{"id":1567,"date":"2005-05-21T00:17:43","date_gmt":"2005-05-21T07:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/05\/20\/1567\/"},"modified":"2005-05-21T00:17:43","modified_gmt":"2005-05-21T07:17:43","slug":"1567","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1567","title":{"rendered":"Fun Debate over Sexism and Discrimination"},"content":{"rendered":"

You should really go read this comments thread on Pharyngula. It’s the Eighth “Skeptic’ Circle”<\/a> – an ongoing collection of high-quality blog posts which “praise science and reason, and smirk and mock the gullible and credulous.”<\/p>\n

Dean of Dean’s World decided to submit this post<\/a> (written by Trudy Schuett, a men’s rights activist) from his blog. Trudy’s post is a response to a post of mine, which criticized men’s rights activists for using outdated statistics to discuss intimate homicide<\/a>. (Not coincidently, my post was included in the seventh Skeptic’s Circle<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Here’s where it begins to amuse. Trudy’s rebuttal of my post was not only rejected, the editor, P.Z. Meyers, found it so ridiculous that he openly mocked it when he posted the Skeptic’s Circus:<\/p>\n

This article from Dean’s World<\/a> on Men’s Issues and Stats<\/a> has but one virtue: irony. Look at these opening lines in disbelief.<\/p>\n

It seems the ignorance of feminists is not only alive and well, but growing at an astonishing rate. Or maybe it’s deliberate, this dissemination of obvious untruth. I vote for the deliberate, as I’ve never met a feminist or women’s shelter advocate yet who could hold an entire conversation without resorting to at least one fabrication. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you must read further, watch the phony strawman go up in the second paragraph, too. Ouch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ouch, indeed.<\/p>\n

This rejection infuriated Dean so much that he posted a sour grapes attack<\/a> on the entire Skeptics Circle tradition.<\/p>\n

The angry link from Dean’s world caused a few anti-feminists to swarm on the thread. And here’s where it’s very entertaining: a long debate ensues between the anti-feminists and the Skeptics, and the anti-feminists make total idiots of themselves. If you enjoy the “Alas” posts debunking anti-feminists, you’re pretty much guaranteed to enjoy this thread, too.<\/p>\n

Also, note that in the comments on Dean’s World, Richard Bennett calls me<\/a> “the Josef Goebbels of the women’s movement.” Lovely fellow, that Richard.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, P.Z. Meyer’s spam-prevention program has gone haywire, so people who haven’t already “joined” the site might not be able to post. So you can read the thread, but you might not be able to post to it. What follows “below the fold” are two responses I wrote intending to post on in P.Z.’s comments, but which I’m instead posting here. (UPDATE: I’ve just discovered that I can <\/em>join P.Z.’s site, as long as I used IE rather than Firefox to do so.)<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Trudy Schuett responds to a piece that appeared in the last Skeptic’s Circle that was full of straw men and name calling, she provides numerous references and citations to back up her point, and you go after her for responding in kind in her opening paragraphs?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the comments of your blog, Dean, I challenged you to find any 100-word passage in my original post<\/a> that can match the first hundred words of Trudy’s post for both insulting content and lack of substance. I renew my challenge now.<\/p>\n

I really get bored by these sorts of personal attacks. Let’s ignore them, and look at the substantive issue that was under discussion.<\/p>\n

1) I claimed<\/a> that anti-feminists and MRAs tend to use out-of-date data to support their claim that women murder intimate partners (e.g., spouses & lovers) as often as men do. More recent, nationwide data shows that, contrary to MRA claims, women are murdered by intimates
\nmore often than vice-versa.<\/p>\n

2) Trudy responded<\/a> by claiming that I had distorted my data by citing out-of-date articles, and that more recent MRA articles make us of more recent data. To support her point, Trudy cited this collection of citations by Dr. Fiebert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3) I pointed out that Trudy’s substantive claim is not true; recent MRA articles about intimate homicide often use outdated data, just as I claimed. (The most recent example I found – this article by Glenn Sacks<\/a>, a prominent and well-respected MRA – was published just last month). In fact, in the article by Dr. Fiebert that Trudy herself cited as an example of an MRA who uses recent data, all of the cited data regarding intimate homicide<\/i> was from 1992 or earlier. (It did have more recent data regarding other topics, but I never claimed that MRAs preferred outdated data regarding all topics, just regarding intimate homicide).<\/p>\n

Neither Trudy nor any other poster on Dean’s World ever provided a substantive rebuttal to my response to Trudy.<\/p>\n

As far as I can tell, if we brush aside the name-calling and other irrelevant silliness, that is where the substantive debate stands. And the debate over substance – not the name-calling – should be what we pay attention to.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Richard B. wrote:<\/p>\n

But [Weitzman] lied. Peterson’s examination of her data showed that when tax effects were considered, her data showed living standards were a wash.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Compare that to what Peterson himself wrote, in a discussion on USENET<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I see that the Weitzman controversy lives on. I have a couple of comments. First of all, let me say that I am the person who published the research showing that her much cited numbers (73% decline in standard of living for women, 42% rise for men) were wrong. The “real” numbers from her study are 27% decline for women, and a 10% rise for men, on average. So her numbers do show a gender gap (as does every other RELIABLE study I know of). (See article in American Sociological Review, June 1996 Vol 61, pp. 528-540.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So Peterson made it clear that he found a gender gap – not a “wash,” as Richard claims Peterson found.<\/p>\n

Richard really should have known that without being told – since he was, like myself, a participant in that same Usenet discussion. Having the actual researcher you’re discussing<\/em> pop up to correct you in a Usenet discussion is unusual – not unlike the scene in “Annie Hall” in which Woody Allen pulls Marshall McLuhan out from behind a movie poster.<\/p>\n\n

ALVY: (Sighing and addressing the audience) What do you do when you get stuck in a movie line with a guy like this behind you? I mean, it’s just maddening!<\/p>\n

The man in line moves toward Alvy. Both address the audience now.<\/em><\/p>\n

MAN IN LINE Wait a minute, why can’t I give my opinion? It’s a free country!<\/p>\n

ALVY I mean, d- He can give you- Do you hafta give it so loud? I mean, aren’t you ashamed to pontificate like that? And-and the funny part of it is, M-Marshall McLuhan, you don’t know anything about Marshall McLuhan’s…work!<\/p>\n

MAN IN LINE (Overlapping) Wait a minute! Really? Really? I happen to teach a class at Columbia called “TV Media and Culture”! So I think that my insights into Mr. McLuhan-well, have a great deal of validity.<\/p>\n

ALVY Oh, do yuh?<\/p>\n

MAN IN LINE Yes.<\/p>\n

ALVY Well, that’s funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here. So … Come over here … a second.<\/p>\n

Alvy gestures to the camera which follows him and the man in line to the back of the crowded lobby. He moves over to a large stand-up movie poster and pulls Marshall McLuban from behind the poster.<\/em><\/p>\n

MAN IN LINE Oh.<\/p>\n

ALVY (To McLuhan) Tell him.<\/p>\n

MCLUHAN (To the man in line) I heard what you were saying. You know nothing of my work. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.<\/p>\n

ALVY (To the camera) Boy, if life were only like this!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/pracut>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You should really go read this comments thread on Pharyngula. It’s the Eighth “Skeptic’ Circle” – an ongoing collection of high-quality blog posts which “praise science and reason, and smirk and mock the gullible and credulous.” Dean of Dean’s World … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-feminists-and-their-pals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}