Ginmar writes up a possible draft of the Liberal Feminist Conspiracy Agenda.

And I guess she found it fun to write it once, because then she wrote it again.

Both versions cracked me up. Here’s a small sample:

13. Use the word ’she’ instead of ‘he’ all the time. See how that feels. Also? Try using the word ‘enclosure’ instead of ‘penetration’ and see how that rocks your world. Try ‘womankind’ isntead of mankind. Cope. God knows, we have.

14. Loud car stereos will be outlawed and offenders will get their stereo confiscated. Then they will have to bag up all the leaves in my yard as punishment.

15. Abstinence only will become the fate of repressive twits.

16. Divorce will become easier to do. Marriage will be harder to do, and will require classes.

17. For a few years, you get to deal with having 520 female members of Congress deciding your fate and see how you like it.

18. School teachers will get combat pay.

19. Nice guys will no longer be able to self-identify. There will be standardized tests.

There’s lots more - you should go read both posts.

From Salon:

Kansas’ statutory rape law prohibits “criminal sodomy” (including oral sex) with teenagers younger than 16. If the object of Matthew’s affection had been female, however, Kansas would have afforded him the benefit of its romantically named “Romeo and Juliet” statute, designed precisely for kids like him, kids who have consensual sex with other kids. In Kansas, and in many other states, when two teenagers have heterosexual sex, even the dreaded sodomy, the penalties are relatively mild. If Matthew had had consensual sex with a girl, and the state had prosecuted him at all, the longest sentence they could have given him was 15 months. Instead, because Matthew had sex with another boy, and only because he had sex with another boy, he has spent the past five years in Ellsworth Correctional Facility in central Kansas.

I wonder if the folks who oppose same-sex marriage would say that this “Romeo and Juliet” law isn’t discrimination? After all, gays and straight teens alike are given the much, much harsher punishment if they have sex with their underage same-sex lover. According to the same logic same-sex marriage opponents are so fond of - the logic that says that gays and lesbians have an equal right to marry someone of the opposite sex - this law must not be discriminatory.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This post was removed by request of the author.

In the comments to an earlier post, Brad Benjaminson (who doesn’t identify as a men’s rights activist, but tends to cite writings by MRAs) cited several articles he thought of interest. I read the title of one - “Wives Also Kill Husbands-Quite Often” - and before I even saw the date the article was written (1994), I knew the article would use data from before 1990.

How did I know? Because I’ve read a lot of men’s rights articles about “intimate partner homicide” (that’s murdering a spouse, a girlfriend or a boyfriend), and nearly all of them use pre-1990 data. For instance, a quick search of two MRA (men’s rights activist) websites - Men’s Network.org and MenWeb - found seven articles arguing that women are about as likely as men to commit intimate murder. All of them used data from before 1990 to make their case. In fact, almost all of them used the same data set - a Bureau of Justice Statistics study of intimate homicide in 33 of the 75 largest-population (i.e., urban) counties, which was published in 1994 but used data gathered in 1988. The BJS has published more recent work - so why do the MRAs return to this one source over and over? (Or, if not this source, sources that also used urban data from before 1990?)

Because they want to prove - despite clear data, like these recent FBI figures, showing men are far more likely to murder wives and girlfriends than vice-versa - that men are “equal victims.” (This relates, I believe, to a larger project of trying to show that patriarchy doesn’t exist, women have nothing to complain about, etc.)

So what’s special about Urban data from before 1988? Check out these charts (source), both featuring more recent homicide data than the data the MRAs highlight:

This graph shows the reality: although there have always been more women murdered by intimates than vice-versa, the numbers used to be closer. In particular, there’s been a huge decline in male victims - which, unsurprisingly, isn’t something that MRAs with an ideology of male victimhood want to admit.

So that’s why MRAs avoid recent homicide data. Why do they prefer urban data, rather than countrywide data?

As you can see, before 1988 or so black husbands were more likely to be murdered by wives than vice-versa. The BJS data set the MRAs like to use, contains data from spousal-murder cases in 33 urban counties in 1988. In that data set, “Blacks comprised 55% of the 540 defendants, and whites comprised 43%. Among husband defendants 51% were black and 45% were white. Among wife defendants 61% were black and 39% were white.”

So using out-of-date urban data enables MRAs to use a historic anomaly - the high rate of husband-murder among blacks before 1988 - and pretend it represents the norm.

* * *

So why have husband-murder rates been dropping faster? Obviously, there is no one simple answer: but part of the answer is that abused women now have more resources. “Studies of homicides between intimates show that they are often preceded by a history of physical abuse directed at the women, and several studies have documented that a high proportion of women imprisoned for killing a husband had been physically abused by their spouses… the weight of the available evidence shows that often wives kill their husbands in the context of a history of wife abuse.” (Mercy, J.A. & Saltzman, L.E. “Fatal violence among spouses in the United States, 1976-85″ American Journal of Public Health 79(5): 595-9 May 1989)

Many of these studies have found that wives who kill their husbands often felt “hopelessly trapped” in an abusive relationship. Therefore, it seems possible that the growth of resources for abused women since 1970 has made a significant number of such wives feel less “trapped,” hence reducing the murder rate of men. To test this possibility, Browne & Williams looked at state-by-state spousal murder rates compared to a “Resources for Abused Women Index,” (availability of shelters, hot lines, support networks, etc, in each state), after controlling for demographic variables (such as the higher general murder rate in many southern states). (Browne, A. & Williams, K. R. “Exploring the effect of resource availability and the likelihood of female-perpetrated homicides.” Law and Society Review, 23, 75-94, 1989.)

The study found that “the Resources for Abused Women Index, although negatively correlated with rates of both types of partner homicide, is more strongly correlated with female-perpetrated than with male-perpetrated homicide…. Moreover, such resources were associated with a decline in the rate of female-perpetrated partner homicide in 1980-1984 compared to 1976-1979.”

So it seems that, thanks to feminism, abusive men may now be less likely to be murdered by their wives.

It’s also possible, that if battered black women (on average) had less access to resources to get themselves out of abusive relationships, that could explain the unusually high rate of black husbands murdered before battered women’s shelters became (relatively) common.

Another question: Why has homicide of white wives declined while homicide of white girlfriends hasn’t? I’m not sure what explains the racial difference, but one factor contributing to the girlfriend/wife difference is the emergence of no-fault divorce. According to a paper (.pdf link) by Betsey Stevensen of Harvard and Justin Wolfers of Stanford, no-fault divorce signficantly helps women in bad marraiges. From an article written by Wolfers:

The findings reveal that under no-fault laws a wife can threaten to leave an abusive husband, and this becomes a credible threat. Under the old regime, this was not so. Our theory is that the fear of divorce creates a strong incentive for abusive partners to behave.

More generally, easy access to divorce redistributes marital power from the party interested in preserving the marriage to the partner who wants out. In most instances, this resulted in an increase in marital power for women, and a decrease in power for men.

Our analysis of US data revealed the legislative change had caused female suicide to decline by about a fifth, domestic violence to decline by about a third, and intimate femicide - the husband’s murder of his wife - to decline by about a tenth.

Unfortunately, as “marriage movement” and men’s right activists have become more influential in recent years, there has been a movement to defund battered women’s shelters and to repeal no-fault divorce laws. Either of these changes would be incredibly harmful to the interests of battered women.

* * *

(Below the fold are links to the seven MRA articles I looked at, with the relevant bits quoted).

Hey, sorry to call you all “dinks,” but hey, it rhymed.

• The Guardian has printed an essay by Andrea Dworkin about her bone disease and resulting disability, which is billed as “the last piece written by Andrea Dworkin.” As usual, Dwokin’s prose voice is clear and engrossing. Thanks to “Alas” reader “Maureen” for emailing the tip.
• From Geekery Today: A man sentenced to just four months in prison for killing his wife, after a jury concluded he acted in a blind fury, drew a 15-year term for wounding her boyfriend.
• No matter how many times you clean the toilet, you’re gonna have to clean it again and again. Which brings us to that stupid shit Paul Cameron, king of the homo-hating liars. I See Invisible People is on hand with the toilet brush.
• I couldn’t write prose this bad if you paid me: “The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever been…but the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned.” It really is awesome - Thomas Friedman is no ordinary bad writer. Read the post and comments at Crooked Timber for more.
• Republicans, conceding that the private sector is unable to win a fair competition with the public sector, have proposed that taxpayers subsidize uncompetitive private-sector weather report services. Majikthise has more.
• Microsoft has apparently been pressured to stop supporting gay-rights bills by the threat of a right-wing Christian boycott. Daddy, Papa and Me has more: here and here.
• Interesting WomensEnews article about Angela Bonavoglia, a Catholic, feminist, Roman Catholic writer working to reform the Catholic Church. “Angela is exposing in her book that we have great women that the church is determined to turn into good girls.” Bonavoglia’s own website is here.
• This New York Times article reports that the divorce rate is not only falling, it was never as high as we’ve all seen claimed; the “50% of marriages end in divorce” claim is a myth.
• Seder-Masochism. A comic book about Passover (well, sort of) made from photos of action figures. So sue me, it totally cracked me up.

Jordon at Confined Space is enjoying the schadenfreude…

Recognizing the very real pain that ergonomic disorders cause, there is still something deliciously ironic about this:

Sandy Boyd’s BlackBerry had become her passion. Now it has also become a source of pain.

About three months ago, the National Association of Manufacturers vice president noticed that, as she started to type, the area between her thumb and wrist would begin to throb.

Orthopedists say they are seeing an increasing number of patients with similar symptoms, a condition known as “overuse syndrome” or “BlackBerry thumb.” In some patients, the disability has become severe.

For those of you just tuning in, the National Association of Manufacturers was one of the leaders in the campaign to stop OSHA from issuing an ergnomics standard, to repeal the standard in March 2001 after it was issued, as well as the current effort to force OSHA to withdraw the voluntary guidelines issued over the past three years because of the lack of “hard, verifiable scientific evidence.”

Read Jordon’s whole post.

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I don’t really have much to say about it that many, many people haven’t said before, but I wanted to point out an interesting exchange about same-sex marriage that’s been bouncing around the blogosphere. I’m quoting brief snippets of each, for flavor, but there’s lots, lots more if you read the posts in full.

First of all, Megan of Asymmetrical Information (who “Alas” readers may remember I debated on a certain movie star’s radio show), a libertarian, argues that same-sex marriage advocates have been too easily dismissing the potential downside of legal same-sex marriage.

A very common response to this is essentially to mock this as ridiculous. “Why on earth would it make any difference to me whether gay people are getting married? Why would that change my behavior as a heterosexual”

To which social conservatives reply that institutions have a number of complex ways in which they fulfill their roles, and one of the very important ways in which the institution of marriage perpetuates itself is by creating a romantic vision of oneself in marriage that is intrinsically tied into expressing one’s masculinity or femininity in relation to a person of the opposite sex; stepping into an explicitly gendered role. This may not be true of every single marriage, and indeed undoubtedly it is untrue in some cases. But it is true of the culture-wide institution. By changing the explicitly gendered nature of marriage we might be accidentally cutting away something that turns out to be a crucial underpinning.

To which, again, the other side replies “That’s ridiculous! I would never change my willingness to get married based on whether or not gay people were getting married!”

Now, economists hear this sort of argument all the time. “That’s ridiculous! I would never start working fewer hours because my taxes went up!” This ignores the fact that you may not be the marginal case. The marginal case may be some consultant who just can’t justify sacrificing valuable leisure for a new project when he’s only making 60 cents on the dollar. The result will nonetheless be the same: less economic activity. Similarly, you–highly educated, firmly socialised, upper middle class you–may not be the marginal marriage candidate; it may be some high school dropout in Tuscaloosa. That doesn’t mean that the institution of marriage won’t be weakened in America just the same.

Megan goes on to give a number of somewhat dubious examples of government policy causing Bad Things (no-fault divorce caused a high divorce rate, that sort of thing).

Galios responds (in part; read the whole thing):

[Megan speculates that, if same-sex marriage is legalized,] some people might no longer choose to marry as it will no longer be an expression of an explicit gendered role. I had thought, however, that in such a conflict where one person wants a role to be explicitly gendered and another wishes to take that role in spite of his or her gender, the latter’s equality rights would generally trump the other’s interest in maintaining gender roles. If not we should reconsider a lot of issues. Perhaps women should no longer be allowed to be policemen as some men at the margins are no longer joining the force because it does not afford an opportunity to step into an explicitly gendered role. In this case it is not that I arrogantly suppose nobody would react this way. I simply feel the need for explicit gendered roles is far outweighed by the need to be free of them.

Tom at Family Scholars Blog, also responding to Megan, writes:

Hear, hear. Same-sex marriage could weaken marriage in numerous ways. I think there are clear reasons why marriage has always been understood as being between a man and a woman. Marriage has been about regulating sexuality and procreation (and property and other things), and we live in”“and always will live in”“a heteronormative world.

But not allowing same-sex marriage could also weaken marriage. (Marriage could increasingly be seen as a discriminatory institution, the compromise of civil unions could undermine marriage far more than same-sex marriage, and so on.) Just as many gay rights activists should think a bit more seriously about marriage, many opponents of same-sex marriage should think a bit more seriously about fairness and equality for homosexuals. I see no reason why society should condemn homosexuality and stigmatize homosexuals, and most opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in opposition to homosexuality (Elizabeth and David are in the minority there, I’m afraid). I’m not sure if there are any rational arguments out there against homosexuality, either. That’s not to say that our ancestors were bigoted, repressed bastards. But sometimes societies make progress, and it’s difficult to see how the growing social acceptance of homosexuality can be categorized as anything other than progress.

Jim at Unqualified Offerings gets in the deal; answering Megan’s examples and also her Chesterson quote (which I’m not even getting in to here, space being limited and all), and also writing:

The form of the social conservative argument against gay marriage is entirely different: easing couple-formation among Class A is supposed to make couple-formation less attractive to Class B. One version of this argument would hold that Class B so reviles Class A that they will, at the margin, want less to do with any institution Class A has contaminated. Social conservatives on their best behavior are at pains to avoid this one. Instead they argue that marriage is deeply attractive because it is an opportunity to “step[] into an explicitly gendered role,”?as Megan puts it, and opening the institution to Class A, gay couples, compromises that.

I can’t say definitively that it doesn’t, because one can’t prove a negative. I can say that the “gendered roles are the it thing about marriage”? claim has a distinctly after-the-fact air about it; that is, it feels like the opposition to gay marriage comes first, and the reasoning afterward. [...]

Social conservatives either need a more compelling causal explanation of how gay marriage would harm straight marriage, or they need closer analogies than Megan managed. Give me compelling historical cases of the form “We opened Institution X to Class A and that caused it to weaken among Class B”? and you’ll have at least a level of surface plausibility that social conservatives currently don’t have. You won’t have won the argument by any means - at that point we have to weigh your story against the justice claims that have been patiently waiting to be brought back in to the discussion. But at least you’ll have an argument.

Kip Esquire makes a solid point as well:

The mile-wide blindspot in Jane’s tome is that all her examples are non-discriminatory. Look at the income tax: two clones with exactly identical financial profiles pay exactly the same income tax … whether that tax is too high is an entirely different discussion. Yes, libertarians … or anyone … can disagree about whether “taxes are too high,” but I would hope that a tax policy that discriminated against gays … or blacks or women or immigrants or any other group … would unite libertarians in saying “Now hold on a minute…” [...]

I don’t give a damn whether recognizing same-sex marriage affects anybody else’s behavior “at the margin.” I’m being discriminated against, and I want it to stop. The margin be damned.

Over in Obernews, Brooke writes:

But I ask again, what does any of this have to do with gay marriage? Traditional marriage supporters seem to be flocking to this essay because it supposedly makes a compelling case for not allowing gay marriage. But do we learn anything at all about the possible consequences of gay marriage in this essay? No. So what have we learned? That change means change and incentives matter. Both good lessons with no discernable relationship to gay marriage. Because what are the incentives to marriage that are likely to change? Companionship, having children, economic security, fulfillment of religious duty, and, as McArdle says, “stepping into an explicitly gendered role”? (which, incidentally, I think is increasingly rare and likely to become more so, and also, bullshit)? For heterosexual people who want any or all of those things, how are the incentives changed by allowing gay people to marry, even to people on the margin? What disincentive to marriage does allowing gays to marry create? McArdle doesn’t suggest any.

In the comments to Obernews, Jesse made what I thought was an on-target comment:

But Megan, the position you’re targeting doesn’t boil down to “Because I wouldn’t change my behavior, it is therefore true that no one else will change their behavior.” It boils down to “Why would this cause any heterosexuals to change their behavior?” Put another way, the point isn’t that the speaker doesn’t see how incentives that won’t affect him could affect anyone else. It’s that gay marriage doesn’t change any heterosexual’s incentives in the first place.

The proper response, if you object to the argument, is not to point out incentives that were pooh-poohed in the past but which turned out to be important after all; it’s to note some negative incentives that exist in the first place.

Since I haven’t seen any compelling examples of such incentives, I can’t say the argument strikes me as stupid at all.

In contrast, Justin at Dust In The Light argues that what this all shows is that gay marriage is a slippery, slippery slope.

…It’s true that the social mixing will remain intact even should the genetic mixing be withdrawn from the essential definition of marriage. However, McArdle’s point about each step making the next easier comes starkly into play: there are currently two reasons for the fence against consanguineous marriage: procreative and social. At the very least, same-sex marriage would invalidate the former, leaving only vague notions of clannishness that a society (or judiciary) that takes individual choice as the supreme principle would surely deem an inappropriate basis for the law.

Stepping outside of the narrow point, though, we observe that Henley has made the repeated assertion that he is leaving out the “justice claims” of same-sex marriage supporters. Those claims, and every other argument that Henley puts forward on behalf of same-sex marriage, would apply equally to any other couple or group that wished to have the government recognize its relationship as “marriage.”

One of Justin’s comment-writers argues that it’s not true that we have to be against same-sex marriage because it would be the end of the world. No, no - we have to be against same-sex marriage because it would led to the Muslims taking over.

You two are overstating our arguments. I’ve never claimed that humanity will die out. I don’t think any other commenters here have ever made that claim either. The real argument is that this particular society that you will have radically modified will become unviable and will be replaced. What the replacement will be nobody can guess. Some believe it will be replaced with a fundamentalist muslim society. In which case your ssm couples would have to start hiding again, only not from fear of being ostracized. Whatever replaces American society will not be as friendly to homogamous relationships as you hope to enjoy. It won’t happen overnight of course. It may not even happen until your ssm grandchildren, but it will happen just like it is happening in Europe.

Although it’s too difficult to find a bit to quote, Sebastian Holsclaw also has some interesting thoughts on the nature of reforming any institution.

Anyhow, with the exception of Justin’s (which is just more of the old “same sex marriage will lead to incest” fearmongering), all the above posts - including Megan’s original post - are well worth reading.

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This post was removed by request of the author.

[I don't have time to post today (drawing), but I thought I ought to post this, so I'm swiping every word from Hannah at Feministing. (Think of it as a special "involuntary guest post.") --Amp]

The U.S. Senate will have an up-or-down vote on the Federal Refusal Clause as soon as this Thursday, April 21. Why does this matter, you ask?

According to NARAL Pro Choice America, the Federal Refusal Clause provision slipped into the federal budget at the end of the 2004 and “allows any health-care company (including hospitals, health-insurance corporations, and HMOs) to refuse to comply with any federal, state, or local law that assures women have access to abortion services. It lets a health-care company gag its doctors, and bar them from providing abortion services - or even information - to their patients. Doctors could even be blocked from referring women clients to another doctor under this proposal even when a woman’s health is at risk. Under the Federal Refusal Clause, many women may lose access to vital reproductive health services, and in some cases may not even be told what options are available to them.”

Take action against this insanity and write your senator today.

[I will say that I followed the link at the end and sent an email to my senators, and it took all of 20 seconds. Maybe less. --Amp]

I’m getting back into drawing Hereville (which will slow down blogging on “Alas” a lot - my new rule is that I’m not allowed to blog unless I’ve made some progress on Hereville first). Page 27 can now be seen here.

Actually, I drew page 27 one and a half times. I drew it and started drawing page 28. Then, partway through drawing page 28, I realized that the scene I was drawing sucked. So I rewrote the scene, which made it necessary to redraw the bottom half of page 27 (and to throw away many of the pencils for page 28, as well).

And, for those of you who are curious, the original page 27 can be viewed here. Although I hate the script for the bottom half of the page, I like the visual pattern formed by the line of word balloons.

The New York Times has an article summing up the same study that I talked about yesterday (thanks to “Alas” reader Katie for the tip). The big finding: it’s better to be a little “overweight” than to be “normal” weight.

People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today.

The researchers - statisticians and epidemiologists from the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - also found that increased risk of death from obesity was seen for the most part in the extremely obese, a group constituting only 8 percent of Americans.

And being very thin, even though the thinness was longstanding and unlikely to stem from disease, caused a slight increase in the risk of death, the researchers said.

The new study, considered by many independent scientists to be the most rigorous yet on the effects of weight, controlled for factors like smoking, age, race and alcohol consumption in a sophisticated analysis derived from a well-known method that has been used to predict cancer risk.

Perhaps the Times just didn’t mention it, but it sounds like they didn’t control for the negative health effects of weight cycling (aka “yo-yo dieting”). Multiple studies have shown that weight cycling can take years of of people’s lives; a morbidity study of fat that doesn’t control for this factor will inevitably exaggerate the risks of fat.

The article’s conclusion:

“The take-home message from this study, it seems to me, is unambiguous,” Dr. Glassner said. “What is officially deemed overweight these days is actually the optimal weight.”

And hey, while I’m on the subject, let me recommend this terrific Paul Campos article from the New Republic, “The Weighting Game” (pdf link - the article begins on page 3). Thanks to “Alas” reader Richard Bellamy for the link. Here’s a sample, but the whole thing is good:

If fat is ultimately irrelevant to health, our fear of fat, unfortunately, is not. Americans’ obsession with thinness feeds an institution that actually is a danger to Americans’ health: the diet industry.

Tens of millions of Americans are trying more or less constantly to lose 20 or 30 pounds. (Recent estimates are that, on any particular day, close to half the adult population is on some sort of diet.) Most say they are doing so for their health, often on the advice of their doctors. Yet numerous studies–two dozen in the last 20 years alone–have shown that weight loss of this magnitude (and indeed even of as little as ten pounds) leads to an increased risk of premature death, sometimes by an order of several hundred percent. By contrast, over this same time frame, only a handful of studies have indicated that weight loss leads to lower mortality rates–and one of these found an eleven-hour increase in life expectancy per pound lost (i.e., less than an extra month of life in return for a 50-pound weight loss). This pattern holds true even when studies take into account “occult wasting,” the weight loss that sometimes accompanies a serious but unrelated illness.

For example, a major American Cancer Society study published in 1995 concluded in no uncertain terms that healthy “overweight” and “obese” women were better off if they didn’t lose weight. In this study, healthy women who intentionally lost weight over a period of a year or longer suffered an all-cause increased risk of premature mortality that was up to 70 percent higher than that of healthy women who didn’t intentionally lose weight. Meanwhile, unintentional weight gain had no effect on mortality rates. (A 1999 report based on the same data pool found similar results for men.)

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Over at Willow Tree, Rachel Ann asks:

Under what circumstances is it okay to break the law? I don’t mean jaywalking, or grand theft auto either, I mean something in between.

Pretty much whenever I think 1) there’s virtually no chance I’ll get caught, and 2) I don’t believe that by breaking the law I’d be making a significant contribution to hurting another person. (Breaking the law in the context of a political protest is a different matter; there sometimes I’d find it worthwhile to break a law even if there’s a significant chance I’d be caught. But I don’t think that’s the sort of thing Rachel Ann was thinking of.)

So, for example, I don’t hesitate to get stoned (or when I do hesitate, it’s not because I’m disturbed by the law-breaking). Nor would it bother me morally to shoplift from a huge corporation. (I don’t shoplift anymore - haven’t for years - but that’s not a moral decision, I’m just not as fearless as I once was. Or as needy).

Of course, I realize that shoplifting - and, for that matter, smoking pot - does contribute in a small way to harming other people. If I was the only person in the world to shoplift, it would be pretty harmless; but the cumulative effect of millions of shoplifting incidents is to raise prices and unemployment by some degree. But to me, this sort of “cumulative” harm is similar to the harm caused by driving when you could walk, or flying across the country, or failing to protest my government vigorously, or not buying the most fuel-efficient car available, or any other activity in which some of the costs are externalized. Yes, it’s the wrong thing to do; but being one of millions who contributes a tiny bit to a larger social harm is something I’ve learned to live with on a day-to-day basis.

Sesame Street’s producers, reacting to the “obesity epidemic,” have decided that the Cookie Monster should moderate his eating habits; a new song for C.M. will have the title “A Cookie Is A Sometimes Food.” When I read the story, I didn’t give it much thought; just another example of mindless anti-fat hysteria.

But as Jason at Positive Liberty points out, this isn’t just mindlessness; it’s bad art:

You know, even when I was a kid I think I understood the point of Cookie Monster, which was that you’re not supposed to be like him.

I know this is pedantic for most of you, but look at the original Sesame Street characters. They all had faults that kids were meant to learn about and avoid: Oscar the Grouch was dirty; Cookie Monster ate junk food; Big Bird could be a bit naive. Kids learned by watching that these traits aren’t always the best ones to have–but that they aren’t the end of the world, either. And we liked the characters anyway.

Dimensionality. Complexity. Literature, or as much as a four-year-old can understand of it. And they’re squashing it flat. Behold the damage that can be done by a momentary phobia passing through the pundit class.

I wish I didn’t suspect that it’s somehow patronizing for an uptight white guy like me to say “word,” because if I didn’t, then right here would be the perfect place for me to say “word.”

On the other hand, isn’t it sort of racist for me to keep myself from using obviously useful and eloquent words like “dis” and “word” just because I don’t want to seem patronizing?

So, then. Er.

Word.

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From an AP story:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated today that packing on too many pounds accounts for 25,814 deaths a year in the United States. As recently as January, the CDC came up with an estimate 14 times higher: 365,000 deaths.

The new analysis found that obesity … being extremely overweight … is indisputably lethal. But like several recent smaller studies, it found that people who are modestly overweight actually have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight.

Biostatistician Mary Grace Kovar, a consultant for the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center in Washington, said “normal” may be set too low for today’s population.

Keep in mind that the 365,000 number was itself a retreat from the CDC’s recent figure of 400,000 deaths a year. Don’t worry, though… the fact that they overestimated fat deaths by 1400% isn’t going to make them do anything crazy like revise the publicity materials based on false figures.

CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said because of the uncertainty in calculating the health effects of being overweight, the CDC is not going to use the brand-new figure of 25,814 in its public awareness campaigns and is not going to scale back its fight against obesity.

I’ll be interested to see if this new study accounted for the effects of yo-yo dieting as a separate cause from merely being overweight; if they didn’t, then even the new figure of 25,814 may be an exaggeration. And given the near-universal failure of diets to turn fat people into “normal” people over the long term, I think that describing being fat as a “preventable” condition is dubious.

“This analysis is far more sophisticated,” said Kovar, who was not involved in the new study. “They are very careful and are not overstating their case.”

A related study, also in Wednesday’s JAMA, found that overweight Americans are healthier than ever, thanks to better maintenance of blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Diabetes is on the rise among people in all weight categories, however.

I think that last paragraph relates to an important point: Fat people who are concerned about their health are better off using moderate exercise and improved diets to work on reducing blood pressure and “bad” cholesterol, and not paying attention to what the scales say. Unlike trying to lose weight, this is an approach that can be successfully applied by most fat people over the long run.

It’s stunning how irresponsible the CDC has been throughout the “fat is the new smoking!” saga. On the bright side, I’m surprised and pleased that the CDC is releasing this new data, rather than finding ways to cover it up.

Thanks to Paul of Big Fat Blog for the tip.

Although I’ve written a fair amount about the rape prevalence controversy over the years, I haven’t discussed false rape reports. Feminists tend to claim that false rape reporting is relatively uncommon; anti-feminists and men’s rights advocates (MRAs) tend to claim that false rape reports are almost as common as true rape reports.

I haven’t said much because I’ve looked into the research and found it very inconclusive. This Columbia Journalism Review article (link via Julie Saltman at Washington Monthly) sums up the state of the research pretty well. At the low end, some studies and sources have claimed that 2% of rape allegations made to police are false. The FBI finds that about 8% are false. Some studies - most famously one by sociologist Eugene Kanin, examining rape reports in a single, small Midwestern city - have found false reporting rates as high as 41%.

(It should be noted that what many studies report as false reporting rates are in fact recanting rates. However, can we really safely assume that 100% of all women who recant an accusation were not raped? There are other reasons to wonder about the highest numbers. In some studies, police interrogation or polygraph exams were used, tactics which can sometimes lead to false confessions. In other cases, the sample considered - a tiny Midwestern city, women in the military, etc - seems likely to include many women who have a much stronger-than-average motivation to not admit they voluntarily had sex. In no case is the honesty or possible bias of the police investigators ever questioned.)

Both feminists and anti-feminists sometimes talk about this question as if what’s at issue is how honest women are. That’s a mistake - what percent of reported rapes are false says nothing about women in general, or rape in general. As Eugene Volokh points out, since relatively few (I’d argue a minority) of rapes are ever reported to police, even if very few women would ever lie about being raped it’s quite possible to have a relatively high percentage of false rape reports.

Let’s say, for instance, that only 2% of all women age 16-19 would ever lie about rape; and that any particular year, only 2% of that tiny fraction actually do falsely report a rape to the police. So 98% of all women (including relatively young and not very mature women) would never lie about rape, and even of those who might under the right circumstances, most never will. (I use the 16-to-19 age group because the risk of rape is highest there; the same analysis could apply, though, to other age groups.)

There are, however, about 8 million women in the 16-to-19 age group in the U.S., and 2% x 2% x 8 million = 3200 false rape reports per year. The National Crime Victimization Survey (2002 data, see table 3) reports that 2.7 out of 1000 people age 16 to 19, which means 5.4 out of 1000 women age 16 to 19, are raped each year. This is an estimate based on a survey, not on police reports, and it may well be low (the actual rate may be higher) [it almost certainly is higher -Amp]; but in any event, we know that the rate of rapes reported to the police is roughly half that estimated to the NCVS (compare the Uniform Crime Reports data, and remember that the UCR data aggregates rapes and attempted rapes, while the NCVS breaks them out). This means that roughly 2.7 out of 1000 women age 16 to 19 report an actual rape each year, for a total of 2.7/1000 x 8 million = 21,600 true rape reports per year.

Under this model, then, 13% of all rape reports to the police would be false (in the 16-to-19 age group), even though only 2% of all women in that age group would ever make a false rape report, and only 2% of those actually make a false rape report each year. Ninety-eight percent of all women may be completely truthful on this subject, and yet we may still have a substantial false rape report rate.

It’s also important to realize that the connection between false rape reports and false rape convictions is weaker than most people assume. First of all, it’s quite possible to make a false rape report without making a false rape accusation. For example, a teen girl seeking an alibi for staying out late - or for being pregnant - may make up a story of being raped by a stranger. But if all she claims is that a stranger raped her and she can’t identify him, then no one has been falsely accused.

Second, it’s unfortunately possible for a genuine rape report to lead to a false rape conviction. A woman who is raped by a stranger may mistakenly think she recognizes an innocent man; a lot of research has shown that all crime victims, including victims of traumatic violence, are much more likely to make mistaken identifications than most people (and most juries) believe.

Finally, the large majority of reported rapes never lead to convictions at all; and, since false rape reports probably have less evidence supporting them than true rape reports, it seems likely that they lead to convictions even less often. Even true rape reports, unfortunately, are unlikely to lead to a conviction; how much more unlikely when the report is fiction?

None of this is to suggest that it’s ever acceptable to make a false rape report; that a falsely accused man doesn’t suffer unjustly even if there is no conviction; or that any number of false accusations and convictions - however small - is acceptable. Nonetheless, the speculations by some men’s rights activists that there is a nationwide epidemic of men falsely imprisoned for rape don’t seem well founded.

P.S. It’s common, when people discuss this issue, to hear claims that “rape is the only crime where people are convicted based on the word of one witness.” That’s just nonsense; lots of crimes are based on the word of one witness (often a cop). Resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, drug dealing, solicitation… unless someone happened to take a video, these sort of crimes commonly come down to one person’s word against another’s.