility, sil vous plait. No one’s exceeded a single warning, but my army of cute fluffy kittens remains at the ready.
Donna, many people (in my experience) apparently think that far MORE than two percent of rape accusations are maliciously false.
It’s important to distinguish between the various kind of “false” accusations. That’s because “false” in the “2% of accusations are false” doesn’t match the way many people use “false” (as with many terms that share common and legal usage.)
To many people, “false” means “incorrect.”* In that context, when faced with an unexplained “2%” statistic, they feel forced to conclude either that the 2% is wrong, or that 98% of people who are found not guilty of rape (including those who are victims of incorrect identification who are later discovered) are actually guilty of rape. They tend to choose the former.
Obviously, that’s a bad thing. The 2% statistic is accurate, and to avoid people assuming otherwise, it it’s common to explain it a tad. That means explaining the “malicious” aspect.
*For example, with the “malicious” definition, someone who is misidentified as a defendant, and is entirely innocent, is NOT considered “falsely accused.” Perfectly reasonable in context, but way, way, different from how the general public uses “false.”
Thanks for posting this, Mandolin! I’m more full-beardy now, but the Simpsons site doesn’t have that option, and I’ve had the goatee often enough.
I’d love to see some other poster’s avatars as well!
—Myca
I suppose some might find the “number of false accusations and the reason they’re false” debate interesting, but ultimately it’s of little relevance to the Duke case. 100% of rape cases in Durham, North Carolina reported in the first half of 2006 involving three white Duke LaCrosse players and a black stripper were false accusations.
You can close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears and cry “la la la la la” at the top of your lungs when confronted with the truth all you want. Isn’t going to change a thing.