Tue, 2010-09-28 13:43

After dismissing the to main arguments for prosecuting abortion providers but not the women who hire them as sexist claptrap Scott Lemieux of the Center for American Progress’s TAPPED wades into the third in a way that resonates with my own memories of the days before abortion became legal (emphasis mine)

So this leaves us with the pragmatic justifications — essentially, “we would like to punish women, but we can’t because it’s impolitic.” Aside from undermining the case for anti-abortion laws, the problem with this pragmatism is that we need to go further. How effective are laws banning abortion in conditions where most people think women shouldn’t be subject to any punishment for obtaining an abortion? The answer is, “not very.” As Sunday’s episode of Mad Men usefully reminded us, plenty of safe, elective abortions were preformed in hospitals even when it was illegal for doctors to perform them. The effect of criminalizing abortion is not to stop women from obtaining abortions so much as to force those without the right social connections into the black market. So bans on abortion aren’t very good ways of lowering abortion rates, although they do make abortion much less safe for less affluent women. How this can be a good thing is, to put it mildly, unclear.

He said it here.

That sounds about right. I’m old enough to have been a newsboy going room to room in a local hospital back in the days before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. And, yeah, it’s funny how often “good girls” from nicer neighborhoods could be found in the ob/gyn wing recovering from their “appendectomies.”

The appendectomy rate for girls of less fortunate means was considerably closer to their demographic averages. As were their rates of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies.

This is why, of course, the affluent can remain sanguine about restrictions on abortion in their states and regions: such restrictions have never applied to them. They may choose not to take advantage of the… quiet options available to them. And some may not. But they all know it will always be there for them.

Wed, 2010-07-07 13:22

Harriet J of Fugitivus says of 3rd-person rape apologies of the form “I mean, the victim forgave XYZ, didn’t she? She doesn’t even want XYZ to go to trial.”

I am sure that in this wide, wide world of people, there are rape victims out there who truly want nothing more than for their rapists to go free without punishment, without retribution, without justice. That’s their right. But I don’t think I’ve actually heard any of them. Instead, what I hear is, “I just want this whole thing dropped. I don’t want it prosecuted. Every time this gets brought up I get harassed.” Or, “I don’t want this prosecuted. I don’t want to be called a slut in court.” Or, “I don’t want this prosecuted. I could never win, I don’t have the money, and nobody would believe me.” Or, “I don’t want this prosecuted. He would kill me. His friends would come after me.” Or, “I don’t want this prosecuted. I can’t stand to see him every day in court.”

None of those statements can be reasonably boiled down to, “Rape victim doesn’t want her rapist to come to justice.” They can be reasonably boiled down to, “Rape victim suspects pursuit of justice will feel worse than getting raped did.” But only one of those boiled-down statements makes us, as a society, look like we’re decent and human and deserve to live. The other might point the finger squarely at you — listen, are you the reason justice is worse than rape? Is it because you are going to call her a liar, call her a whore, make her life hell, threaten her, harass her, treat her like a pariah, tell her she liked it, tell her she deserved it? Are you one of the people who lined up to stone the victim into silence, only to smarmily say later, “Well, the victim isn’t asking for justice, is she?”

She said it here.

As is often the case with her really great posts this one’s about 10 browser pages long and in the process of answering the original question* she made a number of intelligent, insightful, and highly usable points like this one.

I really like how clearly she distinguishes between “I don’t think I can win” and “I don’t think my assailant should be prosecuted.” Not in the sense that there would otherwise be no difference, but in the sense that it a) clearly communicates one’s point to someone who might not yet have thought through all the details of what they’re saying while also b) clearly putting the responsibility for defending one’s position on the person doing the rape apology.

Saying “Are you one of the people who lined up to stone the victim into silence, only to smarmily say later, ‘Well, the victim isn’t asking for justice, is she?’” definitely shifts the dynamics of the conversation. In a way that’s no more rude than telling you they want you to give an unrepentant rapist slack. Or asking you to give them slack for giving an unrepentant rapist slack.

* The original question was “A reader recently emailed me asking for some advice. She’s having her feminist ‘click’ moment, and now finds that she is incompatible with almost everybody around her. Suddenly, the presence of rape apologism, racist jokes, sexist sneering, and other such Socialization Aids is inescapably fucking gross instead of invisibly malforming. She finds she can’t talk to anybody without finding out they believe something that is offensive, oppressive, and/or horrifyingly inhumane. She asked me, to briefly summarize: What the fuck do I do now?” Her answer is pretty awesome. —fl

Sun, 2010-01-24 12:50

Via Tyler Cowen Eric Barker of Barking Up the Wrong Tree points to an interesting-looking social psychology paper on entitlement and selfishness as it relates to a sense of victimization.

Does feeling like a victim make you selfish?:

Three experiments demonstrated that feeling wronged leads to a sense of entitlement and to selfish behavior. In Experiment 1, participants instructed to recall a time when their lives were unfair were more likely to refuse to help the experimenter with a supplementary task than were participants who recalled a time when they were bored. In Experiment 2, the same manipulation increased intentions to engage in a number of selfish behaviors, and this effect was mediated by self-reported entitlement to obtain positive (and avoid negative) outcomes. In Experiment 3, participants who lost at a computer game for an unfair reason (a glitch in the program) requested a more selfish money allocation for a future task than did participants who lost the game for a fair reason, and this effect was again mediated by entitlement.

via Journal of Personality and Social Psychology – Vol 97, Iss 5

Barker said it here.

Quick note: Barker may have been citing the print version. For whatever reason, though, the the article appears online in JPSP Vol 98, Issue 2: Victim entitlement to behave selfishly Zitek, Emily M.; Jordan, Alexander H.; Monin, Benoît; Leach, Frederick R. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 98(2), Feb 2010, 245-255.

I’m not going to cough up ~$12.00 to read the gated version but while digging around for more information it looks like the same results turn up quite a few similar studies of selfishness, fairness, and sense of entitlement. I ought to add it makes sense because it’s been my intuition, stated repeatedly online and in real life, that privilege and entitlement (stereotypical male in particular, kyriarchal in general) derives more from insecurity and resentment than the stereotypical spoon-in-your-mouth aristocratic sense of “the peasants are revolting.” And finally makes sense because I’ve been around my children and their friends for 13 years now… although that experience might be unscientifically anecdotal. :-)

At any rate, assuming the research supports the conclusion, and assuming it confirms similar prior research, it’s going to supports my contention that those who exercise privilege tend to perceive their actions as defending themselves from unfairness or attack. With the result that asking, say, men to “give up” their privileges never seems to work (and, when it does sort of work, seems really wimpy, half-hearted, or passive-aggressive. Or chivalrous, which would be by far the least productive!)

I think it also supports my developing strategy of attempting to recruit “oppressive” classes with the entirely reasonable (and often easily-observed) point that conditions that are worse for someone don’t necessarily imply that conditions are better for you.

Sat, 2009-09-05 10:57

This post started out as an innocent attempt to answer a startling accusation about the influence of porn on men. The answer is… larger. Unusually, for me anyway, there’s a call to action at the end.

The porn commentator Daze Reader, newly revived after a long hiatus, expresses skepticism about one more outlandish story about the perils of watching porn. The source is an interview with BBC producer Tim Samuels on The World from public radio’s PRI

And even Papua, New Guinea there were doctors who said that they’ve had to deal with cases of young men putting ball bearings down their penises to try and keep up with the impressive nature of the porn stars they’ve been watching in films.

Samuels said it here.

Daze Reader retorts

As for porn-obsessed dudes stuffing ball bearings down their penes, I’ll believe that when I see notarized X-rays. Until then, it’s a great urban legend.

Read the quotes in context and follow the links here.

A bit of Googling suggests it actually might be an urban legend. But if it is it’s a very old one! Australian research demographer Terence H Hull, writing for the website Inside Indonesia, says that reports of Indonesians, Melanesians, and Southeast Asians employing esoteric penis piercings and implants go back to Chinese traders in the 1400s and Magellan’s voyagers in the 1500s! The inserted items included “spurs,” bells, implanted balls, and even precious jewels.

(Quick aside: According to Hull the traditional Indonesian word for a device piercing the glans of the penis is “palang.” According to Wikipedia the traditional kinkster word for a glans piercing is “ampallang,” which they say derives from a tradition of the Dayak peope of Borneo. And I know this is all complicated but I’ll just say here that parts of both Borneo and New Guinea islands belong to Indonesia, which is why I’m citing an Indonesian website. Now, where was I?)

For the record the, well, record of Indonesian, New Guinean, Southeast Asian ball-implanting predates the kind of porn folks like Mr. Samuels concern themselves with by at least (um, 1980, the year VHS-based video players became commonly affordable, minus 1433, the year Ma Huan noted ampalling in Thailand equals) five hundred forty-seven years! Give or take.

Case closed on the “porn drives young men to ball-bearing themselves” idea? No, it’s still complicated. Hull says reports of the practice, once believed to be obsolete, is flourishing in laboring-class sailors, loggers, miners, and prisoners. Who evidently share the characteristics of being young, single, unschooled, and very segregated from contact with actual women.

Which lack of contact is… problematic.

Says Hull

From ad hoc interviews I have found that men use the devices before marriage, but remove them when they settle down with one woman. Why, if the purpose is to please a woman? One explained: ‘You can’t really be sure about these things – what if something went wrong? You wouldn’t want to take a risk with your wife.’

So where does the idea that women “love it” come from? Hull says

Informal but persistent attempts to understand the practices of genital cutting and the use of inserts and implants among Indonesian men indicate that what we are seeing today is not the resurgence of tradition. Rather these are largely attempts to come to terms with sexualities based on gender relations emerging from rapid modernisation.

Workers in isolated camps who rely on their peers for information on ‘what women want’ are easily convinced that implants may make them attractive to lovers. Young men who see peers attempting the operations to insert stones or plastic balls, and hear the bragging afterward are easily swayed to try the practice themselves. They do not hear clinical evidence of damage done to sex organs, and they definitely do not hear women’s stories of pain, discomfort or infection. From the viewpoint of men and reproductive health the response to penis implants must be based on education and the demystification of large areas of sexuality.

And how easy would it be to get word out that a) it’s dangerous, b) it’s actually not all that traditional, and c) despite what young men tell each other women actually don’t care for it at all? Turns out it’s hard because

The Indonesian Health Department regards any talk of penis adornments as esoteric, sensitive and obscure. Reproductive health service providers do not recognise the problems associated with genital cutting and the use of sexual accessories because such things are quickly dismissed as immoral. Whatever the moral arguments though, the practice of penis inserts appears to be spreading because men’s sexual education is incomplete and isolated. Lower class men in particular are likely to experiment with implants, not because their sexual needs are any different from other men, but because they are the groups most likely to experience isolation from women in their occupations.

M’kay, so in that environment it’s actually possible to say that porn could somehow be influencing young men raised in that environment to stick ball-bearings (and horsehair threads, bells, and the caps from toothpaste tubes!!!) in their penises. But whereas I don’t have a lot of patience with porn I think its totally missing the point to imply, as the BBC’s Tim Samuels does, that without porn young Indonesians and their regional counterparts wouldn’t “[put] ball bearings down their penises to try and keep up with the impressive nature of the porn stars they’ve been watching in films.”

To the extent porn matters at all for these men it’s just one shovel of dirt in an egregiously stifling, repressive, dehumanizing cemetery of isolation, bad information, institutional denial, misogyny, segregation, chattelization, miscommunication, insecurity, bluster and bravado, loneliness, alienation, ignorance, not even rudimentary education about actual heterosexual sexuality, othering, exploitation, and self-mutilation!

And that’s just for the men! Who nevertheless have an understanding that the mere fact of their gender renders them superior. Or, worse, baseline/constant/normal against which all others are measured and made to fit! And if they’re willing to subject themselves to such torment what are they willing to see befall everyone else inside and outside their societies?

Yeah, porn might be a problem in parts of New Guinea but that’s like PETA saying the problem with Guantanamo Bay is they serve meat to prisoners. A problem, possibly, but so far from the problem it would… I think… you could…

Sorry, lost for words there.

Recommended Action Item: It would be really, really nice if, when he’s done promoting this series the BBC would send Samuels and/or other documentary production teams to shine a little light on what’s happening to the men in the places he casually mentioned. And I’m not saying this in a “whut about Teh Menz” way. I’m saying it because what happens to these guys is bad, yes, and shouldn’t happen to anyone, yes, but also because whatever they learn, whatever happens to them, whatever view of the world they bring home with them rains down on everyone else in their lives from wives to children to brothers and sisters to sex workers to employees and so on.

So, to get back to Daze Reader’s question about whether this is an urban legend. Here’s one last snippet from Hull’s article

For some years I had been hearing of penis inserts in Indonesia, but like most middle class Indonesians I dismissed the stories as being little more than sensationalist rumours or fillers for slow news days in tabloids. Eventually though the growing number of reliable sources suggested that there might be something worthy of further research.

I was serious when I said someone like the BBC should send someone like Samuels shed light on it. The world still needs change and change doesn’t happen in the dark. This would be a good place to start.