Cathy Young has a good op-ed on some of the claims made by groups that claim people who don’t have children are treated unfairly.
Sometimes it’s hard to choose which is more annoying — the radical feminists or the traditionalist anti-feminists. Take Amy Holmes who is featured in the July 27, 2000 edition of the USA Today ripping on the National Organization for Women. Why? Because NOW doesn’t advocate mandatory DNA samples from all convicted felons(“Save women: Take all felons’ DNA”).
According to Holmes, the only reason NOW doesn’t want mandatory DNA testing is that “the powerful liberal lobby, the American Civil Liberties Union” opposes it. But there’s an eminently good reason everyone should oppose it — it’s a stupid idea. I outlined the statistical problems with this approach in an earlier essay (Rapists, Thieves and Logical Fallacies), so will just summarize here that widespread DNA testing of all felons would be a) incredibly expensive and b) tend to greatly increase the risk that a false positive DNA match would occur which could greatly undermine the public’s confidence in DNA evidence that is used properly.
Holmes, in fact, doesn’t even understand the evidence she thinks buttresses her case. According to Holmes, “A study of Virginia’s DNA database released this month found that 40% of men arrested for rape previously committed property crimes.” That is in fact false. The study didn’t look at all rapists, but rather only those rapists who were convicted based in part on previous DNA samples in Virginia’s database. Nobody knows what percentage of rapists commit other crimes first, but most studies do indicate that rapists tend to be people already predisposed to commit criminal acts.
In this case, count me in with NOW and the ACLU.
The UK Sunday Times recently reported allegations that Iraqi dictator is using rape to intimidate opponents of his regime living outside of Iraq. The charges come from former Iraqi general Najib Salahi who fled Iraq in 1995 and now lives in Jordan.
According to Salahi, somebody sent him a videotape depicting an Iraqi intelligence officer raping one of Salahi’s female relatives. Salahi claims, and the Times quotes unnamed Washington sources as confirming, that other high ranking Iraqi defectors outside of that country have received similar videotapes depicting the rape of close female relatives.
If Salahi’s story is accurate, this is a clear case of a war crime and the members of the Iraqi state could and should face trial for instituting a policy of using rape as an instrument of terror. The United States is currently trying to bring a crimes against humanity prosecution against the Iraqi state and Salahi says he is willing to allow the videotape to be played in court as evidence of Iraq’s crimes at such at trial.
Source:
Saddam blackmails rebels with rape. Marie Colvin. The Sunday Times (UK). July 9, 2000.
When I took a Women’s Studies course many years ago, the underpinning assumption of much of the class was that sexual differences were completely culturally determined. Although obviously there are some physical differences between men and women, everything else was simply a reflection of cultural expectations which could, of course, be modified.
Proof positive of this claim were the stories of babies who were genetically male but were born with deformed genitalia or had their genitalia altered by a surgical accident during circumcision. Some of these boys were raised as girls and, so the story went, acted like girls. Clearly sexual characteristics had more to do with culture than genetics.
The only problem was this turned out to be a myth, which is finally getting the thorough debunking it deserved. The first volley was fired in the book “As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl,” which dealt with a boy who had been raised as a girl after an accident during a circumcision. Contrary to the myths told about this case in my class, the “girl” rebelled against the social conditioning and reasserted his male identity.
Now the American Academy of Pediatrics is urging more causation about reassigning the gender of such babies, noting the failures that have happened over the years.
Contrary to the politically correct views of the radical feminists, human sexuality isn’t some simple cultural artifice but is deeply ingrained in our genes.
U.S. doctors urge caution on baby gender questions. Reuters. July 4, 2000.
A British study recently suggested that a rather large minority of women approve of domestic violence, but unfortunately it’s hard to tell exactly what the study means.
According to a report in the Sunday Times (UK) on the study,
…[500] women taking part were asked to comment on a situation where a man argued with his wife about her long working hours. At the end of the row he slapped her face and locked her in the bathroom.
About 25 percent of the women said they sympathized with the man, and 30 percent said they didn’t believe he should be arrested. Caroline Healy, who conducted the study, interpreted this result as evidence of the failure to communicate the anti-domestic violence message:
Although the Government is spending a lot on publicity to say that violence shouldn’t be dealt with in the home, that message isn’t always getting through. This research shows a clear need for more public awareness and public education work, particularly in primary schools. More needs to be spent on teaching people about it and more research needs to be done.
But the results are ambiguous at best even taking them at their face value. The first result is hardly even interesting — it is possible for men and women to feel sympathy for someone without approving of his or her actions.
Much the same problem occurs with whether or not the husband should be arrested for assaulting his wife. Some studies tend to show that legal intervention in low level acts of violence tends to worsen rather than improve the situation. Those who don’t think the husband should be arrested might think that some form of family counseling might be more likely to change his behavior than arrest.
It’s a shame that studies like this usually only ask the 500 women to react to scenarios where men assault women. It would be interesting to have asked the same people about a situation where a woman slaps her husband after a verbal argument. Would they have felt any sympathy for the woman? Would they have thought the woman should have been arrested?
I know personally my wife and I have never committed acts of violence against each other (and I really can’t imagine this happening), but if my wife should slap me after a heated argument calling the police as the first strategy would be counter-productive over the long term. Does it follow then that, as Healy puts it, I am “implicitly condon[ing] the use of force in intimate relationships”? No, of course not, but neither does every relationship fit into the same cookie cutter mode that requires legal intervention for resolving incidents of low level violence.
Source:
Not all women condemn wife beaters. Gillian Harris, The Sunday Times, July 11, 2000.
The latest annual salary survey by Working Women magazine pretty much confirms the trend over the last decade — on average women’s earnings are only 76.5% that of men’s, but the difference disappears when comparing men and women in the same field with similar characteristics. In fact in some fields, women earn significantly more than men.
The current figure is an improvement of 14% since 1979, when women made on average only 62.5 cents for every dollar a man made.
Comparing men as a whole to women as a whole is deceptive, however, since the two groups are not homogenous in the work force. Men, for example, tend to work many more hours than women. Many women also tend to take extended breaks from the work force to have children during the twenties, which sets them back in the race for promotions.
“It’s extremely hard to make comparisons, but when you are better able to compare employees of equivalent aspirations and equivalent commitment, the closer the salaries are,” economist June O’Neill told the Associated Press.
Ironically there are now some fields where men out-earn women.In advertising, women CEO’s earn an average of $275,000 compared to men who make $253,100. The most startling example is occupational therapy where women earn an average of about $39,000 compared to men who make an average of about $32,000. Typically many feminists have argued that the mere existence of discrepancies in average salaries is prima facie evidence of sexual discrimination. It will be interesting to see how they shift their position once the salary advantage shifts in other occupations.
It is also interesting to consider how the closing wage gap will affect support among men and women for affirmative action programs. As Working Woman editor Lisa Freeman pointed out, the reason for the shift is largely because most business today care little about the sex of a worker, but rather the quality of a worker. “They’re looking for good employees, regardless of color, regardless of sex,” Freeman told the Associated Press.
Contrary to the assertions of radical feminists, women don’t need any special privileges to succeed economically, just a fair shot based on their merit.
Source:
Study: women’s salaries lag behind men’s pay. The Associated press, July 4, 2000.
The other day I posted about the ongoing problems women face in Afghanistan. An excellent on-line source for information on the Taleban is the Revolutionary Assocation of the Women of Afghanistan which includes information on atrocities committed against women in Afghanistan as well as efforts to overthrow the Islamic fundamentalist Taleban regime.
Laurie Essig is a lesbian with a message — marriage, whether
between gay or heterosexual couples, is wrong. And Essig isn’t about to let
tiny details like historical facts get in the way (Same-sex marriage).
Essig’s argument against marriage is the typical radical feminist
view that was borrowed from Marxism — marriage is an inherently
oppressive social institution. “Although we like to pretend that marriage is
natural and universal,” Essig writes, “it is an institution founded in
historical, material and cultural conditions that ensured women’s
oppression…”
The logical fallacy here is jumping to the conclusion that any
social institution created by an oppressive culture must itself, by
definition, be oppressive. Taking this argument at its face value is what
leads some radical feminists to condemn things like science as inherently
oppressive to women.
But Essig really drops the ball when she bizarrely claims that
“Monogamous, heterosexual marriages were an invention of the Industrial
Revolution’s emerging middle-class.” This claim is so absurdly wrong that
it’s unbelievable the Salon editor’s let it pass.
Monogamous, heterosexual marriage didn’t exist until the Industrial
Revolution? That assertion would have come as a shock to the Romans,
the Hebrews, the Greeks and a whole host of other societies that
practiced monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Has Essig really never noticed the
numerous proscriptions against adultery in the Old Testament? Or read
any of the tedious Church writings on marriage in medieval Europe?
Even in cultures where monogamous marriage was not the rule, some
form of marriage institution is pretty much universal (anyone who
disagree is more than welcome to name a single culture that had absolutely no
marriage-like institution).
In fact, although clearly most Westerners today might not want some
of the sexist excesses of medieval or even Victorian marriage, marriage
survives as an institution precisely because it appeals to something
very deep in the human psyche. Essig finds this impulse to marriage
appalling.
What annoys me is that no one, not even queers, can imagine anything
other than marriage as a model for organizing our desires.
Essig does have a point that the state shouldn’t favor (nor
penalize) marriage over other forms of personal relationships. Someone who
wants to remain single shouldn’t be penalized for that decision (although
today it is married couples, not single individuals, who are penalized
by the tax code).
Other than that, though, Essig’s attack on marriage as a social
institution is historically inaccurate and absurd.
According to the BBC the Taleban, the group of Islamic fundamentalists in power in Afghanistan, recently arrested an American aid worker and ordered the United Nations and other aid agencies to fire any Afghanistan women working with the agencies. The BBC estimated there are several hundred such women working for aid agencies.
Mary MacMakin, the American woman arrested by the Taleban, is in her seventies and has worked on aid projects in Afghanistan on and off for 40 years. MacMakin was arrested with her staff and nine male aid workers. The men were released earlier, but MacMakin is still being detained. MacMakin was working on a project teaching widows in Kabul to make carpets and other projects.
The Afghanistan regime has become infamous around the world for its strict sex laws, including a ban on women working outside the home. That ban had been moderated somewhat in recent months when the Taleban exempted women working in certain sectors such as health care, but the arrest of MacMakin and the ban on female aid workers suggests a turn back toward the group’s ultra conservative policies.
Source:
Taleban move against women workers. The BBC, July 10, 2000.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering reclassifying a number of prescription drugs and turning them into drugs that would be available over the counter. Among the drugs under consideration for OTC status is the birth control pill. Such a move is long over due.
There is already some precedent for making this move. In some states pills that induce abortion can already be dispensed by pharmacists which makes them effectively over the counter drugs. Why not make the Pill, which hundreds of millions of women have safely taken, available without a prescription as well? Why shouldn’t a woman be able to walk into a drug store and buy birth control pills without going to see a doctor first?
The main argument against making the Pill available over-the-counter are the tired old paternalist arguments about protecting patients from themselves. Although the Pill is a relatively safe drug, a small percentage of women will have side effects and need to consult a physician to find the best drug for them. But this problem is no more egregious than the side effects that other OTC drugs have — after all aspirin is a potential killer when taken by certain people, yet it’s been available over-the-counter literally since it was first widely available.
It’s very important to have the convenience of popping down to a drug store for an aspirin or ibuprofen pain killer, and the same sort of freedom and convenience should be extended to birth control drugs.
Ironically while only one major anti-abortion group, the American Life League, has weighed in decrying the move to make birth control easily available without a prescription, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights League and Planned Parenthood are both oddly ambivalent about the whole issue. Salon quotes NARAL attorney Elizabeth Arndorfer as saying, “Using emergency contraception is a one-time thing that many recent studies have shown to be effective. But there are contraindications for some women using the birth control pill longer term. It may be better for a doctor to keep an eye it.”
So women are intelligent and capable of making the choice for themselves whether or not to have an abortion, but they are too irresponsible to seek out information on the birth control pill and decide for themselves whether or not to take it.
Women are not simply moral patients, they are moral actors. Women are more than capable of deciding for themselves whether or not to take a drug such as the Pill. The FDA should approve the Pill for over the counter sales as soon as possible.
Sources:
The silence of the Pill. Leah Kohlenberg, Salon.Com, July 10, 2000.
No prescription for the pill?. CNN, June 29, 2000.