So as you may recall, Bill O’Reilly was invited by the Alexa Foundation to give a speech at a fundraiser. The Alexa Foundation is a group that supports rape survivors — a great cause — but the invitation to O’Reilly was odd at best, given that O’Reilly has, in the past, embraced a blame-the-victim approach to the crime of rape. So a variety of crazy lefties pointed that fact out, which seemed pretty reasonable, all in all.

One of the writers who followed the story was Amanda Terkel of ThinkProgress. She had the temerity to suggest that maybe, just maybe, someone who thinks a rape victim could be asking for it shouldn’t have been invited to address rape survivors.

O’Reilly responded in typically mature fashion:

This weekend, while on vacation, I was ambushed by O’Reilly’s top hit man, producer Jesse Watters, who accosted me on the street and told me that because I highlighted O’Reilly’s comments, I was causing “pain and suffering” to rape victims and their families. He of course offered no proof to back up this claim, instead choosing to shout questions at me.

Watters evidently followed Terkel for two hours, following her and a friend to a hotel, where they ambushed her. Terkel responded, it appears, as professionally as possible under the circumstances; O’Reilly’s producer, of course, was about as far from the standards of professionalism as is humanly possible.

I’d comment further, but Terkel already has the most sane response to these events:

The main issue remains: O’Reilly should offer an apology/explanation of why, when a woman is raped and murdered, it’s relevant what she was wearing or how much she was drinking. O’Reilly never asked me for a statement nor invited me on his show before sending Watters to harass me. Since I’m a 5 ft, 100 pound woman with an opinion that he doesn’t like, perhaps O’Reilly believes I deserve to be treated this way.

Bill O’Reilly is a bully and a stalker. He should never have been invited to headline an event for anyone, anywhere. Indeed, one can only hope that he will Go Galt someday; the world will be a better place without him in it.

(Via Shakesville.)

UPDATE: If you are familiar with the Facebook on the interwebs, you can lend your support there.

This email was sent to the Alas moderators and I thought it would be a good thing for everyone to discuss.

So I have an interesting, for lack of a better word, anecdote relating to rape culture. I am a 22-year-old white queer female, fresh out of one of the most lefty elite colleges in the US — and I even majored in queer studies while there (and yes, they actually call it queer studies!). I was raised by Democrat-to-leftist parents who are economically upper-middle-class (~$60k combined/yr) but socially and educationally upper class (Harvard.). I never had a feminist “click” moment, because I didn’t realize feminist was anything but a positive term until sometime in high school, at which point I affirmed it ferociously, being the rebellious protodyke I was.

AND YET.

I am currently dating a dude (bio and identified as such), and have been dating this dude for over two years. I tend to go to sleep a couple hours after him, which occasionally, and very consensually, results in my waking him up for a bit with nightnight sex, if he’s up for it. Tonight I started feelin’ it, looked over at him, saw how cute he looked, and found myself thinking very distinctly, in my inner stand-up comic voice, “Oh I am so gonna rape you– wait, what!?”

Now, I did not mean rape literally. What I meant was “wake you up with sexual advances that will lead to sex if accepted.” But my inner monologue went ahead and made a) a joke about rape that b) belitted what rape actually means and c) treated rape as rape-as-compliment!

My point in sending this e-mail is, how horribly pervasive rape culture can be — I look at someone I love, sexually desire them, and want to give them a hopefully pleasant midnight experience, and my broseph inner monologue compares that to rape. As if rape is just surprise sex! If they don’t want it they’re moody! Also I’m only doing it because they’re totes hot right now!

I’m just so, well, terrified that rape can come into my innermost thoughts as “boy, you are gonna love this unexpected goodness!” I spend a good part of my day finding and analysing the evidence of rape culture that show up in advertising, television, and social interactions, and yet my uncensored self still uses “rape” casually and incredibly inappropriately. Horrible and amazing, and something I’d love a comment on, if any of you have got the time.

I answered:

That’s really intense. I think we all have moments like that where it becomes weirdly clear how much our brains have been “colonized” by the dominant culture. For me, they’ll often be about internalized fatphobia, directed at myself and at other women.

I don’t know if there’s a way to get rid of such things entirely. Writer Nisi Shawl describes those quick-thought rising-from-your-subconscious bad reactions as being sort of your “lizard brain,” although obviously that’s metaphorical. We all have those kinds of bad reactions, but the point is to know why they’re bad, and then sculpt your action in the world around that.

Would you like us to post this on our blog and open it up for comment from others? People might learn from this, or have more substantive comments to add than mine — or feel relieved at seeing the ways other feminists experience and cope with mental “colonization.”*

*

The writer agreed that posting might be interesting, so let’s open it up to comments. What do y’all think?

I’m going to warn y’all: please be respectful of the person who wrote in. She’s a guest in this posting space, and exposed some tender and personal details, even if they are being released anonymously. I’m not going to limit this to feminist-only commenters because I think non-feminist-identified people may have smart things to say about this — but only as long as they are respectful of the subject and the poster.

–

*I put colonization in quotation marks because I know that some people of color object to the term being used as they see it as appropriation. I don’t know of a better way to express the concept clearly, though, off-hand, so I hope that the quotation marks will suffice to demonstrate that the term suggests an imperfect metaphor that should not be taken to diminish the real effects of colonization on literally colonized minds.

Kevin Moore draws:

Click through to read the whole cartoon.

Dear Joss and the other writers and producers of Dollhouse,

This show has too much sexual violence. All four episodes so far have contained a threat of sexual violence on some level. If you want to talk about sexual violence, talk about sexual violence. Repeatedly using sexual violence as a minor plot-point is not okay.

In this episode you used sexual violence as a bait and switch for the audience. For a few minutes we were supposed to believe that the Greek guy had given Echo to his nephew as a present so that the nephew could rape her. That is unbelievably disturbing. It is also entirely plausible. We live in a rape culture; many men say that they’d rape a woman if they’d get away with it. One of the things the Dollhouse could give clients is an opportunity to rape a woman and get away with it. If you want to tell a story about that then do so, and I’ll judge it on its merits. But don’t toy with that scenario - please understand that sexual violence is serious and disturbing and treat it as such.

Maia

PS The trust on this is low as you are some of the same people who brought us “Spike has a soul now”

Dear Dichen Lachman (who plays Sierra),

Please continue being awesome.

Maia

Dear Liz Craft and Sarah Fain (writers of this episode),

First go read my first letter twice. Look I appreciate that your depiction of a woman lying about rape was much more critical of the person she was lying to than it was of her. But I think you should have probably thought a little bit harder about the implications of telling a story which incidentally included a woman lying about being raped.

Apart from that, I really enjoyed this episode. Thanks for including so much Echo, I like her much more than any of her engagements.

I thought the resonance of art was well done. From Echo’s reaction to the Picasso picture to Adelle’s comment about Michaeangelo’s views about Marble, you let the metaphor relate to the characters without hitting us over the head with it. I found the ending of this episode almost as optimistic as the ending of episode two: “that meaning and humanity comes from our interest in representing ourselves.”

The episode hit some really nice small notes. The accomplice-who-wasn’t-shot was all smooth charm and trying to pick her up when things were going well, but was the one to blame her wipe on “Hysterical Woman Syndrome” - a nice display of the links between the way women are objectified. I liked that the connection that Echo built with the guy who got shopped saved them both, even though he thought she was a talking computer (nice dialogue throughout by the way).

I’m looking forward to more episodes from you.

Maia

PS Really do read that first letter

Dear Dollhouse wardrobe:

Did you not read the script or do you think Stiletto heels are comfy shoes?

Maia

Dear Fox,

You’ve got lots and lots of money. How about you use some of it to make a second season of Dollhouse.

Maia

Edited to add: Author’s Preface: I see each post in this series as one section of a single piece of writing, not as a discrete essay unto itself. As a result, while each section may contain its own argument, it is not really possible to know whether an issue that you feel is important will or will not be left out of the argument made by the entire piece if you’ve only read a part of the series. I certainly do not mean this caveat to be, in any way, an inoculation against critique, but given the modular nature of posting to blogs and of how blogs are read, it is a caveat I’d like you to keep in mind if you find yourself wondering, and commenting on, why I have not addressed something you feel needs to be addressed. Thanks.

///

To protect the privacy of the individuals involved, some names have been changed and some identifying details have been fictionalized.

Where I lived in the early 1970s, sixth grade was when boys got to see the movie–or maybe it was a narrated film strip with line drawings–about erections, nocturnal emissions, menstrual periods and such (girls got to see it in fifth grade). Seventh grade, if I remember correctly, was when they started teaching about sex itself, which I assume would have included a discussion of birth control, though I am not sure, since a paperwork mix-up placed me in the health class that did not include sex education. So I know I did not learn about birth control there; nor, I am equally sure, did I learn about it in the yeshiva I started attending when I was in eighth grade, where the only classroom-based “sex education” I remember receiving was in Rabbi W’s all-boy gemara class. He would preach at us week after week about the evils of co-ed dancing–it was the season of sweet 16 parties for the girls–and explain how it inevitably lead to unwanted teenage pregnancy. (The boys and girls watch each other dancing, you see, and then they want to slow dance, and so they are touching each other, and then one thing leads to another and, sooner or later they find someplace dark, and before you know it, her belly is big and both their lives are ruined.) My classmates and I talked about sex, of course, but since none of us were even thinking about actually having it, what we talked about tended to be theoretical and had little do with practicalities like preventing an unwanted pregnancy. Three incidents of such talking stand out in my memory, from 8th, 9th and 10th grades respectively.

I first learned about the baseball-diamond-as-metaphor-for-sex in 8th grade, because the big question was whether or not, at someone’s bar mitzvah to which I had not been invited, Robert “got to second” with Sharon over or under the shirt. “Over or under,” of course, was a huge question, one that my classmates pondered at great length, wondering why she would let him get that far, how cool it was that he could get her to let him get that far; or maybe he didn’t have to do all that much persuading, maybe underneath the “good girl” image that Sharon so carefully cultivated was a whole other person that those of us who knew her only in school had never met; and did this make her a “slut,” and how, precisely, did getting that far, did her letting him get that far, obligate him to her in terms of commitment; and what the hell–some people were smart enough to ask–did commitment mean in ninth grade anyway?

I could not imagine why what Robert and Sharon did or did not do with each other was anyone else’s business, nor did I think that the question of when a girl stepped over the line and became a “slut” was anything other than stupid, but I was new to the school, though, which meant no one thought my opinion mattered very much, and so I was almost never included in these conversations. Still, I do remember one time that I spoke up, asking–in response to I don’t remember what–some far-less-articulate version of the following questions: The whole point of touching a girl’s breasts is to bring her pleasure, right? What is wrong with Sharon wanting that pleasure or with Robert wanting to give it to her? And why are we talking about it like Robert was running bases and Sharon was playing (ineffective) defense? You make it sound like sex is a competition that the girl has to pretend to lose, just a little bit at a time, in order for both people to get what they want.

I was not naive. I knew that boys did in fact put “notches on their bedposts” depending on how far they got with any particular girl, and I understood that girls who went too far put that hard-to-pin-down thing called their reputation at great risk. I knew these things, however, as facts, and while I accepted them as information I needed to know about how the world worked, I did not really understand them, and, more to the point, I did not like them. Anyway, no one said anything when I was finished talking. All I have is a picture of my classmates’ faces turned towards me in a momentary, non-comprehending stare, and then they turned back towards each other and continued talking in the terms that were relevant to them.

The second talking-about-sex moment that I remember from yeshiva happened when I was in 9th. The boys in my class were scheduled to take a trip to the very famous Lakewood Yeshiva in New Jersey. I don’t remember why I didn’t go, but I was the only boy in my grade in school that day, and so, since our religious classes were all canceled–it would not have occurred to the administration to send me to class with the girls–I spent the morning shooting hoops in the gym. (The day was split: religious classes in the morning, secular classes in the afternoon.) After lunch, the girls and I decided we would cut classes for the rest of the day. After all, how much teaching would go on with more than half the class missing? So we went out to the back of the school, where one of the girls pulled out a copy of the Ann Landers sex test that had recently been published in one of the local newspapers. (What looks like the version of the test that the girls and I were talking about, can, if you’re willing to wade through some religious self-righteousness, be found here.)

We cut our first period class, which might have been math, talking and laughing about what was, for most of us at the time, the entirely theoretical nature of the items on the test; and we were doing absolutely nothing that would have been considered inappropriate anywhere other than an orthodox yeshiva, where the simple fact of our being alone together was cause for concern. Because of what could happen–remember Rabbi W’s worries over co-ed dancing–if we lost control of ourselves. Because of how, even though we were doing nothing but talking, it would look to an outsider that we are alone together in the first place. Then, just as second period English was about to begin, one of the girls who had gone inside to use the bathroom came running out to tell us that the boys were had returned. Apparently, they had stopped to get a blessing from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most important rabbis of the 20th century. He gave them the blessing, they got back in their bus to go to Lakewood, and the bus broke down, forcing them to return to school. We ran into the building, rushed upstairs and, remarkably, made it to second period English on time, though it was only a few minutes into Mrs. Lynch’s lesson before Rabbi S burst into the classroom, pointed one by one to each of the girls and said, “You! Out!”

When he did not point to me, I thought perhaps I had escaped detection, but he came back a few minutes later, flung the door open with the same law-enforcement air about him, pointed to me and said, “You too!”

We were suspended, the girls and I, not only for cutting class, and not only because the idea of one boy and twelve girls hanging out alone in the back of the school was unseemly, but also, and to some administrators most importantly, because we had been talking about sex. When we were told that, before we’d be allowed back into class, our parents would have to come in to speak personally with Rabbi S, who was only available in the afternoons, I had to ask if my mother, since she worked, could come in the morning to speak with Rabbi F, the dean of the school. You would have thought that speaking to the Dean would be more serious than speaking to the principal of secular studies, but when my mother came in, all Rabbi F said was, “Mrs. Louras [her name from her second marriage], Richard is a real mensch, a wonderful boy. He made a terrible mistake, but we’re sure he’ll never do it again.” That was it. He and my mother exchanged some pleasantries, told me to go back to my class, and wished her a good rest of the day. My mother, who couldn’t imagine why they were making such a big deal out of the whole situation, collapsed laughing against the wall just outside the school entrance. “Remind me,” she said, “Why were you suspended again?” (To be fair, it’s not that my mother did not think I should be punished for cutting class, but she could not imagine that I was being suspended for a first offense or that the “real” problem, as it had been explained to her, was that I’d been alone with the girls and that we were talking about sex.)

I find it hard to believe that Rabbi F did not say more because he did not know why I had been suspended; nor do I think he did not consider my “offense” a very serious one. Most likely, he was just uncomfortable talking about such things with a woman, especially a woman like my mother, who in her jeans and one-button-too-many-undone button down shirt, her long denim frock coat and her afro, did not at all fit the image of the nice, middle-class Jewish mother with whom he was used to dealing. He never said anything else about the incident to me, either, but an incident that sticks in my head as somehow connected this episode took place later that year. Rabbi F pulled me aside one day while my class was in the library and, speaking very softly, indicated with this chin a new girl in the class whose boyfriend everyone knew was not Jewish. (Indeed, it had been the boyfriend who encouraged her to go to yeshiva so she could learn about her heritage.) He said something about her being a very nice girl, and attractive, and how it was a shame that she was dating a non-Jewish boy. Maybe–and I wish I could remember the exact words he used, because I remember thinking even at the time how absolutely precious his phrasing was–I could get friendly with her, not too friendly, mind you, but friendly enough that she would see just how much Jewish boys had to offer her. I refused, of course, and I think this may be the first time I am telling this story to anyone.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a speech, self-described “conservative feminist” Christina Hoff Sommers said:

Let me turn to my second major objection to contemporary feminism: its reckless disregard for the truth. In doing research for my books, I looked carefully at some standard feminist claims about women and violence, depression, eating disorders, pay equity and education. What I found is that most –- not all —- but most of the victim statistics are, at best, misleading –- at worst, completely inaccurate. [...]

I partly agree with Sommers: Too many feminists — including those we rely on to get facts right (such as academics and published writers) — have been careless about fact-checking their claims. Critiquing a textbook on domestic violence, Sommers writes:

Zorza also informs readers that “Between 20 and 35 percent of women seeking medical care in emergency room in America are there because of domestic violence.” This claim is ubiquitous in the feminist canon. But is it false. There are two legitimate studies on emergency room admissions: one by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and another by the Centers for Disease Control. The results of both indicate that domestic violence is a serious problem, but that it is far down on the list of reasons women go to emergency rooms. Approximately one half of one percent of women in emergency rooms are there seeking treatment for injuries from domestic violence.

Sommers cites a second recent textbook, The Penguin Atlas Of Women In The World, which repeats the same error. And she’s right — it is an error. (Although, as I’ll show in a future post, Sommers’ counter-claims are just as false.)

I think this is the strongest of Sommers’ claims. Sommers is right to say that “false assertions, hyperbole and crying wolf undermine the credibility and effectiveness of feminism in general.” And many errors could easily be avoided if authors just checked primary sources — something that professional writers and academics should do routinely.

Within feminism, there’s sometimes too little skepticism regarding statistics and news stories which emphasize harms against women. We’ve created a culture which does a rotten job of self-correction.

But although she has a point, Sommers is still substantially wrong, for two reasons. First, Sommers conflates unambiguous errors of fact — which will inevitably happen sometimes, especially in a movement the size of modern-day feminism — with well-reasoned disagreements. And secondly, Sommers’ own work is full of errors, and at times actually deceptive.

In her lecture, Sommers writes:

Some of you are probably thinking –- the literature on feminism is vast and complex –- there are bound to be some mistakes. So what? But I and other investigators have not found “some mistakes.” What we have found is a large body of blatantly false information. The Domestic Violence Law textbook and the Penguin Atlas of Women in the World are not the exception. They are the rule.

So here’s Sommers’ argument:

1) Feminist writers sometimes repeat “blatantly false information.”

2) This errors are the rule, not the exception. This is documented in the works of Christina Hoff Sommers and “other investigators.”

3) Therefore, feminism, as a rule, consists of “a large body of blatantly false information.”

The trick here is in point 2. Sommers wants us to believe that her critiques of feminism, as well as those by “other investigators,” are filled with examples of feminists making unambiguous factual errors. But that’s not true. In Sommer’s book Who Stole Feminism?, Sommers does catch feminists making some unambiguous errors, but most of the book is taken up by subjective political disagreements, not by fact-checking.

In order to accept that Sommers’ work demonstrates that a “reckless disregard for truth” is the “rule,” “not the exception,” we’d have to accept that anytime a feminist disagrees with Christina Hoff Sommers — because such disagreements take up most of Sommers’ work — that is evidence of a reckless disregard for the truth. But of course, it’s no such thing.

So what do I mean when I say subjective political disagreements? By “subjective political disagreements,” I mean questions that reasonable, honest people, basing their opinion on well-founded evidence, can disagree with Christina Hoff Sommers on.

I will focus on one example: the rape prevalence research of Mary Koss. Koss’ research is probably the single example that “conservative feminists” and their allies have used most often to “prove” feminist dishonesty, ¹ starting in the early 1990s in books like Sommers’ own Who Stole Feminism?, and continuing to this day (Heather MacDonald published an attack on Koss’ research just last year). According to the Independent Woman’s Forum,² Koss’ research is the “number one feminist myth” in America.

So what was Koss’ rape research? In the 1980s, Koss pioneered a new approach to surveying populations about their past experiences with rape. Where previous surveys measured rape prevalence by asking respondents a single, sometimes hilariously vague question (”Has anybody ever attacked you in any other way?”), Koss asked a series of comparatively specific questions (”Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man threatened or used some degree of a physical force (twisting your arm, holding you down, etc.) to make you?”) about respondents’ experiences.

Koss’ study of “hidden rape” proved three important facts, which feminists and criminologists had long suspected: that rape happened much more frequently than official numbers indicated; that most rapes aren’t committed by strangers; and that most rapes are never reported to police or other authorities.

Koss’ study, in the decades since, has led two parallel lives. In one life — a life lived in books funded by right-wing foundations, anti-feminist websites, and the like — Koss’ work is an enduring symbol of feminist dishonesty and deception, and is considered a discredited joke, trotted out for rehashed debunkings every couple of years.

In another life, however — a life lived among academic experts — Koss’ work has been amazingly successful. Decades later, her work is respectfully cited in peer-reviewed studies — a few years ago I found that just two of Koss’ articles had been cited over six hundred times.³

Although subsequent research has arguably improved on Koss’ 1980s work, her insight — that rape victims are more likely to recount their experiences in response to a series of behaviorally-specific questions — is accepted by virtually all published rape prevalence researchers. And Koss’ central findings (described above) have been replicated in study after study, including two major studies conducted by the Federal government.

By ordinary academic standards, a frequently-cited study which has been replicated multiple times is solid work. That’s not to say that Koss’ study was perfect — no study ever is — but citations plus replication is the gold standard.

Of course, reasonable people can sometimes disagree with professional researchers, and Sommers and other “investigators” are entitled to their opinions.⁴ But Sommers’ position on Koss’ research isn’t that reasonable people can disagree. Instead, she and other “investigators” have repeatedly used Koss’ research as their major example of feminist lying, even though Koss’ results are widely accepted by experts and have been replicated over and over.

This is the central dishonesty of Sommers’ thesis: She claims her work shows that feminists “as a rule” have “reckless disregard for the truth,” but most of her book concerns matters that an honest person could easily disagree with Christina Hoff Sommers about.⁵

Sommers has to frame all her disagreements with mainstream feminism as feminist lying, because that is the basis of her case against feminism. If she admits that reasonable, honest feminists can disagree with Christina Hoff Sommers, she loses her claim that modern feminism consists of “a large body of blatantly false information… at best, misleading –- at worst, completely inaccurate.”

* * *

Earlier this post, I said that “Sommers’ own work is full of errors, and at times actually deceptive.” In my next post in this series, I’ll back that statement up, using her discussion of emergency room admissions as my example.

This post appears both at “Alas, a Blog” and at “Blog By Barry.” To facilitate intra-feminist dialog, the comments at “Alas” are only open to feminists, while the comments at “Blog By Barry” are open to all.

1. Think I’m exaggerating? Here is an incomplete list of books which rehash the “conservative feminist” arguments against Koss’ research: The Morning After by Katie Roiphe; The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism by Carrie Lukas; Dead End Feminism by Elisabeth Badinter; Lip Service by Kate Fillion; Tax-funded Politics by James T. Bennett; A Nation of Victims by Charles J. Sykes; Moral Panic: Biopolitics Rising by John Feteke; The New Victorians: A Young Woman’s Challenge to the Old Feminist Order‎ by Rene Denfeld; The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell; Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? by Warren Farrell, Steven Svoboda, & James P. Sterba. It’s likely there are additional books I’m unaware of, not to mention dozens of articles and hundreds of website. (back)
2. A Sommers-influenced “conservative feminist” think tank. (back)
3. In Who Stole Feminism, Sommers claims that Koss’s work is frequently cited by activists but “not so much by established scholars in the field of rape research.” It would in fact be hard to name a scholar of rape prevalence who has been cited more often in the professional literature. (back)
4. To delve into the details of the debate, including detailed responses to the arguments most often brought up by Sommers and other “investigators,” see my past posts about the Koss controversy. (back)
5. It’s not just rape prevalence research; I could make similar arguments for how Who Stole Feminism? treats topics like domestic violence, education, the wage gap, etc…. (back)

At the end of an otherwise interesting list of convicted people various feminists would pardon — including Assata Shakur, The Amiraults, and all nonviolent drug users (a suggestion that would save millions of tax dollars) — one feminist wrote:

I would pardon every woman convicted of killing her husband before the self-defense plea was admissible in all 50 states because, after all, it probably was. We live in a country where the biggest risk factor for the death of pregnant women is homicide and the number of women killed by their husbands or partners constitutes 41 percent of all women killed (only 11 percent of men killed are done in by their wives or partners). It’s not a far leap of logic to think that those women were making sure they didn’t become part of that 41 percent statistic.

Virtually all of that is wrong.

I would pardon every woman convicted of killing her husband before the self-defense plea was admissible in all 50 states because, after all, it probably was.

First of all, there has never been a time when pleas of self-defense were inadmissible. My guess is that she means any woman convicted of killing her husband before expert testimony on battering and its effects (what used to be called “Battered Women’s Syndrome”) was admissible in all states.

Second of all, it doesn’t appear that the inclusion of excluded expert testimony on battering often changes the outcome of a trial. To quote from a congressional report:

With respect to the disposition of cases, a review of state court cases found that convictions of battered women were reversed in less than one-third of the cases appealed and that, of those reversals, less than half were due to erroneous exclusion of, limitation of, or failure to present expert testimony on battering and its effects.

These findings suggest that, contrary to popular misconceptions, the introduction of expert testimony on battering and its effects does not equate to acquittal for a battered woman defendant.

Still, I agree that expert testimony on battering should be included in any relevant case, and probably juries and judges aren’t giving it as much weight as they should. So there are certainly some good pardons in there. But let’s face it — there are also women who kill husbands for motives other than self-defense.

We live in a country where the biggest risk factor for the death of pregnant women is homicide…

We really don’t. Pregnant women in the US are about eight times as likely to die of medical causes (such as bleeding during childbirth) than they are of homicide. Car accidents come second, and homicide comes third.

It’s unclear if homicide is any more common among pregnant women than it is among non-pregnant women of a similar age (young women are both more likely to be murdered and more likely to be pregnant than other women). But maybe it is — the reporting system isn’t great, and some scholars say that homicide of pregnant women is badly undercounted. But there’s no way it’s so undercounted that homicide is “the biggest risk factor.”

I’ve seen feminists make this false claim before. It’s too bad, because it obscures the biggest preventable cause of maternal death in the US — which isn’t murder, but inadequate health care. Better prenatal care could save hundreds of women’s lives every year.

…and the number of women killed by their husbands or partners constitutes 41 percent of all women killed (only 11 percent of men killed are done in by their wives or partners).

This is misleading and wrong.

It’s wrong because the real numbers are actually a lot more extreme: only 2.5% of men murdered are victims of intimate homicide, versus about 33% of women murdered.

It’s misleading because a portion of that difference isn’t caused by more women being killed by intimates, but by more men being murdered by strangers. In 2005, 1,181 out of 3,545 women who were murdered, were killed by boyfriends or husbands, while 329 of the 13,122 men who were murdered, were killed by girlfriends or wives. To just report the percentage of intimate homicides, without reporting the difference in the total number of murders, creates a false impression.

(Crossposted at Blog By Barry.)

In a letter published in The New York Review of Books, David Kaiser of Just Detention International argues that we could significantly reduce prison rape, if we genuinely wanted to.

“Since 1980 the murder rate inside prisons has fallen more than 90 percent, which should give pause to those inclined to think that prisons are impossible to reform.” We could similarly reduce the incidence of rape in prison.

We know how. To some extent, stopping prisoner rape is simply an issue of better prison management. In facilities where the chief official cares about it, and ensures that his or her subordinates take it seriously, rates of sexual abuse go down dramatically. This is accomplished by, for example, providing vulnerable inmates with nonpunitive protective housing at their request, and establishing confidential complaint systems that encourage inmates to report sexual violence without increasing their risk of future assault or retaliation, from any party.

Perhaps the most important thing detention facilities can do is employ classification systems that effectively separate likely rape victims from likely sexual predators. This requires maintaining basic data about inmates; it also requires training staff to accurately assess incoming prisoners’ various levels of threat and vulnerability. Prisoners placed in protective custody must be segregated by security level. A maximum-security gang member and a sixteen-year-old first-time offender placed in an adult facility may both require extra protection; that does not mean they should be put in the same cell. Recent innovations in facility design are helpful, particularly the use of pod-shaped configurations of cells rather than the traditional rows. But no matter what the architecture, effective surveillance of inmates is essential, and meaningful rehabilitative programs such as GED courses—leading to the equivalent of a high school diploma—which used to be much more common in American prisons than they are now, have been shown to reduce all sorts of violence. [...]

Some policies that could reduce prisoner rape need funding. Legislators can help in other ways as well. Overcrowding makes it much more difficult for staff to meet their responsibilities, particularly of supervision. But overcrowding is close to inevitable if we lock people up at present rates. Offering treatment instead of incarceration to nonviolent drug offenders would by itself reduce prisoner rape enormously. In any case, we need laws that increase the independent oversight of detention facilities, and therefore their accountability. And Congress should repeal or at least substantially amend the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996, which as DeParle writes “has cut in half the number of inmates filing civil rights complaints,” and which makes it especially difficult for inmates to seek redress for sexual abuse.

Daisy at Our Decent Into Madness writes:

In Iran, a woman was attacked by her scorned suitor turned stalker: he threw sulfuric acid on her face, blinding and permanently disfiguring her. He’s been sentenced to a punishment of having five drops of acid put in each of his eyes. [...] This is cruel and unusual punishment, a human rights violation. They’re very right. This man has been sentenced to torture.

What struck me, though: cruel and unusual punishment relative to what? It’s very easy to sit here in the United States and say it’s barbaric to put acid into this attacker’s eyes. But what would happen to him here? He’d be thrown into a prison, where, chances are, he would be raped for years with absolutely no consequence.

Our courts don’t sentence convicts to torture. (Not that this stops our government from torturing!) No, we just let them be tortured by other convicts instead.

Via Five Before Midnight and Behind The Blue Wall, and pointed out to me in comments by Radfem.

As I’m sure someone will point out in comments, it’s one person’s word versus another, emails can be faked, etc etc.. I don’t claim to know exactly what’s happening here, and readers should remember that appearances aren’t always reality. But after reading this news story from the Palm Beach Post, I think the blogger’s claims are extremely credible.

What’s also frightening is that neither of the police forces involved here — not the one employing the cop, nor the one where the threatened blogger lives — are willing to lift a finger to enforce the law against these threats.

“Alas” readers (with some help from Pandagon readers) responded to anti-feminist attacks on the Family Place by donating $725. (The Family Place helps victims of intimate violence (regardless of sex) with shelter, hotel vouchers, and counseling.)

“Alas” has just made a matching donation of $725, bringing the total to $1450. Yay us!

Paige Flink, the director of The Family Place, emails:

Still contemplating whether to send an acknowledgment letter to Glenn Sacks, two people specifically said they were doing it in his honor, one thanked him for helping them find another good non profit, and another person said something not so kind about him, which I won’t repeat.

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

[This is the third post in a series, criticizing the recent campaign by anti-feminist Glenn Sacks against The Family Place. I'd like to remind readers that "Alas, a Blog" will match any contributions you make to The Family Place this week (up to $800 total), so please donate, and then let me know in comments or by using the form!]

This post continues the interview with Paige Flink, the executive director of The Family Place. The Family Place, a Dallas-based group providing shelter and services to victims of domestic violence, was the subject of a recent campaign by men’s rights activists, led by Glenn Sacks.

Once again, thanks to Ms. Flink for being nice enough to talk with me.

Did Glenn Sacks, or any other men’s rights activist, contact you about these ads prior to beginning their campaign?

No. They started blasting before I ever heard from him.

Did Glenn Sacks directly call or write you once his campaign had begun?

He did call me later, kinda the way I remember it happening, our bus ads had been up for about three weeks, the Dallas news ran an article about it. He [talked about the ads] on a Sunday radio show, and then on Monday DART was deluged with emails. Then I got a call from him the following week. He called saying, and I’m paraphrasing, “I have a way for you to get yourself out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” I did not return his phone call.¹

Why didn’t you return his call?

Well, I didn’t return his call.. at that point, we were being attacked. It wasn’t a conversation I had started, and I didn’t feel like my point of view would make any difference.

Does The Family Place provide services to male victims of domestic violence?

Yes we do. We do. Of course, there’s a huge difference in the number. On an average year we’ll shelter between 700 and 900 women and children, and we’ll council 8-20 men who are victims.

We do not shelter men in the facility, but we do provide hotel vouchers. We have a suite we can use. Most of the men who have come to us have been men in same-sex relationships, so we work with the Dallas Resource Center, which provides services for gays and lesbians. And when they come with kids we help them too; we have sheltered men with children.

Would you consider bus ads designed to reach out to male victims of violence?

We would certainly consider it. This was our 30th anniversary and we had been saving money for a campaign, and we targeted women specifically because our experience has been that when women think about what their children are witnessing, they are more likely to take action. We are ultimately trying to prevent murders, and women are the most likely victims of murder in these situations.

It was a small campaign, but we wanted it to be memorable.

Would you have been open to, for example, the idea of Glenn and his audience raising funds to help pay for an ad campaign reaching out to abused men?

Sure. My experience has not been that with these father’s rights groups, but if a father’s rights group had contacted us and said we want to help raise money to provide counseling services and to provide shelter, that would have been incredible. But that’s never happened.

How would you respond to a men’s rights activist who said “men aren’t using the services because there hasn’t been enough outreach to men”?

I would talk about the reality of the person who seems harmed the most, and with limited funds, we have to serve the people who are in the most danger. The lethality in family violence of a women who’s being harmed by a man is greater. We don’t have unlimited funds, and the most vulnerable are the women who have children. The women in our shelter usually come because their children have become a target. That is the very specific response we were targeting in our campaign.

We weren’t trying to make a big point about “sexism” and all of those other things — that wasn’t the point. We had a very specific point we were trying to make: There is a cycle of violence. We want to reach the people who most need our help. We want to reach them before they get murdered.

What advice would you give a men’s rights activist who is sincerely concerned about male victims of domestic violence?

I would say, get together another group of men and raise the money to provide the services for the people you say are needing them. And go out there and say “we are the new men’s shelter, and we are here to serve men who have been victims of family violence and sexual violence in their homes.” Do it just the way the women’s shelters stared 30 years ago.

Then show when you open the doors — when The Family Place opened the doors in 1978, it was full, because so many people needed help. Then show the numbers, go back to your donors, and say “I had to turn away 100 men because I lacked the funding.” Everything that happened with shelters for women, happened because of the demand.

Don’t put me down because I’m trying to help somebody. Go out there and help somebody.

Instead of bashing women’s organizations, stand up and help somebody yourself. That’s what I’d say.

1. Glenn, on his own blog and in “Alas” comments, recalls his voicemail message differently: “in my voice mail I did commend her for the good work that her organization does on behalf of abused women.” (back)

[This is the second post in a series, criticizing the recent campaign by anti-feminist Glenn Sacks against The Family Place. I'd like to remind readers that "Alas, a Blog" will match any contributions you make to The Family Place this week (up to $800 total), so please donate, and then let me know in comments or through this form.]

Prominent right-wingers Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin recently praised Glenn Sacks’ campaign against The Family Place, a domestic violence shelter that provides help to both female and male victims of intimate violence. Reynolds said:

They didn’t try to get anybody fired but they contacted them and asked them, “Did you realize that your money is supporting these ads? Is this what you want to do?”

They made a very big point of being very polite about it and not making any threats. They did get some action and did it without trying to get anybody fired or booted from their jobs or doing anything vicious.

Because there’s nothing vicious about attempting to cut off the funding of a domestic violence shelter.

I suspect that Reynolds learned this from Glenn Sacks’ site, where Glenn claimed this “achievement” for his campaign:

A sub-group of our protesters who I selected called over 50 of The Family Place’s financial contributors to express our concerns about the ads. Most contributors said they sympathized with us, and many told us they thought the ads and the subsequent protest were an embarrassment to The Family Place. Many contacted Family Place Executive Director Paige Flink with their concerns.

Several of The Family Place’s financial contributors withdrew or reduced the financial gifts they planned for the end-of-the-year giving season.

Like Roy Eduso in The Village Voice, and the blogger at Glenn’s Cult (warning: that link makes an annoying noise), I was concerned when I read this; I’d hate for the anti-feminists to succeed in depriving abused women and men of desparately needed support and services.

Fortunately, according to Paige Flink, Glenn vastly exaggerated the effects of his campaign. Unfortunately, contrary to what Glenn Reynolds (and, probably, Glenn Sacks himself) believes, the calls made to The Family Place’s volunteers and donors due to Glenn’s campaign were anything but polite.

Ms. Flink was kind enough to talk to me on the phone. Glenn Sacks declined to make any “on the record” comments to me.

Can you tell me how long you’ve been at The Family Place?

I have been on staff at The Family Place for seventeen years, and I was a volunteer for three years prior to that.

Is it a difficult job?

It is hard work, but when you see success… It’s unbelievable the families that we help. Even if they’re only in the shelter for 45 days, the difference is incredible. If we help them get a job, or go to school, it really improves their life for years to come. It’s awesome.

Plus I see bad things happen to women and it just makes me mad. The oppression is true, it’s real.

Glenn Sacks claimed his activists convinced some regular Family Place supporters to withhold donations. Have you seen any evidence of that from your end?

The only thing I know for sure is I got an email from a man who said he’d never give again, because of this. He once gave $25, in 2003.

It’s possible that [Sacks] convinced somebody besides that one donor.

Have you heard from any of your donors who had been contacted by Glenn’s campaign?

Yes. They were horrified.

What were they horrified about?

They were horrified that they were contacted. Not about the ad campaign. Horrified that someone from outside the state of Texas would call and say “don’t give money to The Family Place.” There was one of my board members who received 25 calls from the same woman.

What did the people calling them say?

It was… they were paraphrasing, so I don’t know exactly. They were told that you should not support The Family Place. This is a terrible campaign, they’re not a good organization, you should not support The Family Place, and we’re asking you to stop donating to The Family Place.

Some of the vile language and verbal abuse we took on the phone was horrific. The kinds of things they said to our staff about what they’re going to do to them was awful. I’ve had some “you’re going to go to hell, you’re a fat lesbian luring women into those shelters so you can prey on them.”

If I reply back to a victim I really am cautious in how I speak to her, because how do I know it’s a victim? We screen our clients on the phone, but…

I didn’t know there was this atmosphere out there of people who would say… horrible things to people they don’t know. They’d write in all caps like they were screaming and yelling. This is not a world that I’m used to. And the people would would say verbatim what he had said, like they’d drank the kool-aid… It was just amazing. It lasted a very short window of time. It was not much more than 10 days and then it fell off.

Did the campaign succeed in doing damage to The Family Place?

No, as a matter of fact, what he did was make us even more visible, in venues where we wouldn’t necessarily have been visible. We are not an AM radio organization. So even though some of it was negative… For example, he was on one of the radio stations here, and a huge organization, a very conservative group, emailed the radio station saying we support The Family Place. So just the name of The Family Place being out there might, in a perverse way, help, because we might reach someone who needs our services.

So I’m still thinking the campaign was very successful. When Glenn went on CNN, we got so many positive phone calls to our hotline that night, saying go for it, don’t back down, don’t let him do that to you.

I want to make sure it’s clear that we had a 60 day contract on those buses. It is not true that we took down our ads down. That’s not true. It was always going to end on November 30 — that was all the money we had.

I feel very strongly that the donors in this community understand what we’re doing in the family place. We have a lot of credibility. So I feel like our donors are going to stand beside us. It’s a shame that we’ve had to take anything away from the mission of this organization to even waste time in defending what we’re doing. It’s been a drain on time … it isn’t productive.

How much time did you have to spend dealing with this controversy?

I don’t know… hours, I had to spend hours. Thinking about the right strategy and how to respond and how to stay true to the message of The Family Place. If it’s five hours then it’s five hours too many.

We have a page on our website that we did make gender-neutral in response.

I’d like to thank Ms. Flink for talking with me.

My next post in this series will feature more from my interview with Paige Flink, including her advice to men’s rights activists who want to help male victims of violence. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to donate to The Family Place! Even very low donations are worthwhile, and remember, this week they’ll be doubled.

Via Womanist Musings: Men’s rights advocate Glenn Sacks has gotten some press for protesting these ads, which were created by The Family Place and were displayed on buses in Dallas through November 30:

(Image description: The image shows a boy, perhaps 5-7 years old. The boy is wearing a striped shirt and smiling at the viewer. The text of the ad says “When I grow up, I will beat my wife. Men who witnessed domestic violence as children are twice as likely to abuse their wives. Break the cycle of domestic violence.” The first letter of the text is a child’s wooden block toy with the letter “W” carved on its surface. The ad also includes contact information for The Family Place.)

(Image description: The image shows a girl, perhaps 4-7 years old. The girl is wearing a pink dress and a toy princess crown. The text of the ad says “One day my husband will kill me. Girls who grow up in households with domestic violence are more likely to end up with abusive partners. Break the cycle of domestic violence.” The first letter of the text is an illuminated letter “O” in the style of an illuminated manuscript or a children’s fairy tale book with old-fashioned illustrations. The ad also includes contact information for The Family Place.)

From the Dallas News:

“The calls [for help and support] are coming more than we can handle,” Paige Flink, executive director of the nonprofit, told me yesterday. “That’s what we intended to happen.”

What Ms. Flink didn’t intend is happening just as quickly – an international backlash caused by a Los Angeles-based “men’s and fathers’ issues columnist,” Glenn Sacks, who blogs for the Massachusetts-based Fathers & Families nonprofit advocacy group.

Mr. Sacks is spearheading a campaign to get DART and The Family Place to yank the ads, saying they stereotype men as batterers and women as just victims of domestic violence.

“I think it’s over the top,” Mr. Sacks said in a phone interview. “And I think it is insulting.”

The Family Place created three ads,¹ all depicting female victim / male abuser situations. I wish they had done a fourth ad showing a boy child as a future victim. Men are a minority of victims of intimate violence, but “minority” doesn’t mean “nonexistent.” There are male victims of intimate violence who require assistance, and there seems to be virtually no outreach to abused men. (The Family Place provides assistance to both female and male victims of violence.)

But the best evidence we have indicates that most intimate violence — and in particular, the most severe and harmful cases — are typically cases of men abusing women. Given that context, it’s ridiculous that Glenn objects to the depiction of women suffering from male abusers. It’s notable that Glenn didn’t work to have a new ad added to the campaign, reaching out to male victims of abuse; that’s a goal I could support. Instead, he campaigned to have these ads removed. Whatever his intent, what Glenn’s demands called for wasn’t inclusion of male victims, but the erasure of female victims and male perpetrators.

Glenn assumes it’s an insult to fathers for domestic violence awareness ads to even implicitly talk about male violence against women. But why should fathers be insulted? The ads don’t claim, or even imply, that all fathers are abusers.

It doesn’t appear that Glenn attempted — or even considered — a more productive approach before he began grandstanding. Before demanding that the Dallas buses take down ads that might genuinely help raise awareness of domestic violence against women — and might even save a life — Glenn could have instead have contacted The Family Place and offered to help raise funds to help pay for a fourth ad intended to reach out to male victims of intimate violence. Instead, Glenn and other men’s rights advocates (MRAs for short) specifically attacked The Family Place’s funding:

A sub-group of our protesters who I selected called over 50 of The Family Place’s financial contributors to express our concerns about the ads. [...] Several of The Family Place’s financial contributors withdrew or reduced the financial gifts they planned for the end-of-the-year giving season. I don’t say this with pleasure–I would have preferred that The Family Place do the right thing from the beginning rather than lose the funding.

Actions talk louder than words, Glenn. You specifically targeted The Family Place’s funding (although, as we’ll see in a future post, you didn’t succeed). This “I don’t say this with pleasure” plea is the worse sort of responsibility-dodging.

Glenn could have acted constructively. Glenn could have at least suggested that his readers give some money to The Family Place to make up for the funding damage Glenn claims they’ve caused. Instead, Glenn suggests his readers give money to Glenn, so that Glenn can organize more swell protests like this in the future.

That Glenn never attempted a constructive approach is telling. It’s typical of MRAs, most of whom are passionate about attacking feminism, and attacking people working to help victims of abuse and rape, but indifferent to helping male victims. Imagine if all the energy and time MRAs have put into bashing, hating, and attacking feminists for the last twenty years could be taken back and instead invested into building institutions that could help male victims of rape and abuse. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

This is the first in a short series of posts about the anti-feminist attack on The Family Place. Future posts will include never-before-published quotes from The Family Place’s Paige Flink, an examination of Glenn Sack’s statistical claims, more on how a constructive MRA movement would act, and explaining why Glenn’s protest actually didn’t accomplish much.

By the way, after talking to Paige Flink, I was very impressed by The Family Place. For decades, they’ve done good work to help victims of violence, regardless of sex. They should be encouraged and supported, not protested.

To donate to The Family Place, click here. Please let me know in comments or via email if you’ve donated to The Family Place because of what you’ve read on “Alas.” At the end of the week, “Alas” will match contributions made by “Alas” readers.² So in a way, your contribution this week is worth double.

1. One ad I didn’t reproduce at the top of this post, since Glenn isn’t protesting that one. All three ads can be seen on this page at The Family Place’s website. (back)
2. Up to a maximum total of $800. (back)

[trigger warning]

Can rape jokes be funny? Megan at Jezebel argues they can be:

If we take sexual assault off the table of things we can laugh about or joke about, it’s just another way of saying: this is a different crime than any other crime, and so we can and must treat its victims differently than any other crime.

And, you know, fuck that. I got treated differently than any other crime victim once because of the kind of crime that I was the victim of. If I had been mugged, would the cops have been calling my friends and asking them how much I’d been drinking that night? If I had been only robbed, would it have mattered to the cops whether I’d told the guys I was out with that night that I was dating someone? If I had been shot walking out of the bar, would it have been anyone’s business if my friend thought that I was flirting or not? And if any of those crimes had been committed instead, would everyone be so horribly offended by me making jokes about it? It’s all part of the way in which society wants to treat me differently because of how I was victimized. Let’s treat sexual assaults like any other crime and tell some rape jokes. Cool?

In the course of her post, Megan talks about this Wanda Sykes routine:

…she’s making light of Kobe Bryant’s victim, who was raped after she went up to his hotel room at the ungodly hour of 2 in the morning. In fact, you could argue — and I am — that Wanda Sykes is poking fun of that victim for being, you know, stupid enough to get raped.

I didn’t even consider that interpretation until Megan suggested it. To me, Sykes’ joke seemed to be playing with how tragic/ludicrous it is that visiting a celebrity’s hotel room isn’t safe for a woman. (Men can visit a celebrity’s room to discuss his jump shot without worrying about being raped — and without being blamed for it if they are raped).

Disagreeing with Megan’s approach, Liss writes:

Except, here’s the thing: Public rape jokes have fuck-all to do with sexual assault survivors using humor to deal with their own sexual assaults.

Megan’s argument lacks some critical distinctions and exceptions: Public jokes and private jokes are not equivalent. Jokes for laughs and jokes for catharsis are very different animals. Jokes about rape made by men, who have a significantly lower chance of being raped, are not the same as jokes made by women, whose lives are qualitatively different from men’s because of their heightened chance of being raped. Jokes that minimize the severity and ubiquity of rape (e.g. prison rape jokes) perpetuate the rape culture; jokes that underline the severity and ubiquity of rape (e.g. Wanda Sykes’ detachable vagina bit) challenge the rape culture.

And even still, all rape jokes run the very real risk of triggering survivors who aren’t expecting rape jokes in their escapist entertainment. (Go figure.) Which underscores the inherent deficiency of the question “Is a rape joke ever funny?” It’s incomplete without a discussion of audience, intended or otherwise—and the audience for any rape joke potentially includes survivors who may not only find the joke decidedly unfunny, but also triggering.

I think Lissa interpreted the Sykes routine pretty much as I did (although she put it better than me, typically).

Asking if a rape joke is “funny” is besides the point, because “is this funny” and “is this problematic” are not the same question. As I’m pretty sure bell hooks points out somewhere, some jokes are offensive and funny. I think a better question for feminist analysis is the one Liss asks: does a rape joke (funny or not) perpetuate rape culture, or does it question rape culture?

And, finally, I think people should be careful to avoid turning discussions of humor into the politics of personal purity (just to be clear, Melissa didn’t do this, but it’s a mistake I’ve seen other feminists make in similar discussions). It’s worthwhile to subject humor to the kind of feminist analysis Melissa uses. But we shouldn’t give ourselves demerits for having laughed at the “wrong” joke, because the point of these discussion isn’t for each of us to gauge our own (or other people’s) level of feminist purity.

This is a feminist-only thread.

Robert Franklin, a co-blogger at Glenn Sacks’ blog, complains that mothers who kill their own children get treated more sympathetically than fathers:

Her behavior, according to the story was “a cry for help.” If a father had murdered his toddlers, would we say he was crying out for help? I’ve never seen it and I frankly don’t expect to.

So this story falls into the familiar pattern – when women behave badly, we seek to understand why; when men behave badly, we judge and condemn them. One approach is love and understanding; the other is condemnation. The difference is based on the sex of the bad actor.

I’ve seen this complaint made by many MRAs, and I was initially inclined to agree with it — after all, all else being equal, there’s no reason to have any more sympathy for female than male criminals. Plus, I fully believe that the media is sexist. And maybe the media’s sexism is biasing their coverage of filicides. But there’s another reason for the imbalance Franklin notices: mothers and fathers murder for very different reasons.

“Filicide” means the murder of a child by her or his own parent. And all the research agrees: paternal filicide (murder of kids by fathers) typically has very different motivations from maternal filicide (murder of kids by mothers). The typical father-killer is a longtime abuser, and is motivated by a desire to control his family, or by jealousy because he believes (rightly or wrongly) that his wife is cheating on him or leaving him. (He is, however, sane, in the legal sense that he has an understanding of right and wrong.) The typical mother-killer is committing neonaticide in a context of postpartum depression, denial, and social isolation; or, if she’s killing an older child, she’s doing so out of a deranged belief that the child is better off dead.

Is it unfair that our society looks down on revenge-killings of children, more than we look down on killings done in postpartum madness? Maybe. But that’s not an argument that Franklin makes. And it’s usual in our society to find killings done by people who understand right and wrong more reprehensible, and deserving of a greater level of condemnation.

Research published in The Journal of Family Violence found:¹

The data on motives indicated major differences between the two groups of offenders: Men were more likely to kill their children as a means of reprisal against their spouse, whereas women were more likely to kill their children for altruistic reasons.

(”Altruistic”? How can murder be “altruistic”? Well, obviously it’s not genuine altruism: but the killers believe the murders to be altruistic.)²

Let’s take sex away from this. Which is more sympathetic — a parent who kills a child because the parent has come unhinged from reality; or a parent who kills a child for revenge on a cheating or divorcing spouse? Is it really unjust if the latter parent gets treated more harshly by the press, and by the courts?

In an article in The Guardian, Jack Levin, a professor at Northeastern University, profiles men who kill their famililes:

“He doesn’t hate his children, but he often hates his wife and blames her for his miserable life. He feels an overwhelming sense of his own powerlessness. He wants to execute revenge and the motive is almost always to ‘get even’.” [...]

In the majority of cases, if the perpetrator fails in his own suicide, as in the Hogan and Hall cases, they almost always plead some form of insanity.

But Levin rejected this: “These are executions. They are never spontaneous. They are well planned and selective. They are not carried out in the heat of the moment or in a fit of rage. They are very methodical and it is often planned out for a long time. There are certain people the killer blames for his problems. If a friend came along, he wouldn’t kill him or her. He kills his children to get even with his wife because he blames her and he hates her. The killer feels he has lost control. Annihilating his family is a way of regaining control. It is a methodical, selective murder by a rational, loving father. That’s why it is so terrifying.”

This is a case in which reality is not sex-neutral. Although there are individual exceptions, if you read about a filicide in which a parent is going mad from social isolation and depression and kills their infant, odds are overwhelming that that parent is the mother. If you read about a filicide in which a parent kills their infant because they’re trying to control the other parent, or get revenge because the other parent wants a divorce, odds are overwhelming that parent is the father.

That said, I’m not arguing that sexism has nothing to do with it — actually, sexism has a lot to do with the differences in how mothers and father murder. Writing in Child Abuse Review, Ania Wilczynski argues that sexist social conditioning accounts for the difference in how women and men commit filicide:³

Marked sex differences were also apparent in filicide motivation. While men tend to predominate in the retaliating, jealousy and discipline categories of filicide, women tend to be found in the unwanted child, altruistic and psychotic categories…. The literature reports comparable results on both these findings.

The gender differences in filicide motivation indicate that an understanding of the social construction of masculinity and femininity may be crucial to an adequate understanding of filicide. Men are socialized to be unemotional, aggressive, dominant and sexually possessive. Therefore their filicides tend to most commonly involve retaliation, jealousy and discipline. Conversely, social norms encourage women to be passive, nurturant and self-sacrificing. Hence women’s filicides tend to be found in the altruistic, psychotic and neonaticide categories. Thus, while filicide is often seen as an aberrant and inexplicable act committed by someone who is either evil or mentally deranged, it is important to place the crime in its social context and to see that it represents in extreme form the playing out of traditional gender roles.

MRAs like Robert Franklin might do more good if they concentrated on fighting the sexist model of masculinity that harms nearly all men, but also leads a tiny minority of men to feel that they have to murder to maintain control of their families. If men felt less need to be “aggressive” and “dominant,” fewer men would be murdering their families. To this end, we should be looking at changing the culture of violence and bullying that too many boys are raised in, and too many adults (of both sexes) accept or encourage.

Men who commit felicide have very often been abused themselves, when they were children. Obviously, our society needs to do more to fight child abuse. But it would also be worthwhile to try and provide counseling and services to adult survivors of child abuse. Men are frequently socialized to avoid admitting when we need help, so outreach programs for male survivors of child abuse are also extremely necessary.

What about reducing felicide among mothers? The lowest-hanging fruit here is neonaticide, the murder of very young infants by their mothers. Mothers who commit neonaticide are usually poor, usually teenaged, usually socially isolated, and are often in denial about having been pregnant. Increased sex education, and increased availability of free prenatal care — including confidential care for minors — would be good steps to take. I’d also speculate that it would help if society was more accepting of teenage pregnancy, so that pregnant girls might feel less desperate and isolated.

UPDATE: Welcome, Glenn Sacks dot com readers!

If you’re interested in having your comments approved here, use conventional English, and a mild and respectful tone. Comments with a sneery attitude, WITH SENTENCES WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS, or a general “you feminists are such stupid bigots” attitude will be deleted.

1. Léveillée S, Marleau JD, Dubé M (2007) Filicide: a comparison by sex and presence or absence. of self-destructive behaviour. Journal of Family Violence v22 n5 p287-295. Link. (back)
2. From Psychiatric News: “In ‘altruistic’ filicide a parent—almost always a mother in this category—kills her child or children as an extension of a suicide attempt. ‘These mothers see their children as an extension of themselves,’ he said. ‘They do not want to leave a child motherless in a ‘cruel’ world as seen through their depressed eyes.’ In a second type of altruistic filicide a child is killed to end his or her real or imagined suffering. ‘These mothers may project their own unacceptable symptoms onto the child,’ he said.” (back)
3. Wilczynski, Ania (2005). “Child Killing By Parents: A Motivational Model.” Child Abuse Review v4 365-370. Pdf link. (back)

In mid-October, the California Court of Appeals ruled¹ that California cannot legally fund women-only shelters.² I didn’t see anything about it in the feminist blogosphere until yesterday, when Renee posted about the case.

In California, it is generally illegal for the government to discriminate based on sex.³ The California statutes funding domestic violence shelters, however, contained language defining “domestic violence” as something that only happens to women,⁴, and some funding apparently went to women-only services.

This was legal (before this court ruling) because of this provision of California law:

No person in the State of California shall, on the basis of race, national origin, ethnic group identification, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, color, or disability, be unlawfully denied full and equal access to the benefits of, or be unlawfully subjected to discrimination under, any program or
activity that is conducted, operated, or administered by the state or by any state agency, is funded directly by the state, or receives any financial assistance from the state. [...]

This article shall not be interpreted in a manner that would adversely affect lawful programs which benefit the disabled, the aged, minorities, and women.

The plaintiffs, a group including men who said they had been abused, and a teenage girl who claimed her father had been abused by her mother, sued. The appeals court found in their favor, writing:

The greater need for services by female victims of domestic violence does not provide a compelling state interest in a gender classification. As Connerly makes clear, equal protection is not concerned with numbers. “In applying the strict scrutiny test, it must be remembered that the rights created by the equal protection clause are not group rights; they are personal rights guaranteed to the individual.” (Connerly, supra, 92 Cal.App.4th at p. 35.) Arguing that a group of people (here male victims of domestic violence) is too small in number to be afforded equal protection is simply arguing “that the right to equal protection should hinge on ‘administrative convenience.’” (Molar v. Gates (1979) 98 Cal.App.3d 1, 18.) Administrative convenience is an inadequate state interest under a strict scrutiny analysis. (Id. at p. 17.) Plaintiffs and defendants agree domestic violence is a serious problem for both women and men, and programs funded under Health and Safety Code section 124250 and Penal Code section 13823.15 offer a variety of services, primarily shelter but also counseling and other support services. Defendants fail to show a compelling state interest in providing funding only to those programs that provide these services to women only.

Even if there were a compelling state interest, defendants do not show the classification is necessary, rather than convenient, and no gender-neutral alternative is available. Most of the programs funded by DHS and all of the programs funded by OES offer services on a gender-neutral basis, showing the classification is not necessary.[...]

The gender classifications in Health and Safety Code section 124250 and Penal Code section 13823.15, that provide state funding of domestic violence programs that offer services only to women and their children, but not to men, violate equal protection.

Nothing in either statute evinces a legislative intent to restrict funding to programs that assist only women. Indeed, all of the programs funded under Penal Code section 13823.15 and the vast majority, 85 percent, of the programs funded under Health and Safety Code section 124250 provide services on a gender-neutral basis. Accordingly, both Health and Safety Code section 124250 and Penal Code section 13823.15 are reformed to provide funding for services to victims of domestic violence, regardless of gender.

In reforming the statutes that provide funding for domestic violence programs to be gender-neutral, we do not require that such programs offer identical services to men and women. Given the noted disparity in the number of women needing services and the greater severity of their injuries, it may be appropriate to provide more and different services to battered women and their children. For example, a program might offer shelter for women, but only hotel vouchers for a smaller number of men.

Overall, I agree with this decision. Five quick points:

1. Equal protection and treatment by the law, regardless of gender (race, gender identity, etc), is a principle I support.

2. It makes sense that the law makes an exception for beneficial programs like affirmative action, which could not exist without the exception. However, services for victims of intimate violence seem to fall into a different category, because it is possible for shelters to provide services to both women and men. Indeed, the vast majority of publicly-funded DV services in California served both female and male victims, even before this lawsuit.⁵

3. This ruling will have very little practical effect on anything. As the court noted, the large majority of publicly-funded DV services in California are already gender-neutral.

4. Although I approve of equal protection, and of this ruling, it’s frustrating that the MRA movement — which is so much more dedicated to attacking feminism than to helping men — ever gets what it wants. Many or most DV services were initially created by feminist work and activism; MRAs have done none of the hard work involved in creating this network. Nor is the MRA movement fundraising to enable DV programs affected by this ruling to add services for men without reducing services for women, or lobbying to increase funding for DV shelters. In short, the MRA movement is a leech movement; MRAs sue to change systems feminists (mostly women) have built, but they don’t contribute positively to those systems.

This is, I think, part of what Renee was talking about in her post on Woods v. Shewry.

But when I look at the bigger picture, MRAs are irrelevant. It’s not the fault of male victims who need help that MRAs are leeches, and the worthlessness of the MRA movement can’t justify denying services to someone because of their sex.

5. The appeals court also ruled on a program which allows children under age six to be raised by mothers in prison, if the mothers are sentenced to 3 years or less. The program is available only to primary caretakers, and only if it is determined that staying with the mother is in the child’s best interest. The program is available only to mothers.

The appeals court allowed the program to stand, because the plaintiffs couldn’t find a single real-life example of a father who would have qualified for this program, if only he were female. I would have preferred the appeals court to order that the program be made available to fathers, should one who qualifies ever turn up.

1. The case is “Woods v Shewry”; a pdf file of the court’s decision is here (back)
2. I first read about the case via Glenn Sacks and Feminist Critics. (back)
3. Although, thanks to proposition 8, it now seems that it is legal for the government to discriminate based on sex when it comes to same-sex marriage. (back)
4. From the statute in question:”‘Domestic violence’ means the infliction or threat of physical harm against past or present adult or adolescent female intimate partners, and shall include physical, sexual, and psychological abuse against the woman, and is part of a pattern of assaultive, coercive, and controlling behaviors directed at achieving compliance from or control over, that woman.” (back)
5. The appeals court noted that the plaintiffs weren’t able to provide compelling evidence that any California services discriminate against men; the only evidence of discrimination against men was a statement by a defense witness: “The only evidence that some state-funded programs discriminate against men is the declaration of Dr. Susann Steinberg that 85 percent of agencies funded by DHS provide services to men, from which we presume the other 15 percent do not.” (back)

Jacob Alperon Sherrif at the Huffington Post, after examining Wasilla’s budget records and talking to the pre-Palin police chief, reports:

Under Sarah Palin’s administration, Wasilla cut funds that had previously paid for the medical exams and began charging victims or their health insurers the $500 to $1200 fees. Although Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella wrote USA Today earlier this week that the GOP vice presidential nominee “does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test…To suggest otherwise is a deliberate misrepresentation of her commitment to supporting victims and bringing violent criminals to justice,” Palin, as mayor, fired police chief Irl Stambaugh and replaced him with Charlie Fannon, who with Palin’s knowledge, slashed the budget for the exams and began charging the city’s victims of sexual assault. The city budget documents demonstrate Palin read and signed off on the new budget. A year later, alarmed Alaska lawmakers passed legislation outlawing the practice.

It wasn’t until Sarah Palin and her hand-picked police chief were in power that the city decided that it couldn’t afford to pay for ordinary police procedure for rape victims — even while Palin was spending millions on a new sports complex.

Sherrif’s proof that Palin was aware of the change from the start is that Palin signed off on the budget. I don’t think that’s conclusive; Palin could claim that she just signed the forms, and others in government were the ones that actually knew what was going on. (We are, after all, talking about one line item in a report of over 100 pages).

But that shouldn’t get Palin off the hook.

1) Palin fired the previous police chief so she could install her close political ally Charlie Fannon in the job. Choosing the right people is a major part of being an executive; ignorance is no excuse. As Mayor, Palin was responsible for choosing good people — and if she instead chose a close ally who instituted a policy of gouging rape victims, and then defended that to the press, that’s Palin’s responsibility too.

2) Whether or not Palin knew of the policy before it was implemented, she certainly found out about it at some point. Former Alaska Governor Tony Knowles has said that when Alaska outlawed charging victims for rape exams, they were doing so in response to Wasilla’s policy:

Eight years ago, complaints about charging rape victims for medical exams in Wasilla prompted the Alaska Legislature to pass a bill — signed into law by Knowles — that banned the practice statewide.

“There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla,” Knowles said.

The USA Today story gives the impression that Wasilla may not have been the “one town in Alaska” doing this, but stopping Wasilla’s gouging of rape victims was a important motivation — and maybe the primary motivation — for the Alaska legislature to take action.

It is not known how many rape victims in Wasilla were required to pay for some or all of the medical exams, but a legislative staffer who worked on the bill for Croft said it happened. “It was more than a couple of cases, and it was standard practice in Wasilla,” Peggy Wilcox said, who now works for the Alaska Public Employees Association. “If you were raped in Wasilla, this was going to happen to you.”

It’s impossible that things could have gotten as far along as the state legislature passing a statewide law to change Wasilla’s practice, without the mayor of Wasilla ever being aware of the policy. Yet in public, Palin never criticized the policy and never proposed a new policy. On the contrary, she apparently gave Fannon permission to speak to the press and defend the policy of gouging rape victims.

Either Sarah Palin was the most incompetent mayor in the world, or she knew her administration had instituted a policy of charging rape victims for their own rape exams, which caused so much stir that it led to a statewide law. Why did it take the Alaska legislature to reverse the policy? Shouldn’t Palin had done it herself, without the state having to step in?

It’s worth mentioning again that Wasilla’s form of gouging rape victims is now pretty much illegal nationwide, thanks to VAWA legislation, which was primarily authored by Joe Biden. John McCain, in case you’re wondering, voted against VAWA.

(And a big curtsy to Charles for links provided.)

Amanda at Pandagon writes:

I’m a little wary of this story about how Sarah Palin turned a blind eye when rape victims in Wasilla were forced to pay for their own investigations. Even if she is responsible—and she’s so firmly anti-feminist it isn’t hard to see that she could be—it’s all too easy for the campaign to argue that it was an internal police matter that simply wasn’t brought to her attention.

It’s a little hard to buy that Palin didn’t know about the policy, since the “gag order” she instituted — forbidding any city official to talk to the press about anything without Palin’s express permission — would have required Police chief (and close Palin ally¹ ) Charlie Fannon to ask Palin’s permission before blabbing to the press about how terrible it would be if taxpayers, rather than rape victims, paid for rape kits.

Even if Fannon broke Palin’s gag rule, how plausible is it that the police chief of a small town could break the mayor’s well-publicized gag rule with tons of quotes in a major state paper, and the mayor would never, ever hear about it?

It’s notable that the practice of charging rape victims for rape kits is now illegal nationwide — due to VAWA, legislation pushed through Congress by Joe Biden.

I think that this is something Palin can legitimately be held accountable for. Fannon was her handpicked police chief and close political ally. I don’t buy that ignorance is an excuse; if the mayor doesn’t know about a policy like this, even while the governor is pushing through legislation to ban the policy (not usually a quick process), then she’s not good at her job. Similarly, a mayor who knows that her police chief wants to charge rape victims for rape kits, but publicly does nothing about it — not even a press release disagreeing — is not good at her job.

That said, I agree with Amanda that this probably won’t stick to Palin.

1. For example, when Fannon ran for mayor of Mat-Su Burough, Palin was his campaign chairman. (back)