Feministe has a good round-up of recent posts discussing male liberal bloggers who use “gendered language as insult.” She quotes Body and Soul, who (predictably) gets to the core of the issue:

The comments thread following Jeanne’s post is especially worth reading. I’d also recommend this post on Des Femmes and, indeed, everything on Des Femmes, if you’re interested in this issue.

An issue that comes up a lot is the question of satire; what about lefty bloggers who use terms like “pussy” and “bitch slap” as an ironic reference to right-wing points of view? As Atrios wrote in Jeanne’s comments:

There’s something to be said for that. In a post like this, Atrios is obviously making fun of misogyny, not endorsing it.

And as MaryBeth points out:

Well, great. Except: how the heck did this become a debate over if Atrios is a good person or not?

Look, he’s a great guy. But that’s not the point. The point is, when language like this become normalized, it’s a problem just like Jeanne says. It’s not about what I call “the politics of personal purity” - who is pure and who is not. It’s about the atmosphere created when using gendered insults like “pussy” and “bitch-slap” becomes the norm.

To see what I mean, take this Atrios post - which, as I wrote before, is obviously anti-sexist parody.

But then read some of the comments on that post left by Atrios’ readers….

Or, for that matter, after I debated a female blogger (Megan McArdle) on the “Majority Report” radio show, how about this appalling comment left on the “Majority Report” blog by a reader:

It’s not Atrios’ fault, or my fault, or Janeane Garagalo’s fault that these comments are made. But although it’s not our fault, it should be our concern. If you’re against sexism, then you have to be against the woman-excluding atmosphere these comments create - and against the way such comments seem to be becoming more common as the election heats up.

If Atrios makes an ironic anti-sexist comment on his blog - or I talk against sexism on the radio - and the comments we get indicate that some of our audience, some of the folks who think they’re on our side, don’t get it - that’s a matter of concern.

If a leftist as smart and thoughtful and not-particularly-thin-skinned like Jeanne is feeling excluded, that’s a matter of concern.

I’m not saying don’t use irony. I am saying do use thoughtfulness. If you’re gonna use such language ironically, use it in such an over-the-top fashion that no one can possibly mistake who it is you’re blasting. (Comics readers may remember when cartoonist R. Crumb did a parody comic of racist views - only it was too subtle, and some racist publications reprinted it because they thought it was supporting their views). I am saying the question we should be asking ourselves is not “am I personally pure and good of heart?” but “is what I’m doing, regardless of my good intent, contributing to the problem?” And: “Am I remaining silent when I should be objecting?”

Finally, something that isn’t the point of this discussion, but is still worth thinking about. From a conversation with a Republican operative, reported on TAPPED:

The more women feel alienated from politics, the better things will go for the GOP. And if what we want to fight that alienation - not just for electoral reasons, but because it’s the right thing to do - then the lefty blogosphere could be doing a lot better.

At the historic site where I work, I’m in charge of running Microsoft Access - even though I really don’t know much about it. (I know more than my co-workers, so that means I’m in charge.)

So, unsurprisingly, I often run into problems which - although they’re probably no problem at all for people who actually know Access or SQL - are enough to completely stump me. So I thought “why not ask the “Alas” readership? Nothing stumps them!”
Read the rest of this entry »

Newsmax reports, 27% of Louisiana’s registered voters turned out yesterday and overwhelmingly passed an amendment banning same sex marriage in Louisiana. The amendment will be challenged by opponents on at least two grounds. One is failure to deliver ballot boxes to polls in a timely fashion. The other is a constitutional challenge, alleging the amendment has more than one purpose, which violates the Louisiana constitution. A previous constitutional challenge had been turned down by the courts, which ruled that challenges can only be lodged after the vote.

For more visit CNN.

• Yay for Jews! A recent poll shows that Jews are more supportive of same-sex marriage than any other religious group in the USA (55% in favor), and another 30% on top of that favor civil unions.

  What happens a generation from now, when the large majority of synagogues recognize gay marriage? Eventually, this is going to come down to a question of why Evangelical marriages are universally recognized by the law but Jewish marriages aren’t.

• The same poll also found that strong majorities of every single religous group in the USA - which is to say, the entire US population - favors taxing the wealthy to fight poverty. (pdf file - see page 19) Jews moreso than everyone else, but still - it was striking that there was such universal agreement.
• The same poll (see page 27) also found that 24% of Evangelicals, even when given the choice of saying that abortion should be legal in just a few circumstances, prefer that abortion should be illegal in every circumstance. Who cares if the mother dies? Psychos.

  In comparison, not one (0%) Jew said that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Again, us Heebs are in the right.

• Law professor Richard Thomson looks at the recent debate over who is an “African American” and very sensibly asks, who cares? Via Ms. Musings.

• Ms Musings is also one of several bloggers to point out the first American Time-Use Survey (and it’s about time - the Canadians have been doing a survey like this for years). The unsurprising results: Men spend more time at paid work than women, but not to the extent that women spend more time in unpaid housecleaning and caretaking than men.
• What kind of freaky mother are you? A quiz for alt-mommies, which I’m not, but I’m posting it here so my friend Kim will see it. Via Feministe, punk-rock mommy.
• Mousewords presents a round-up of some Republican dirty tricks.
• Southwest Airlines is arbitrarily enforcing its “buy two seats if you’re fat” policy even on fat people who can fit in the seat with the armrests down and the belt buckled. So what is the point of this policy, exactly? To generate lawsuits against Southwest, perhaps - two lawsuits in the last couple of weeks. There’s also some suspicion that Southwest’s “fatsos pay double” policy is enforced more often against women and people of course. Big Fat Blog has the story, here and here.
• You know, when Bigfatblog linked to an organization called “Fat is the New Black,” I figured it would be an analysis along the lines of fat suits being the new blackface. It turns out I was mistaken - it’s a fashion statement. Cool.
• The GOP wants single women to stay home; TAPPED reports.
  …a D.C. Republican operative tells me that this election will come down to the votes of single women. But don’t take that to mean the GOP is going to be competing for the Planned Parenthood supporter vote any time soon. Single women, in particular, hate negative campaigning, he says, which is one reason the Bush campaign hasn’t hesitated to go negative this season. Every woman who is repelled from politics by doubts about John Kerry and disgust with George W. Bush — the “pox on both your houses” outcome — is effectively another vote for Bush.

  I’ve always found attempts to keep the other side’s voters home to be particularly disgusting; it seems to indicate a fundimental contempt for the idea of democracy. Via Diotima.

• Three posts about three arguments: Positive Liberty discusses the three styles of poliitcal argument Americans use: the argument from democracy, the argument from pluralism, and the argument from justice. Very interesting stuff. Here’s part one, here’s part two (my favorite - plus, lots of stuff about gay marriage), and here’s part three.
• Ricka points out the oddness of an administration which bases its theory of government on their ability to understand what 200-years-dead men meant, claiming that it’s impossible to know what someone who died 10 years ago meant.
• The scariness of “concience clauses,” which allows doctors and hospitals to opt out of providing abortions - even in cases of rape, or a threat to the mother’s health. Good quote: “Yes, we need to respect individual freedom of religion. But at what point does it cross the line of not providing essential medical care? At what point is it malpractice? If someone’s beliefs interfere with practicing their profession, perhaps they should do something else.”
• From the UN Population Fund’s “State of World Population 2004″: “Poverty dramatically increases a woman’s chances of dying. The lifetime risk of a woman dying in pregnancy or childbirth in West Africa is 1 in 12. In developed regions, the comparable risk is 1 in 4,000.” Bush v. Choice has more on the report, including the unsurprising news that Bush’s defunding of the UN Pop fund has contributed to countless preventable abortions - and maternal deaths - in poor nations. That’s what “pro-life” means, I guess.
• The Log Cabin Republians have officially decided not to endorse Bush in the 2004 election. Meanwhile, Kerry gets the endorsement of virtually every liberal gay-rights organization - although he’s done absolutely nothing to earn it.
• Eugene Volokh comments on a same-sex marriage opponent who is afraid that if same-sexers marry, that’ll lead down a slippery slope to people who practice S/M being allowed to marry.

  No, really. Check out the follow-up, as well.

• Also on Volokh: it turns out that the CIA unit on Bin Laden is desparately understaffed - and in fact they’re assigned fewer experienced officers now than they had before 9/11. The incompetance continues to stun.
• I am too sickened by the “my penis is bigger and more macho” presidential campaign to comment on it, much. Happily, Ms Musings and Katha Pollitt have stronger stomachs than I do.

A lot of home ownership stuff is still new to me.

For instance: Just after buying the house, we bought two new dishwashers and a new refrigerator from Sears. The appliances came with a one-year warrenty for all parts and labor. The dishwashers are fine, but we had to have the Sears repairman come out twice to fiddle with our fridge before the icemaker (which we use a lot) worked properly.

Now the one-year warranty is running out, and Sears has sent us the “don’t you want to extend the warranty?” letter. And I have no idea. Extending the warrenty for all three appliances costs $370.20 for 3 years, $252.68 for 2 years, or $140.38 for a year. Does anyone have any experience with this? Should we extend the warranty or not?

Update: Spelling of “warranty” corrected. Yeesh, sometimes I amaze myself.

New page of Hereville. This is probably the page I’ve done that required the most work, despite it having only three panels; I ended up having to redraw Fruma again and again.

The problem with a page like this is it requires someone who draws much better than I do. Hopefully, after a few years of doing Hereville, my drawing will improve until I can manage pages like this one better - but, of course, I can’t put off drawing this page until then.

Then again, who knows? Gerhard (the background artist of Cerebus, who draws better than just about anyone in comics nowadays) apparently loathes his own work, because he can never get it to look the way he wants it to. So perhaps it’s hopeless. :-)

Anyhow, for those of you interested in work process, below is a pencil drawing of panel two, which I worked on for a couple of hours (erase, redraw, erase, redraw, erase, redraw) before deciding to dump it and start over from scratch. I just couldn’t get Fruma’s hands to work right from this angle. I like the Mirka head, though.

UPDATE: I’ve added the final panel here, too, so people could
compare the two even after I put the next page up on girlamatic.

Remember the over 200 same sex weddings performed in New Paltz, NY? NBC3 reports NY State Supreme Court Justice Michael Kavanagh refused to invalidate them.

Unfortunately, the judge’s reason is the couples need to be named in the case, this would give them the right to be heard in court. So, this doesn’t sound like a big legal victory for marriage equality. Matthew Staver of Liberty Counsel who filed the suit to invalidate the marriages plans to add the names to the suit, and then try again to invalidate the marriages.

We will be hearing more from the New York courts since there are several pending cases in the NY court system.

— Edited:
For a more detailed story, visit The Daily Freeman.com

CVT.ca reports:

This ruling was not unexpected. The neither the provincial nor the federal government contested the case and the Judge was swayed by previous rulings in other provinces. So, same sex marriages are now legal in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, the Yukon and Manitoba.

The Guardian reports:

Lourdes Rivera, director of the Los Angeles-based National Health Law Program, comments on abortions foes’ concerns regarding conscientious objections by medical personnel:

I’d suggest not providing medical care and refusing referrals during a medical emergency would certainly represent crossing the line.

But, I have a non-abortion related question. Isn’t there a big states rights issue at stake here?

====== Edited at 4:35 pm central time.
Ema of The Well Timed Period expressed amazement at the idea that such a bill might be passed. She has called congress about this bill and is tracking down the provisions. We currently don’t know whether this story accurately represents the bill’s contents. (Let’s hope not!)

Friday Sept. 17. Ema dashes my hopes, and say the story is, indeed, true. For her update visit: Well Timed Period

Posting in comments at “Alas, A Blog”, Rev. Ian Brumberger suggests:

Rev. Brumberger’s full comment; 365.com’s story

Evidently, some anti-abortion groups are working to curb sales of birth control pills. Lisa Boyd, of Planned Parenthood, summarizes the situation in Wisconsin:

For more, read this BBC news report.

“Alas” reader Steven Duncan has been bringing up the “why don’t women just vote in female candidates?” question in the comments to an earlier post.

I don’t have time to write an answer today; but fortunately, I don’t have to. I can just recycle the answer I wrote to someone else, asking the same (or at least, a quite similar) question.

Several years ago, someone using the netname “RightWinger” wrote:

First of all, the answer seems to assume that - even if all women, without even a minority of exceptions, would prefer 50-50 female/male representatives (which seems unlikely) - they care so much about this one issue that they’re willing to ignore all their other opinions. I doubt this is true.

Next, studies have shown that, at least in the 90s (and in the USA ? in fact, all the data I refer to when I write is from the USA, sorry), female candidates do as well as male candidates with the voters. (In the 80s, many voters did seem to prefer men; female candidates had to be better money-raisers and have more experience to do as well as male candidates, on average).

But (at least in the USA) who gets to be on the ballot isn’t something that’s generally chosen by the voters. Realistically, someone who doesn’t have the support of some party elites (as well as the support of at least a few people with VERY deep wallets) has next to zilch chance of winning the nomination for a national office in either major party. (And if you’re not in a major party in the USA, then you’re simply not gonna get in office).

Party elites are usually “old boy” networks, and they can be quite sexist. For instance, a 1998 survey by David Niven of county party chairs found that male party chairs (the vast majority) were of the opinion that women are less likely to be able to win elections than men — even though statistics show that in the 1990s, the voters haven’t been giving one sex or the other an advantage in elections. But right or wrong, party chairs will always favor whichever candidates they believe has the best chance of winning. When asked the sexes of the five people they were thinking of tapping for nominations to higher offices, mostly men were named.

Also, Niven surveyed women holding local elected offices (to get a sample of potential women candidates for state legislature and Congress). 64% answered yes when asked “In your experience, have party leaders discouraged potential women candidates from running for office because of their gender?” The majority of those women told about “old boy networks.” In the words of one California Democrat, “women in the party are to rise no higher than volunteer work. Women elected to office rarely come from the party but run from the outside. If they win, the party quickly embraces them.”

So when I vote in a primary between the three people running to represent my party in the election for Senator, those three people haven’t been chosen by “the entire electorate.” Usually they’ve been chosen by the handful of party leaders and wealthy contributors whose support makes a candidate a “serious” candidate. And to say that there’ s a choice of three is an exaggeration; usually (at least in Oregon) there’s at most two serious candidates for the chance of being the Democratic or Republican candidate, and frequently there’s only one.

To blame the lack of women in congress on voters - who are basically nonsexist in making their choices - is ridiculous. Voters can’t vote for people who aren’t on the ballot.

There are some other factors — such as the fact that the large majority of elected politicians in America are from the very top bracket of income earners. But only about 23% of the Americans who have a money income over $75,000 are women (as of 2002, according to the 2004 Statistical Abstract of the U.S.). If there are significant wealth barriers to successfully running for higher political office in the U.S., and I think there are, then the pool of potential male candidates is larger than the pool of potential female candidates.

Also, the fact that women are generally expected to be in charge of raising children and taking care of elders who need caretaking means that women, on average, have less time available to pursue political careers than men. (There are individual exceptions to this, of course, but nonetheless the pool of men who have time to pursue politics is larger.)

Finally, consider the impact of incumbentcy. Especially as district boundaries in the US become more and more gerrymandered by the major parties, and as incumbent fundraising advantages become more important, any past inequality tends to perpetuate itself through the incumbent’s advantage. Even if you assume that sexism doesn’t exist anymore (an assumption not supported by evidence), past sexism will still have a very strong impact on who is in office.

This is pretty outragious:

The punchline: The Kerry campaign heard about the firing and has given her a job.

Americablog is very atop this story. Via Samsara Shmamsara.

[Note: This version of the list is not the current version. The most up-to-date version of the list can always be found at this link.]

No time for blogging today - gotta draw, gotta go to work, blah blah blah. So instead, here’s a piece I compiled five or six years ago, originally as an exercise for a women’s studies class. It’s probably my most widely-read piece; as well as floating around on the internet, it’s been used in dozens of high school and college courses.

In 1990, Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh wrote an essay called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. McIntosh observes that whites in the U.S. are “taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.” To illustrate these invisible systems, McIntosh wrote a list of 26 invisible privileges whites benefit from.

As McIntosh points out, men also tend to be unaware of their own privileges as men. In the spirit of McIntosh’s essay, I thought I’d compile a list similar to McIntosh’s, focusing on the invisible privileges benefiting men.

Since I first compiled it, the list has been posted several times on internet discussion groups. Very helpfully, many people have suggested additions to the checklist. More commonly, of course, critics (usually, but not exclusively, male) have pointed out men have disadvantages too - being drafted into the army, being expected to suppress emotions, and so on. These are indeed bad things - but I never claimed that life for men is all ice cream sundaes. Pointing out that men are privileged in no way denies that sometimes bad things happen to men.

In the end, however, it is men and not women who make the most money; men and not women who dominate the government and the corporate boards; men and not women who dominate virtually all of the most powerful positions of society. And it is women and not men who suffer the most from intimate violence and rape; who are the most likely to be poor; who are, on the whole, given the short end of patriarchy’s stick. As Marilyn Frye has argued, while men are harmed by patriarchy, women are oppressed by it.

Several critics have also argued that the list somehow victimizes women. I disagree; pointing out problems is not the same as perpetuating them. It is not a “victimizing” position to acknowledge that injustice exists; on the contrary, without that acknowledgement it isn’t possible to fight injustice.

An internet acquaintance of mine once wrote, “The first big privilege which whites, males, people in upper economic classes, the able bodied, the straight (I think one or two of those will cover most of us) can work to alleviate is the privilege to be oblivious to privilege.” This checklist is, I hope, a step towards helping men to give up the “first big privilege.”

The Male Privilege Checklist

1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.

2. I can be confident that my co-workers won’t think I got my job because of my sex - even though that might be true.

3. If I am never promoted, it’s not because of my sex.

4. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.

5. The odds of my encountering sexual harassment on the job are so low as to be negligible.

6. If I do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think I did a better job.

7. If I’m a teen or adult, and if I can stay out of prison, my odds of being raped are so low as to be negligible.

8. I am not taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces.

9. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.

10. If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.

11. If I have children and provide primary care for them, I’ll be praised for extraordinary parenting if I’m even marginally competent.

12. If I have children and pursue a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.

13. If I seek political office, my relationship with my children, or who I hire to take care of them, will probably not be scrutinized by the press.

14. Chances are my elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more likely this is to be true.

15. I can be somewhat sure that if I ask to see “the person in charge,” I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person is, the surer I can be.

16. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.

17. As a child, I could choose from an almost infinite variety of children’s media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of my own sex. I never had to look for it; male heroes were the default.

18. As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.

19. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether or not it has sexist overtones.

20. I can turn on the television or glance at the front page of the newspaper and see people of my own sex widely represented, every day, without exception.

21. If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.

22. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.

23. I can speak in public to a large group without putting my sex on trial.

24. If I have sex with a lot of people, it won’t make me an object of contempt or derision.

25. There are value-neutral clothing choices available to me; it is possible for me to choose clothing that doesn’t send any particular message to the world.

26. My wardrobe and grooming are relatively cheap and consume little time.

27. If I buy a new car, chances are I’ll be offered a better price than a woman buying the same car.

28. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.

29. I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.

30. I can ask for legal protection from violence that happens mostly to men without being seen as a selfish special interest, since that kind of violence is called “crime” and is a general social concern. (Violence that happens mostly to women is usually called “domestic violence” or “acquaintance rape,” and is seen as a special interest issue.)

31. I can be confident that the ordinary language of day-to-day existence will always include my sex. “All men are created equal,” mailman, chairman, freshman, he.

32. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.

33. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.

34. The decision to hire me will never be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.

35. Every major religion in the world is led primarily by people of my own sex. Even God, in most major religions, is usually pictured as being male.

36. Most major religions argue that I should be the head of my household, while my wife and children should be subservient to me.

37. If I have a wife or live-in girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks.

38. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, chances are she’ll do most of the childrearing, and in particular the most dirty, repetitive and unrewarding parts of childrearing.

39. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, and it turns out that one of us needs to make career sacrifices to raise the kids, chances are we’ll both assume the career sacrificed should be hers.

40. Magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media is filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are much rarer.

41. I am not expected to spend my entire life 20-40 pounds underweight.

42. If I am heterosexual, it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ever be beaten up by a spouse or lover.

43. Complete strangers generally do not walk up to me on the street and tell me to “smile.”

44. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.

45. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

(Compiled by Barry Deutsch, aka “Ampersand.” Permission is granted to reproduce this list in any way, for any purpose, so long as the acknowledgment of Peggy McIntosh’s work is not removed. If possible, however, I’d appreciate it if folks who use it could tell me about how they used it; my email is barry-at-amptoons-dot-com.)

(Updated since the original posting to add some new items to the list.)

[Note: This version of the list is not the current version. The most up-to-date version of the list can always be found at this link.]

I’ve been disappointed. I visit the Chicago Tribune every morning, search on “Alan Keyes” just to find new outrageous remarks. Sadly, for the past several days, I haven’t read any new ones. I was afraid he is growing tired.

Now, I read this drought of outrageous comments shall surely end! Rick Pierson at The Chicago Tribune. reports that during a closed door meeting with top GOP fundraisers and donors, Keyes revealed:

(Pierson reports his sources request anonymity; Keyes campaign manager says the speech was private and should remain so.)

Evidently, Keyes considers himself engaged in some sort of war (and I don’t think he means the one with Iraq). He advises:

I think that was General Sherman’s philosophy. Despite the similarity to Sherman, Keyes seems to see himself as similar to Ulysses S. Grant:

How?

I guess by seeing whether or not the child a exhibits a reverence for life and a hatred of terror. To wit:

Yow!

Obama, the other candidate, is still thought to be ahead in the race for US Senate. Will the “meat grinder” image turn the tide for Keyes? We shall see.

While I feel failed marriages are always sad, equal treatment requires extension of divorce to same sex couples. So, with mixed feelings, I bring you this story, via Iafrica: Canada grants world’s first gay divorce.

When the article calls this the world’s first divorce, I’m assuming the author is making distinctions between legal dissolutions of domestic partnerships, civil unions and marriages. I’m under the impression some domestic partnerships or civil unions have been dissolved. (Gay.com calls this North America’s first same sex divorce.)

Evidently, despite various Canadian Courts’ previous rulings extending marriage to same sex couples, the legislature has not yet modified the divorce code. So:

In her ruling, Judge Ruth Mesbur of the Ontario Supreme Court found:

The Judge then granted the divorce to the couple.

Before I start responding to Hugo’s most recent reply to me, I wanted to comment on something he wrote in his earlier reply to me.

From my perspective, I’m the one advocating for a “both/and” way of seeing the world in this debate. I’ve been arguing that since the most effective ways of reducing abortion don’t involve banning abortion, there’s no need to choose between pro-woman policies and pro-fetus policies. We can have it both ways, reducing abortions far more than any ban plan can while preserving women’s bodily autonomy.

For all his chatter about preferring “both/and” solutions, it’s plain that - on this issue at least - Hugo passionately opposes “both/and.” In his view, we should absolutely ban women’s rights wherever women’s rights come into conflict with fetal rights; he believes it’s an either/or choice, with no compromise possible.

That said, let’s look at Hugo’s more recent post.

First of all, Hugo asks me to prove that women will be hurt by future pro-life laws, but then says that he refuses to accept the past results of actual pro-life laws as evidence (such as the actual history of banned abortion here in the US, or what’s happened in other countries that have banned abortion, such as Poland). Since no other kind of evidence can possibly exist, I’m afraid that I can’t fulfill Hugo’s request.

But (at the risk of losing my civility a tad) I understand why Hugo and other pro-lifers don’t want to talk about the disgusting carnage they’ve caused; there are about 70,000 women who die every year from unsafe abortions, mostly in third-world countries where evangelical Christians have succeeded in banning legal abortions. Not only do pro-lifers not take responsibility for their death toll, they make things worse by slandering organizations that provide non-abortive health care to third world women, such as UNFPA. (”Feminists for Life,” an organization Hugo admires, is no different from any non-feminist pro-life organization in this regard.)

Would it get that bad in the USA? Of course not - the pre-Roe record shows pretty clearly that illegal first-world abortions are many times safer than illegal third-world abortions. Would there still be occasional women in the US, if abortion were banned, who’d be afraid to go to a hospital if their illegal abortion led to complications - which could then lead to serious health consequences, or even death, for the woman? Of course, there would be - and, again, the pre-Roe record is clear about that. Since Hugo is anti-evidence, perhaps he’ll accept simple logic instead: if you pass a law that makes it effectively impossible for people to seek needed medical help without fear of arrest, then of course some people will be harmed.

(And, of course, that’s not the only harm banning abortion does to women - not by a long shot.)

Hugo suggests that injuries and deaths from illegal abortion won’t be a problem “if — as leftist pro-lifers insist — anti -abortion legislation be accompanied by considerable aid to help single (and married) women either afford to keep their children or give them up for adoption.” But leftist pro-lifers have never insisted on this; instead, as Hugo points out later this same post, they “make common cause with Christian right-wingers,” advocating pro-life bans that are not accompanied by a stitch of aid for women. (According to Hugo, he “rejoiced when President Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion ban” - a ban so misogynistic that it doesn’t even include a health exemption. Of course, the PBA ban was not accompanied by any of the nice policies Hugo suggests.)

The basic fact - the fact that Hugo never addresses directly - is that there is not a single country in the world in which banning abortion has led to a low abortion rate. Logically, there is no compelling reason for someone whose goal is a low abortion rate to support abortion bans, because they simply don’t work. (What does work, judging from those countries that do have low abortion rates, is Belgium-style generous social support combined with widely available birth control).

There is no logical way, given the evidence, that a pro-lifer can claim to support banning abortion because they want the US to have a low abortion rate. The two things are not connected.

Hugo does address this a bit, writing:

What’s striking to me is how Hugo’s analogy completely misstates my argument. If Hugo had been true to my argument, he might have written this: “The fact that outlawing prostitution victimizes women while not actually reducing prostitution significantly, and that other methods which don’t victimize women will reduce prostitution much more, is a poor argument for legalizing prostitution.” That would be an accurate analogy, but it would also be an excellent argument for legalized prostitution.

(Regarding prostitution, I strongly favor decriminalization. Specifically, I favor the Swedish approach, which decriminalizes prostitution but criminalizes being a John. But that’s a subject for a different post).

Hugo writes:

First of all, it’s not the law that makes abortion possible. As Hugo well knows, abortion takes place whether or not it’s outlawed. By spreading the lie that it’s laws that make abortion possible, Hugo is being deceptive - except the main person he’s deceiving is himself.

I think the question Hugo should ask himself is where his real priority lies: in restricting and punishing women and doctors, or in saving as many fetal lives as possible? If it’s the former, then perhaps it makes sense to remain pro-life - even though that locks us into an endless political deadlock, and will never really prevent abortion.

But imagine an alternative world. Imagine a world in which pro-lifers realized that 1) banning abortion has never, in the real world, led to a low abortion rate, and 2) feminists and civil libertarians will never, ever give up fighting to protect reproductive rights. On the other hand, what if the endless people-hours and billions of dollars pro-lifers spend on banning abortion were instead spent on working to actually reduce abortion, by incrementally working towards a Netherlands-level social support system? Sure, it would be a hard fight - but instead of being enemies, feminists, pro-lifers and civil libertarians would all working in the same direction. And unlike banning abortion, a victory in this case actually could lead to a low abortion rate, if real-world abortion rates are anything to judge by.

Hugo likes to say that he’s against “either/or” choices, but in the real world sometimes choices have to be made. Every dollar spent on trying to ban abortion is a dollar that could have been spent advocating for a policy that would more effectively save more preborn lives. Every minute spent supporting banning abortion is a minute that could have been used supporting policies that would more effectively save more preborn lives.

Thinking of it that way more than justifies not working for an abortion ban. Assuming, that is, that the point is saving fetal lives, not controlling female lives.

And that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? If being a feminist pro-lifer means anything, it should mean an eagerness to support both the best interests of women and the best interests of preborns. And, in fact, there’s a practical real-world way of doing that - a more effective method of reducing abortions that doesn’t attempt to punitively control women’s bodies. That’s something pro-life feminists should be eager to support.

But when I talk to pro-life feminists, they don’t seem eager about the possibility that they can have it both ways. Instead, they seem eager to dismiss the possibility. I think that’s a mistake on their part.

Aaron Hawkins wasn’t someone I knew well, even by blogospheric measures where someone you’ve never met in person can be a close friend. He and I reside - “resided” in his case, dammit - in the same general neighborhood of blogtopia. You know this neighborhood; it’s where you find lefty political blogs that aren’t so much about the swift boats and the election horserace as they are about race and gender and wealth and culture and the like. Heck, if you’re a blogger and you’re reading this post, odds are you live in this neighborhood too.

(Aaron and I also shared a geeky interest in comics and in Buffy - Aaron’s blog is a place where several different blogospheric neighborhoods overlap).

But although we blogged in the same broad neighborhood, we weren’t part of each other’s daily routes. We linked to each other’s posts a handful of times over the years - passing each other in the street, nodding in friendly recognition. I was more than normally pleased when Aaron linked to me, because he was so much better a writer than me and because he made it seem effortless.

What can I say? He was a damn good neighbor, and a better than good writer. I didn’t know him well - hell, you could make a good argument that I didn’t know him at all - but I envy those who did. The world is better off because he passed over it, and worse off now he’s passed beyond it.

P.S. If you’re of a mind to leave condolences, this thread on Aaron’s blog is the place.

Well, I guess they always were working. But mt-blacklist (the spamblock software “alas” uses) is working again, meaning that the spam is back down to a managable trickle, rather than being an impossible-to-deal-with torrent. Thanks muchly to site admin Eric and co-blogger Lucia (hi, Eric! hi, Lucia!) for their help (I think it was something Eric did that fixed it in the end).