Amanda Marcotte's Fake Feminism Problem

I briefly wrote on Wednesday about a Vox poll showing only 18% of the population self-identify as "feminist". I was somewhat (positively) surprised to read Amanda Marcotte's reaction:

The sample was a little over 1,000 adults, nationwide. We’ve seen similar polling data in the past, so this seems to be a pretty accurate assessment. This sort of thing frustrates the fuck out of feminists, because, by definition, if you believe in gender equality, you’re a feminist. So why is there this disconnect?

One big theory is that a lot of people are, in fact, feminists, but they don’t know it, because they’ve been scared off by negative stereotypes about feminists promulgated by opponents of women’s equality. Call it the “I’m not a feminist, but” phenomenon and it’s certainly a big factor, but I don’t think it fully explains the situation. Another huge chunk of it is likely due to the American fetishization of individualism, which leads a lot of people to shun labels in an effort to show what special snowflakes they are.* This is why, for instance, a lot of people who self-identify as “independents” are actually consistent Republicans or Democrats. There’s also some truly feminist men who avoid the label, because they don’t want to be mistaken for one of those creepers who calls himself a feminist to get female attention and cookies, but who is secretly a pig to women.

I say "positively" because she's at least interested, even at a very superficial level, in why people might find the label "feminist" a pejorative, as many in the HuffPo/YouGov 2013 survey did. Marcotte backs away — as she must — from the self-examination that might conclude that public recoil from the label "feminist" is self-inflicted damage; claims that conservatives and others have successfully framed the dialogue only go so far in their explanatory power. "You only have yourselves to blame" is not a message that will go over well, especially when you think you rest on the side of the angels. As Ken White observed, most label-based analysis is bullshit, so arriving at a mutually agreeable definition of "feminist" and "feminism" is very nearly impossible. One of the standard responses to definitional difficulties is to cast feminism in uncontroversial terms:

Reluctance to use the F-word may be more about education and information than the word itself. When respondents to the 2013 poll were given the dictionary definition of feminist — "someone who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes" — 57 percent of respondents, including 67 percent of women and 47 percent of men, agreed that, yes, they were feminists.

But dig a little deeper, and you will discover that a great deal of what gender feminists propose is outright dangerous to men when it isn't being deeply insulting:

• The uncritical belief in the truth of rape accusations.
• Idiotic affirmative consent laws that reduce sex to the level of a bank transaction.
• The existence and ubiquity of "patriarchy", "rape culture", and "male privilege" which benefits any and all men.
• Championing of bogus statistics about rape and wage differentials.

Scott Alexander, lifting from Nicholas Shackel (PDF), calls this a "motte and bailey" tactic (his example 3 here), a bait-and-switch in which the speaker claims one thing (feminism is the mere equality between the sexes) but substitutes other things entirely for them later (specific theories and proposals that are in fact quite controversial). Interestingly, Marcotte appears to at least partially reject such a motte-and-bailey; either you use the label and are a feminist, or you don't and aren't. That, at least, represents a weak form of honesty. I have little hope she or other dedicated feminist partisans will take the next step from there and look in the mirror.

Saturday Link Dump, Mostly Sexual Assault/Due Process Edition

More links for your Saturday enjoyment:

• Added to the sidebar in a new section on legal matters: Community Of The Wrongly Accused, opening with a piece on the University of Illinois' remarkable discovery that it's much easier on the accuser if no hearing at all takes place:
  

  The University of Illinois is taking college sex hearings to the next level in order to protect rape victims. The school is "moving toward an investigation process that may not require a hearing so an assault victim doesn't have to testify in front of a large committee."
  
  Finally! A school with the courage to cut through the bullshit! This ingenious plan will spare rape victims the indignity of having impartial adjudicators consider their accusations with an open mind. It will also spare schools the bother of introducing evidence to actually prove the young rapists are guilty. And it will spare the young rapists the bother of putting on a defense to avoid a life-altering expulsion.

  I'm sure that this won't result in more lawsuits against the University...
• A bit of good news from Scott Greenfield's Simple Justice blog comes in the news that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has taken down a sentence repeating the false-but-frequently-cited 1-in-5 rape victimization statistic. You may recall that Gillibrand was pleased to have the liar Emma Sulkowicz as her guest at the presidential State of the Union address in January. Sit down, Emma, you've had your fifteen minutes.
• Leslie Loftis at The Federalist makes the case that Phi Kappa Psi has a good case for libel against Rolling Stone. There's a lot there, but the big takeaway seem to be that Phi Psi is suing mainly for honor, not monetary damages, which are capped at a very low $350,000 under Virginia law. I really hope they open a suit in New York, which does not offer such protections.
• Here's another roundup of campus rapes that were less than they seemed, including several I've previously written about in this space, if only in passing (h/t @Anneeliz1).
• And finally, another piece of good news from Mr. Greenfield: a woman refuses to act like a victim when discussing a (female!) law professor inadvertently pasting a porn site link into a mass email to her students.
  

  It may be that Tabo is still being a bit overly forgiving, in that it might not matter whether “he meant to do it,” as intent is a courtesy no longer in favor.  As I recently quipped on the twitters, “there’s a reason why they call it ‘mens’ rea.”  This was immediately misunderstood and seized upon as demonstrable proof of the patriarchy, rather than a joke.
  
  And that’s where Tabo’s refusal to condemn others, even though she has long enough blond hair to justify it, betrays her failure to appreciate her victimhood.  Does she not get it?  Is she a disgrace to her gender, a traitor to the cause?
  
  Or does Tamara Tabo just have a sense of humor, an appreciation of irony, an ability to laugh off a theoretical harm done by mistake, by dumb chance, rather than leap up to the podium and demand that we burn the witch?

Breeding Right: Genetic Diversity Among The Jack Russell Terriers And Collie Dogs

In my many transactions with dog folk, it is received wisdom that the AKC is evil, stupid, and willfully ignorant, refusing even the most basic precepts of genetics. I recently had cause to read some correspondence with Dr. Niels C. Pedersen of UC Davis on the subject of genetic diversity; one part of the discussion ran to the business of prior studies done on other breeds, and in particular, landrace dogs — in which group he included the village dogs of Southeast Asia and Africa, but also, amazingly, the Jack Russell Terrier.

Wait, what?

Yup.

When comparing the heterogeneity of the BSD to that observed within the AKC breeds some caveats should be addressed. One may initially expect long established, well-defined dog breeds to be much less heterogeneous than reported here. While some breeds do have a low H_E, such as the Boxer with a H_E of 0.320, breeds like the Jack Russell Terrier have a high H_E of 0.713 and overall their H_E is higher than that of the dingo.

So, a breed that's got more genetic diversity than a wild canid with a large population and distribution? I leave for others to decide how that might have happened, but consider that the collie-descended dogs appear similarly situated; the Australian Shepherd is fourth (H_E=.696) and the Border Collie is seventh (H_E=.669) on this list, and both are in the top third (Table 1). It speaks to the surprising diversity of the breeds, and while it does raise my hopes for the English Shepherd, only an actual study will tell us about genetic diversity there. It certainly makes me wonder what the JRT people do to arrive at that result. Genetic diversity, of course, isn't a panacea for genetic disease (coff hip dysplasia coff collie eye anomaly coff), but it is vastly better than a dozen or more breeds I could name.

Update 4/11/2015: Patrick Burns has more to say about this.

The Princess Mary Sue: Sansa Stark's Surprising Defender

A Facebook friend alerted me to an amazing piece at bitchmagazine.com, purporting to tell us all about the "powerful femininity" of ... Sansa Stark. My friend Linda and I share very similar views of what female agency is and what it is not, and so the core thesis of this essay elicited a gag reflex in both of us. Long on assurances and disturbingly light on actual badassery, the author informs us of why we hate Sansa:

Kristin Iverson at Brooklyn Magazine has a theory to explain why Sansa attracts so much hate, and it carries a note of bitter truth: “The problem with Sansa Stark is that she bought into a world that was nothing more than an illusion; she was born into a position of privilege that turned out to have a crumbling foundation. The problem with Sansa Stark is that she is just most of us, and so we hate her.” Viewers expect the women of pop culture to be iconoclasts, as Iverson puts it, but the fact of the matter is that surviving is iconoclastic in itself.

 That this couldn't be less true is almost beside the point; she's selfish, mawkish, and worst of all, deeply stupid. Arguably, no other Stark had more to do with her father's death than Sansa, who gives up Ned for the hope she can continue to be queen. Earlier, she lied to match Joffre's story about Arya and her direwolf Nymeria embarrassing and lightly wounding him, with the result that it backfires on her, upon which her direwolf Lady is assassinated to appease Cersei Lannister. Repeatedly, she pursues status and ease, and in doing so, has it backfire; most notably, her assumption that she would have any value to Joffre once her father was out of the picture was a very bad miscalculation. Arguably, the first intelligent (if highly dangerous) thing we see her do is to cover for Lord Baelish at the Eyrie.

So we do not hate Sansa for no reason; we hate her because she is willing to endanger those she loves in order to achieve her own selfish ends. Iverson comes in my estimation perilously close to identifying with Sansa as a sort of reverse Mary Sue, in which the writer identifies with a character written by another author. And here's why I think this might just be the case:

Sansa stands out by being a survivor. In her own way, she is perhaps a more of a parallel to the strong women of the real world than the other women on Game of Thrones. Most women in the real world don’t pick up swords. More commonly, hardship forces us into survival mode. In a world of abusive relationships, everyday sexism, and misogyny, we can’t just lop off peoples’ heads like Prince Joffrey does. Arya Starks of the world certainly exist, but there are many more Sansas quietly wearing their pretty dresses and pushing teacakes around on their plates as they maintain a façade, refusing to break character and betray themselves. Haters, it seems, have missed this nuance of her character, taking her seeming innocence and compliance at face value, when it’s clearly evident that she’s anything but either of those things—she’s just willing to fake it until she can reach safety and start dealing out some revenge.

I note here that the "pretty dresses" passage sounds disturbingly like ... oh, I don't know, a surprisingly traditional view of female risk aversion? And the unmistakable plaint of "everyday sexism" that I have to believe the author thinks makes her a perpetual victim -- presumably a few notches below death and disfigurement?

Compared to the other women of the show, Sansa is in some ways the strongest. She endures unimaginable torment and it’s sustained. She can’t easily escape her abusive situation. Instead, Sansa lives in conditions that would break some people, as at first glance they appear to break her, as Joffrey hopes they’ve done. Her ability to rally her resources for survival makes her an impressive and outstanding character, even if she doesn’t meet the oft-vaunted standard of a “strong female character.”

So, in other words, female agency doesn't actually consist of doing things, as Arya Stark or Brienne of Tarth or Catelyn Stark do (and must); it consists of mere survival. What, exactly, is "badass" about this? What actions of Sansa's are we supposed to be impressed by, especially when so many of them are traps she laid for herself? There's a lot of people on this show, even women, who endure a great deal. That does not make them "badass", or remotely admirable.

Self-Declared "Feminists" Decline In New Vox Poll

The number of people willing to apply the label "feminist" to themselves has dropped, if the latest Vox poll is to be believed. Only 18% of those surveyed were willing to adopt the label for themselves, which represents a 2% drop from a 2013 poll by Huffington Post/YouGov. It's almost certainly within the error bands on both sides, but still worth mentioning.

One more time: we don't get a choice in this. Hatefulness is not helpful, and neither blanket charges. We have to live with each other.

Two Three On Consent

Two posts on consent, which, despite reductive and childish bloggers, is not simple:

• In which we learn that some women expect men to be mind-readers, and think they are themselves:
  

  I had said "yes," but I didn't mean it. I knew that he knew I didn't mean it. Five minutes of what felt like a silent eternity followed.

  She knew this how? Everything else that follows is a justification for her own inability to say "no". She never establishes coercion, and so we must presume this is the voice of regret talking.
• An elderly man has sex with his Alzheimers-afflicted wife — and is accused of rape:
  

  Friends and family say that Donna Lou and Henry Rayhons, a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from 1997 until this year, were besotted with one another throughout their relationship. She often accompanied him to the state Capitol in Des Moines. He bought her dresses and acquired a bee suit so he could join her in her beekeeping.
  
  “He treated her like a queen,” Charity McCauley Andeweg, who clerked for Rayhons, told Bloomberg.
  
  But a few years into their marriage, Donna was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. She suffered headaches and forgetfulness, drove on the wrong side of the road and once put a single sock into the dryer instead of a full load of laundry, according to Bloomberg.
  
  On March 29, Donna was moved to Concord Care Center in Garner, Iowa, a five-minute drive from her home with Rayhons. Rayhons reportedly resisted the move and clashed with Donna’s daughters — both from her first marriage — over how she should be cared for at the facility.
  
  In May, Dunshee and Donna’s other daughter, Suzan Brunes, met with Concord staff and drew up a care plan for Donna, according to a state affidavit. At the meeting, the women and doctors concluded that Donna was no longer able to consent to sex, a fact Rayhons was informed of.
  
  But a week later, on May 23, surveillance video showed Rayhons spending about 30 minutes in his wife’s room. When he left, he was holding her underwear, which he dropped into a laundry bag in the hallway.

  And thereupon he was accused of raping his wife — who could not, at least by some legal definitions, consent to sex. (One wonders who might have launched such charges; the stepdaughters seem natural complainants, but the article gives no indication.) “… Accusing a spouse of a crime for continuing a relationship with his spouse in a nursing home seems to us to be incredibly illogical and unnatural, as well as incredibly hurtful.” Indeed.
• Update 4/9: Here's the third piece I wanted to put on this post but kept forgetting where I left it. A really thoughtful essay at Elle by Christina Nehring, contrasting a murky dating situation with her own actual rape at age eight:
  

  "Shall I take you home now?" he asked. It was one in the morning. I had recently arrived in a city whose geography was still opaque to me. I was in the car of a man I'd met at a dinner and who'd invited me to drinks.
  "Yes, of course," I said, giddy from a goodly amount of rosé. Dozens of turns and traffic lights later, we pulled up in front of an unfamiliar apartment building. It was his home. Not my home.
  My heart plunged. I'd never spent the night with a man. But what to do? Confess I'd misunderstood the question? Show that I, an international college exchange student, was that uncool, that frigid and frightened? Plead, like an innocent, to go home, to my home? I twisted my face into a smile, kept silent, and followed my companion to his flat the way I pictured a cow heading to slaughter.
  ...
  ... [T]his was the 1990s. And this was Paris. Were it today and in the U.S., our first time together could readily be considered "rape."

Ellen Pao: No Salary Negotiations For You, Young Missy!

From The Libertarian Republic comes the hilarious news that Ellen Pao has banished all salary negotiations at Reddit on the grounds that women are more frequently likely to be lied to during such transactions, among other things. CNN/Money took it a step further with their headline asking whether negotiations are themselves a form of gender bias, which makes me wonder if they had ever seen True Grit, and particularly, this sequence:




That Pao here infantilizes women is bad enough, but she becomes a hypocrite at the juncture of her recently lost lawsuit, which is nothing if not salary negotiations by other means.