WSJ: ‘Unprotected’ by Danielle Crittenden

Unfortunately, the young women described in “Unprotected” have fallen victim to one of the few personal troubles that our caring professions refuse to treat or even acknowledge: They have been made miserable by their “sexual choices.” And on that subject, few modern doctors dare express a word of judgment.

Thus the danger of sexually transmitted diseases is too often overlooked in the lifestyle choices of the young women at the unnamed college where the author works.

These college women are either interacting only with other women or Ms. Crittenden is implying men are not making any choices when it comes to sex and that they shouldn’t be expected to do so. Since rape is a serious problem on college campuses, the further implication — through omission — is that being raped is the woman’s choice.

The author meets patients who cannot sleep, who mutilate themselves, who exhibit every symptom of psychic distress. Often they don’t even know why they feel the way they do. As these girls see it, they are acting like sensible, responsible adults: They practice “safe sex” and limit their partners to a mere two or three per year.

They are following the best advice that modern psychology can offer. They are enjoying their sexual freedom, experimenting, discovering themselves. They can’t understand what might be wrong. And yet something is wrong. As the author observes, surveys have found that “sexually active teenage girls were more than three times as likely to be depressed, and nearly three times as likely to have had a suicide attempt, than girls who were not sexually active.”

Ms. Crittenden is quick to decide that all of this is the result of bad decisions by women based on modern psychology, but as someone who had all those symptoms of psychic distress except self-mutilation and who didn’t know why I felt as I did, I know this psychic distress is neither irrational nor self-inflicted. For years certain memories were just too painful to think about and I mistakenly believed I had put what happened to me firmly in the past.

Too often a girl or woman is described as sexually active even when she was raped or sexually abused. As in my own case after rape, I drank alcohol to numb the pain and then was seen as someone men could freely exploit. Then I had people like Ms. Crittenden scolding me for for my sexual choices while letting those who raped or used me off the hook.

That rape and sexual abuse is so outside of Ms. Crittenden’s thought process speaks volumes about her lack of understanding about the topic of her op-ed piece.

Near the end of this piece Ms. Crittenden finally addresses the sexual behavior of a man. Only he’s gay.

So Ms. Crittenden makes her point crystal clear by omitting straight men from her op-ed piece. Sexual responsibility is for everybody but heterosexual men and boys.

From the beginning to the end of her op-ed piece Ms. Crittenden caters to the male dominated audience of the Wall Street Journal. “Hey, men whatever you do with or to women is her responsibility. You will not be held responsible for your sexual choices.”

Very convenient.

(crossposted at my blog, Abyss2hope)

This post is a feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly only thread.

If you aren’t sure what that means, please read this before commenting.

In a brief exchange about a prominent liberal blogger’s use of blackface, Maha — a blogger I have a lot of respect for — writes:

And I still say the intention of Billmon’s post had nothing to do with racism, and if you can’t see that then it went over your head. I’m sorry if you take that as condescension, but it’s a fact.

I see this happen a lot in discussions between black and white progressives — not universally, but very, very frequently. The black progressive wants to talk about what happened and why it was wrong, while the white progressive wants to talk about what good intentions white progressives had.

Here, the pattern repeats again. But there’s no reason to make Billmon’s intentions the subject at all. Billmon isn’t on trial, and it’s not about his guilt or innocence. Talking about racism as if the issue to be determined is the purity of white people’s intentions is, frankly, a characteristically white way to frame discussions of racism. And it’s a mistake.

Racism is bad because it hurts people who are discriminated against. Let’s keep an eye on that, and not worry so much about the state of White people’s souls. Okay?

(There’s much more to be said, but Ebogjonson already said it very well.)

Editor’s note: As the commenters pointed out, I’m actually arguing that both gender and sex are social constructions. 

I have a good example. This case is not unique, but it is rather interesting. An Indian runner who earned a Silver Medal in the Asian Games, was disqualified because she “failed a gender test.”

The IOA also asked its medical commission to inquire into Soundarajan’s case and report within 10 days.

There are no compulsory gender tests during events sanctioned by the International Association of Athletics Federations, but athletes may be asked to take a gender test. The medical evaluation panel usually includes a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist and internal medicine specialist.

An Indian athletics official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media said Soundarajan almost certainly never had sex-change surgery.

Instead, the official said Soundarajan appeared to have “abnormal chromosomes.” The official also said the test revealed more Y chromosomes than allowed.

I find it interesting that they had to get a half dozen experts to determine this women’s gender for her. If gender was just about chromosomes and/or genitalia, then this wouldn’t be such a big debate. I have heard of cases like this before with professional athletes and other people.

Now before, the biological determinists come crawling out of the wood work, I’m not saying that there is no biological basis for sex, but I am saying that the criteria used for assigning gender (and sex) are social in nature. One of the things that our social construction of gender teaches us is that there are “males” and “females” and that’s it. It also tells us that everybody fits into these two gender boxes, but the biological “truth” is a little more complex.

Boy, I’m sure milking Sydney’s third birthday for a lot of Baby Blogging posts… Actually, Sydney and Maddox are currently out-of-state (visiting grandparents for the holidays), so I’m currently very toddler-deprived.

Anyhow, on to the cute pics.

Here is Maddox on the merry-go-round at Chuckee Cheese. Did Maddox enjoy it? I dunno. I said “hey, let’s put Maddox on the horsey, that’ll be a cute picture,” and we did, and it was. Maddox grinned and enjoyed it, but Maddox pretty much grins and enjoys all of existence; her basically happy nature is, I think, her most striking personality trait. She’d have grinned just as much if we had plopped her down in a dusty corner with an empty coke bottle to play with.

Read the rest of this entry »

New York City has banned trans-fats in restaurants; restaurants have until July 2007 to get rid of the trans fats.¹

1) I’m enough of a libertarian to think they should have just required restaurants to clearly label foods containing trans fats, and then let consumer preferences do the rest.²

2) On the other hand, if this law really saves 500 lives a year (as ban proponents claim), I’m enough of a liberal to think that’s worth a tiny loss in freedom. But I’m skeptical about the 500 lives a year claim; I haven’t been able to find out how that figure was derived.

3) NYC Mayor Bloomburg says “We’re not trying to take away anybody’s ability to go out and have the kind of food they want in the quantities they want.” It must be nice to be that free of distressing reality. Next, Mayor Bloomburg will explain how speeding laws aren’t trying to take away anyone’s ability to drive as fast as they want.

4) Trans fat ban proponents often claim that there’s no taste difference between food prepared with trans fats and food prepared with other oils. But that isn’t true; many folks (but not all folks) can taste the difference. See the taste test at the bottom of this Willamette Week article, for instance. And no one knows how to make trans-fat-free donuts that taste as good.

5) Ironically, margarine — once billed as the healthier (and lousier-tasting) alternative to butter — is much higher in trans fats than butter, and is now considered less healthy than butter. Zig! cry the health mavens. Zag! they cry, ten years later. Yet their credibility never seems to go down.

6) Banning trans fats in restaurants, but not in grocery stores, doesn’t make sense. I guess the supermarket lobby is more powerful than the fast-food and donut lobby.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

1. Except for donut shops, which have until July 2008. (back)
2. The bill does require restaurants to provide calorie information, which is good. (back)

I’ve been looking through the UN’s “State Of The World’s Children 2007″ report (pdf link), which seems to concentrate mostly on children in the developing world. The entire report is well worth reading, or at least skimming the summaries included at the start of each chapter.

It’s clear the authors believe it’s impossible to discuss improving the state of the world’s children, without also discussing the state of the world’s mothers. The rest of this post is quoted from the summary of chapter two:

• A growing body of evidence indicates that household decisions are often made through a bargaining process that is more likely to favour men than women. Factors underlying women’s influence in decision-making processes include control of income and assets, age at marriage and level of education.
• According to data from the Demographic and Health Surveys, in only 10 out of the 30 developing countries surveyed did half or more of women participate in all household decisions, including those regarding major household spending, their own health care and their visits with friends or relatives outside the home.
• The consequences of women’s exclusion from household decisions can be as dire for children as they are for women themselves. According to a study conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute, if men and women had equal influence in decision-making, the incidence of underweight children under three years old in South Asia would fall by up to 13 percentage points, resulting in 13.4 million fewer undernourished children in the region; in sub-Saharan Africa, an additional 1.7 million children would be adequately nourished.
• A woman’s empowerment within the household increases the likelihood that her children, particularly girls, will attend school. A UNICEF survey of selected countries across the developing world found that, on average, children with uneducated mothers are at least twice as likely to be out of school than children whose mothers attended primary school.
• Men play a vital role in promoting egalitarian decision-making. Through simple and direct strategies, such as sharing responsibility for household chores and childcare, men can help combat gender discrimination in households and communities.
• Women themselves are the most important catalysts for change. By challenging and defying discriminatory attitudes in their communities, women’s groups can advance the rights of girls and women for generations to come.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

I am going to repeat myself about this a little further down, but let me say up front that this post is in response to the comments in this open thread for male survivors of sexual abuse/violence started by Abyss2Hope. First, though, since this is my first post on Alas, and since my comments in various posts here will not necessarily provide adequate context to what I want to write about and why I take the approach to it that I do, let me offer a brief introduction: I am a poet and writer and a professor in the English Department at a large community college in New York City, where I have been teaching composition, creative writing and literature for the last seventeen years. I tend to structure the content of my classes such that, even if the topics themselves are not explicitly feminist—such as the course in Middle Eastern literature I am teaching this semester—I can make feminist analysis a part of how I teach them. Indeed, feminism has been central to the way I understand the world since my late teens-early twenties, when reading Adrienne Rich’s On Lies, Secrets and Silence was the only thing that convinced me I wasn’t crazy (a few years later it was Andrea Dworkin’s Intercourse). I will have more to say about that further on in this post. For now, let me just say that I have been writing and publishing about issues of manhood and masculinity from a feminist perspective since 1988, when the first of two essays I wrote on women’s reproductive rights was published in Changing Men Magazine. Since then, I have published pieces in more than a few other journals, including this one in Salon.com that might have turn out to have some relevance to this discussion. If you are interested in seeing more of my work, you can find excerpts on my website. You can also visit my own blog, where this will be cross-posted.

My point in providing these links is not primarily to hawk my own writing—though I will, of course, be very happy to have more readers ;)—but rather to give you the opportunity, should you be interested, (and I guess this is also the academic in me) to see what I write here in the context of a body of work and a perspective I have been developing for more than half my life. My experience here on Alas, especially in threads where the intent of the original post is to expose male privilege as fully as possible, particularly as that privilege is expressed through rape and other forms of violence against women, is that the substance of the ideas originally put forth too often gets lost, as commenters shoot from the hip in ways that either intentionally derail conversations or do so because people are more concerned with their own personal agendas than with actually reading what others have to say. (Anecdotally, and this is also a point I will return to later on, it seems to me that while men more than women are guilty of these derailments, it is not only MRA’s and other anti-feminists/critics of feminism who do this. I had my head quite rightly handed to me in a thread about women and rape that I completely derailed because I got defensive about something I shouldn’t have gotten defensive about.)

While I have no illusion that this post will be any different—though I certainly hope that it is—the issues that arise when male survivors of sexual violence confront feminism, either as an ideology put forth in books or in the bodies of feminist women and men, still need to be talked about. These issues are complex—which is why I have called this post “A Beginning”—and, indicative of this complexity, perhaps, is the fact that while I have already declared my bias in favor of a feminist analysis of things, I do not belive that feminist discourse is a place where male survivors ought to expect either to speak or to be heard in a way that places our experience at the center of whatever is being discussed. Indeed, the post you are reading has its origins in a comment I made to Daran in Abyss2Hope’s Anatomy Of A False Rape Accusation - Part 2. Daran, in a comment that he has since acknowledged was rooted in a misreading of a comment by Q Grrl, made the following statement:

The complaint isn’t just that feminists talk solely of male on female rape, but also that male rape survivors are excluded from services.

Later on, he restated this concern in this way:

I still find [Qgrrl's] characterisation of those who advocate for the admission of male rape victims to the discourse as “wankers” who “whine” to be offensive. “Respect” is not a one-way street.

I am not interested here in resurrecting either Daran’s misreading of Qgrrl or the discussion that followed it. I have quoted these statements by Daran because I think they say quite succinctly what he and other men see a shortcoming of feminist discourse about sexual violence, i.e., that it does not, by defintion and even by design, make room within itself for a space that can adequately account for the experience of male survivors. I think this concern has validity, though I disagree with the ways in which Daran pursues it—at least as far as I have been able to tell in the short time I have been reading him—and so my response to him read, in part:

You know, Daran, as a man who was sexually abused when I was a child, I have quite a lot of sympathy for a position that is critical of the way in which men are often left out of the sexual-assault discourse, feminist or otherwise. When I was in my late teens and early 20s and just beginning to come to awareness of what had been done to me, no one, and I mean no one, was talking about the fact that boys were sexually abuse; people were just beginning to acknowledge publicly the degree to which it happened to girls [...] I would love, therefore, the opportunity to be part of a conversation among men about what it means to be a male survivor of rape and other forms of sexual assault that takes as its starting point not the fact that feminism does not include men in its discourse, which is where you inevitably start these discussions, but rather our experience of men of being sexually violated (and, yes, also of having our experiences dismissed, etc. and so on).

In response to this comment, A2H started an Open Thread For Male Survivors of Sexual Violence, naming me as moderator and asserting that while the problem of “male survivors of sexual abuse/assault being left out of the sexual-assault discourse” is

a real problem that merits attention[, it] too often [...] gets mentioned as a way to attack efforts to fight sexual violence directed at girls and women or as an excuse to attack feminism or feminists. That exploits male victims and they deserve better.

Toy Soldier found this a less than inviting introduction, asserting in another comment that A2H’s words were “antagonistic, accusatory and inaccurate.” Ultimately, despite the fact that I posted two or three comments trying to start a discussion of ideas around male survivors and feminism, and at least one or two others, including Jake Squid, tried to move the conversation away from what Amp rightly called “a lot of mutual suspicion and dislike here, on both sides,” the thread devolved onto the topic of what it would take for male survivors who have had negative experiences with feminists on Alas and elsewhere to feel safe posting here. Ultimately, it became clear that the roots of the open thread for male survivros in A2H’s thread on false rape accusations, coupled with the fact that Alas is an explicitly feminist blog, was a problem for at least some of the people who might otherwise want to join this discussion. Hence, this post, which will, I hope, give the discussion a fresh start.

I do not want to deny or trivialize what it feels like for male survivors who have had their experiences of abuse dismissed, denied or trivialized by women or men speaking in the name of feminism. I have had that experience as well, and, as anyone who has survived an assault of any kind must know, to have that experience denied is to be forced to relive the shame and isolation of the original assault. However, someone who speaks in the name of feminism does not represent all of feminism, even if what they are saying can legitimately be called feminist, and it is with feminism that I want to start, not feminists, because if this discussion were to start with a focus on what feminists have said and done or not said and not done when it comes to male survivors of sexual abuse, we would end up right where we ended up in the thread started by Abyss2Hope, with a whole lot of suspicion and mistrust, and we will have gone essentially nowhere.

I was around 19 when I first started to name as sexual abuse what I had experienced at the hands of two different men at two different times of my childhood, and one of the things that enabled me to name that experience was reading the essay “Caryatid: Two Columns,” in On Lies, Secrets and Silence. I remember distinctly being at summer camp, sitting on my bed during my day off and reading and rereading the following passage:

[T]aught to view our bodies as our totality, our genitals as our chief source of fascination and value, many women have become dissociated from their own bodies…viewing themselves as objects to be possessed by men rather than as the subjects of an existence.

I don’t know why, but those words pushed a button somewhere in me, and I began to ask—in fact, I actually heard a voice in my head asking—”But what about me? What about what happened to me?”

Yet even as successive readings of that essay, along with the other pieces in Rich’s book, offered me a way to begin to name my own experience, it also identified me as a man with the same power and privilege that the men who abused me had used to abuse me:

Rape is the ultimate outward physical act of coercion and depersonalization practiced on women by men. Most male readers…would perhaps deny having gone so far: the honest would admit to fantasies, urges of lust and hatred, or lust and fear, or to a “harmless” fascination with pornography and sadistic art.

I was fascinated by pornography; I had fantasies that combined lust and fear; and it was impossible to miss the cynical accusation in Rich’s use of the word “perhaps.” The message was clear. Whatever else might have been true about who I was, I was also, by definition, the enemy, and I did not know how to speak at one and the same time as both a survivor of male sexual violence and someone who participated in it. I don’t know why this paradox did not lead me to reject feminism outright, except to say that reading feminist writers like Rich convinced me that feminism, more than any other ideology I had encountered, pointed to a way of living my life that was antithetical to the way the men who abused me were obviously living theirs.

Nonetheless, the paradox was silencing, so silencing, in fact, that a few years later—and this was after I’d started telling people I’d been abused—in a training session at a different when day camp, when the male session leader told us he was going to use “she” as the generic pronoun referring to kids who might choose to tell us they’d been sexually abused, I found myself unable to confront him about the way that choice rendered me and my experience, not to mention the experiences of the other men and, perhaps more importantly, the boys at the camp who’d had the same experience, invisible. Yes, part of why I didn’t speak up had to do both with the very public nature of the forum I’d be speaking in and the adversarial nature of what I’d be saying, but I also couldn’t speak up because I didn’t have the words, the conceptual vocabulary not only to say “This isn’t fair,” but also to point out that boys’ experience of abuse, my experience of abuse, needed to be understood on its own terms and not as a perhaps anomolous subset of the experience of girls; and one reason I did not have that vocabulary was that it was not to be found in the feminism I’d been reading. (To be fair, no one else had that vocabulary either. At that time, and I am talking here about more than 20 years ago, barely anyone but feminists was willing to acknowledge that sexual abuse happened to girls; no one had even really considered—at least as far as I know—that it was happening to boys as well.)

It was not until a couple of years later, when I was in graduate school, that my perception of the lack of such a vocabulary became the need to develop one. It started when a female friend of mine persuaded me that I should think of what happened when I lost my virginity as an instance of date rape. I have written about that experience here, on my blog, and so I am not going to retell the whole story. What is most relevant here is that, as I came to understand that my friend was wrong, that the girl with whom I had sex for the first time had not raped me (and if you want to know more about that, you need to go read the post on my blog), I also began to articulate distinctions between the ways in which feminism was helpful to me as a survival of child sexual abuse and the ways in which it could not be and, more importantly, was unreasonable for me to expect it to be. Some of these, in no particular order, include:

1. Women, not men, are the subjects of feminist discourse; and men, when men are part of that discourse, are the objects of its analysis. This is not merely the logical result of the fact that most feminists are women; it is a deliberate political stance intended to subvert and ultimately eliminate patriarchy/male dominance. As such, whether you accept a feminist analysis or not, it is pointless to ask feminist discourse to admit men’s subjectivity on an equal footing with women’s—and equal footing is what would be required if one were to try to turn feminism into a forum for dealing with the experience of male survivors of sexual abuse/violence. Stephen Heath’s essay “Male Feminism,” in Men In Feminism, does a great job of articulating the problem of male subjectivity within feminism, but without a specific reference to sexual abuse. (I should also be clear that when I talk about people who do not accept a feminist analysis, I am not talking about people who believe that feminism is itself an oppressive ideology the purpose of which is to subjugate men, or any of the myriad variations on that theme that run through the various strands of conservative discourse out there. I am thinking of people who believe there are other forms of political analysis that adequately account for the kinds of gender imbalances that feminism addresses and that seek the change of those imbalances in the direction of greater equality.)

2. At the same time, however, feminism names the structures—political, socioeconomic, cultural and even psychological—that normalize the kind of power hierarchy that leads to the sexual abuse and exploitation of both boys/men and women/girls. Broadly speaking, feminism gathers these structures under the label patriarchy or male dominance. Curiousgyrl gets at this point in a comment where she points out that “men systematically rape male children and other men [because of the] way that male dominance works; there [are] not only benefits for exercising male dominance but consequences for refusing or being unable to do so.” I realize that her formulation very neatly elides the fact that there are also female abusers. What I will say about female abusers for now is this: the boys/men they abuse are also suffering the consequences “of refusing or being unable” to exercise male dominance. In other words, even if female abusers do not neatly fit the feminist paradigm of the dominant and abusive male, boys and men who have been abused by women still suffer their abuse within a male dominant context, and it is feminism that first named that context for what it is. Still, the phenomenon that curiousgyrl points out is a structural one; it does not get at male survivors’ interior experience, and it is that experience I am hoping this post will motivate people to discuss.

3. Feminism, more than any other socio-cultural/political form of analysis, articulates the different positions boys/men and girls/women occupy vis-a-vis sexual violence. When a girl or woman is raped, the rape enacts, confirms, affirms her status in a male dominant society as a sexual object; it makes explicit that part of the social script for what it means to be a woman that says a woman exists to be used sexually by men. On the other hand, when a boy or man is raped, the rape interrupts his status as a sexual subject; it turns him into something he is not supposed to be in a male dominant culture. Part of talking about men’s experience of sexual abuse on its own terms, it seems to me, has to include the taking apart of this aspect of the experience; and I do not see how we can talk about this without coming to the conclusion that male sexual subjectivity in a male dominant culture is built on the denial of precisely the vulnerability that abusers exploit. This conclusion, carried to its logical political and socio-cultural ends, is a quintessentially feminist insight.

Some things about the discussion and moderation:

1. This thread is open to anyone who has something substantive and constructive to add to a discussion of feminism and male survivors of sexual abuse/violence. My title includes the world “child” in parentheses because child sexual abuse is what I experienced, and so, for me, a central motivation in taking the time to write this post is something I said in this comment:

[G]iven the number of boys who are sexually abused–statistics I have seen range from 1 in 5 to 1 in 7–the problem of the sexual abuse of boys cannot be framed, simply, as the individual problems of those boys who have been assaulted. The problem needs to be politicized [....]

2. Daran argues that the result of the exclusion of male survivor experiences from feminist discourse has material consequences in that male survivors are sometimes refused services because they are men and that organizations which would serve men are either refused or have a hard time getting funding. This is a serious issue, but I do not think this thread is the place to have it What I want to talk about here are the ways in which we talk about male survivors’ experiences, the ways in which we conceptualize it, because those things will form the foundation of how we argue for services and funding.

Okay, I guess that’s it for now. Let’s see where this discussion takes us.

The headline on this news story makes it seem like everyone involved in prostitution in Atlantic City, New Jersey and elsewhere have chosen to play a dangerous game, but for many it isn’t a game, but a trap, one that benefits pimps, Johns and other exploiters.

AP

Selling sex on the streets of this gambling capital is a dangerous pursuit: Streetwalkers have been strangled, smothered, slashed and set ablaze. [...] Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz said the Atlantic City cases were sufficiently different from the Egg Harbor deaths to make authorities believe they were carried out by different attackers. He also resists speculation that the four ditch bodies were the work of a serial killer, noting that autopsies could not determine the cause of death for two of the women. No arrests have been made in any of this year’s attacks in and near Atlantic City.

In any case, the attacks illustrate how dangerous it is for prostitutes, who are statistically 18 times more likely to be killed than other women, and 40 times more likely to die from other than natural causes, according to national studies.

These stark statistics are aided by the disdainful attitudes many people have toward those trapped in prostitution. The girls and women become something less than human. If something bad happens to them, they either brought it upon themselves or it’s no great loss.

The nation’s most notorious prostitute killings were committed in the Pacific Northwest by a single attacker who came to be known as the Green River Killer. In pleading guilty in 2003 to the murders of 48 prostitutes, Gary Leon Ridgway told a judge he targeted street walkers “because I thought I could kill as many as I wanted to without getting caught.”

Unfortunately, the view some people have of other people as a commodity contributes to people like this. Whenever someone says about a crime victim or alleged victim, “she’s just a hooker” they are robbing her of her humanity and they are revealing a lack within themselves. At its worst, this perceived lack of humanity can cause a person to rationalize committing crimes they otherwise wouldn’t commit.

It can cause teenagers to think of attacking and murdering the homeless as nothing more significant that a little fun.

Like many prostitutes in similar situations, Spazz, who said she was beaten by a “trick” two years ago, didn’t call police when it happened. Like all four hookers found dead behind the motels in Egg Harbor Township, and like 85 percent of prostitutes nationwide, Spazz has a drug problem.

I suspect that many of these women who are at the highest risk have a long history of problems that drugs keep at bay. For some it is childhood sexual abuse, for others drugs may be their only coping mechanism. Any drug treatment program that doesn’t deal with suppressed issues sets most participants up for failure.

Unfortunately, those who don’t break free of drugs and/or prostitution are usually given all the blame for ineffective programs and the cynicism of the program drop outs. If they fall victim to the ultimate preditors, too many of us are unwilling to call them innocent victims.

(crossposted at my blog, Abyss2hope)

This post is a feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly only thread.

If you aren’t sure what that means, please read this before commenting.

Talk about anything you’d like. Also, if you have good links to share — either your own stuff, or someone else’s — don’t selfishly keep ‘em to yourselves.

Faux Real presents: Help Us Help Ourselves #1

New Blog: Junkfood Science
A blog by one of my favorite writers about fat acceptance and health issues, Sandy Szwarc.

New to the Blogroll: Ebogjonson.com
One of the sharpest writers about race in the blogosphere.

New to the Blogroll: Masculinity and its Discontents.

Abstract Nonsense: Six Policies To Reduce The Gender Wage Gap

Balloon Juice: Best Quote Ever From A Right-Winger About Iraq

I really don’t know why anyone would listen to me anyway. My credibility on this issue should hover between snake-oil and used-car salesmen- as recently as a year ago I was flaying Murtha.

Positive Liberty: Debunking Right-Wing Myths About The History Of The Separation Of Church & State

Sex And Race: A Guide To The Art Of Defending Racism

Racialicious: Regarding “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs”
Very interesting analysis of a racist Warner Brothers animation from 1943 (a video of the animation is embedded in the post).

Thus Spake Zuska: Republican Senator Claims Global Warming Is A UN Plot.
He also claimed that working against global warming is Idolatry. Is there any chance Senator Inhofe’s flight from reality will hurt him with right-wing voters?

Trash Talks Back: 13 Tips For Non-Fat People When Dealing With Fat People

Rape Trial - The Reality TV Series! With A Jury Of Celebs!
Whenever you think reality TV has bottomed out, it surprises you. (Curtsy: Bean.)

The Debate Link: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Does AA Lead To An Increase In Racism?

The Debate Link: An Anti-Heteronormative Reading of Leviticus 18:22
By the way, The Debate Link has been nominated for an award, and is seeking votes - you can vote for The Debate Link (or the other nominees) here. And Mozil Tov to David on the nomination, regardless of how the vote goes.

Contexts Magazine: Married People Have Less Commitment To Friends, Family and Community
On average, that is. Of course, all married “Alas” readers are outliers.

Living On Less: Consumerism Is Not A Sin

If the feminist movement can make it acceptable to be hairy, why doesn’t the anti-capitalist movement take a page from their book and work to make it acceptable to be poor? We’re poor already — the median income in the US is $23,000 a year — we just aren’t allowed to walk around looking like we’re poor without being made to feel ashamed. The feminist message that you are acceptable just the way you are is fundamentally a compassionate message. It’s not that you can’t doll yourself up if you enjoy doing so — though there are some who take that stance — what’s important is for you to have a choice: being dolled up is not an imperative, and it isn’t shameful to just go out in public looking like yourself. Movements like Voluntary Simplicity, which Levine discusses, are very much centered on the individual, not on society’s responsibility to address inequality nor to help make the outward appearance of poverty socially accepted.

Echidne: How Homophobia and Sexism Are Linked

Obsidian Wings: Must-Read Post About The Tampon Shortage Crisis In Zimbabwe

Box Turtle Bulletin: Family Research Council Cites Ludicrously Bad Research To Smear Gay Men

Official Shrub.com: The Female Gamer Archetypes

Matt Yglesias: The Green Lantern Theory Of Geopolitics
Willpower alone won’t make impossible wars winnable.

New York Times: Good Article About Transgendered Girls And Boys, And Their Parents

Obsidian Wings: Right-Wing Econ 101: Consumers Registering Preferences Through Their Purchasing Choices Is A Good Thing, Unless They Do It In Support Of Decent Labor Conditions.

Damned Interesting: Study Shows, Most People Think They’re Above Average
And furthermore, in many cases, the problem is that they’re too incompetent to be able to recognize their own incompetence.

Lorielle on WordPress: The Growing Problem of RSS Feed Fatigue
The problem with my RSS reader is that if I miss a day or a week of blogreading, the posts I miss don’t disappear. They just build up.

Abstract Nonsense: Iranian Elections 101

The upcoming general election in Iran is a good opportunity to explain how Iranian politics works. In principle, there’s an elected President, right now Ahmadinejad. In practice, the President is a pretty face, whose job is to represent Iran internationally and exercise minor influence on policy. The American equivalent would be electing a pundit to make statements about world affairs and pretend to lead, while reserving real power to an unelected President.

Reappropriate: Spike Lee To Direct Film About 1992 LA Riots
Jenn wonders if the film will present a balanced portrait of Koreans, rather than ignoring or demonizing them.

Ezra Klein: Study Shows Car Drivers Drive Closer To Helmet-Wearing Bicyclists
Just goes to show, there’s a down side to everything.

NY Times: The $100 $150 Laptop
Remember the much-discussed $100 laptop, to be mass-manufactured and sold to third world governments, to be given away to third world schoolchildren? It’s now $150, but plans are going forward. I think this is a good idea, although obviously it’s not a solution to anything by itself. There is some interesting reader comments and debate on the Times site, as well.

Even The Devils Believe: Christians Have Gotten So Used To Owning The Public Sphere, We’ve Forgotten Our Calling

Even The Devils Believe: Could Judge Roy Moore Swear To Uphold The US Constitution?

Equality Loudoun: Yet More Christians Lying About What Social Science Says About Gay Parenting

Obsidian Wings: Glenn Reynalds Thinks That Southerners Didn’t Hold Much Of A Grudge After The Civil War.
See also this post at Sadly, No! For someone who’s pretty smart, Reynalds is an idiot.

Weblog Tools Collection: Bloggers, please. Stop using Captchas.
They don’t work well, they’re often bad for accessibility, and they’re a big pain in the neck. Other than that, they’re swell.

Racialicious: More On Gwen Stefani and Racism
A topic I know is near and dear to some “Alas” readers’ itty bitty hearts.

East Village Idiot: Questions I Want to Ask Potential New Roommates, Based on Experiences with the Roommate They Will Be Replacing

NY Times: Review of the new production of Sondheim’s “Company”
Another the-cast-is-the-orchestra Sondheim production, from the same director as the recent “Sweeny” revival. The review makes the new “Company” sound excellent; the gimmick is put to good use to emphasize Bobby’s isolation (Bobby is the one character who doesn’t play an instrument). I hope the production is still playing this summer, when I’ll be in NYC.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction, where we gave up freedom for ease. If your comments aren't being approved here, try there.]

A recent Miss America¹ is performing at my workplace all week, which has me thinking about a topic I usually don’t think about: beautiful women. I’ve gotta say: I just don’t get it.

Having seen someone who is Officially One Of The Most Beautiful Woman In The USA up close, I can report that she’s pretty. But I see don’t see anything that makes her prettier than other thin women with clear skin, big eyes and even features.² Yet this person was officially certified the beautifulist of all (at least, among women). It this one of those things you have to be an expert on to be able to tell the difference?

(She can really sing, by the way.)

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction, where we all parade in gowns 24-7.]

1. Katie Harmon, surgeon in training, classical singer, and proud Republican. (back)
2. ”Thin, clear skin, big eyes and even features” seems to me to be the basic requirements of being conventionally pretty in our culture, for men and women. Edited to add: Actually, I guess big eyes aren’t manditory for men; David Boreanaz, for example, is considered unusually good-looking, but his eyes are if anything on the small side. (back)

Check it out at Abyss2hope.

Included in this edition is information about the increase in charges being filed against women after they report being raped and a post about the guilt many rape victims feel because they couldn’t stop their rapist(s) from raping again.

The rush to judgment against alleged rape victims directly contributes to victims reluctance to report rape and their misplaced guilt over remaining silent.

Those who back laws and policies which scare victims away from reporting are helping rapists. If anyone — other than rapists — should feel guilty about not stopping rapists it is them.

We had a little glitch last month, but we’re back in business for December. This will be the 8th Carnival, and it will be hosted at Christina Downloaded. For more information about the Carnival and its history, you can click here.

Submissions to the Carnival can be sent through this blog carnival link. The deadline is the 17th, and the Carnival will go up on the 20th.

The following solidarity campaign comes from Amnesty International. As is obvious from reading the details, AI has marked this campaign as urgent and ask supporters to take actions ASAP.

Armed men, reportedly security guards and off-duty military police officers, have been threatening to kill members of the Tremembe indigenous community of Sao Jose and Buriti in the north-eastern Brazilian state of Ceara. The Tremembe are attempting to stop the construction of a vast tourist resort on what they consider to be their ancestral lands. The company is continuing work on the site in defiance of a court order.

Some 200 Tremembe have been blockading an access road to the site since 10 October, to prevent trucks from delivering materials and equipment. They say that on 4 November a group of armed men, including two off-duty police officers, came to the blockade, saying they were there to matar, prender e algemar (”to kill, seize and handcuff”) them, and drive them off the land. Members of the Tremembe indigenous community have also accused police and company security guards of repeatedly blocking up their well, which they depend on for water, threatening to kill indigenous people fishing in a nearby river, and cutting down banana trees planted by the Tremembe, who are subsistence farmers. The Tremembe have lodged official complaints at their local police station, and the State Attorney of Ceara, but they allege that armed police have been driving around the Tremembe village in company cars, harassing them.
Read the rest of this entry »

This post is a total geek-out; non-geeky readers will want to scroll on past this one. Later today, I’ll also post this week’s baby blogging (sorry for being late on it!).

Read the rest of this entry »

As in this comment thread over at Alas, some people keep insisting that women lie about being raped while insisting that men don’t lie about rape.

[Update (12/17): Per Daran's request I am clarifying that my use of "insisting that men don't lie about rape" incorrectly labels his words on the linked thread. If I understand his correction what he continues to assert is that it hasn't been proven that men lie about rape.

I see that as playing word games. He disagrees.

Here is his own explanation of his position:

Feminist cannot object to the statement "Women do (sometimes) lie about rape-and men don’t". Because:
1. Construing "lie about rape" to mean "falsely report to the police that they were raped", the statement is true, or at least, feminists cannot show that it is false.
2. Feminists cannot object to that construction, because they were the ones who used that construction in the first place when they circulated the 2% false accusation myth.
Edited to add:
3. While it is debatable to what extent individual feminists can be held responsible for the actions of other feminists, feminists who make generalised group-based complaints about the actions of non-feminists, cannot object when they are hoist on that petard.

end update]

If challenged, they will explain that by denying that men lie about rape, they are referring only to a very specific scenario where the man is the alleged victim who filed a police report.

It’s a very useful redefinition for alleged rapists and those who want to dismiss the pervasiveness of sexual violence against girls and women.

I’ve been thinking about how this dual “statement of facts” creates an unfair bias against female alleged rape victims.

What “women lie about rape, men don’t” does is plant the idea that when a rape case comes up where a woman is the alleged victim she must be treated with open skepticism. Can’t take her word for what happened because she’s female and girls and women lie about being raped. If there is anything about her that people won’t like or won’t trust then it can seem like she must be lying about being raped.

However, if a rape case comes up where the man is the alleged victim he must be treated as a real victim. Heck, there’s no need for the word alleged. He’s simply a victim. No criminal trial needed to know who is innocent and who is guilty. All he has to do is self-identify as a sexual assault/abuse victim and everyone must believe him even if he makes that claim during a crank and obscene call to a rape crisis line.

“Women lie about rape, men don’t” also plants the idea that when it comes to a particular sex crime case where a key part of the evidence is testimony, men are always honest while women will resort to lies for a whole list of reasons.

This implication of male honesty vs. female dishonesty is nonsense, but because it is supposedly based on solid research many people never question it and let it color their perception of what they hear.

This is an attempt to misuse probability theory both in the determination of probability statistics and the use of those statistics. The probability when flipping a balanced coin is 50:50 that it will be heads. But that probability does not predict the outcome of the next flip of the coin.

What the “men don’t lie about rape” statement does is make people assume that statistics on false accusations predicts who you should believe in so-called “he said, she said” rape cases.

Unlike the probability of a flipped coin, accurate statistics of convictions for false accusations are not the same as accurate statistics for false accusations. Just as some of those convicted of rape are later cleared through evidence such as DNA mismatches, some who are convicted or charged with fabricating a charge of rape are proved to be innocent or are convicted based on judgments about the alleged victim’s character and honesty. She seems like someone who would lie therefore she’s judged as a liar.

I can almost hear the men who say, “men don’t lie about rape” screaming that I’m supporting their view that alleged rape victims should be assumed to be dishonest. If any women have lied about being raped then we must assume that this rape victim is a liar until there is enough evidence to prove she’s telling the truth. We can’t use the claim that only 2% of rape claims are false to show anything about this alleged victim.

What they want is a starting belief of, “she’s lying.” I not only don’t want this, I will show that this belief impedes justice. Instead, I believe there should be a starting assumption of credibility.

My support for the assumption of credibility in the report of a crime is not based on statistics. It is based on how assumptions impact the collection of evidence. Once investigators assume the alleged victim is no victim at all, they may feel justified in interrogating a real rape victim until she decides she won’t get justice and abandons her case or until she is treated so abusively that she breaks and tells her interrogators whatever they want to hear. Either way, the outcome is the illusion that the negative assumption has been proven to be fact. These cases are then classified as unfounded or false.

This injustice then reinforces the case being made by those who say that huge numbers of girls and women lie about being raped.

For rapists, this is a good thing since it increases the odds that they will get away with their crimes without being charged with even a misdemeanor.

When the assumption about the alleged victim is credibility (untainted by the “women lie about rape” bias) that allows for the ethical collection and evaluation of evidence, including testimony from the alleged victim. Sometimes there will be enough evidence to bring charges and sometimes there won’t be. With the assumption of credibility the mere lack of evidence doesn’t get twisted into confirmation of a lie.

For rapists, this is a bad thing since it increases the odds that they will be charged for their crimes and that they will be convicted and it reduces the odds that their victims will be labeled liars and criminals.

Despite what many people claim, assuming an allegation is credible and working from there does not doom innocent men to false convictions.

For rapists, busting the myth that “women lie about rape, men don’t” is a bad thing. They are counting on the power of this myth and the fear innocent men have of false rape convictions to keep rape laws from being enforced.

(crossposted at my blog, Abyss2hope)

This post is a feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly only thread.

If you aren’t sure what that means, please read this before commenting.

Editor’s note: Last week I started a big debate over at my blog with this rant/post.  The post below is inspired from that debate.  I’ve been really frustrated with the “I’m not racist” refrain that I keep hearing over and over, and Dumi over at Black at Michigan put some of my views into his words, so I gave a short ranting response that lead to a good discussion on racism.  I’m posting the follow-up post where I discuss racism and racists in more depth, but in order to follow the meaning of this post, I suggest following the debate at my blog, and reading the post at Dumi’s blog to put this in perspective.

The I’m a Racist and I Participate in Racism thread has really touched on many important issues, and I thought it would be useful to further discuss some of the issues that people brought up in the comments section.  Let me first say that I don’t really think that we can separate racism and racists.  I see racism existing in four major forms: 

  
• Individual or isolate—actions or incidents that are the products of isolated individuals, who intentionally or unintentionally harm people physically, psychologically, or socially because of the race, gender, national origin, etc.
• Small group–actions or incidents that involve a relatively small number of people, who intentionally or unintentionally harm people physically, psychologically, or socially because of their race, gender, national origin, etc
• Direct Institutional—laws, policies, and formal and informal practices encoded in institutions that are specifically designed to exclude minority groups from access to resources
• Indirect institutional–laws, policies, and formal and informal practices that are not specifically designed to exclude minority groups; however, the result of these policies is such that minority groups are disproportionately affected. (These typologies comes from http://www.socioweb.com/sociology-textbooks/book/0136747221“> Feagin and Feagin.)

Feagin’s model could be used for any type of discrimination, but in this case I wanted to focus on racism.  I think racism exists on two major levels–the institutional levels and the interpersonal level.
Of course racism, is not the same as racists.  Racists would be the people who participate in racism whether it is institutional or interpersonal in its nature.  When most people think of racists, they think of people engaging in interpersonal racism, but I think anyone who participates in upholding racist structures or institutions is indeed racist.  I know that won’t sit well with many folks because they view racists as people who act with a deliberate intent to cause harm, but I would contend that many people do not intend to cause harm.  In fact, some people are relatively powerless in a social system, and they engage in racism even though they may think that it is wrong or harmful.  In his famous essay on racism and the American creed, sociologist, Robert Merton¹ mentions a group of people he labels non-prejudice discriminators.  These are people who do not hold prejudiced beliefs, but engage in discriminatory behavior.  I think in many cases non-prejudiced discriminators are relatively powerless.  Take the example of a loan officer at a bank that has redlining policies or a cashier in a store that has informal policies of targeting black customers as shoplifters.  While the loan officer and the cashier may think these policies are wrong, they could fear losing their jobs if they do not comply with the institutional rules.  Are these people racist?  Yes.  However, they are likely not as culpable as the people who create and enforce such racist policies.  Moreover, we could also have social institutions that include people who are not racist in their interpersonal lives, but a part of systems that support institutional racism.
Many people immediately jump to a discussion of culpability when racism comes up–the key question they ask is, “Who is to blame?”  However, I think if we just started from the point that blame is less important than eradicating racist behaviors and institutions, we would all be better.  Personally, I think everybody deserves a little blame, but some deserve more blame than others.  For me culpability is directly related to power–the more power a person has the more culpability he or she has.  Nevertheless, the blame discourse is not really going to get us further because it exacerbates social inequalities that already exist.  I’m not saying; don’t speak truth to power, but I am saying that it is important as a strategy to work of redistributing power more than placing blame.
Personally, I use the term white racism, not because I want to “blame” all whites for racism.  I use “white racism” because I agree with the commenters that institutional racism is much more insidious, and institutional racism in the US is undoubtedly “white racism.”  Racism is not just “white” because of who created or maintained it; it is also white because it upholds white supremacy.  There is no history of social institutions in this country that upholds “black racism” as an ideology.  Many people of color also participate in white racism–one primary example being colorism which exists in numerous societies.
Many commenters also suggested that “reclaiming the term racist” and arguing that everybody is racist may not be an effective strategy for social change because it is either 1) too radical for people to accept or 2) it is so conservative that people may say why change. I think the question about strategy is important.  I don’t have a simple answer as to what the best strategy would be, but I do have a collection of random thoughts about it:  

 
• I would like to change how people define racism.  To me racism is not about hate or evil, although I do think it is morally corrupt.  If we could focus more on behaviors and practices and less on “good vs. evil,” we may be able to make a dent in racism.  Part of what started my rant was the fact that people were engaging in very clear (interpersonal) racist behavior, and saying they weren’t racist because they were nice people, etc. etc.
• Part of the problem we have now is the emergence of a colorblind/raceblind rhetoric.  Reclaiming racist challenges colorblindness and can make institutional and interpersonal racism more apparent.  People don’t like the r-words (racist and racism), but many really don’t have a problem with engaging in racist behavior or turning a blind eye to racism.

I could write more, but I’ll turn it over to the readers.  Do you think it is worth it to try to put the word “racism” and “racist” back into the lexicon?  If not, why?  If so, what strategy do you think we be effective.

1. Merton, Robert K. 1948. “Discrimination and the American Creed.” Pp. 99-126 in R.M. Maclver, ed. Discrimination and National Welfare. New York: Harper & Brothers. (back)

I’m currently trying to revise and expand Lady Madonna for publication as part of an essay collection, and I just had this thought.

Noting the similarities between me and a classical image of Madonna and Child is harmless enough. Concluding that I’m going to behave like the demure Virgin Mary of classical art is a step too far, and resenting me for acting like myself instead of the image is right out of line. Of course, this problem is only loosely connected to gender dysphoria: female-identified mothers suffer in just the same ways. Take the militant lactivists who confuse matters completely by aggressively demanding their right to breastfeed in public, or the mothers through the ages who protest the sacrifice of their children in needless wars.

Is this part of the reason why breastfeeding in public arouses such hostility in some quarters? If it was that perfect submissive Mary (who was delighted to be informed her destiny was to be a vessel, rather than wanting an abortion like these uppity women), she would naturally go elsewhere as soon as she realised she was making someone else uncomfortable. How dare these uppity women go around looking like the Virgin Mary and then refuse to behave like her?

Any thoughts?

So often when people bring up false convictions, they talk about maliciousness as if that is the only cause. The implication is that those who report crimes are the ones mostly to blame for false convictions. Nowhere does this belief seem to be stronger than when discussing rape.

The perceived solution to this problem is almost always a call for lax enforcement of rape laws or a removal of rape victim shield laws. If only we’d stop protecting alleged rape victims, no innocent men would be sent to prison.

But Injustice Anywhere has a post about faulty assumptions about the forensics of how to determine whether a fire was the result of arson. Those assumptions are now in question and may have led to thousands of false convictions. Maybe even the execution of the innocent.

That means that the assumptions about wrongful rape convictions must be thrown out and replaced by the data of how wrongful convictions really happen.

Blaming the victim might be easy, but easy isn’t always accurate.

(crossposted at my blog, Abyss2hope)

This post is a feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly only thread.

If you aren’t sure what that means, please read this before commenting.

Recently Foolish Owl posted the lyrics to Love Me I’m a Liberal. It’s a great song. If you haven’t read the lyrics you should go do that now.

Reading the lyrics to ‘Love Me I’m a Liberal’ made me sad. There was a time in my life I loved Phil Ochs. When I’m Gone was on the short-list of songs I wanted played at my funeral. I still have his live album and it’s wonderful.

But I don’t listen to his music any more, not since I read a biography of his life. Phil Ochs was a great lyricist, but he was also violent and abusive.

Like most music genres political folk is male dominated, and there’s a lot of sexism in it. When the lock-out ended it took me a while to clean out the sexism of Talking Union Blues so I felt comfortable posting it on my blog. The original third verse of Union Maid, is so offensive that it makes me giggle. That doesn’t bother me that much. I either listen to the music in its original form, or (more likely) a recent re-recording that has lyrics I like better. The nice things about folk music is that everyone changes the lyrics up sometimes.

It is regrettable, but understandable, that such sexism was acceptable in political movements in the past. But I can overlook that in a way I can’t overlook men like Phil Ochs sang for freedom and abused the women around them.

It’s particularly political folk music that I have this reaction to. Other forms of art I’m generally less fussy about. I’m not going to stop loving In My Life, because 50% is a conservative estimate of the number of men in the Beatles who were violent and abusive.

But political folk music, at least the stuff I listen to, is music about liberation. Abusing the power society gives you is fundamental incompatible with anyone’s liberation. Just like I wouldn’t be interested in a brilliant interpretation of When I’m Gone, from someone who didn’t mean it. I lost interest in Phil Och’s interpretation of ‘When I’m Gone’ to the extent that he didn’t mean it.

I want to emphasise that my reaction is not one of political purity, but my emotional reaction to the disconnect between the song and what I know of the person who wrote it. I’d be interested in how other people feel.

As fans of Buffy probably already know, from March next year ‘Season 8′ will run monthly in comic book form. Joss will write the first four, last four and some in between. I’m excited, really I am, I love Buffy beyond the telling of it.

But I’m just not sure I can be persuaded to love superhero comic books. I enjoyed Fray, it had Joss dialogue and great twists and turns. But the drawings of Fray and her sister depressed me - croptops, tiny waists, and breasts of steel.

Joss says the right things:

TVGuide.com: Does she get comic-book superheroine breast implants?

Whedon: She really doesn’t. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never worked with a T&A artist. I’m very specific about that.

TVGuide.com: Isn’t that the raison d’etre of lots of comics?

Whedon: That’s part of why I stopped reading comics for a while. All the people I work with draw actual women.

But this is one of the sample pages from the Buffy comic provided with that very article:

I suppose there are possibly women who have a waist hip ratio of .66 (or whatever that figure has), but Buffy sure wasn’t one of them.

It seems a bit stupid to be complaining about the images of women in a comic book based on a TV series where Amber Benson was ‘the big one’. But at least with TV you are looking at an acutal women. When a TV actress loses weight she does lose weight all over. Comic book women are fantasies - and they’re male fantasies. I don’t want to look at images of women created to fulfil the desires of men. The endless images of women with exagerated hour-glass figures make it clear that women readers are peripheral to superhero comics. That the stories are not supposed to be for or about us.

I’m just not sure I could handle Buffy stories that said that to me.