I'm convinced that Joe Biden sexually assaulted Tara Reade.
Noted feminists Amanda Marcotte and Jezebel's Emily Alford have come out swinging to support... Biden.
Nathan J. Robinson lays out the whole sordid story.
Trump is going to win in a fucking landslide.
And the Democratic party will lie down and let him.
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Monday, April 13, 2020
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Does anyone have the right to sex?
Does anyone have the right to sex? [pdf]
The article raises a lot of what I think are good questions, without offering answers. Sex is weird! Just a snippet:
h/t to Crooked Timber
The article raises a lot of what I think are good questions, without offering answers. Sex is weird! Just a snippet:
Yet it would be disingenuous to make nothing of the convergence, however unintentional,between sex positivity and liberalism in their shared reluctance to interrogate the formation of our desires. Third and fourth-wave feminists are right to say, for example, that sex work is work, and can be better work than the menial labour undertaken by most women. And they are right to say that what sex workers need are legal and material protections, safety and security, not rescue or rehabilitation. But to understand what sort of work sex work is – just what physical and psychical acts are being bought and sold, and why it is overwhelmingly women who do it, and overwhelmingly men who pay for it – surely we have to say something about the political formation of male desire. And surely there will be similar things to say about other forms of women’s work: teaching, nursing, caring, mothering. To say that sex work is "just work" is to forget that all work – men’s work, women’s work – is never just work: it is also sexed.
h/t to Crooked Timber
Monday, August 05, 2019
Young men and guns
How about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion — mandatory 48-hour waiting period, parental permission, a note from his doctor proving he understands what he's about to do, a video he has to watch about the effects of gun violence, an ultrasound wand up the ass (just because). Let's close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and beg him not to buy a gun.
It makes more sense to do this with young men and guns than with women and health care, right? I mean, no woman getting an abortion has killed a room full of people in seconds, right?
— Anonymous
This passage has been incorrectly attributed to Gloria Steinem.
This version
Slightly edited version
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Daddies, “Dates,” and the Girlfriend Experience: Welcome to the New Prostitution Economy: A growing number of young people are selling their bodies online to pay student loans, make the rent, or afford designer labels. Is it just an unorthodox way to make ends meet or a new kind of exploitation?
Thursday, August 06, 2015
Sexual assault and the legal system
In sexual assault accusations and the left, Fredrik deBoer cautions that we should not eliminate nor relax legal standards regarding the burden of proof and presumption of innocence in the prosecution of allegations of sexual abuse. deBoer notes that even with these standards, abuses of the legal process can, as in the satanic ritual abuse hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s, result in verdicts that would be comical if not for their profound, tragic human toll. deBoer claims that some on the left are ignoring the value of these skeptical standards with regard to rape and sexual abuse allegations. While it's true that a certain degree of skepticism is always necessary, deBoer is mostly full of shit. All of the sources he actually cites: Late British Prime Minister Edward Heath Accused of Raping 12-Year-Old, Zerlina Maxwell's No matter what Jackie said, we should generally believe rape claims, and Jessica Valenti's Choosing Comfort Over Truth: What It Means to Defend Woody Allen, have nothing to do with the legal system. deBoer writes that "the conventional progressive wisdom has become that anything other thank [sic] blanket presumption of guilt is actively offensive and misogynist. You can read arguments from people like Zerlina Maxwell and Jessica Valenti if you think that’s an exaggeration." But, as noted above, none of the issues above have anything to do with legal standards. Indeed, Zerlina Maxwell explicitly states, "This is not a legal argument about what standards we should use in the courts; it’s a moral one, about what happens outside the legal system." To make his argument at all compelling, deBoer really needs to address this disclaimer, showing evidence it is disingenuous, or that the legal system's evidentiary standards really should prevail in general discourse. He does not do so, nor does he really show that the real miscarriages of justice he cites at the beginning really were due to abandonment of legal standards of burden of proof and presumption of innocence.
But I'm not really here to criticize deBoer's piece. deBoer is brilliant when he's right, a complete prick when he's wrong, and you just have to deal with that if you're going to read him. And I think he's worth reading: even when he's being a willfully obtuse prick, he's always interesting, and unlike a lot of writers, even his atrocious arguments are worth refuting.
Instead, I want to talk about what the legal system is and is not, and argue that it's a terrible idea to adopt legal thinking at any level about sexual assault and misogyny.
The capitalist legal system, consisting of legislatures, police, courts, jails, and prisons, exists to reproduce capitalism. The legal system's primary function is to create and maintain the criminal class that, apparently, capitalism desperately needs. (Why capitalism needs a criminal class is beyond the scope of this post, but if capitalism did not need a criminal class, we would not spend so much time and effort creating one.) The legal system both creates individual criminals, and forms those individuals into a social/economic class in the Marxist sense.
If we want to create and maintain a class of people who are criminal sex offenders, then yes, absolutely, that's what the legal system is for.
To a certain extent, yes, we want to "create" sex offenders, i.e. we want people who are treating women in a particular way that is presently considered normal and acceptable to become criminals. But that's not the kind of criminals the legal system creates. The legal system exists to take people who have done nothing morally wrong (besides being poor or black) and transform them from honest citizens to career criminals. I don't think that anyone (aside from a few lunatics) wants to turn honest men who want to treat women with respect into sex offenders.
The way that capitalism destroys something is not by making it illegal and putting people in jail. They way capitalism destroys something is by making it unprofitable. The issue is not whether Bill Cosby, for example, should or should not go to jail. The real issue is that Bill Cosby's career, enormously profitable to himself and many hangers-on, should absolutely have been nuked from orbit the minute we had reasonable suspicion — not legal proof — that he was a serial rapist.
We don't need to make sexual assault more criminal. We need to make not only sexual assault but mere misogyny unprofitable, even economically ruinous.
But I'm not really here to criticize deBoer's piece. deBoer is brilliant when he's right, a complete prick when he's wrong, and you just have to deal with that if you're going to read him. And I think he's worth reading: even when he's being a willfully obtuse prick, he's always interesting, and unlike a lot of writers, even his atrocious arguments are worth refuting.
Instead, I want to talk about what the legal system is and is not, and argue that it's a terrible idea to adopt legal thinking at any level about sexual assault and misogyny.
The capitalist legal system, consisting of legislatures, police, courts, jails, and prisons, exists to reproduce capitalism. The legal system's primary function is to create and maintain the criminal class that, apparently, capitalism desperately needs. (Why capitalism needs a criminal class is beyond the scope of this post, but if capitalism did not need a criminal class, we would not spend so much time and effort creating one.) The legal system both creates individual criminals, and forms those individuals into a social/economic class in the Marxist sense.
If we want to create and maintain a class of people who are criminal sex offenders, then yes, absolutely, that's what the legal system is for.
To a certain extent, yes, we want to "create" sex offenders, i.e. we want people who are treating women in a particular way that is presently considered normal and acceptable to become criminals. But that's not the kind of criminals the legal system creates. The legal system exists to take people who have done nothing morally wrong (besides being poor or black) and transform them from honest citizens to career criminals. I don't think that anyone (aside from a few lunatics) wants to turn honest men who want to treat women with respect into sex offenders.
The way that capitalism destroys something is not by making it illegal and putting people in jail. They way capitalism destroys something is by making it unprofitable. The issue is not whether Bill Cosby, for example, should or should not go to jail. The real issue is that Bill Cosby's career, enormously profitable to himself and many hangers-on, should absolutely have been nuked from orbit the minute we had reasonable suspicion — not legal proof — that he was a serial rapist.
We don't need to make sexual assault more criminal. We need to make not only sexual assault but mere misogyny unprofitable, even economically ruinous.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Regulating sex
Ugh... what a terrible article. In Regulating Sex, Judith Shulevitz argues that affirmive consent laws could lead to a host of unintended problems. I think her concerns are way overblown.
Shulevitz introduces a hypothetical proposed by 70 of the 4,000+ members of elite American Law Institute:
I'm not a lawyer, but this doesn't seem like a big issue. The authors simply take for granted that the "thrill" constitutes "sexual gratification," but does it really? Would person B actually complain? Would a prosecutor prosecute? Would a judge or jury find that holding hands constituted sexual gratification?
And, maybe, it really might be a bad idea to hold someone's hand without their express permission.
Shulevitz also worries about disproportionate penalties. Even per the above, if Person B complains, a prosecutor prosecutes, and a judge or jury actually finds Person A guilty, should Person A above be imprisoned for years and be publicly registered as a sex offender?
Well, duh, no. We can create degrees of "Criminal Sexual Contact," for which inappropriate hand-holding could be only an infraction. Our present definition of criminal sexual contact only prohibits the most extreme behavior, and thus warrants a proportionate penalty; if we're going to radically broaden the definition, then we can just as easily make the penalties proportionate.
All these sorts of weird edge cases are important, and the best minds of law should think about them carefully and write the statutes appropriately. But we have hundreds of years of experience fine tuning laws like this. This kind of minutia is appropriate for expert legal debate, but not to challenge the political concept of affirmative consent.
Essentially, Shulevitz asks what might happen if "victims", politicians, prosecutors, judges, and juries all act in extraordinarily moronic ways or with unaccountably bad faith. But the law is not set up as algorithms to regulate the behavior of morons. The law applies to, and is administered by, human beings, not sphex wasps.
It is very important to remember that affirmative consent is being discussed to solve a real problem: women, often young and vulnerable, getting pressured or intoxicated and not actively protesting completely unwanted sexual activity. I'm willing to be a little extra careful about holding hands to decisively prosecute these real cases.
Shulevitz introduces a hypothetical proposed by 70 of the 4,000+ members of elite American Law Institute:
Person A and Person B are on a date and walking down the street. Person A, feeling romantically and sexually attracted, timidly reaches out to hold B’s hand and feels a thrill as their hands touch. Person B does nothing, but six months later files a criminal complaint. Person A is guilty of ‘Criminal Sexual Contact’ under proposed Section 213.6(3)(a).
I'm not a lawyer, but this doesn't seem like a big issue. The authors simply take for granted that the "thrill" constitutes "sexual gratification," but does it really? Would person B actually complain? Would a prosecutor prosecute? Would a judge or jury find that holding hands constituted sexual gratification?
And, maybe, it really might be a bad idea to hold someone's hand without their express permission.
Shulevitz also worries about disproportionate penalties. Even per the above, if Person B complains, a prosecutor prosecutes, and a judge or jury actually finds Person A guilty, should Person A above be imprisoned for years and be publicly registered as a sex offender?
Well, duh, no. We can create degrees of "Criminal Sexual Contact," for which inappropriate hand-holding could be only an infraction. Our present definition of criminal sexual contact only prohibits the most extreme behavior, and thus warrants a proportionate penalty; if we're going to radically broaden the definition, then we can just as easily make the penalties proportionate.
All these sorts of weird edge cases are important, and the best minds of law should think about them carefully and write the statutes appropriately. But we have hundreds of years of experience fine tuning laws like this. This kind of minutia is appropriate for expert legal debate, but not to challenge the political concept of affirmative consent.
Essentially, Shulevitz asks what might happen if "victims", politicians, prosecutors, judges, and juries all act in extraordinarily moronic ways or with unaccountably bad faith. But the law is not set up as algorithms to regulate the behavior of morons. The law applies to, and is administered by, human beings, not sphex wasps.
It is very important to remember that affirmative consent is being discussed to solve a real problem: women, often young and vulnerable, getting pressured or intoxicated and not actively protesting completely unwanted sexual activity. I'm willing to be a little extra careful about holding hands to decisively prosecute these real cases.
Sunday, November 02, 2014
Affirmative consent
In Sex Is Serious, Christian (presumably liberal) philosopher and theologian Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig parallels the politics of affirmative consent and conservative Christian, especially Catholic, sanctification of sex. Bruenig highlights a perspicacious, crucial element of conservative sexual ideology: fertility is, in their view, the essential, ineluctable component of sex; to withhold fertility is to render whatever physical acts ensue as not sex. Indeed, by withholding fertility, people corrupt the physical act, rendering the act something not just irrelevant but deeply and perhaps permanently harmful. Critically examining the ethics of affirmative consent, with the recent passage of California's SB 967 as a paradigmatic example, Bruenig notes that advocates of affirmative consent hold that consent, in the strongest form, is the essential, ineluctable component of sex; without consent, whatever physical acts ensue are not not sex, and deeply harmful. Bruenig juxtaposes affirmative consent with the general feminist complaint against pornography to draw the conclusion that like conservative Christianity, "consent feminism" seeks to use state power to impose normative sexuality, a vision of what sex ought to be: "The law makes a statement about the nature of the right kind of sex in general, and also claims that the right kind of sex is serious enough to merit legal intervention." While Bruenig accurately notes a similarity, the similarity is trivial and misses the truly important question: who decides what kind of sexuality is right or wrong?
The juxtaposition of consent and pornography is specious. The feminist critique of pornography has never been that viewing sexual activity for the purpose of arousal is by itself inherently bad. The critique is, and always has been, that in a patriarchal society, pornography is predominately a tool used to culturally normalize the inferior and subordinate status of women. As Gloria Steinem says in the interview Bruenig links to, "We have to say pornography is not erotica, porn means female slavery. It means the depiction of female slavery." There are exceptions, but pornography as normalization of subordination is so pervasive that it deserves general condemnation; the exceptions truly are exceptional. A good analogy, perhaps, is with the police: in theory, the police serve an important, perhaps necessary social role; in practice, however, in a misogynist, racist, capitalist society, the police so predominantly serve as an instrument of oppression of women, people of color, and the poor and working class that they deserve general condemnation. The practical critique does not necessarily negate the theoretically positive value. Pornography is not about sex at all; it is about subordination. But pornography is a side issue.
Because sex happens between (at least) two people, sex is an inherently social act. The frequent use of erotica (and perhaps pornography in the feminist sense) in masturbation makes even this apparently individual act deeply social. Thus, the question is not whether we construct social norms and customs about sex; the question is what kind of social norms and customs we construct. Even the idea that people should have nothing at all to say about others' sexuality would be a social norm, in need of construction. And even then, we would still have to socially negotiate what are appropriate and inappropriate ways, places, and times that people get into sexual relationships. Advocates can unreservedly admit to the charge that we are trying to use the law not to codify existing standards but to change the culture. [ETA] Bruenig herself is trying to advocate her own vision of what sex should be - fluid, spontaneous, without a lot of niggling worries about consent. [/ETA] If Bruenig were just trying to draw and deep parallels between conservative Christians and consent feminists just on the basis of participating in the social construction of sexual norms, she would be making a completely trivial point: social people are social.
To my knowledge, no one believes that sex is unimportant or trivial. Affirmative consent ethics are not at all hypocritical or contradictory. Sex-positive feminism is not dedicated, as Bruenig claims, to "everyone having fun"; sex is not "little more than a silly pastime." The "SlutWalk moment" was not about affirming the value of "frivolous no-strings-attached" sex. It was about establishing women unapologetically as sexual beings, who want sex, and, more importantly who get to choose and consent themselves to expression of their own sexuality on their own terms. If that happens to be casual sex, well, that's their own choice, not mine. Consent is not necessary to protect casual sex; the fundamental point of SlutWalk is that sex is not something that must be pushed onto categorically sex-averse or -ashamed women; women can and do consent to sex, for their own enjoyment and fulfillment. Again, were Bruenig simply saying that affirmative consent ethics upholds the importance of sex, she would be making another trivial point.
But Bruenig has a deeper point: affirmative consent takes something important away from sex. Bruenig argues first that the law has always required consent; new laws change only the "expression of consent, which is an intervention into the way sex is [emphasis original]." According to Bruenig, affirmative consent ethics promote
Bruenig, however, massively overstates her case. Even in a perfect world, without a hegemonic patriarchy, and even if affirmative consent laws were applicable generally instead of just to higher education institutions in California, affirmative consent does not change how sex is except to exclude rape. First, Bruenig unaccountably asserts that according to SB-967 excludes body language as a form of consent. Antioch College's 1993 sexual assault policy does require verbal consent (which in context is not a terrible idea; see below), but SB-967 says nothing of the sort; it mandates that agreement must be "affirmative, conscious, and voluntary" as well as ongoing. I've been sexually active for around thirty years, from one night stands to marriage, and I have never had a problem interpreting body language as unequivocally granting or withholding consent. Consequently, I have never had a problem with a woman later asserting that I had unconsciously or inadvertently violated her consent. Establishment and maintenance of consent has never caused a lack of passion, spontaneity, fluidity or any other positive aspect of sex.
The only thing that affirmative consent ethics establish is that "I didn't know he or she did not consent" is no longer a defense against sexual assault. SB-967 says that the only legitimate defense to sexual assault is "I had good reason to know he or she did consent." Indeed, SB-967 does not change the legal theory of sexual assault that much. In edge cases, such as statutory rape above a particular age, consent been an affirmative defense against charges of sexual assault: the defendant has the burden of proof, not the prosecution. Fundamentally, I would never defend myself against a charge of sexual assault by saying only that I didn't know a woman did not consent; if I do not know — and have good reason to know — a woman really does consent, I don't have sex. I have been at every stage of sexual activity when a woman has subtly or obviously indicated that she wants to stop. I stop. Period. I do not proceed unless and until I am absolutely clear that she wants to stop. Period. This is not rocket science. Affirmative consent places zero additional boundaries on my own sexuality.
I am personally a relatively sophisticated, perceptive middle-aged man. Not every college student, however, has the benefit of my upbringing and experience. It is critically important to understand that SB-967, as well as the Antioch College policy are aimed not at sophisticated, independent, self-confident adults, but at college students. These are typically young men and women, both sexually and socially inexperienced. Yes, we want to let them experiment, we need to allow them, as the 1993 New York Times article, 'Ask First' at Antioch,, that Bruenig cites, to make mistakes. But only some mistakes. Although no longer acting in loco parentis, college administrators need to help young people avoid catastrophic mistakes. We do not, for example, want to blithely allow young women to mistakenly become pregnant. We do not want to allow young people to mistakenly get sexually transmitted infections. And we do not want young people (indeed anyone) to "mistakenly" violate the personal autonomy and integrity of another person. Hence colleges prohibit bullying and fraternity hazing. And they should also take steps not ordinarily necessary for adults to prevent non-consensual sex. Even the Antioch College policy is reasonable. There are, of course, sexually and socially sophisticated eighteen year olds, who will largely take care of themselves, but if you're become sexually active with an inexperienced eighteen year old, especially if you yourself are more experienced and sophisticated, you could do a hell of a lot worse than establishing explicit verbal consent at every stage. That's how a person becomes sophisticated and experienced, and can move on to more subtle forms of communication.
Fundamentally, consent is first of all complex, and it is not about only sex: consent is the fundamental virtue of liberalism. (The Marxist critique of liberalism and capitalism does not deny the value consent; we claim that consent is necessary but not sufficient, especially in cases of indirect economic pressure.) Even a world without patriarchy, establishment of affirmative consent just brings this fundamental liberal value to the realm of sexuality.
But of course we do not live in a perfect world: we live in a world where patriarchy, although compromised, still retains considerable power. Men do get raped, and violation of consent for men, especially young homosexual men, is an important issue. But rape and sexual assault is a special problem for women. As Susan Brownmiller argues extensively in Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, for centuries, perhaps millennia, the patriarchy has used rape (among other means) to exert its power and domination over women. Rape is not an isolated criminal act; rape has been, and still is, a tool to maintain the subordination of women. Even overt, forcible rape is still inadequately prosecuted, especially on college campuses when committed by high status male students such as athletes and fraternity members. (e.g. here, here, here, here, and an attempt at a depressingly long comprehensive list of just college rapes football players). A frequent defense in these overt rapes is that the perpetrators believed the victim had consented, placing the burden of proof on the victim to show she unequivocally did not consent. Shifting the burden of proof to the perpetrators can help shut down this legal strategy.
[ETA (forgot to pay off my thesis statement!] It's unclear why Bruenig tries to compare conservative Christians. If she were writing a college "common ground" essay, she would argue that the common ground between conservative Christians and consent feminists was a good thing (if it were to exist; I'm unconvinced that conservative Christians really have the temporal fulfillment of human beings at the forefront). Instead, she seems to take more of a "pox on both your houses" view, an Eric Hoffer communists-and-fascists-are-the-same view that people who are genuinely concerned about sex and its place in society are both trying to ruin it, or at least subordinate sex to a political agenda. But the question is not about what sex should be, it's about who decides how sex should be.
There are really only three possibilities about who should decide. First, morally privileged authorities such as the church. If you think you're enjoying sex, but it's not procreative, then they know, because they have privileged information about what God thinks about sex, that you're just fooling yourself, and you need to be protected from your own stupidity and moral ignorance. Second, the powerful (with, obviously, some overlap with authority). Men are typically stronger and more powerful than women; the mob is more powerful than the individual. Whatever men can get by force, overtly or subtly, is by definition good. Third and finally, the individual. It is the great paradox of liberalism* that the rights and privileges of the individual can be guaranteed only by the state; otherwise, the individual is always subject to the mob. Fundamentally, that's what feminist affirmative consent ethics do: make sex whatever each individual wants it to be, irrespective of what anyone else might think, necessarily using state power to protect the weaker from the stronger, and the individual from the mob. Intentionally or not (probably unintentionally), Bruenig regrettably comes down on the side of the stronger against the weaker.
*Socialism expands and does not resolve this paradox; communism (hopefully) resolves the paradox by securing to each individual sufficient economic power to truly make the state wither away.
The message that affirmative consent gives to women, especially young women, is that their sexuality is their own, no one else's, and they are free to consent, and free to withhold consent, at their pleasure, not anyone else's. This is the basis not only of modern liberal virtue but of the empowerment and freedom of every woman. These standards deserve our unequivocal, uncompromising assent.
The juxtaposition of consent and pornography is specious. The feminist critique of pornography has never been that viewing sexual activity for the purpose of arousal is by itself inherently bad. The critique is, and always has been, that in a patriarchal society, pornography is predominately a tool used to culturally normalize the inferior and subordinate status of women. As Gloria Steinem says in the interview Bruenig links to, "We have to say pornography is not erotica, porn means female slavery. It means the depiction of female slavery." There are exceptions, but pornography as normalization of subordination is so pervasive that it deserves general condemnation; the exceptions truly are exceptional. A good analogy, perhaps, is with the police: in theory, the police serve an important, perhaps necessary social role; in practice, however, in a misogynist, racist, capitalist society, the police so predominantly serve as an instrument of oppression of women, people of color, and the poor and working class that they deserve general condemnation. The practical critique does not necessarily negate the theoretically positive value. Pornography is not about sex at all; it is about subordination. But pornography is a side issue.
Because sex happens between (at least) two people, sex is an inherently social act. The frequent use of erotica (and perhaps pornography in the feminist sense) in masturbation makes even this apparently individual act deeply social. Thus, the question is not whether we construct social norms and customs about sex; the question is what kind of social norms and customs we construct. Even the idea that people should have nothing at all to say about others' sexuality would be a social norm, in need of construction. And even then, we would still have to socially negotiate what are appropriate and inappropriate ways, places, and times that people get into sexual relationships. Advocates can unreservedly admit to the charge that we are trying to use the law not to codify existing standards but to change the culture. [ETA] Bruenig herself is trying to advocate her own vision of what sex should be - fluid, spontaneous, without a lot of niggling worries about consent. [/ETA] If Bruenig were just trying to draw and deep parallels between conservative Christians and consent feminists just on the basis of participating in the social construction of sexual norms, she would be making a completely trivial point: social people are social.
To my knowledge, no one believes that sex is unimportant or trivial. Affirmative consent ethics are not at all hypocritical or contradictory. Sex-positive feminism is not dedicated, as Bruenig claims, to "everyone having fun"; sex is not "little more than a silly pastime." The "SlutWalk moment" was not about affirming the value of "frivolous no-strings-attached" sex. It was about establishing women unapologetically as sexual beings, who want sex, and, more importantly who get to choose and consent themselves to expression of their own sexuality on their own terms. If that happens to be casual sex, well, that's their own choice, not mine. Consent is not necessary to protect casual sex; the fundamental point of SlutWalk is that sex is not something that must be pushed onto categorically sex-averse or -ashamed women; women can and do consent to sex, for their own enjoyment and fulfillment. Again, were Bruenig simply saying that affirmative consent ethics upholds the importance of sex, she would be making another trivial point.
But Bruenig has a deeper point: affirmative consent takes something important away from sex. Bruenig argues first that the law has always required consent; new laws change only the "expression of consent, which is an intervention into the way sex is [emphasis original]." According to Bruenig, affirmative consent ethics promote
a particular kind of sex, specifically that which is marked by mutual concern, unreserved enthusiasm, and ongoing mutual engagement—a shared focus on body language and verbal cues, refreshed step-by-step, underscored by an honest concern for the other person’s mental and emotional state with regard to the sex actbut ignore "bored sex, disinterested sex, or sex with reservations [emphasis original]." Affirmative consent ethics make women fundamentally mysterious: "women are essentially unknowable, that the usual ways of reading us can’t be trusted, and that our minds must be constantly probed for affirmative signals." Affirmative consent ethics, according to Bruenig, change how we have sex, but do not address sex as it actually is.
Bruenig, however, massively overstates her case. Even in a perfect world, without a hegemonic patriarchy, and even if affirmative consent laws were applicable generally instead of just to higher education institutions in California, affirmative consent does not change how sex is except to exclude rape. First, Bruenig unaccountably asserts that according to SB-967 excludes body language as a form of consent. Antioch College's 1993 sexual assault policy does require verbal consent (which in context is not a terrible idea; see below), but SB-967 says nothing of the sort; it mandates that agreement must be "affirmative, conscious, and voluntary" as well as ongoing. I've been sexually active for around thirty years, from one night stands to marriage, and I have never had a problem interpreting body language as unequivocally granting or withholding consent. Consequently, I have never had a problem with a woman later asserting that I had unconsciously or inadvertently violated her consent. Establishment and maintenance of consent has never caused a lack of passion, spontaneity, fluidity or any other positive aspect of sex.
The only thing that affirmative consent ethics establish is that "I didn't know he or she did not consent" is no longer a defense against sexual assault. SB-967 says that the only legitimate defense to sexual assault is "I had good reason to know he or she did consent." Indeed, SB-967 does not change the legal theory of sexual assault that much. In edge cases, such as statutory rape above a particular age, consent been an affirmative defense against charges of sexual assault: the defendant has the burden of proof, not the prosecution. Fundamentally, I would never defend myself against a charge of sexual assault by saying only that I didn't know a woman did not consent; if I do not know — and have good reason to know — a woman really does consent, I don't have sex. I have been at every stage of sexual activity when a woman has subtly or obviously indicated that she wants to stop. I stop. Period. I do not proceed unless and until I am absolutely clear that she wants to stop. Period. This is not rocket science. Affirmative consent places zero additional boundaries on my own sexuality.
I am personally a relatively sophisticated, perceptive middle-aged man. Not every college student, however, has the benefit of my upbringing and experience. It is critically important to understand that SB-967, as well as the Antioch College policy are aimed not at sophisticated, independent, self-confident adults, but at college students. These are typically young men and women, both sexually and socially inexperienced. Yes, we want to let them experiment, we need to allow them, as the 1993 New York Times article, 'Ask First' at Antioch,, that Bruenig cites, to make mistakes. But only some mistakes. Although no longer acting in loco parentis, college administrators need to help young people avoid catastrophic mistakes. We do not, for example, want to blithely allow young women to mistakenly become pregnant. We do not want to allow young people to mistakenly get sexually transmitted infections. And we do not want young people (indeed anyone) to "mistakenly" violate the personal autonomy and integrity of another person. Hence colleges prohibit bullying and fraternity hazing. And they should also take steps not ordinarily necessary for adults to prevent non-consensual sex. Even the Antioch College policy is reasonable. There are, of course, sexually and socially sophisticated eighteen year olds, who will largely take care of themselves, but if you're become sexually active with an inexperienced eighteen year old, especially if you yourself are more experienced and sophisticated, you could do a hell of a lot worse than establishing explicit verbal consent at every stage. That's how a person becomes sophisticated and experienced, and can move on to more subtle forms of communication.
Fundamentally, consent is first of all complex, and it is not about only sex: consent is the fundamental virtue of liberalism. (The Marxist critique of liberalism and capitalism does not deny the value consent; we claim that consent is necessary but not sufficient, especially in cases of indirect economic pressure.) Even a world without patriarchy, establishment of affirmative consent just brings this fundamental liberal value to the realm of sexuality.
But of course we do not live in a perfect world: we live in a world where patriarchy, although compromised, still retains considerable power. Men do get raped, and violation of consent for men, especially young homosexual men, is an important issue. But rape and sexual assault is a special problem for women. As Susan Brownmiller argues extensively in Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, for centuries, perhaps millennia, the patriarchy has used rape (among other means) to exert its power and domination over women. Rape is not an isolated criminal act; rape has been, and still is, a tool to maintain the subordination of women. Even overt, forcible rape is still inadequately prosecuted, especially on college campuses when committed by high status male students such as athletes and fraternity members. (e.g. here, here, here, here, and an attempt at a depressingly long comprehensive list of just college rapes football players). A frequent defense in these overt rapes is that the perpetrators believed the victim had consented, placing the burden of proof on the victim to show she unequivocally did not consent. Shifting the burden of proof to the perpetrators can help shut down this legal strategy.
[ETA (forgot to pay off my thesis statement!] It's unclear why Bruenig tries to compare conservative Christians. If she were writing a college "common ground" essay, she would argue that the common ground between conservative Christians and consent feminists was a good thing (if it were to exist; I'm unconvinced that conservative Christians really have the temporal fulfillment of human beings at the forefront). Instead, she seems to take more of a "pox on both your houses" view, an Eric Hoffer communists-and-fascists-are-the-same view that people who are genuinely concerned about sex and its place in society are both trying to ruin it, or at least subordinate sex to a political agenda. But the question is not about what sex should be, it's about who decides how sex should be.
There are really only three possibilities about who should decide. First, morally privileged authorities such as the church. If you think you're enjoying sex, but it's not procreative, then they know, because they have privileged information about what God thinks about sex, that you're just fooling yourself, and you need to be protected from your own stupidity and moral ignorance. Second, the powerful (with, obviously, some overlap with authority). Men are typically stronger and more powerful than women; the mob is more powerful than the individual. Whatever men can get by force, overtly or subtly, is by definition good. Third and finally, the individual. It is the great paradox of liberalism* that the rights and privileges of the individual can be guaranteed only by the state; otherwise, the individual is always subject to the mob. Fundamentally, that's what feminist affirmative consent ethics do: make sex whatever each individual wants it to be, irrespective of what anyone else might think, necessarily using state power to protect the weaker from the stronger, and the individual from the mob. Intentionally or not (probably unintentionally), Bruenig regrettably comes down on the side of the stronger against the weaker.
*Socialism expands and does not resolve this paradox; communism (hopefully) resolves the paradox by securing to each individual sufficient economic power to truly make the state wither away.
The message that affirmative consent gives to women, especially young women, is that their sexuality is their own, no one else's, and they are free to consent, and free to withhold consent, at their pleasure, not anyone else's. This is the basis not only of modern liberal virtue but of the empowerment and freedom of every woman. These standards deserve our unequivocal, uncompromising assent.
Saturday, September 06, 2014
Onrushing penis
"Never, in the history of humanity, has a man been at risk of a woman leaping out of the bushes and accidentally impaling herself on his onrushing erect penis." -- PZ Myers
Friday, July 04, 2014
Paying for birth control
The argument that employers such as Hobby Lobby have a right to refuse to pay for birth control seems nonsensical on its face.
My employer pays for everything* I buy. They pay my rent, my food, my car, my beer, my movie tickets. All of this money comes from my paycheck. Traditionally, we hold that although my employer pays for everything I buy, they have no standing whatsoever to tell me how to spend it. We could, of course, make a different social decision about that, but if a principle of law is to keep things consistent, then the obvious answer is that the employer is paying employees in money, and employers cannot dictate what employees do with that money, whether the money is paid directly to the employees or passed through directly as premiums to an insurance company.
*Or would if I still worked a straight job.
Just that companies are mandated to buy insurance does not change anything. Companies have a lot of coercive mandates regarding my paycheck. They have to pay me the minimum wage, they have to pay me for all my time, they have to pay me on time, they have to pay social security taxes (mine and theirs) and unemployment insurance premiums, etc.
The whole point of paying employees in money instead of in kind is precisely to place the decision about what to consume in the hands of the employees. If we are consistent on the principle of payment in money, then we either say that employers have no say on how employees spend their pay, or employers have say over everything employees buy with their pay.
Of course, the consistency the Supreme Court is actually employing is that conservative employers have say over how female employees manage their sexuality. Women (especially women workers) are, of course, inferior, and women's sexuality is evil (unless they're having sex to pop out Republican babies and no orgasms please). It is of the highest social necessity that someone regulate women's sexuality; if we let government do it, we might end up with something (ugh!) democratic. It's much better to place this regulation in the hands of corporations; the owners of land and capital have been explicitly and intentionally insulated from democracy since the founding of the republic.
My employer pays for everything* I buy. They pay my rent, my food, my car, my beer, my movie tickets. All of this money comes from my paycheck. Traditionally, we hold that although my employer pays for everything I buy, they have no standing whatsoever to tell me how to spend it. We could, of course, make a different social decision about that, but if a principle of law is to keep things consistent, then the obvious answer is that the employer is paying employees in money, and employers cannot dictate what employees do with that money, whether the money is paid directly to the employees or passed through directly as premiums to an insurance company.
*Or would if I still worked a straight job.
Just that companies are mandated to buy insurance does not change anything. Companies have a lot of coercive mandates regarding my paycheck. They have to pay me the minimum wage, they have to pay me for all my time, they have to pay me on time, they have to pay social security taxes (mine and theirs) and unemployment insurance premiums, etc.
The whole point of paying employees in money instead of in kind is precisely to place the decision about what to consume in the hands of the employees. If we are consistent on the principle of payment in money, then we either say that employers have no say on how employees spend their pay, or employers have say over everything employees buy with their pay.
Of course, the consistency the Supreme Court is actually employing is that conservative employers have say over how female employees manage their sexuality. Women (especially women workers) are, of course, inferior, and women's sexuality is evil (unless they're having sex to pop out Republican babies and no orgasms please). It is of the highest social necessity that someone regulate women's sexuality; if we let government do it, we might end up with something (ugh!) democratic. It's much better to place this regulation in the hands of corporations; the owners of land and capital have been explicitly and intentionally insulated from democracy since the founding of the republic.
Monday, February 03, 2014
Sexual assault
Commenter HH disagrees with my condemnation of Nancy McDermott's essay, The Triumph of the Maternalists:
HH is, I think, mistaken in three ways.
First, granting arguendo that some US campuses handle sexual assault in a ridiculous manner, such a premise does not prove the author's thesis that we are somehow destroying autonomy, rationality, or Enlightenment values. People and institutions do stupid shit all the time without destroying civilization as we know it.
Second, I don't know that any US campus actually does handle sexual assault in a ridiculous manner. I'm not saying I know they don't, but I've never seen a news report of anyone unjustly accused or convicted of sexual assault on a college campus. (Note that unjustly convicted is different from wrongly convicted.) I have, however, seen a fair number of news reports where rather obvious sexual assault was un- or under-prosecuted, and the victims harassed and bullied for reporting the assault. I could be swayed by evidence here, but I haven't yet seen it.
The most important mistake, however, is a fundamental misunderstanding of what colleges and universities are. I touched on this point in my previous commentary, and I want to expand it now.
A university is not a commons; it is a professional environment. Every professional environment has norms and standards that go beyond universal legal norms. McDermott highlights one such norm: Maternalistic authoritarianism
McDermott juxtaposes her charge of deprivation of rights with a mention of the University of Montana's definition of sexual harassment and the Office of Civil Rights' approval. But the university's definition has nothing to do with any procedural rights mentioned in the preceding sentence. More importantly, the university's definition is completely appropriate for a professional environment. People in a professional environment assume obligations to the other members that go far beyond the negative legal limitations and procedural requirements applied to autonomous citizens in the commons. When people join a professional organization, they must necessarily surrender part of their individual autonomy: they must work toward not their own personal goals, but toward the goal of the organization or institution.
I can write the most vile and hateful opinions on this blog, and the United States and my own state will not lift a finger to punish me. If someone brings a criminal charge against me, they must satisfy procedural and substantive requirements before the court will punish me; even if I did the deed, if it cannot be legally proven, I will not be punished. If, however, I were to write vile and hateful things about my coworkers, my employer would be perfectly justified in firing me not for committing a crime, but for violating the basic standards of professionalism. And if one of my coworkers and I have a conflict, my employer must resolve the conflict; they cannot just say (as the court can say), "Not proven: work it out yourselves." Finally, my employer has to maintain a professional environment, even if a specific act does not actually harm anyone. Even if nobody really cares, I cannot walk into work in raggedy cutoffs and a dirty tank tee-shirt. (Yes, it is true that in a capitalist society, employers and other organizations routinely leverage their legitimate right to maintain a professional environment to oppress their workers, but the necessity of a professional environment still stands.)
When you enter any professional environment, you have a positive obligation to learn what it means to be a professional in that environment, and you have a positive obligation to act professionally. Ignorance is no excuse, and lack of specific harm is no excuse.
We have dismantled the legal structures barring women from fully participating in civil society. Women may not be legally barred from any occupation or any social role. However, although we have dismantled the legal barriers, there are still profound social barriers that push women out of many areas of civil society. The most egregious of those social barriers is sexual harassment. Because it tends to discourage women from full civic participation, it is intolerable. If you do not know that sexual harassment is a real problem, you are not merely ignorant, you are willfully ignorant. If I have offended you, good.
It doesn't matter if you did not intend to harass your coworker when you said to her, "Nice ass!" It doesn't matter that that particular women did not take offense at your comment. The comment itself is still unprofessional. If you worked for me, and I heard you say that, even if I didn't fire you on the spot, you would have to eat a ton of shit to keep your job. If you think I'm an asshole for that stance, good. I like being an asshole to sexist douchebags.
(McDermott also condemns California for restricting certain legal procedures, "the right [of victims] to refuse interview, deposition or discovery requests" from defendants charged with rape. But our legal procedure was not handed down by God. Equality under the law does not depend on every crime having the exact same set of procedural guarantees, especially when there is overwhelming evidence that procedures such as interviews, depositions, and discovery have been used not to seek justice but to harass, intimidate, and discourage women from prosecuting accusations of rape.
Here's a tip for you guys: if you think it's consensual, but the situation might be misconstrued as assault, DON'T HAVE SEX WITH HER. If you don't trust her not to fabricate a charge of rape, DON'T HAVE SEX WITH HER. If you think these standards will prevent you from ever having sex again, hold a seashell to your ear: you will hear the voices of 3.5 billion women breathing a sigh of relief and gratitude.)
We men, with our privilege, have the positive obligation to bend over backwards to include women in civil society. If you do not accept this obligation, then fuck you. The only "right" you're losing is the right to treat women as less than human beings.
I would have to disagree with your evaluation of that article. Some of it is a bit of a strech but the general charge seem reasonably solid.
The way in which sexual assault is handled now on some US campuses is just ridiuclous. It seems a trading of the rights of the accused because more convictions are desired.
HH is, I think, mistaken in three ways.
First, granting arguendo that some US campuses handle sexual assault in a ridiculous manner, such a premise does not prove the author's thesis that we are somehow destroying autonomy, rationality, or Enlightenment values. People and institutions do stupid shit all the time without destroying civilization as we know it.
Second, I don't know that any US campus actually does handle sexual assault in a ridiculous manner. I'm not saying I know they don't, but I've never seen a news report of anyone unjustly accused or convicted of sexual assault on a college campus. (Note that unjustly convicted is different from wrongly convicted.) I have, however, seen a fair number of news reports where rather obvious sexual assault was un- or under-prosecuted, and the victims harassed and bullied for reporting the assault. I could be swayed by evidence here, but I haven't yet seen it.
The most important mistake, however, is a fundamental misunderstanding of what colleges and universities are. I touched on this point in my previous commentary, and I want to expand it now.
A university is not a commons; it is a professional environment. Every professional environment has norms and standards that go beyond universal legal norms. McDermott highlights one such norm: Maternalistic authoritarianism
has so imbued the culture of American college campuses that students accused of sexual misconduct are routinely deprived of their rights, considered guilty until proven innocent, deprived of representation and not permitted to give evidence on their own behalf. The Office of Civil Rights, the US government’s oversight body governing Title IX (the provision that banned discrimination on the basis of sex), recently praised the University of Montana’s definition of sexual harassment, which was so broad it included verbal conduct regardless of the intention of the speaker or whether anyone was offended. The Office of Civil Rights called this a ‘blueprint’ for other policies around the country.As I said before, I've seen no evidence that students are ever, much less, routinely deprived of their rights. (What makes McDermott's article atrocious is that she presents a controversial position as established fact.)
McDermott juxtaposes her charge of deprivation of rights with a mention of the University of Montana's definition of sexual harassment and the Office of Civil Rights' approval. But the university's definition has nothing to do with any procedural rights mentioned in the preceding sentence. More importantly, the university's definition is completely appropriate for a professional environment. People in a professional environment assume obligations to the other members that go far beyond the negative legal limitations and procedural requirements applied to autonomous citizens in the commons. When people join a professional organization, they must necessarily surrender part of their individual autonomy: they must work toward not their own personal goals, but toward the goal of the organization or institution.
I can write the most vile and hateful opinions on this blog, and the United States and my own state will not lift a finger to punish me. If someone brings a criminal charge against me, they must satisfy procedural and substantive requirements before the court will punish me; even if I did the deed, if it cannot be legally proven, I will not be punished. If, however, I were to write vile and hateful things about my coworkers, my employer would be perfectly justified in firing me not for committing a crime, but for violating the basic standards of professionalism. And if one of my coworkers and I have a conflict, my employer must resolve the conflict; they cannot just say (as the court can say), "Not proven: work it out yourselves." Finally, my employer has to maintain a professional environment, even if a specific act does not actually harm anyone. Even if nobody really cares, I cannot walk into work in raggedy cutoffs and a dirty tank tee-shirt. (Yes, it is true that in a capitalist society, employers and other organizations routinely leverage their legitimate right to maintain a professional environment to oppress their workers, but the necessity of a professional environment still stands.)
When you enter any professional environment, you have a positive obligation to learn what it means to be a professional in that environment, and you have a positive obligation to act professionally. Ignorance is no excuse, and lack of specific harm is no excuse.
We have dismantled the legal structures barring women from fully participating in civil society. Women may not be legally barred from any occupation or any social role. However, although we have dismantled the legal barriers, there are still profound social barriers that push women out of many areas of civil society. The most egregious of those social barriers is sexual harassment. Because it tends to discourage women from full civic participation, it is intolerable. If you do not know that sexual harassment is a real problem, you are not merely ignorant, you are willfully ignorant. If I have offended you, good.
It doesn't matter if you did not intend to harass your coworker when you said to her, "Nice ass!" It doesn't matter that that particular women did not take offense at your comment. The comment itself is still unprofessional. If you worked for me, and I heard you say that, even if I didn't fire you on the spot, you would have to eat a ton of shit to keep your job. If you think I'm an asshole for that stance, good. I like being an asshole to sexist douchebags.
(McDermott also condemns California for restricting certain legal procedures, "the right [of victims] to refuse interview, deposition or discovery requests" from defendants charged with rape. But our legal procedure was not handed down by God. Equality under the law does not depend on every crime having the exact same set of procedural guarantees, especially when there is overwhelming evidence that procedures such as interviews, depositions, and discovery have been used not to seek justice but to harass, intimidate, and discourage women from prosecuting accusations of rape.
Here's a tip for you guys: if you think it's consensual, but the situation might be misconstrued as assault, DON'T HAVE SEX WITH HER. If you don't trust her not to fabricate a charge of rape, DON'T HAVE SEX WITH HER. If you think these standards will prevent you from ever having sex again, hold a seashell to your ear: you will hear the voices of 3.5 billion women breathing a sigh of relief and gratitude.)
We men, with our privilege, have the positive obligation to bend over backwards to include women in civil society. If you do not accept this obligation, then fuck you. The only "right" you're losing is the right to treat women as less than human beings.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Damsel in distress
Damsels in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs. Women in Video Games
by Anita Sarkeesian
Part 2
(Note: Sarkeesian explores some realistic, gruesome, and emotionally charged violence in videogames)
by Anita Sarkeesian
Part 2
(Note: Sarkeesian explores some realistic, gruesome, and emotionally charged violence in videogames)
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Separation of church and state
In his essay, Don't tear down that wall!, Roger Ebert argues against legislating religious morality on First Amendment grounds. Ebert draws an analogy between "the eagerness of states to permit the teaching of Creationism . . . in public schools" and "the attempt to legislate birth control, abortion and other matters pertaining to birth." Because issues of birth, pregnancy, and sexuality are dictated by religious belief, attempting to legislate these matters is tantamount to imposing religious belief by law. Instead of passing laws, Ebert argues that to increase social adherence to their moral beliefs, sincere religious believers should try to convert others to their religion. Although I agree with Ebert's politics, and I'm a strong supporter of the Separation of Church and State, his analysis is flawed because he implicitly leaves no mechanism for deciding moral values in a democracy.
It would be convenient if we could use objective, secular scientific reasoning to determine the correct moral values. However, the world does not appear to work that way. As I explore in more depth in my series on Meta-Ethical Subjective Relativism, science cannot establish moral laws in the same way it establishes physical laws. A physical law is, by definition, a statement that despite careful and focused and careful effort, we cannot observe any exception. If we do observe an exception to what we thought was a physical law, we do not conclude that a "miracle" happened; we must readjust our construction of physical law to permit the observation. However, the only interesting moral "laws" are those we do observe contraventions of; a moral law prohibiting killing (under specified circumstances) is useful only to the extent that people do actually kill. Since we cannot (or it is not useful to) "falsify" a moral law by observing an exception, we simply cannot apply the scientific method to determine moral law.
There have been other philosophical approaches to determining moral law, but, lacking scientific foundation, all of them suffer from the Universal Philosophical Refutation. Science can "privilege" hypotheses only because the universe itself appears to refuse to contradict the hypothesis, but when the universe does not speak to the conclusions, any premise can, with a little ingenuity, be abandoned or replaced by its opposite without contradiction. There is no objective way you can say, that it is morally wrong to kill a person (under specific circumstances). There is no objective way you can say, we ought to (somehow) maximize the "well-being" of society. There is no objective way you can say that we should do only what everyone always ought to do. I can simply deny it's wrong to kill a person, maximize utility, or be compelled by the categorical imperative, and although we might not like or respect each other, neither of us can find a contradiction in the other's reasoning.
A democracy fundamentally rejects the idea of objective moral law. Instead of "searching for the truth," about morality, we search for ways we can all live together. Some of those ways involve prohibiting or compelling behavior. Democracy is not a simple matter of always doing what the majority says; because we are not completely stupid, we can look at issues at varying levels of abstraction and generality. A majority of us can, for example, strongly disapprove of specific, concrete speech, such as racist or sexist speech, but still strongly approve generally and abstractly of freedom of speech, and we can decide to implement the general and abstract into law. Furthermore, we have learned to institutionalize certain democratic principles, such as the First Amendment, and making the process of changing those principles complicated and difficult. But at the end of the day everything in a democracy is up to the arbitrary preferences, specific and concrete or general and abstract, of the people. The people are sovereign; because the universe constrains only how we can act, not how we ought to act, there is no higher authority on how we ought to act than the preferences of the people.
Because democracy is based on implementing arbitrary preferences, there is no good way to distinguish arbitrary preferences from arbitrary religious preferences. This is precisely the distinction Ebert tries to draw. Religions have not become popular because they completely ignore our natural preferences. Religions forbid murder and theft not because wow! who'd'a thunk it until God said so, but because a religion that excused or required wanton murder and theft would not gain many adherents. Even so, people usually attach all their moral beliefs to God; just as they believe homosexuality is wrong because God says so, they also believe that murder is wrong because God says so. They are mistaken, of course, no God exists to say anything, but they are mistaken about the justification, not the preference. A secularist is simply more direct. As a secularist, I am tolerant of homosexuality simply because I don't have any preference about what people do with their genitals*; I am intolerant of murder because I strongly prefer that people don't go around killing each other (and I don't give a tinker's damn that I'm infringing on the liberty of people who do want to kill others). The difference is not in the kind of preference, only the justification (or lack thereof); because all preferences are arbitrary, it is incoherent to talk about correct or mistaken preferences; preferences are just brute facts. Thus, it does not make sense to distinguish between different kinds of preferences; all preferences have equal standing.
Rather than placing limitations on motives, since motives are essential preferential, the First Amendment places limitations on the purposes and effects of laws. Rather than making the government either supportive or hostile to religion, the establishment and free exercise clauses, the First Amendment makes the government indifferent to religion. Thus, any law that has a primary or exclusive purpose or effect of establishing or suppressing religion is illegitimate. Although it's not consistently applied, the Lemon Test expresses this doctrine. Even if some law might have a "religious" motivation, it is legitimate so long as its primary purpose and effect are secular. Thus, even if the prohibition of murder were religiously motivated, it has a secular purpose and effect of suppressing the killing of human beings. It is sufficient to limit the purpose and effect of laws without addressing their motivations.
I myself am, of course, a strong proponent of absolute reproductive rights of women. However, I think the "religious motivation" argument against laws that would infringe on women's reproductive rights is fundamentally flawed. Laws limiting reproductive rights have a clear secular purpose: laws restricting abortion and contraception aim to and would have the effect of promoting the creation of and protecting human zygotes and blastocysts. Whether these are good secular purposes is a matter of preference (or many preferences, at different levels of generality and abstraction), but they are clearly secular: they address physical, concrete things about which we can have scientific knowledge. The secular/religious distinction does not by itself address reproductive rights.
Ebert does, however, imply a useful moral distinction. Rather than the distinction between religious and secular morality, we can draw a distinction between social and individual morality. Social morality concerns behavior that has a direct effect on others: killing people, hitting them on the head, taking their stuff, polluting their air and water, denying them employment, housing, or economic activity, etc. Even though people might have preferences as strong as they have concerning social morality, individual morality concerns behavior that does not have a direct effect on others: consensual sexual activity*, masturbation, diet, health care choices, assisted suicide/euthanasia of the terminally ill**, and similar activities. Religion, one's preferences about what to believe about God, is perhaps the most obvious form of private morality; as Jefferson says, religion (or lack thereof) "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." By itself, religion has a purely individual effect.I t it tempting, therefore, to locate what are essentially privacy rights in the First Amendment. But that approach ignores most of Supreme Court jurisprudence. Privacy is a right, and therefore any act that affects no one but those who consent is usually considered private. But privacy rights have been located by the Supreme Court, not in the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment, but in the concept of substantive due process, a consequence of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The issue over contraception and abortion rights is important, but the argument from the establishment clause is a bad argument. It is impossible in principle and actively contrary to democracy to try to distinguish between certain kinds of arbitrary preferences. Because they involve tangible, material entities and activities, not immaterial, invisible entities such as gods and souls, contraception and abortion are, whether we like it or not, secular matters. The best constitutional arguments, indeed the ones actually made by the Supreme Court in Griswald, Roe and others, are found in substantive due process. We must, in a democracy, let people argue (and vote) for any legitimate law, regardless of their individual motivation. If we do not, then we subvert democracy by making some process sovereign over the will of the people, and, more dangerously, unacceptably privilege those individuals who implement that process.
It would be convenient if we could use objective, secular scientific reasoning to determine the correct moral values. However, the world does not appear to work that way. As I explore in more depth in my series on Meta-Ethical Subjective Relativism, science cannot establish moral laws in the same way it establishes physical laws. A physical law is, by definition, a statement that despite careful and focused and careful effort, we cannot observe any exception. If we do observe an exception to what we thought was a physical law, we do not conclude that a "miracle" happened; we must readjust our construction of physical law to permit the observation. However, the only interesting moral "laws" are those we do observe contraventions of; a moral law prohibiting killing (under specified circumstances) is useful only to the extent that people do actually kill. Since we cannot (or it is not useful to) "falsify" a moral law by observing an exception, we simply cannot apply the scientific method to determine moral law.
There have been other philosophical approaches to determining moral law, but, lacking scientific foundation, all of them suffer from the Universal Philosophical Refutation. Science can "privilege" hypotheses only because the universe itself appears to refuse to contradict the hypothesis, but when the universe does not speak to the conclusions, any premise can, with a little ingenuity, be abandoned or replaced by its opposite without contradiction. There is no objective way you can say, that it is morally wrong to kill a person (under specific circumstances). There is no objective way you can say, we ought to (somehow) maximize the "well-being" of society. There is no objective way you can say that we should do only what everyone always ought to do. I can simply deny it's wrong to kill a person, maximize utility, or be compelled by the categorical imperative, and although we might not like or respect each other, neither of us can find a contradiction in the other's reasoning.
A democracy fundamentally rejects the idea of objective moral law. Instead of "searching for the truth," about morality, we search for ways we can all live together. Some of those ways involve prohibiting or compelling behavior. Democracy is not a simple matter of always doing what the majority says; because we are not completely stupid, we can look at issues at varying levels of abstraction and generality. A majority of us can, for example, strongly disapprove of specific, concrete speech, such as racist or sexist speech, but still strongly approve generally and abstractly of freedom of speech, and we can decide to implement the general and abstract into law. Furthermore, we have learned to institutionalize certain democratic principles, such as the First Amendment, and making the process of changing those principles complicated and difficult. But at the end of the day everything in a democracy is up to the arbitrary preferences, specific and concrete or general and abstract, of the people. The people are sovereign; because the universe constrains only how we can act, not how we ought to act, there is no higher authority on how we ought to act than the preferences of the people.
Because democracy is based on implementing arbitrary preferences, there is no good way to distinguish arbitrary preferences from arbitrary religious preferences. This is precisely the distinction Ebert tries to draw. Religions have not become popular because they completely ignore our natural preferences. Religions forbid murder and theft not because wow! who'd'a thunk it until God said so, but because a religion that excused or required wanton murder and theft would not gain many adherents. Even so, people usually attach all their moral beliefs to God; just as they believe homosexuality is wrong because God says so, they also believe that murder is wrong because God says so. They are mistaken, of course, no God exists to say anything, but they are mistaken about the justification, not the preference. A secularist is simply more direct. As a secularist, I am tolerant of homosexuality simply because I don't have any preference about what people do with their genitals*; I am intolerant of murder because I strongly prefer that people don't go around killing each other (and I don't give a tinker's damn that I'm infringing on the liberty of people who do want to kill others). The difference is not in the kind of preference, only the justification (or lack thereof); because all preferences are arbitrary, it is incoherent to talk about correct or mistaken preferences; preferences are just brute facts. Thus, it does not make sense to distinguish between different kinds of preferences; all preferences have equal standing.
Rather than placing limitations on motives, since motives are essential preferential, the First Amendment places limitations on the purposes and effects of laws. Rather than making the government either supportive or hostile to religion, the establishment and free exercise clauses, the First Amendment makes the government indifferent to religion. Thus, any law that has a primary or exclusive purpose or effect of establishing or suppressing religion is illegitimate. Although it's not consistently applied, the Lemon Test expresses this doctrine. Even if some law might have a "religious" motivation, it is legitimate so long as its primary purpose and effect are secular. Thus, even if the prohibition of murder were religiously motivated, it has a secular purpose and effect of suppressing the killing of human beings. It is sufficient to limit the purpose and effect of laws without addressing their motivations.
I myself am, of course, a strong proponent of absolute reproductive rights of women. However, I think the "religious motivation" argument against laws that would infringe on women's reproductive rights is fundamentally flawed. Laws limiting reproductive rights have a clear secular purpose: laws restricting abortion and contraception aim to and would have the effect of promoting the creation of and protecting human zygotes and blastocysts. Whether these are good secular purposes is a matter of preference (or many preferences, at different levels of generality and abstraction), but they are clearly secular: they address physical, concrete things about which we can have scientific knowledge. The secular/religious distinction does not by itself address reproductive rights.
Ebert does, however, imply a useful moral distinction. Rather than the distinction between religious and secular morality, we can draw a distinction between social and individual morality. Social morality concerns behavior that has a direct effect on others: killing people, hitting them on the head, taking their stuff, polluting their air and water, denying them employment, housing, or economic activity, etc. Even though people might have preferences as strong as they have concerning social morality, individual morality concerns behavior that does not have a direct effect on others: consensual sexual activity*, masturbation, diet, health care choices, assisted suicide/euthanasia of the terminally ill**, and similar activities. Religion, one's preferences about what to believe about God, is perhaps the most obvious form of private morality; as Jefferson says, religion (or lack thereof) "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." By itself, religion has a purely individual effect.I t it tempting, therefore, to locate what are essentially privacy rights in the First Amendment. But that approach ignores most of Supreme Court jurisprudence. Privacy is a right, and therefore any act that affects no one but those who consent is usually considered private. But privacy rights have been located by the Supreme Court, not in the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment, but in the concept of substantive due process, a consequence of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
*that does not have a direct, substantial impact on the transmission of infectious disease.
**with appropriate protection for the poor and mentally ill.
**with appropriate protection for the poor and mentally ill.
The issue over contraception and abortion rights is important, but the argument from the establishment clause is a bad argument. It is impossible in principle and actively contrary to democracy to try to distinguish between certain kinds of arbitrary preferences. Because they involve tangible, material entities and activities, not immaterial, invisible entities such as gods and souls, contraception and abortion are, whether we like it or not, secular matters. The best constitutional arguments, indeed the ones actually made by the Supreme Court in Griswald, Roe and others, are found in substantive due process. We must, in a democracy, let people argue (and vote) for any legitimate law, regardless of their individual motivation. If we do not, then we subvert democracy by making some process sovereign over the will of the people, and, more dangerously, unacceptably privilege those individuals who implement that process.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
I wish my mother had aborted me
I wish my mother had aborted me, by Lynn Beisner.
Let me add that the idea that the world would have been worse had I or any other individual never been born seems incredibly narcissistic. At least an order of magnitude more potential human beings have never been born than have actually existed, and abortion counts only for a fraction of those never-existing potential people. We have enough trouble maintaining the people we actually have; there's simply no way to manage the rights for all the people we might have had.
(via HumanistLife)
[N]o one should have to make such a Herculean struggle [as the author's] for simple normalcy. Even given the happiness and success I now enjoy, if I could go back in time and make the choice for my mother, it would be abortion. . . .
It is not easy to say, "I wish my mother had aborted me." The right would have us see abortion as women acting out of cowardice, selfishness, or convenience. But for many women, like my mother, abortion would be an inconvenient act of courage and selflessness. I am sad for both of us that she could not find the courage and selflessness.
Let me add that the idea that the world would have been worse had I or any other individual never been born seems incredibly narcissistic. At least an order of magnitude more potential human beings have never been born than have actually existed, and abortion counts only for a fraction of those never-existing potential people. We have enough trouble maintaining the people we actually have; there's simply no way to manage the rights for all the people we might have had.
(via HumanistLife)
Sunday, January 22, 2012
This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.
— Harry Blackmun, Roe v. Wade
Sunday, August 14, 2011
What's wrong with catcalling women?
What's Wrong with Catcalling Women?
Read the rest
Let me add this...
There's a difference between being attracted to a woman and hitting on her, in the sense of "hitting on" that Sunsara uses. I can't help how my brain is wired: I find certain women visually appealing, without knowing anything about their personalities or characters. But I keep this appeal to myself: that I find a woman appealing does not give me the right even to merely intrude upon her attention. I get to know many people, men and women, in the course of my daily life. I have legitimate, socially acceptable reasons for interacting with them as full human beings. I can evaluate their personality and character; more importantly, I give them an opportunity to evaluate my personality or character. I don't "hit on" women; I get to know people; if the whole package works, and works both ways, we can proceed. We can proceed. There are well-established, legitimate and socially acceptable methods of communicating mutual interest, and if the interest is not mutual, these methods allow either party to disengage gracefully, with a minimum of awkwardness and hurt feelings. I don't count myself a red-hot feminist for this attitude; I consider it nothing but obvious common sense.
I used to be in sales. The guiding principle in sales is to always make it socially awkward for the customer to say "no". It doesn't matter at first what you ask; you just ask questions so that it's easier for the customer to say "yes" from social convention (or you ask questions where the customer gets to "choose" between different ways of saying "yes" to preserve the illusion of choice). If you're approaching a woman like you're a salesman approaching a customer, you're doing it wrong; you're being a creep. Before you ask any woman anything, ask yourself: "Would it be even a little bit awkward for her to say 'no'?" If it would be, shut the fuck up.
There are, I suppose, venues where it might be acceptable to take the sales approach towards women. When you walk into a used car dealership, you want to be sold on a car, n'est pas? (And if you don't want to buy a car, why are you wasting the salesperson's time?) But women have to consciously, explicitly and knowingly choose to enter those venues, they have to be able to leave at any time, and participation cannot be a precondition for any other social task or status, especially a task or status available to men without participation. And the sidewalk, the bus stop, the coffee shop, the convention, and especially the workplace are most emphatically not this kind of venue.
Recently a young woman asked me, “How do you explain to guys how frustrating it is to be hit on all day long? Whenever I tell them to imagine what it would be like, not to be hit on just once in a while, but every day everywhere you go, they always say, 'That would be great! I'd have sex with every woman who propositioned me!' They just can't imagine why women would find this oppressive.”
Here is my response.
Men: imagine if every time you opened your mouth no one heard what you had to say. Imagine, instead, you were being humored – or ignored – based primarily on whether the listener thought they could get you to have sex with them. Imagine if half your professors or teachers never solicited your thinking in earnest. Imagine if you knew that despite your talents in any particular field – acting, writing, science, singing, or anything else – you would be evaluated on your looks and your perceived sexual availability. Imagine thinking you met someone who took you seriously and found your ideas and talents compelling, only to discover that really they were just “playing you” to get you in bed.
Read the rest
Let me add this...
There's a difference between being attracted to a woman and hitting on her, in the sense of "hitting on" that Sunsara uses. I can't help how my brain is wired: I find certain women visually appealing, without knowing anything about their personalities or characters. But I keep this appeal to myself: that I find a woman appealing does not give me the right even to merely intrude upon her attention. I get to know many people, men and women, in the course of my daily life. I have legitimate, socially acceptable reasons for interacting with them as full human beings. I can evaluate their personality and character; more importantly, I give them an opportunity to evaluate my personality or character. I don't "hit on" women; I get to know people; if the whole package works, and works both ways, we can proceed. We can proceed. There are well-established, legitimate and socially acceptable methods of communicating mutual interest, and if the interest is not mutual, these methods allow either party to disengage gracefully, with a minimum of awkwardness and hurt feelings. I don't count myself a red-hot feminist for this attitude; I consider it nothing but obvious common sense.
I used to be in sales. The guiding principle in sales is to always make it socially awkward for the customer to say "no". It doesn't matter at first what you ask; you just ask questions so that it's easier for the customer to say "yes" from social convention (or you ask questions where the customer gets to "choose" between different ways of saying "yes" to preserve the illusion of choice). If you're approaching a woman like you're a salesman approaching a customer, you're doing it wrong; you're being a creep. Before you ask any woman anything, ask yourself: "Would it be even a little bit awkward for her to say 'no'?" If it would be, shut the fuck up.
There are, I suppose, venues where it might be acceptable to take the sales approach towards women. When you walk into a used car dealership, you want to be sold on a car, n'est pas? (And if you don't want to buy a car, why are you wasting the salesperson's time?) But women have to consciously, explicitly and knowingly choose to enter those venues, they have to be able to leave at any time, and participation cannot be a precondition for any other social task or status, especially a task or status available to men without participation. And the sidewalk, the bus stop, the coffee shop, the convention, and especially the workplace are most emphatically not this kind of venue.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
The Stupid! It Burns! (misandrous edition)
Return of the Pink Poseur I’m sure you’ll agree. I would rightly be called a misogynist for talking to my general audience as if they were all prostitutes. ... But why is it different for Rebecca when she talks to males as if they were date-rapists?
Sadly, it's true: men are pigs. Sorry.
Monday, July 11, 2011
An answer to Ross Douthat
The Horror of 160 Million Missing Girls – and Of the Attacks on Abortion Rights; An answer to Ross Douthat
By Sunsara Taylor
On June 26, the New York Times ran an op-ed from Ross Douthat which highlighted the horror of there being 160 million girls missing in the world today, largely owing to sex-selective abortions. However, rather than indicting this as a horrible outgrowth of deeply entrenched male-supremacy and patriarchy, Douthat places the blame for this on women’s right to abortion and the few hard-won advances that have been made in some spheres for some women. As such, he ends up arguing for the very male supremacy and traditional values that lead to this kind of thing in the first place.
Douthat’s argument rest on three key assertions.
First, Douthat makes the outrageous claim that the widespread practice of sex-selected abortions is not due to patriarchy, but to female “empowerment” and to abortion technology itself. Second, Douthat distorts and discounts the very liberating aims and actual impact of the fight for women’s ability to control their own reproduction due to the fact that there were some very reactionary forces that overlapped at times with some of their program. And, finally, Douthat insists that only the anti-abortion movement can legitimately and fully critique this horror.
On all accounts, as I will show, Douthat is dead wrong.
Let’s begin with his first major argument.
Douthat disputes the notion that sex-selective abortion is caused by patriarchy and misogyny, because, “Thus far, female empowerment often seems to have led to more sex selection, not less.” He cites Mara Hvistendahl’s new book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, to argue, “In many communities... ‘women use their increased autonomy to select for sons,’ because male offspring bring higher social status.”
Excuse me? There is a huge difference between “women’s empowerment” and increased “autonomy” within a world of patriarchy and male-supremacy and the full liberation and equal participation of women together with men in every sphere through the achievement of a world without patriarchy and male supremacy! And lest anyone be confused: a world where “male offspring bring higher social status” is a world in which women are still a) valued not as full human beings but as the breeders of children; and b) boys are valued more than girls. That is a world of patriarchy.
Further, it is extremely widespread for women in the countries where the practice of sex-selected abortions is most widespread to be severely beaten, set on fire, or burned with acid if they fail to produce a male child. In this context, the fact that some of these women themselves “choose” to selectively abort female fetuses – and even the fact that often this brutality is carried out with the participation of women (most often the mother-in-law) – does not change the fact that this violence, the valuing of women only in terms of the offspring they produce, and the subsequent selection for male fetuses are ALL the result of deeply entrenched male supremacy and patriarchy.
Next, let’s take apart Douthat’s attempts to obscure and bury any discussion of the real interest of women beneath a game of guilt by association.
Douthat cites Hvistendahl in identifying “an unlikely alliance between Republican cold warriors worried that population growth would fuel the spread of Communism and left-wing scientists and activists who believed that abortion was necessary for both ‘the needs of women’ and ‘the future prosperity – or many survival – of mankind.’” He continues, “For many of these antipopulation campaigners, sex selection was a feature rather than a bug, since a society with fewer girls was guaranteed to reproduce itself at lower rates.”
Notice first that there is zero discussion from Douthat as to whether or not “abortion [is] necessary for the ‘needs of women.’” In fact, it is. A world without abortion is a world in which women are forced to bear children against their will. It is a world that enslaves women to their biology. It is a world in which women have little more freedom than slaves.
But Douthat side-steps this basic and fundamental truth by instead “revealing” that there were some reactionary forces whose agendas overlapped in some ways with those fighting for women’s reproductive freedom. Big fucking deal! I spoke to a fanatical End Times fundamentalist not long ago who was eager to seize on recent scientific findings pointing to the tremendous extremes of recent weather patterns, but that doesn’t mean he had anything in common with those fighting to recognize – and put an end to – the man-made causes of climate change!
But to go even further, the fact that some in the movement for women’s reproductive rights have at times been influenced by racism and chauvinism that is so common in an imperialist country like the U.S., does not negate the fact that the right to decide for herself when and whether to have a child is necessary for women to be free.
Finally, Douthat implies that Hvistendahl and others who uphold women’s right to abortion don’t really have firm ground to stand on in condemning the situation that has led to – or the harm caused by – the 160 million missing girls. Instead, Douthat offers the simplistic and wrong-headed claim that “the anti-abortion side has it easier” because it can say outright that, “The tragedy of the world’s 160 million missing girls isn’t that they’re ‘missing.’ The tragedy is that they’re dead.”
Only they aren’t dead, they really are missing. While a fetus has the potential to become a human being, it is not a human being until it is born. Ever notice how we count how long we’ve been alive since the date of our births? Until then – no matter how much the anti-abortion movement romanticizes it and no matter how many “pro-choice” people capitulate to their bullshit – a fetus is a subordinate part of a woman’s body. As such, those girls really are missing because they never came into being as independent biological or social beings.
On the other hand, the women in whose body fetuses grow are fully formed human beings. And each year, 70,000 of those fully formed human beings die due to lack of access to reproductive health and safe abortions. They are not “missing” -- those women are dead! And the lives of the millions upon millions of women worldwide who are forced to have children they do not want, their lives are significantly disfigured. And the lives of all women who live in a world that fails to recognize the full humanity and equality of women in every sphere – and instead reduces them to either breeders or sex objects, and quite often both – is horribly diminished.
We do not need the horrors that Douthat is peddling – even greater burden on that half of humanity that has the misfortune in this world of male-supremacy of being born female, the retrenching the very patriarchy that leads to female children being valued less than males, and the further restriction of women’s ability to control their own bodies and their own destinies. We need the kind of thorough-going, world-wide revolution that can once and for all lift these burdens off of women as a core and driving force in the emancipation of all of humanity – from the lack of access to birth control and abortion to the life-time of restrictions, insults, violence and degradation that comes from being born female.
To find out more about that revolution, here is a good place to start:
Sunsara Taylor writes for Revolution Newspaper and sits on the Advisory Board of The World Can't Wait
Copyright (c) 2011, Revolution Magazine, reprinted with permission.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Schrödinger’s Rapist
Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced:
(via PZ Myers)
When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.
(via PZ Myers)
Monday, March 14, 2011
On torture
The torture of political prisoners, categorically, while awful, pales to insignificance next to the subjugation of women and girls, both historically and in the present day.Hear, hear!
— IOZ
Friday, January 14, 2011
Geoff on SuperScholar and Sam
Geoff notes that SuperScholar’s list of the 25 most influential living atheists includes only four women, the top at #15. Geoff doesn't think that'll make Ophelia Benson happy; it certainly doesn't fill me with glee.
But he's more concerned about Sam Harris, "commanding a $50K honorarium and traveling with an entourage that includes a security detail (for his criticism of Islam), Harris is the “rock star” of contemporary atheists."
Geoff snarks, "Not bad for a mushy-minded, one-dimensional, tendentious, Wilber-admiring Trojan Horse for the New Age eh?"
Don't be shy, Geoff: Tell us what you really think.
(I'm not a huge Sam Harris fan either.)
But he's more concerned about Sam Harris, "commanding a $50K honorarium and traveling with an entourage that includes a security detail (for his criticism of Islam), Harris is the “rock star” of contemporary atheists."
Geoff snarks, "Not bad for a mushy-minded, one-dimensional, tendentious, Wilber-admiring Trojan Horse for the New Age eh?"
Don't be shy, Geoff: Tell us what you really think.
(I'm not a huge Sam Harris fan either.)
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