This has certainly made my day; Hereville was included on The WebComics Examiner’s list of “The Best Webcomics of 2004.” Neat!
About 20 comics made the list, including three comics by other Girlamatic cartoonists: Dicebox by my pal Jenn Manley Lee, The Stiff by Jason Thompson, and Bite Me! by Dylan Meconis. (See? All the more reason for you to subscribe to Girlamatic!)
Wonder if I’ll get any new “Hereville” readers out of it?
I’m told that the print version has an illustration (one of my self-portraits) along with the article.
By the way, in the hopes of retaining a few readers who might check Hereville out because of the Post mention, the entire Hereville archive is free this week. So if you want to reread the 20 Hereville pages so far and you’re too cheap to subscribe (just kidding!), this week is the time to do it.
If you’d like to read the whole interview (which was conducted by email), check it out below the fold. I deliberately kept my answers short (for me), since I knew the article would have a small word count. I was very, very tired when I did this, so my answers are less-than-brilliant, alas.
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In the previous post, I quoted from various peer-reviewed articles on dieting, to try and establish one point: Weight-loss programs do not work for most fat people over the long term.
Now that we’ve read all that (or skimmed it, or skipped it), let me return to Don’s question: Why do I think being fat is like being lesbian or gay?
There’s a question so often asked in queer-rights rhetoric, it’s become a cliché: “Why would anyone choose to be gay? The point is, being a widely despised minority is not fun. It’s not easy. It involves a lot of suffering, for many people. It’s not something that most people would choose. (Although, thanks to the lesbian and gay rights movement, it is now easier for many lesbians and gays than it used to be).
By the same logic, why would anyone choose to be obese? Fat people are discriminated against in jobs, are widely seen as lazy and unattractive, and are taught a truly stunning level of self-hatred. It’s not something most people would desire for themselves.
Peer-reviewed studies show that 92-96% of weight-loss plans fail over the long run - and those studies count anyone who takes off 10% or 15% of their weight as a “success.” The failure rate would be a lot higher - I’d guess more like 99% - if the measurement of “success” for fat dieters was “this person is no longer fat.” It’s clear, I think, that weight-loss treatments don’t work.
Nonetheless, some people will respond as Don did:
Don’s right, in a sense (ignoring, for lack of a civil response, his stereotypes about fat people). In theory, any fat person could become thin, if they only kept up what the New England Journal of Medicine called “extreme measures” - extreme low-calorie diets and tons of hard exercise - for the rest of their lives. (One formerly fat person who commented on the earlier thread, said that she exercises four hours every day).
By the same token, any lesbian or gay person could “not be gay,” in the sense of repressing their real desires and marrying a person of the opposite sex. (Historically, how many lesbians and gays lived their entire lives like this? There’s no way of knowing, but hundreds of thousands seems like a reasonable guess).
So in theory, every fat person and every queer person could choose “not to be.” Just choose to eat as little as an anorexic, and exercise four hours every day, for your entire life. Just choose to repress your core sexual identity. Whatever it takes.
But in practice, some choices are so difficult that they can’t reasonably be called choices at all.
And that is what fat people and gay people have in common.
In an argument on an earlier thread, Don asks:
It’ll take me two posts to answer Don’s question. In this post - which can be skipped by those of you who hate reading big blocks of quotes - I want to point out that some experts writing in the peer-reviewed scientific literature strongly doubt that fat people can choose to be thin.
In Don’s view, as I understand it, body weight is a function of two variables - the intake of calories (eating) and the expenditure of energy (exercise). If fat people only ate less and walked more, they’d cease being fat people; therefore, being fat is a choice.
But it’s not universally true that fat people have bad diets and bad exercise habits. Some fat people are healthy eaters who exercise often; most fat people have diets and lifestyles that are less than ideal, but not significantly different from that of most non-fat Americans.
In fact, although it’s commonly believed that fat people must eat a lot more than thin people, the scientific evidence for that is either non-existant or non-replicable. Multiple studies, based both on observation and on diaries, have found that fat and thin people eat similar amounts. From an article in Clinical Psychology Review (citations omitted):
[In a study of children], Rolland-Cachera and Bellisle found that food intake was about 500 calories greater and obesity about four times more common in the lowest versus the highest socioeconomic groups studied; however, within each socioeconomic group, there were comparable levels of caloric intake among lean, average weight, and obese children. [...]
…It may be concluded that nature and nurture both exert influences on body weight and that the eventual expression of obesity is a complicated matter…. Regardless of these factors, the myth of overeating by the obese is sustained for the casual observer by selective attention. Each time that a fat person is observed to have a “healthy appetite” or an affinity for sweets or other high calorie foods, a stereotypic leap into causality is made. The same behaviors in a thin person attract little or no attention….
…The major premise of dietary treatments of obesity, that the obese overeat with respect to population norms, must be regarded as unproven.
Since the premise behind diets is unproven, it should be no surprise that diets themselves have never been proven to work over the long run. From a review of empirical tests of weight-loss plans by Wayne Miller, an exercise science specialist at George Washington University:
William Bennett, editor of the Harvard Medical School Health Letter, reviewed empirical weight-loss studies going back to the 1930s. He concluded that not one had been shown to produce long-term weight loss for more than a tiny minority of dieters (and most of the few who did lose weight, lost too little weight to turn an obese person into a non-obese person).
An important element of behavior modification is giving the client a model of his or her problem, one that focuses on eating behavior as the target for correction. An essential component of this model is the claim that it will be effective if the client believes it and acts accordingly. The model that appears to form the heart of most such programs, however, is at the very least seriously incomplete; there is good reason to assume it is simply wrong. In any case, the model has not produced results that would support claims of effectiveness. …
The ethical questions that can be raised about research efforts also must be asked about the dietary programs for weight control that are carried on outside a research setting - commercial, hospital, or clinic-based, or self-help. Many such programs proffer treatment as though it were established as effective and safe. Nothing in the results published by research programs authorizes anyone to make such claims.
From an article in The New England Journal of Medicine:
Why is it that people cannot seem to lose weight, despite the social pressures, the urging of their doctors, and the investment of staggering amounts of time, energy, and money? The old view that body weight is a function of only two variables - the intake of calories and the expenditure of energy - has given way to a much more complex formulation involving a fairly stable set point for a person’s weight that is resistant over short periods to either gain or loss, but that may move with age. …Of course, the set point can be overridden and large losses can be induced by severe caloric restriction in conjunction with vigorous, sustained exercise, but when these extreme measures are discontinued, body weight generally returns to its preexisting level.
In my next post, I’ll return to Don’s question.
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While the server does some server-repair things, “Alas” may be unreachable for a while tonight.
Interesting about this option being open to straights - which means that fewer straights will get married in the future. Funny, how the compromises necessary to appease the “protect marriage!” crowd sometimes end up weakening marriage far more than just letting same-sex couples get married would. (Thanks to “Alas” reader “Sarah in Chicago” for the tip!)
Hugo has more on this subject.
Sentence 1 is correct. But the second sentence should read, “If same-sex marriage is a civil right, this necessarily and intrinsically means that the fact that sex between men and women makes babies is not THE ONLY important fact, socially or legally.” Big difference, yes?
Some additions to the blogroll:
The lesson, imo, isn’t just that reforms are needed (although they are), but also that it’s folly to depend on the criminal justice system to bring about any large-scale reduction of rape.
Dave Sim (a great cartoonist, despite his appalling misogyny and homophobia) once advised young cartoonists “once a page is done, don’t finish it.” It’s wise advice, and I habitually ignore it; the day after a Hereville page is finished, I always spend a while making corrections.
I don’t try to fix everything I don’t like about a page (that would be impossible!); but there’s always a few glaring errors that I have to try to fix.
For example, among other problems with page 20, Mirka’s huge, engorged forefinger - far out of scale with the rest of her hand - really bugged me in panel two. And the warped glass (including a stem that had a different center line from the rest of the glass) in panel three really got under my skin, too. (The glass is still pretty awful after my correction - I’m terrible at drawing manmade objects - but it’s better than it was).
Would most readers even notice? I doubt it, but stuff like that drives me crazy if I don’t correct it. Anyway, for the edification of the curious, below is a “before and after” of the two above-mentioned details of page 20.
Page 20 is done - and so, in the storyline, is this week’s Sabbath. I think the last 7 pages, depicting the Sabbath in Aherville, have been as challenging to me as any cartooning I’ve done in my life.
Frances Kissling - the head of Catholics for Choice and a longtime pro-choice activist - argues that pro-choicers can and should value the fetus more. I don’t have a comment on this article yet, but it’s been getting a lot of discussion among pro-choice circles, so it seemed worth linking to. Here’s a sample:
What are the first five concerns and reactions that come to your mind? Is one of them the fact that this would mean fetuses need not die? My own experience in presenting this option to both advocates and opponents of abortion is that the fetus’s life is rarely a consideration. Among the most interesting reactions of those who are prochoice is a concern that some women might find the continued existence of the fetus painful for them or that women have a right to ensure that their genetic material does not enter the world. Abortion in this sense becomes the guarantee of a dead fetus, if desired, rather than the removal of the fetus from an unwilling host, the woman. To even offer women such an option is, some think, cruel. For some the right to choose abortion seems to include the right to be protected from thinking about the fetus and from any pain that might result from others talking about the fetus in value-laden terms. In this construct, it is hard to identify any value fetal life might have.
This level of sensitivity to protecting women from their feelings takes other forms. For example, some prochoice advocates have objected to public discussion of abortion that includes concern for the number of abortions that occur in the US or has as its goal reducing the number of abortions. Some bristled at President Clinton’s formula that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” If abortion is justifiable why should it be rare? Even the suggestion that abortion is a moral matter as well as a legal one has caused concern that such a statement might make women feel guilty. Words like “baby” are avoided, not just because they are inaccurate, but because they are loaded.
In a society where women have long been victims of moral discourse, these concerns are somewhat understandable, but they do not contribute much towards convincing people that when prochoice people say they value fetal life it is more than lip service.
The reaction of antiabortionists to the idea that a fetus could be removed from the body of an unwilling woman is as troubling. Again, one rarely hears cries of joy that fetal lives would be saved. The focus also is on the woman. But here, the view that women are, by their nature, made for childbearing dominates. Women have an obligation to continue pregnancies, to suffer the consequences of their sexuality. It is unnatural to even think that fetuses could become healthy and happy people if they did not spend nine months in the womb of a woman. One is led to believe that, for those opposed to abortion, it is not saving fetuses that matters but preserving a social construct in which women breed.
There’s lots more.
A while ago, I was on some anti-feminist website debating rape prevalence statistics, and of course the “1 in 4″ figure came up. If you’re a feminist, you may not be familiar with the figure; but among anti-feminists, the “1 in 4″ figure is considered the ultimate proof of feminist mendacity or something like that.
Here’s the short version: In the 1980s, an academic named Mary Koss created a groundbreaking study of unreported rape, which surveyed college women about their lifetime experiences with coerced sex. Koss found that roughly 1 in 4 women in college had experienced rape or attempted rape at some point in their lives. Many people (both feminist and otherwise) have misstated this statistic as “1 in 4 women are raped.” In fact, if you exclude attempted rapes, the number is closer to 1 in 8. (I consider this a distinction without much difference; in either case, rape is terrifyingly common.)
Much controversy ensued, which I’ve written about elsewhere.
Anyhow, on that anti-feminist discussion board, one of the resident anti’s asked me:
Here’s my reply:
Did I ever claim that most campus feminists are relying directly on the Koss study? I don’t think they are.
Where did it come from? Let me answer that with a question: did you ever play “telephone” when you were a kid?
Other sources have frequently reported the figure as “1 in 4 women surveyed on campus has been a victim of rape or attempted rape.” There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s a correct way of reporting the stat. However, it quickly evolves into “1 in 4 women are raped!” when it gets spread from person to person along informal, non-peer-reviewed lines. The shorter, punchier (albeit false) version of the statistic is easier for people to remember, easier to paint on a signboard for a “Take Back the Night” march, and easier for anti-feminists to remember when they want to make feminist scholars like Dr. Koss sound like extremists.
It is, in fact, the exact same system that has led to the widespread belief among anti-feminists on internet boards like this one that Koss’ study said that “1 in 4 women have been raped.” Some people on these boards have read about Koss’ study in Sommers or Roiphe (etc, etc); those books typically state the correct “1 in 4 experience rape or attempted rape” Koss citation once or twice (and then go on to misstate it over and over). But when the people who have read these books are in online discussions, they end up playing a virtual game of “telephone,” and only the shorter, punchier, inaccurate form of the statistic gets discussed and passed on to the community as a whole.
Similarly, on campus, some 19-year-old feminist sees the Koss statistic cited correctly somewhere, but writes it down or reports it in conversation incorrectly. And she told two friends, and she told two friends, and so on, and so on…
Of course, in both cases it’s not a completely innocent distorting of the statistic, is it? Campus feminists find it easy to accidentally distort the statistic in a way that exaggerates the statistics about rape. Similarly, antifeminists find it easy to accidentally distort the statistic in a way that paints Dr. Koss as a hysterical, inaccurate extremist. In both cases, the distortion happens not because the people distorting the statistic are purposely dishonest; it’s just that most people find it easier not to question statistics that serve their political agenda.
One more thing: When I was in college a few years ago, I was aware of this controversy, and consequently paid a lot of attention to fliers handed out at the women’s center and the like. Some of them screwed things up (sometimes in the way anti-feminists criticizes, sometimes in just random ways), but some actually reported statistics accurately and with correct citations. Needless to say, those latter fliers well never be discussed in any book published with the help of an Olin grant. There’s another distortion going on here - people who only read (or only take seriously) anti-feminist sources for a guide to what’s happening on campus, are getting an only-the-bad-things-are-reported view of campus feminism.
This story is appalling. In a nutshell, a blind couple in California, on the day of their newborn’s birth, were told that they had to sign a form giving the county custody of their baby, or they’d be hauled into court.
Racism and classism are probably part of this story as well - it sounds like the couple isn’t rich (the mother is studying to become a court reporter, and the father sells soda at soccer games and is studying to become a massage therapist), and their native language is Spanish. The form they signed was read to them in English, not in Spanish, nor was it offered to them in Braille.
It seems clear that the Zepedas were prepared to become parents; they have a good support system (not only family and friends nearby, but an online support and information group for blind parents), and they’ve given thought to how they’ll deal with any special parenting problems caused by their blindness (for instance, purchasing a talking thermometer and “pip squeaker” shoes.
Thankfully, an outcry from activists convinced the government to let the Zepedas take their baby home - although they’ve had to arrange to have a sighted person check their baby every two hours (as blind people, they’re seemingly presumed to be incapable of checking to see that their baby is breathing themselves). Hopefully the government will do the sane thing and stop harassing these folks.
Check it out! You may have to scroll downt the page a bit, depending on when you look.
I’m the large guy holding the baby (and drawn from that oh-so-attractive under-the-chin angle!). To the left of me, holding a kitten, is Jenn Lee. Below Jenn is Bill Mudron. And to the right of Bill the artist himself, and to the right of Chris is Kip Manley, caught in a moment of apparently Star-Trek like anguish.
There was a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on “Alas” this morning, which put “Alas” offline for a little while. Some folks are just jerks, I guess.
Server owner Eric, who generously donates “Alas” space to live on, repelled the attack, and has posted some technical details on Wampum.
(Update: Changed “dedicated” to “distributed.” Thanks Eric!)
Over on MarriageDebate.com, Jonathan Rauch and Maggie Gallagher are debating SSM. Go here and then scroll upwards to read the ongoing debate. Here’s a quote I liked from Rauch; it makes a point we’ve all heard made before, but it makes it particularly well:
Justice Antonin Scalia: “Our salvation is the Equal Protection Clause, which requires the democratic majority to accept for themselves and their loved ones what they impose on you and me.” (Cruzan v. Missouri Dept. of Health, 1990)
Everyone rightly accepts as a core premise of liberalism that the majority can’t keep two sets of books, one for itself and one for minorities. Anyone in American politics who flouts this principle will, eventually, lose, and will deserve to. It seems to me that opponents of same-sex marriage should just relinquish the argument that marriage is only for procreative couples (if that’s what they mean by “marriage is for procreation,” which can mean a number of things).
Historically and empirically the argument is incorrect: marriage has everywhere and always been for both procreative and nonprocreative couples. This is not a technicality or a grudging exception. All societies celebrate when post-menopausal women marry. They recognize that banning such marriages would do nothing for children or procreation.
Even if the allowance for (millions and millions of) heterosexual nonprocreative marriages were a loophole or an exception, the exception should be applied evenhandedly, not selectively or self-servingly by and for the people who have the votes. See Mr. Justice Jackson, above. If the rule is that only fertile couples can marry, fine. If the rule is that only couples who actually have biological children can marry, fine. If the rule is that only couples who are rearing children (bio or non-bio) can marry, fine. Well, not fine, but you get the point: the rule that infertility disqualifies all gay couples from marriage but disqualifies no straight couples is a crass double standard that demolishes the very principle (marriage=procreation) on which it’s supposed to be based.
Rauch suggests that SSM opponents should move to a different argument:
I agree that the “marriage valorizes mother-father families and this serves crucial social goals” - which is essentially the argument Elizabeth was making - is a stronger argument than the ridiculous “marriage is about reproduction, so non-reproductive couples can’t marry, unless they’re heterosexual in which case forget the whole thing” argument. However, the “valorizing mother-father families” argument naturally raises some questions:
More and more, it’s becoming clear that the debate over same sex marriage is a debate over the right of conservatives (mostly, but not entirely, Christian fundamentalists and right-wing Catholics) to put the force of law behind their particular gender ideology. Historically, this is the same debate that feminists have faced since feminism began; the people opposing SSM are the ideological heirs of the people who opposed allowing women to attend college, to vote, and to own property.
* * *
There’s also an interesting debate between Mark Barton and Eve Tushnet. It’s hard to know where to start, but here’s a good place; scroll upwards. Here’s a quote from Mark I enjoyed.
Mark: Having put the original procreation argument to bed, let’s turn to what is the independent argument in terms of childrearing. This was the secondary argument in Goodridge. However I’m afraid I don’t think that in 2004 we’re obliged to respect as serious Eve’s presentation of it above.
The issue has been studied. We have actual data. The studies are by no means the last word, but neither are they junk. Opposite-sex and same-sex couples cannot be credibly described as having “obviously a fairly large difference in kind” with respect to parenting outcomes any more than blue-eyed couples versus brown-eyed ones. Now of course Eve is welcome to invoke caution and argue that there might be small but important differences, or large differences in variables that haven’t been studied, but I think at this stage of the game “obviously” and “large” should be considered beyond the intellectual pale.
The “people who can’t procreate shouldn’t be allowed marriage, unless they’re heterosexual people in which case never mind” argument is, I think, on its deathbed. Probably most of the people who are now saying that this argument is essential will have migrated away from it a year or two from now.
Those and other assertions are examples of the “false, misleading, or distorted information” in the programs’ teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.
What a wonderful use of our tax dollars.
For folks who are following the Scandinavian debate, this post by Bjørn Stærk (from back in February) will be of interest.
He goes on to point out that even if SSM caused some trends in Scandinavia - which hasn’t even come close to being proven - that still doesn’t tell us much about what will happen in the USA, which is culturally and legally very different.
Some feminists have taken comfort from a new AP poll which has been widely reported as finding that “59 percent [of respondents] say Bush should choose a [Supreme Court] nominee who would uphold the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion… 31 percent, said they want a nominee who would overturn the decision…”
Unfortunately, the poll itself was inaccurately worded, as Eugene Volokh reports:
“As you may know, President Bush may have the opportunity to appoint several new justices to the U.S. Supreme Court during his second term. The 1973 Supreme Court ruling called Roe v. Wade made abortion in the first three months of pregnancy legal. Do you think President Bush should nominate Supreme Court justices who would uphold the Roe v. Wade decision, or nominate justices who would overturn the Roe v. Wade decision?”
But wait — Roe didn’t just make abortion in the first three months of pregnancy legal. It also made it legal at any time before viability (limiting government regulation to that related to protecting “maternal health”); the Court said viability would be at about six or seven months (though over time, the line has moved up a bit, as the 1992 Casey decision recognized). I suspect that such months-four-to-six abortions would be considerably more controversial than ones in months one through three.
Another poll shows that 66% favor abortion being generally legal in the first three months, but only 25% favor legal abortion for months four through six.
Of course, reproductive rights aren’t right or wrong based on what polls say. Still, it’s unfortunate that this poll was so badly worded.
If you’re in a mood to be disgusted and angered, go read this Human Rights Watch report, “Women’s Unequal Access to Divorce in Egypt.” Or, if you’re in more of a hurry, read this Guardian article on the report. From the Guardian:
Shocking as this may seem, most Egyptian women regard beating as a normal and more or less acceptable part of life. Almost 86% of the women surveyed thought husbands were justified in hitting their wives sometimes, and a large majority said a refusal to have sex was sufficient grounds for beating.
The survey also showed the percentage of women aged 20-29 who thought beating was justified for a range of other domestic “offences”:
Violent husbands can generally avoid prosecution on religious grounds, because the Egyptian penal code excludes acts committed “in good faith, pursuant to a right determined by virtue of the Shari’a” (Islamic law).
* * *
“A survey conducted for the Egyptian government a few years ago found that one woman in three had been beaten at some time by her husband. Of those women, 45% had been beaten at least once in the past year…”
For comparison’s sake, a survey conducted by the US government a few years ago found that one American woman in five had been physically assualted by an “intimate partner” sometime in their lifetime, and 1.3% had been physically assaulted by an intimate partner in the past year.
Of course, in the USA women have - relatively speaking - a much greater right to get divorced from some asshole who beats her, so it’s not surprising that the “in the past year” statistic is so much lower. Which shows why the right to divorce, and reasonably good access to the right to divorce, is absolutely essential. (Amanda’s been all over this, from a different angle).
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