People who promote “traditional” marriage, and oppose official support for or recognition of other family forms, are often the same people who worry about the relatively low fertility rates in the US and other wealthy nations.

The blog Demography Matters quotes from a newspaper article, about attitudes towards motherhood in Germany — attitudes that too many cultural conservatives in the United States share.

Unbeknownst to most outsiders, Germany is the most difficult place in Western Europe to be a working mother, with a deeply ingrained culture of machismo that expects women to give up their lives once they have children.

The ideology itself was Ms. Hoffritz’s biggest barrier. When she talked about her frustrations, her friends and relatives openly denounced her as a rabenmutter – literally “raven mother,” a woman who abandons her children, like the mythic ravens throwing their chicks from the nest. It is a term routinely applied to working mothers in Germany.

“When I got pregnant, even though I’d had a career for 20 years, everyone expected me to drop my job forever, to take care of my son and not do anything else all day for the rest of my life, and they got angry when I said otherwise,” she says. “Friends just thought I should be a full-time mom.”

This attitude, unsurprisingly, discourages women from having children. A new study by Jean-Marie Le Goff compares higher-fertility France with lower-fertility Germany:

Women in France, Le Goff argues, have access to a whole variety of family structures, from the traditional nuclear marriage family to a family marked by cohabitation to single motherhood, with a relatively long tradition of recognizing the responsibilities of parents towards their children regardless of their legal status, with the idea of mothers working outside of the home not only being accepted but supported by any number subsidies to parents to affordable and accessible day care. In West Germany, social and policy norms tend to support traditional family structures. The result? In France, people are childbearing age are split between two sectors, one defined by marriage relationships and the other defined by cohabitation relationships. On the other side of the Rhine, people of childbearing age are split between people who have children and people who don’t. Katja Köppen’s Second Births in Western Germany and France (Demographic Research 14.14) further points out that whereas Frenchwomen seem to enjoy an institutional structure that encourages motherhood and there isn’t a contradiction between high levels of education–hence employment–and fertility, there is such a contradiction in western Germany, with government spending priorities in the latter country being directed towards the support of traditional families. It’s not too much of a surprise, then, that the German Federal Statistics Office reports that [the number] of childless women is rising, particularly in the former West Germany.

Personally, I don’t care if fertility in the US goes down or up; I suspect any deficit in our population caused by declining births can be made up for by increased immigration. But those who are concerned about fertility rates, should consider supporting, rather than denigrating, alternative family forms.

(Curtsy to Economic Woman.)

I liked this interview with Dennis Baron, the author of A Better Pencil.

Historically, when the new communication device comes out, the reaction tends to be divided. Some people think it’s the best thing since sliced bread; other people fear it as the end of civilization as we know it. And most people take a wait and see attitude. And if it does something that they’re interested in, they pick up on it, if it doesn’t, they don’t buy into it.

I start with Plato’s critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They’re not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down — the ultimate irony.

We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won’t have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there’s no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant — it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of “this is going to revolutionize everything” versus “this is going to destroy everything.”

So it’s always true that the new technology — whatever that new technology is — is going to destroy civilization, make kids into idiots, etc.. Fortunately, this never actually seems to be the case. (Not so far, anyway). If anything, scholars seem to be finding that the internet — by making people write much more — is making us into better writers.

P.S. By the way, it’s also not true that the current generation of kids knows less than past generations did. People have been saying that about young people since at least the 1800s, and it never seems to have been true.

Writing to Mark Steyn, Mark Adomanis points out that the “infant mortality rate is significantly higher in the US than it is in the UK. In fact, if you want to be precise, it’s 34% higher.”

Steyn replies:

As to infant mortality rates in general, as with “life expectancy at birth”, that’s a very interesting topic that I will be writing about at length in the weeks ahead. But, even without taking into account the significant variations in the definition of “live birth”, one thing you notice is that, by comparison with the United States, the countries with the lowest “infant mortality rate” have some of the lowest fertility rates on the planet. That’s to say, it’s not just that they have fewer infant deaths, they have fewer infants, period. They have so few, indeed, that over the medium-term (in Italy, Germany and elsewhere) it will render their government health systems unsustainable. But, as a general proposition, I would say that, when fertility rates get as low as they are in Germany, Italy, Spain and elsewhere, to the point that you now have upside-down family trees of four grandparents, two children, one grandchild, it’s hardly surprising that “infant mortality” is lower.

I’m a little confused as to what Steyn is saying. It’s possible that Steyn is arguing that a lower infant population, in and of itself, explains a lower infant mortality rate. As PG points out, if that’s Steyn’s thought, then Steyn misunderstands basic statistics.

Another possibility is that Steyn is saying that if there are more parents and grandparents per infant, that infant will get more attention and thus be less likely to die. That would make more sense, but I can’t find any evidence to support this proposition. (For instance, all else held equal, are only children significantly more likely to survive infancy than second children?)

That said, even if Steyn is mistaken about the cause of the link, he’s right that low infant mortality rates and low fertility rates are strongly correlated. As this World Bank paper points out, the trends mutually feed into each other: “Lower infant mortality can lead to lower fertility by reducing the need for replacement births. Conversely, birth spacing improves the chances of child survival.”¹ (And, of course, both lower infant mortality and lower fertility are made more likely by wealth.)

However, Steyn is wrong to imply that the U.S. can’t lower our appalling infant mortality rate without dropping our fertility rate. Contrary to what Steyn seems to believe, there are many countries with low infant mortality rates where the fertility rate is similar to the U.S.’s. For instance, the UN rates the US and Iceland as having virtually identical fertility rates (the US is ranked 127, Iceland is ranked 128). But Iceland has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world.

There are countries which probably won’t be able to significantly lower infant mortality without lowering fertility rates — Niger, for example, which has about 7 births per woman, a number that’s way too high for health either of women or of children. But the US, with a fertility rate barely above 2 births per woman, is not in that situation. Because our high infant mortality rate isn’t being caused by a high fertility rate, we can lower infant mortality without lowering fertility.

Finally, no one should discuss US infant mortality without pointing out the elephant in the room, which is race.

(Graphic from PRB.)

In effect, whites, Asians and Latinas in the US are living in a reasonably good wealthy nation, when it comes to infant mortality — not as good as Sweden or the Netherlands, but the equivalent of New Zealand, say. But for Blacks and American Indians, it’s like living in an exceptionally poor nation — Tongo, say, or the Palestinian Territories.

Research indicates that the difference isn’t genetic; it’s discrimination. From Science Daily:

They compared birth weights of three groups of women: African American, whites and Africans who had moved to Illinois. Most African-American women are of 70 to 75 percent African descent.

“If there were such a thing as a (pre-term birth) gene, you would expect the African women to have the lowest birth weights,” David said. “But the African and white women were virtually identical,” with significantly higher birth weights than the African-American women, he said.
The researchers did a similar analysis of births to black Caribbean women immigrants to the United States and found they gave birth to infants hundreds of grams heavier than the babies of U.S.-born black women.

For black women, “something about growing up in America seems to be bad for your baby’s birth weight,” David said. [...]

David and Collins spoke with black women who had babies with normal weights at birth, comparing them with black women whose babies’ birth weight was very low — under three pounds.

They asked the mothers if they had ever been treated unfairly because of their race when looking for a job, in an educational setting or in other situations.

Those who felt discriminated against had a twofold increase in low birth weights. And for those who experienced discrimination in three “domains,” the increase was nearly threefold.

As depressing as this is, this also shows us that the US’s high infant mortality rate is — or should be — a solvable problem.

1. For a more detailed discussion, see this paper (pdf link). (back)

This is an open thread. Post what you like, when you want to. Self-linking makes you smell better and will put a spring in your step in the morning.

1. It’s science! Researchers hooked a dead fish up to an fMRI machine. The fish was then “shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations. The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing.” The salmon did great! This shows that dead fish are very smart; or, as Figleaf suggests, it shows that brain-scanning experiments without strong statistical controls have dubious validity.
2. “The stars are aligning for a winnable and worthwhile fight on U.S. policy in Afghanistan in the next several weeks: stopping the Obama Administration from sending more troops.”
3. Former deputy chief of the counterterrorist center at the CIA: Preventing a “terrorist haven” in Afghanistan isn’t worth the costs.
4. Female lawyers with masculine names are the most likely women to become judges. (But sexism is just a myth, right?)
5. “I am female bodied, but I do not identify as a female or in a feminine way. My gender presentation is masculine, but I don’t identify as a man or male. I am on the trans spectrum, but not in the sense that I’m transitioning…”
6. Awesome Golden Girls tattoo.
7. Both rape and false accusations of rape result from rape culture. (Via.)
8. The singular “They” and the many reasons it’s correct
9. Why does Ms. Michelle Bachmann get more attention than all the other ridiculous far-right Representatives? I’m not sure I agree — I’d have to compare the statements of the other contenders and see if they really are as extreme as Bachmannisms are — but it’s a reasonable concern.
10. Did you read Newsweek’s article on how infants and young kids learn about race — and how by pretending race isn’t there, adults encourage racism? If not, you should go read it.
11. If if the jury finds you “not guilty,” you can still be sentenced to prison for the crime. This has been upheld by higher courts, and the Supremes chose not to examine the issue. Scary. (Via.)
12. More on the politics of Black hair
13. The History of Jobs in America. I’m linking mainly because the graphic is so pretty.
14. XKCD presents: The Search For Intelligent Life Out There
15. Matt Bors gives out the first award for excessive labeling in a political cartoon (the winner is Anne Cleaves). The cartoon in question is a doozy.
16. Juan Cole provides a good round-up of links about Iran’s apparently non-existent nuclear weapons program.
17. Once again, pundits are claiming that women’s happiness has plummeted. And once again, Language Log is pointing out that the statistics don’t support that claim.
18. Contrary to what I and many other lefties have claimed in the past, the SATs are actually pretty accurate at predicting success in college grades.
19. Siditty discusses the definition of racism.
20. Yet Another White Person Who Feels Entitled To Touch Black Women’s Hair
21. Inside Edition On Nightclub Sexual Predators.
22. The UN Human Rights Council could become worthwhile — but only if the US puts a huge amount of effort into remaking it.
23. Asshats of the world, please stop calling Kayne West a nigger.
24. Great post by Little Light: “Let’s let vulnerability be radical. Let’s embrace it.”
25. “The problem with making health care reform “cheaper” by lowering subsidies is that if since people will still be required to have insurance, all you’re really doing is making middle-income people spend more money, in order to spare the government the pain of taxing rich people to pay for subsidies.
26. In defense of the claim that better family planning can help save the environment.
27. The UK offers paternity leave for the first time. Molly calls this a baby step forward for working moms, and she’s right, but I’d add that it’s also a step forward for working dads.
28. What ACORN hysteria is distracting us from.
29. Reading, Pennsylvania: Where you get three years in prison for taking consensual nude pictures of your girlfriend, but cops who expose their penises in the office aren’t penalized at all. UPDATE: Figleaf follows up on this, and finds that it’s a heck of a lot more complicated than that.
30. Counterpunch Magazine, which has published a lot of articles I like in the past, publishes a pile of anti-Semitic lies. So, fuck Counterpunch, I say. (Via.)
31. In Iraq, Freedom Is Marching Backward
32. Five Hard-To-Kill Houseplants For Your Home Or Office
33. And finally, via Womanist Musings:

Hillary Clinton rocks.

This seems like a good enough reason to repeat something I said in 2004:

The vast majority of unsafe abortion deaths take place in countries where pro-life forces have successfully restricted or outlawed abortion. Africa - which has by far the highest rate of unsafe abortion deaths - also has overwhelmingly pro-life laws. This is unsurprising; where abortion is illegal, women will seek abortions from people without medical training, and fear (or local laws) may keep them from seeking medical help if the unsafe abortion goes wrong.

The best cure for unsafe abortion is safe abortion - and that means legal abortion. What kind of a difference can legal abortion make? Here’s what happened in Romania when abortion was outlawed, in 1966 - and when it was legalized again, in 1989.

There’s a very clear relationship between legalized abortion and deaths from unsafe abortion.

There’s also no evidence that outlawing abortion reduces the number of abortions. From a WHO article on unsafe abortion:

Contrary to common belief, legalization of abortion does not necessarily increase abortion rates. The Netherlands, for example, has a non-restrictive abortion law, widely accessible contraceptives and free abortion services, and the lowest abortion rate in the world: 5.5 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age per year. Barbados, Canada, Tunisia and Turkey have all changed abortion laws to allow for greater access to legal abortion without increasing abortion rates.

There is no serious doubt that pro-life laws lead to increased death and injuries due to unsafe abortions. Furthermore, as the Netherlands show, it’s possible to have the world’s lowest rate of abortion by concentrating on reducing demand, rather than by threatening doctors and mothers with jail time. So if pro-lifers genuinely want to prevent abortion, why aren’t they demanding Netherlands-style programs?

There’s no reason the US couldn’t have an abortion rate as low as the Netherlands; it would just require the pro-lifers to quit trying to take away women’s freedom, and instead put their enormous energy and funds into reducing how likely women are to want abortion. In economic terms, the difference between a pro-lifer and a feminist who opposes abortion is that pro-lifers focus on reducing the supply of abortion by reducing freedom; feminists who oppose abortion would rather reduce the demand for abortion, by expanding women’s options. The feminist method is at least as effective for reducing abortion - and is far less deadly to women’s lives.

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Jessie Brown celebrates the day with Moishe Oysher and the Barry Sisters, and it does seem like a nice way to kick-start a new year.

From Chazzanut.com:

Moishe Oysher (and that was indeed his real name), was born in Lipkon, Bessarabia in 1907. Even though there were Chazanim in his family, reputedly going back for six generations, he seems to have been drawn more to the stage than following in his predecessor’s footsteps, and whenever travelling players visited his village, much to the disapproval of his father, he would try to get a part in their production as a child player.

In 1921, he was taken to Canada and joined a travelling Yiddish theatrical company, with whom he appeared on the Yiddish stage in New York. In 1932 he led his own company in South America.

In 1934, after he returned from a trip to Buenos Aires, he was unable to get a part in the New York shows since they had all been cast. Needing work, and with the encouragement of his friends, since it was coming up to the High Holyday season he applied to conduct services at the Rumanian Synagogue. He obtained the position and was a sensation!

Moishe now had two careers running. He starred in Yiddish films, The Cantor’s Son, Yankel the Blacksmith, and Der Vilna Balebesel, and it was not long before he became something of a ‘Kosher heart throb.’ He also made numerous recordings, and continued to sing at the Amud. Although he received many offers to appear on Broadway, Moishe always refused, since he would not desecrate Shabbat.

And from Wikipedia’s page on The Barry Sisters:

Born in the Bronx, New York, Clara and Minnie Bagelman were first known as the Bagelman Sisters. As Claire and Myrna Barry they were popular Yiddish jazz singers made popular in the 1940s-1960s on the New York Radio Show “Yiddish Melodies in Swing”, where they would sing jazz recordings in Yiddish. They also would record popular tunes in Yiddish, such as “Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head.” During the height of their popularity, they even made appearances on the Ed Sullivan and Jack Paar shows and were one of the few American acts to tour the Soviet Union in 1959. The Barry Sisters also recorded with other noted Jewish singers such as Barbara Streisand and Moishe Oysher. The Barry Sisters are thought to be the inspiration for the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE skit, “The Sweeney Sisters,” in which Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn portrayed a C-list sister cabaret act. Mark Shaiman did the musical arrangements for these sketches.

Although Myrna Barry died in 1976, Claire Barry continues to sing and perform, and was recently featured in the NPR radio show, “Yiddish Melodies in Swing.”

As I’m typing this, I’m listening to a fun Barry Sisters recording on YouTube.

* * *

In the next year, I want to finish the Hereville graphic novel and get well started on my next comic book. What do you folks intend?

Here’s what I want: A program which will keep track of both my twitter feed and my facebook feed, with pop-up notifications to let me know when one of my friends posts something new. And that pop-up should have useful information, along the lines of “Kip just tweeted: Blah blah blah blabbity blah blah…”

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be such a program out there. At least, not one I’ve found.

Twhirl: Perfect, except it doesn’t cover Feedbook. But since my sister, aunt, brother-in-law, high school buddy, and several others I know use Feedbook and not Twitter, I really want Feedbook included.

bDule: The pop-ups notifications are worthless. It says “1 New Message For Barry Deutsch,” but doesn’t tell me who the message is from, let alone what the message contains. I don’t want to have to stop drawing in Photoshop and open up a different program to see what the message is. If I was willing to do that, I could just use my browser and visit twitter and facebook directly. The whole point, for me, is to keep track of what my friends are up to without interrupting my work.

Tweetdeck has the same problem as bDule. Which is a shame, because if they only had good pop-up info, they’d be the best two programs I’ve tried.

Add Seesmic to the list of good programs with useless notifications. (Apparently having a notification that says something useful is more difficult to do than I’d imagined.)

AlertThingy has the best name, and comes the closest to being what I want. But it’s programming feels a bit clunkly compared to others; for example, there’s no obvious way to get it to show me tweets directed to me from people I’m not watching. The biggest problem is the flickering. AlertThingy’s pop-ups flicker, and — worse — when AlertThingy is running, Photoshop’s menus and “crawling ants” flicker. If I kept this program, I’d eventually be forced to gouge out my eyes in self-defense.

Guess I’ll try Digsby next, although it does a lot more than I’m looking for, which means it might be a memory hog. Feedalizr is another possibility, as is Peoplebrowsr. And Skimmer.

If anyone has a suggested program for me, please post it in the comments.

UPDATE: Tried Feedalizr. Although it claims to be connected to the Facebook account, I don’t see any Facebook updates. Nor does there seem to be any way to see replies sent to me by people I don’t follow. So I guess I’ll try another program.

UPDATE THE SECOND: We have a winner! Digsby turns out to have pretty much everything I want. And because it doesn’t use Adobe Air (or whatever that’s called), it uses less memory than almost all the other programs do.

From a New York Times review of Norman Podhoretz’s new book, Why Are Jews Liberal? In the book, Podhoretz — a conservative — wonders why most Jews are liberals (in recent presidential elections, an average of 75% of Jews have voted for the Democrat), when in his view we should all be conservatives.

Anyhow, I liked the conclusion or the review:

Podhoretz’s book was conceived as the solution to the puzzle that Milton Himmel­farb wittily formulated many years ago: “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” I have never understood the reputation of this joke. Why should Jews vote like Episcopalians? We are not Episcopalians. The implication of the joke is that political affiliation should be determined by social position, by levels of affluence. In living rich but voting poor, the Jews of America have failed to demonstrate class solidarity. Never mind that parties of the right in many Western countries have always counted on the poor to make the same betrayal, and support causes and candidates that will do nothing to relieve their economic hardship but will exhilarate them culturally or religiously or nationally.

It is not a delusion, not a treason, to vote against your own economic interest. It is a recognition of the multiplicity of interests, the many purposes, that make up a citizen’s life. When, in the Torah of Judaism, Moses commands the Jews to perform acts of social welfare, he sometimes adds the admonition that they were themselves strangers and slaves. The purpose of this refreshment of their memory is plain. The fact that we are no longer stran­gers and slaves is not all we need to know. We may not regard the world solely from the standpoint of our own prosperity, our own safety, our own contentment. We are proven by the other, not by the same. The question of whether liberalism or conservatism does more for the helpless and the downtrodden, for the ones who are not like us, will be endlessly debated, and it is not a Jewish debate; but if the answer is liberalism, then the political history of American Jewry is neither a mystery nor a scandal.

Shayne at No, Not You writes this brilliant list:

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

Abyss 2 Hope and Girl With A Pen have more serious takes on the same topic.

(Via.)

Click on the cartoon to see it bigger.

At Obsidian Wings, Eric Martin discusses how the recent, blatantly fraudulent Afghanistan election effects the prospects of U.S. success there.

Due to the complexity and tenacity of the multi-layered, multi-faceted conflict that we are seeking to address as an outside presence with limited resources and staying power, we are forced to bank on a miraculous combination of luck, good fortune and skill in order to pull off an outcome that, if all goes well, might come to fruition some 15 years and a couple trillion dollars down the road (with many thousands of NATO soldiers lost in the interim). But all is not going well, far from it. One of the most crucial political watersheds has played out in worst-case scenario terms. COIN will not fix this. It’s well past time we abandoned what George Kennan called the “stubborn pursuit of extravagant and unpromising objectives.”

In addition to the other (in my opinion, extremely unpersuasive) reasons for maintaining a huge U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Democrats may also be motivated to stay in Afghanistan because they’re afraid of the worst-case scenario for future US elections.

Our strategy in Afghanistan cannot prevent future terrorist attacks against the U.S.; there are many failed states in the world other than Afghanistan, which al Qaeda or other terrorists could use as a base while attacking the U.S.. Our presence in Afghanistan doesn’t prevent future terrorist attacks; it just relocates the people planning the attacks, from Afghanistan to other locations.

From the point of view of the Obama administration, however, that prospect must be a pretty big elephant in the room. Suppose the US greatly reduces its presence in Afghanistan, and then there’s a terrorist attack in early 2011, organized by an al Qaeda group which — had we not pulled out of Afghanistan — would have organized the exact same attack from one of the ungoverned areas of Pakistan?

The US wouldn’t be any worse off a result — the US civilians killed in such an attack would be just as dead in either case. But the Democratic Party would be much, much worse off. Any terrorist attack is bad — but a terrorist attack that can be directly blamed on a specific policy decision by a Democratic prescient, would wipe out the Democrats electorally. I honestly can’t imagine a bigger boon to Republicans.

I’m not saying that the Obama people aren’t sincere about their reasons for wanting to maintain our huge military commitment to Afghanistan. But I wonder if the worst-case scenario for the Democratic party isn’t biasing Obama’s people towards thinking the case for war is stronger than it actually is.

Andrew Romano at Newsweek:

From a purely economic standpoint, insuring illegal immigrants makes a lot of sense—and not just for them, but for everyone.

Consider a few statistics. According to a July article in the American Journal of Public Health, immigrants typically arrive in America during their prime working years and tend to be younger and healthier than the rest of the U.S. population. As a result, health-care expenditures for the average immigrant are 55 percent lower than for a native-born American citizen with similar characteristics. With the ratio of seniors to workers projected to increase by 67 percent between 2010 and 2030, it stands to reason that including the relatively healthy, relatively employable and largely uninsured illegal population in some sort of universal health-care system would be a boon rather than a burden. “Insurance in principle has to cover the average medical cost of all the people it’s serving,” explains Leighton Ku, a professor of health policy at George Washington University. “So if you add cheaper people to the pool, like immigrants, you reduce the average cost.” More undocumented workers, in other words, means lower premiums for everyone.

The actuarial advantages don’t end there. As it is now, undocumented workers (and others) who can’t pay their way receive free emergency and charitable care—a service that costs those of us with health insurance an additional $1,000 per year, as Obama noted. But if illegals were covered, this hidden tax would decrease, further lowering our premiums and “relieving some of the financial burden on state and local governments,” says Harold Pollack, a University of Chicago professor who specializes in poverty and public health. What’s more, employers currently have a clear economic incentive to hire undocumented immigrants: they don’t require coverage. A plan that mandates insurance for native workers but not their illegal counterparts actually makes life harder on the blue-collar Americans competing for jobs (and railing against immigrants) because it means that hiring them will cost more than hiring a recent transplant from Mexico City. As The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein recently explained, “If you’re really worried about the native-born workforce, what you want to do is minimize the differences in labor costs between different types of workers. A health care policy that enlarges those differences—that makes documented workers more expensive compared to undocumented workers—is actually worse for the documented workers.”

At this point, you’re probably wondering whether taxpayers would have to foot a bigger bill for these newly insured illegals. Not necessarily—at least in theory. As Obama said in Wednesday’s speech, “Like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects” to fund whatever care it provides. Given that many undocumented workers leave the country before they’re old enough to require much medical care, says Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation, “you could set up the system in a way that that they wind up contributing as much or more than they receive” in low-income subsidies, especially when the “offsetting savings of lower emergency-room use” are factored in.

As Romano notes, coverage of undocumented immigrants is politically impossible, even though it makes sense. (Via Ezra.)

Please use this thread to post whatever you’d like. Self-linking is awesome.

The Third Carnival of Feminists!

Insurance companies consider domestic violence a pre-existing condition.

A white reporter who was beaten up for no reason tries to understand what happened. Ta-Nehisi has an interesting take.

Rawles argues that Uhura isn’t diminished by romance in the new Trek film: “Uhura is a black girl and there is no angle from which her actually being allowed to have consensual sexuality, being desired, and being loved (in addition to having her job and intellect, no less) is a fundamental downgrade from what she had before.”

Whedonverse fans should be sure to check out the archive of “Feminism and Joss” related posts at This Ain’t Livin’.

Recursiveparadox has an interesting post discussing, among other things, male privilege from the point of view of a trans woman. (Curiously, when this post was crossposted on Deeply Problematic, it was illustrated by one of my cartoons. Was the cartoon added by RP, or by the DP editor?)

The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck

“As long as you’re unconscious, he’s fantastic.” On dealing with sexist doctors.

Interview with John Marcotte, Author of the 2010 California Protection of Marriage Act: “…We are trying to ban divorce. People who supported Prop 8 weren’t trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That’s why I’m confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished.”

Alabama Supremes uphold criminalization of sex toy sales; store owner will continue to sell them

For Africans and African diasapora, Caster Semenya Case Opening Old Wounds.

Botfly maggot removed from head — the video

Ben Caldwell drawings of Wonder Woman. He draws real good.

Report Shows Rise in Reports of Sexual Misconduct by Federal Prison Workers (Via.)

Egg and sperm donors shouldn’t be allowed to be anonymous, and shouldn’t be seen as parents.

Why is Afghanistan so hard? Stephan Walt discusses why all “advances” we make in Afghanistan work against us.

Mexico will probably be providing health care for undocumented immigrants from Mexico.

(via)

Consider this an open thread.

Quoting once again from Aqueertheory’s nutshelling of Julie Serano, I thought this was very interesting:

Serano contributes significantly to feminist theory and practice by providing us with a concise way of categorizing the different forms of sexism in Western societies. She argues that sexism is a two-fold phenomenon, consisting of “oppositional” and “traditional” elements. Oppositional sexism is “the belief that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive categories” (13). A man should not have any of the “attributes, aptitudes, abilities, and desires” commonly associated with women, and vice-versa (13). Anyone who does not follow this schema, any manly women or womanly men, should be dismissed and punished for disobeying the divine, natural and social order that deemed the two genders to be mutually exclusive opposites. On the other hand, traditional sexism is “the belief that maleness and masculinity are superior to femaleness and femininity” (14). This type of sexism specifically demeans all feminine persons (many of whom are females) by characterizing their activities as frivolous and justifying their exclusion from certain jobs and positions of social authority. Thus, according to Serano, sexism is a commonly held belief system that conceptualizes males and females as strict oppositional categories and sets up a hierarchy in which men and masculinity are considered superior to women and femininity.

Feminists and queer theorists have failed to recognize this dual aspect of sexism, which is one of the reasons why they often seem to talk past each other. Queer theorists have focused on oppositional sexism: they have analyzed and railed against binary gender norms, which push people to fit their identities and behaviors into carefully prescribed masculine and feminine boxes. On the other hand, feminists have concentrated their efforts on studying and fighting against the more traditional forms of sexism: the oppression of women and their social subordination to men.

(Via.)

On the racial Bechdel test thread, we discussed my comic Hereville a little. Hereville, it was agreed, failed the racial Bechdel test (understandably, given the setting, I would say), but passes the “Jewish Bechdel test” and the original Bechdel test. Responding to this, Daran wrote that Hereville “fails the reverse gender Bechdel test - it doesn’t have two male characters who talk to each other about something other than a women.”

While Daran is technically correct — there is no conversation of any note or substance between male characters in Hereville – I think that to apply a “reverse Bechdel test” misses the point.

The Bechdel test asks if, in a movie (or graphic novel or whatever)

1) there are at least two named¹ female characters, who

2) talk to each other about

3) something other than a man.

The point of the Bechdel test, in my view, is not to criticize individual pieces of work. It’s to point out that movies in the aggregate are overwhelmingly centered around male characters and their interests. In an IM, Mandolin wrote:

The Bechdel test is something that’s only useful when applied in aggregate to a field. It is not diagnostic of sexism or racism in a particular work that it does not pass it, or diagnostic of anti-racism or feminism.

The test - gender and race - exists because of a system that removes women’s and poc’s voices. To create a reverse-Bechdel test implies that it’s coherent to suggest that there’s a mass problem with erasing men’s voices from work.

I think sexism against men does exist, including in media, and is a real issue. But I don’t think a “reverse Bechdel test” makes any sense, because sexism against men in media is not similar to the mass absenting of women as central characters, and that’s what the Bechdel test is designed to make visible.

To work, a male version of the Bechdel test should be simple to explain and apply. It should be more about pervasive, aggregate sexism than about individual works. And it should address real sexism against men, rather than just taking a knee-jerk “but what about the men?” attitude which, I suspect, underlay Daran’s comment about Hereville.²

The problem is, I’m not sure a reverse Bechdel test that has any substance is even possible. There certainly are sexist stereotypes about men in cinema; men’s lives are treated as disposable in many action films, for example, and men are sometimes depicted as unfeeling brutes. There’s a whole lot of comedies which endorse the “men just think with their penises” stereotype, or which present men as incompetent dorks who need to be taken care of by female characters.³

But are any of these really statistically pervasive, the way that movies which center men and male characters are pervasive? There are, after all, many movies which don’t feature scores of men dying offhandedly; plenty which don’t depict men as bestial or as thinking with their penises, and so on. The anti-male stereotypes exist, and they should be objected to, but they’re not omnipresent. In contrast, there really are amazingly few movies which can pass the Bechdel test.⁴

So I’ve been trying to think of a male equivalent to the Bechdel test, with no success. That said, maybe I’m missing something. If Daran, or someone else concerned with making sexism against men more visible, were to create a substantive yet simple and elegant test that pointed out sexism against men in movies, I’d certainly welcome that development.

1. In the original Bechdel test, “named” wasn’t a requirement; my poor memory accidentally added that bit later. (back)
2. Although maybe Daran was just joking, and the joke didn’t come off. (back)
3. The female characters, in turn, are presented as competent but also relegated to the less funny and central roles. As frequently happens, this is an instance where sexism against women and sexism against men is interlocking and interdependent. (back)
4. This is even more true if you try to apply the Bechdel test in a substantive way, versus the “loophole” way people often apply it — for example, saying a movie passes because of one ten-second scene. Of course, looking for loopholes is often fun, and I totally understand that, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the substance. (back)

Aqueertheory at Below The Belt, nutshelling Julie Serano,¹ writes:

…one of the main problems that trans women face is the common belief that their femaleness and femininity are somehow fake or inauthentic. This view is constantly (re)emphasized in the mainstream media. Transsexual women are routinely portrayed “in the act of putting on lipstick, dresses, and high heels, thereby giving the audience the impression that the trans woman’s femaleness is an artificial mask or costume” (41). Their desire to be female is reduced to the pursuit of “stereotypically feminine appearance(s) and gender role(s),” which emphasizes that they are not real women, but men who are simply parading as women (41).

This notion is reinforced in movies that feature trans women characters. Serano identifies two major cinematic archetypes: the “deceptive” and the “pathetic” transsexual. The former successfully pass as women, but their trans status (usually signalled by the presence of a penis) is eventually revealed in a dramatic fashion as an “unexpected plot twist” (36). This pattern is evident in the Jim Carrey movie, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. At the end of the film, Ace Ventura strips Lois Einhorn, a female police lieutenant, down to her underwear so that the audience can see her penis and testicles tucked between her legs. All of the characters present in the room with Einhorn proceed to retch in disgust – the “deceptive” transsexual has been revealed and everybody is expected to exhibit shock, horror and disgust at the “fact” that she is “really a man.” [...]

In contrast, the “pathetic” transsexual is portrayed as completely unable to pass as a woman, even though she strongly insists that she is female. She is given obviously masculine mannerisms and characteristics, such as the five o’clock shadow, and openly makes references to the absence of a penis or to her intention to eventually “ha[ve] the chop” (41). According to Serano, this “extreme combination of masculinity and femininity does not seem to be designed to challenge the audience’s assumptions about maleness and femaleness… [the ‘pathetic’ transsexuals’] masculine voice and mannerisms are meant to demonstrate that, despite her desire to be female, she cannot change the fact that she is really and truly a man.”

I agree with all that. Unfortunately, even some of my favorite performers, like the brilliant British comedy group The League of Gentlemen, engage in exactly this sort of bigotry.

I have to admit, I can’t think of a single mainstream media presentation of transsexuality that doesn’t fall into one of these two categories (unless you could the psycho serial killer trans stereotype). Even relatively progressive films still tend to contain the “transformation” scene, usually shot in an almost fetishistic style (close-up of lipstick being applied, etc.).

Comics don’t do much better. I think there was a good trans character in Dykes to Watch Out For, who wasn’t presented in these ways. There was a major trans character in Sandman, but although she was also presented respectfully, she wasn’t able to be genuinely female, rather than “fake,” until after she died and was in Heaven.

Aqueertheory does misstep a little, I think, writing:

The situation is unfortunately not that much better in the allegedly more progressive feminist, academic and transgender/queer circles. Serano notes that, “there are numerous parallels between the way trans women are depicted in the media and the way that they have been portrayed by some feminist theorists.”

Serano seemingly took care to make it clear she was talking about some, not all, feminist theorists (at least in what Aqueertheory quoted). Unfortunately, Aqueertheory seems to ascribe transphobia to all feminist, academic, and transgender/queer circles. There are bigotries and problems in all these communities, true, but it’s a wild overstatement to claim that the transgender community is only marginally better at avoiding transphobia than Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. And it’s a wild overstatement that denies the hard work some people in those communities have put in to address exactly these issues.

I am definitely not saying that transphobia in the feminist community shouldn’t be acknowledged and criticized (past “Alas” posts have criticized feminist transphobia), and Aqueertheory makes many points I agree with. But I don’t think that we should pretend that the transphobes own all of feminism, either. Certain transphobic feminists may think that their views represent the One True Feminist Viewpoint, but I don’t think those of us who aren’t transphobic should concede feminism to them.

1. I posted a similar quote from Serano last year. (back)

Click on the cartoon to see it bigger. Happy Labor Day!

From Signs of the Times:

Women who hold supervisory positions are more likely to be sexually harassed at work, according to the first-ever, large-scale longitudinal study to examine workplace power, gender and sexual harassment.

The study, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Gender, Power and Sexual Harassment in Young Adulthood,” reveals that nearly fifty percent of women supervisors, but only one-third of women who do not supervise others, reported sexual harassment in the workplace. In more conservative models with stringent statistical controls, women supervisors were 137 percent more likely to be sexually harassed than women who did not hold managerial roles.

While supervisory status increased the likelihood of harassment among women, it did not significantly impact the likelihood for men.

“This study provides the strongest evidence to date supporting the theory that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than about control and domination,”said Heather McLaughlin, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota and the study’s primary investigator. “Male co-workers, clients and supervisors seem to be using harassment as an equalizer against women in power.”

McLaughlin and her co-authors examined data from the 2003 and 2004 waves of the Youth Development Study (YDS), a prospective study of adolescents that began in 1988 with a sample of 1,010 ninth graders in the St. Paul, Minnesota, public school district and has continued near annually since. Respondents were approximately 29 and 30 years old during the 2003 and 2004 waves. The analysis was supplemented with in-depth interviews with a subset of the YDS survey respondents.

The sociologists found that, in addition to workplace power, gender expression was a strong predictor of workplace harassment. Men who reported higher levels of femininity were more likely to have experienced harassment than less feminine men. More feminine men were at a greater risk of experiencing more severe or multiple forms of sexual harassment (as were female supervisors).

In a separate analysis examining perceived and self-reported sexual orientation, study respondents who reported being labeled as non-heterosexual by others or who self-identified as non-heterosexual (gay, lesbian, bisexual, unsure, other) were nearly twice as likely to experience harassment.

Researchers also found that those who reported harassment in the first year (2003) were 6.5 times more likely to experience harassment in the following year. The most common scenario reported by survey respondents involved male harassers and female targets, while males harassing other males was the second most frequent situation.

Via Hunter of Justice.

Mandolin’s short story “A Monkey Will Never Be Rid Of It’s Black Hands,” previously mentioned on “Alas” when it was honored by storySouth, has now been podcasted by Escape Pod.

Mandolin has said this is her favorite of her own stories, so it’s very worth checking out. (Although I should perhaps warn folks that this is a very harsh story, and includes effects of war mutilations).

For those of you who prefer to receive stories through your eyes, the text of the story is available here.