There is an abundance of evidence that despite some feminists claims to the contrary, it is boys rather than girls who on average are systematically under performing in schools. The big question is why. Veronica Dahl, a professor of computing science at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, offered an explanation — boys know they are part of a “ruling class” and as such know they can “laze a bit” because it won’t affect their position in society.

This is, of course, an absurd claim. Boys are far more likely to drop out of high school than girls are, and people who fail to obtain high school diplomas have very limited economic prospects. Women who graduate high school and go on to college earn far more, on average, than do men who drop out — position within Canadian and American society is today based largely on merit.

Freelancer writer Ilana Mercer became entangled in a mini-controversy after criticizing Dahl for making this statement. As Mercer relates in an article about the controversy (Male bashing in academe), Dahl’s position seemed to be that a) Dahl didn’t actually mean what she was quoted as saying, but b) nonetheless what she didn’t mean to say was in fact an accurate explanation of boys’ poor academic experience.

Mercer wonders,

What do you think would have befallen Prof. Dahl had she ventured that the only reason women are underrepresented in the engineering sciences is because they are lazy and know a man will eventually take care of them? I wager the Prof.’s fitness to teach women would have been called into question.

Source:

Male bashing in academe. Ilana Mercer, LewRockwell.Com, June 15, 2001.

Should anyone who enjoys viewing pornography be barred from supervising other people? That’s the conclusion that a Canadian feminist group has reached in the wake of an Internet pornography scandal involving a high ranking Canadian naval officer.

In some respects, the Canadian Navy’s crackdown on Commodore Eric Lerhe seems excessive. While traveling alone in San Diego in April 2000, Lerhe used a military-owned laptop he had with him to access an Internet porn site while he was off duty. Lerhe used an account he paid for himself to access the Internet, and although the military does have strict regulations barring people from using government equipment to view pornography, as the Boston Globe reported, “the rule is usually interpreted to mean workplace equipment, not a laptop while on personal time.”

For accessing a few pornographic JPEGs on a site described as similar to Penthouse, Lerhe’s career is effectively over. He’s been stripped of his command and could face a dishonorable discharge.

But if that’s a bit of overkill, consider the claim made by Geraldine Glattstein of the Ontario-based Woman Against Violence Against Women. According to Glattstein, “It’s dangerous for women to be supervised by someone who looks at those kinds of Web sites.”

Anyone who looks at a web site along the lines of Penthouse or Playboy is unfit to supervise people? If my boss (who is a woman) happens to read Penthouse, I should consider her “dangerous”?

Bizarre.

Source:

Web porn grounds Canada Navy man. Colin Nickerson, Boston Globe, June 21, 2001.

Gail Jarvis wrote a hilarious article (Don?t Make Fun of Feminists) at a mini-controversy involving South Carolina’s legislature that is so bizarre you couldn’t make this stuff up.

South Carolina’s legislature uses college students to act as pages. Members of the legislature’s Women’s Caucus were apparently offended at the short skirts and low-cut blouses than some female pages were wearing. They complained to the page supervisor who dutifully issued a memo that, No low-cut blouses or shirts that show your cleavage, and tops that are too tight will not be allowed. Skirts that are more than 4 inches above the knee will not be allowed.” At least two female pages were subsequently sent home for wearing clothes that violated this policy.

On the heels of that, some anonymous jokester wrote a parody of the memo from a non-existent Men’s Caucus. I couldn’t find the complete text of the “Men’s Caucus” memo, but the Associated Press reported, “It suggested that pages receive extra pay for wearing tops with less material. It also said dresses should be no longer than 4 inches above the knee. The memo also said underwear is optional and female pages should ignore future memos from the Women’s Caucus.”

The still unknown author might has well have set off a bomb considering the furor the tongue-in-cheek memo created. Governor Jim Hodges told the South Carolina Post and Courier, “I find the contents of this anonymous memorandum despicable. Moreover, I am concerned that the circulation of this memorandum might have created a hostile and offensive working environment for female employees of the House of Representatives in violation of state and federal law.”

Both South Carolina’s Human Affairs Commission and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are investigating the memo, and a spokesperson for the governor said if the author is found he (or she) could face anything from a public reprimand to charges of sexual harassment.

Hodges had to turn around and suspend his own speech writer, however, after the writer fired off a memo referring to male legislators as “cave men.”

Apparently South Carolina must have few, if any, major problems if its political establishment has this much time on its hands to deal with a parody of a memo.

Sources:

Don?t Make Fun of Feminists. Gail Jarvis, LewRockwell.Com, June 27, 2001.

Hodges orders inquiry into memo about pages. Warren Wise, The Post and Courier (South Carolina), June 9, 2001.

Female pages told to dress more carefully. The Associated Press, June 8, 2001.

Governor calls for investigation into phony page dress code letter. Amy Grier, Associated Press, June 8, 2001.

Female pages receive a dressing-down. Warren Wise, The Post and Courier (South Carolina), June 7, 2001.

The Justice Department recently announced that the latest statistics from the National Crime Victimization Study — which uses random phone interviews to estimate levels of crime incidence — showed a staggering 15 percent decline in crime between 1999 and 2000. The decline in rapes measured by the NCVS was even more pronounced falling from 141,070 in 1999 to 92,440 in 2000. Such a large decline begs the question of whether or not this represents a real decline in rape or whether it is the result of a statistical fluke (though it should be added this is just the latest in a five year trend of declining crime rates). Regardless of what one thinks of the NCVS statistics, it was disappointing to see the folks at Feminism.Org relying on non-sequitirs and other questionable methods to attack the NCVS findings. Here’s what they wrote,

However, criminologists and women’s groups are skeptical of the findings, citing ambiguity in the survey’s definition of rape and flaws in data collection.

The survey was based on the testimony of women over 12 years of age. According to Lawrence Greenfeld, acting director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly one-fourth of all rape victims are younger than 12. The survey is also conducted on the phone, even though the highest rape rates are reported among those in the lowest economic bracket who may not have telephone access. Discrepancies between separate long-term studies conducted by last week’s victimization survey and the FBI also raise doubts concerning the decrease in rape. According to Bonnie Campbell, former director of the Violence Against Women Office, “the failure to deal with the culture around rape and sexual assault has made these numbers somewhat irrelevant. Despite the reports, women should “have no doubts about the reality of rape in the United States.”

Lets look at these claims one-by-one.

1. However, criminologists and women’s groups are skeptical of the findings, citing ambiguity in the survey’s definition of rape and flaws in data collection.

Of course the hallmark of studies on rape is that nobody agrees on exactly how to properly define rape in surveys. Some feminists activists want extremely expansive definitions of rape, while others want argue for very narrow definitions. But, I’m not sure this problem is all that salient for the issue at hand. What we are interested most here is the overall trend in violent crime, and the important part about the NVCS is that it has maintained a consistent definition of rape. Obviously there were almost certainly significantly more rapes in 2000 than 92,440, but the overall downward trend is the important point.

2. The survey was based on the testimony of women over 12 years of age. According to Lawrence Greenfeld, acting director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly one-fourth of all rape victims are younger than 12.

This is an odd objection since very few studies of rape, regardless of who conducts them, attempt to include measure incidence in children younger than 12 years of age. This claim seems to imply that a study of sexual violence that excludes young children is inherently biased or distorted, which I find unfathomable.

3. The survey is also conducted on the phone, even though the highest rape rates are reported among those in the lowest economic bracket who may not have telephone access.

First, although there are indeed some people without access to the telephone, telephone service is as close to universally available as any technology is likely to be. Second, whatever small effect there may be from the exclusion of people without telephone service is more than made up by the sheer size of the sample. The NCVS interviews more than 100,000 people who are members of about 49,000 households. Moreover it interviews everyone in the sample households every 6 months over a three year period.

Finally, almost all large scale studies of rape incidence are based on phone interviews. This seems like desperation and grasping for straws on the part of Feminism.Org rather than a real concern about the validity of the NCVS’ methodology.

4. Discrepancies between separate long-term studies conducted by last week’s victimization survey and the FBI also raise doubts concerning the decrease in rape.

Wow. For decades feminists have attacked the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, but now they’re championing them. What’s going on here?

The FBI collects data based on the number of crimes reported to police, and publishes those figures every year broken down by offense. The problem with the Uniform Crime Reports is obvious and it is a flaw that feminists repeatedly point out — not all crimes are reported to the police. This is especially true with rape, where some studies suggests that as many as two-thirds of rapes are never reported to police.

For this reason, telephone surveys and other study methodologies are thought by many to more accurately reflect the true incidence of rape. Until now, apparently. Preliminary figures from the 2000 Uniform Crime Reports show no statistically significant change in the reporting of violent crimes, including rape, to police over 1999. Now, according to Feminist.Org, it is the UCR reports that are more accurate than the NCVS statistics. While UCR reports are very valuable, however, they are more a measure of crime reporting moreso than crime victimization and suffer from methodological flaws much worse than the ones cited by Feminist.Org in its attempted refutation of the NCVS (for example, different jurisdictions have different classification systems for similar crimes and there is sometimes a political interest in underreporting certain crimes to the FBI.)

5. According to Bonnie Campbell, former director of the Violence Against Women Office, “the failure to deal with the culture around rape and sexual assault has made these numbers somewhat irrelevant.” Despite the reports, women should “have no doubts about the reality of rape in the United States

Anytime a study is published that doesn’t find a sufficiently high level of rape incidence, somebody always trots this non-sequitir out. The NCVS finding that rape incidence declined from 1999 to 2000 doesn’t question the “reality of rape” any more than the finding that aggravated assaults declined questions the “reality of aggravated assaults.” To argue, as Campbell does, that the numbers don’t matter is a clear attempt to substitute an ideological view of rape in place of a sound statistical analysis of rape incidence.

Source:

Experts Question Accuracy of New Rape Statistics. Feminist.Org, June 21, 2001.

Last year Randy Thornill and Craig Palmer created a controversy with their book, A Natural History of Rape, which argued that rape persists because it evolved as a successful reproductive strategy for some men. Now, Jon and Tiffany Gottschall have added new fuel to the fire with a study suggesting that women who are raped are more likely to get pregnant than women who engage in consensual sex.

The Gottschalls compared two groups of women. Tee first group were 405 rape victims aged 12 to 45 who were interviewed at random as part of the American National Violence Against Women survey. The second group were the subject of a study by Alan Wilcox at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences This group included more than 300 women who were not using any form of birth control and had one night stands.

The Gotschalls found that only 3.1 percent of the women who had consensual one night stands became pregnant, while 8 percent of the women who were raped became pregnant. The Gottschalls hypothesize that rapists may subconsciously target women who are more likely to be fertile (i.e. healthy and attractive women).

This study is interesting but there are a number of methodological problems with the study that should keep people from reading to much into it. What is fascinating, however, is the inability of many people to realize what it would imply if there were solid evidence that rape evolved as a successful reproductive strategy.

Many of the people outraged by this study seem to be under the impression that if rape is a successful reproductive strategy that this would imply that rape is justifiable or inversely imply that men are inherently immoral. Hilary Rose, a professor of sociology, told The Times (UK) that the study was dangerous saying, “You end up doing enormous harm and not just to female victims. I think you insult men very deeply by saying that they are biologically prone to rape.”

This is a repeat of the vicious rhetoric that was directed at A Natural History of Rape. But the claim that rape evolved as a reproductive strategy says nothing about whether or not rape is moral or immoral. The only thing that counts from the point of view of natural selection is whether or not an adaptation increases the likelihood of an individual passing on his or her genes.

One of the things that likely developed as a result of evolutionary, for example, is the craving that many people have for foods with high fat content. Such an adaptation served human beings well thousands of years ago, but is definitely not a very successful eating strategy for contemporary industrialized societies.

Unfortunately people conflate “is” and “ought” for two reasons. First, because many of the same people who attack the notion that rape might have arised as part of evolution are more than willing to bring in such evidence if it supports their view. There is an extensive feminists literature, for example, looking at how bonobos monkeys and attempting to extrapolate to human societies (bonobos have a female-dominated social structure). Second, the word “natural” has gradually been imbued with the a positive meaning such that oftentimes in our society people use the word “natural” as a synonym for “good.” The idea that nature might be anything but some happy-go-lucky paradise is becoming increasingly alien in Western cultures as they react against urbanization and industrialization.

Claims about the natural history of rape illustrate the problems with both trends. Evolutionary biology often seems to be anthropologists simply swapping “just so” stories that happen to fit whatever ideological predispositions the researchers have, while the tendency for people to reflexively approve of anything that is “natural” means that what counts as natural becomes more contested in many cases than that counts as moral.

Source:

Raped women ‘more likely to get pregnant’. Helen Rumbelow, The Times (UK), June 21, 2001.

Genetic link between rape and pregnancy. The BBC, June 20, 2001.

In early June California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said of Enron Corp. Kenneth Lay,

I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, ‘Hi my name is Spike, honey.’

The sad thing is that our culture has been so debased that an attorney general joking about subjecting someone to prison rape likely will be quickly forgotten. Lockyer should have resigned or been forced from office over such a cavalier statement about rape (which is a serious problem for prisoners of both sexes).

As mentioned before on this site, there is a growing movement urging the U.S. Food and Drug administration to make so-called morning-after contraception available over-the-counter. A couple of states have already passed laws allowing pharmacists to prescribe the pill directly without requiring that a woman see a doctor first, but the drug still requires seeing a doctor and obtaining a prescription all within a 72 hour timeframe.

Some web sites, however, are taking matters into their own hands and selling the drugs online in a move that is certain to spark controversy and intense scrutiny.

Forty-seven Planned Parenthood offices already prescribe morning-after birth control over the phone, and Planned Parenthood of Chicago moved into online prescriptions in January. So far it has issued more than 500 prescriptions. Women visit a web site, enter medical information, which a nurse practitioner then reviews. If the nurse signs off, the prescription is sent off to whatever pharmacy the woman requesting the prescription selected. Planned Parenthood of Georgia has apparently been using such an online system since last summer.

According to an Associated Press story, the Illinois Department of Professional Regulations is currently conducting an investigation into whether or not the Planned Parenthood of Chicago’s web site violates a state medical practices law since drugs are prescribed without the consultation of a physician. “Our position is it doesn’t matter what the drug is,” said Professional Regulations agency spokesman Tony Sanders, “If it’s a prescription drug, you can’t prescribe it to somebody unless you have a relationship with them.”

Federal and state governments led a much publicized crackdown on Internet sites selling Viagra through a similar web-based diagnosis, and efforts to sell morning-after pills are likely to begin receiving the same sort of scrutiny. All the more reason for the FDA to approve these drugs for over-the-counter sale as soon as possible.

Sources:

Condom broke? Head for the web. Julia Scheeres, Wired News, June 19, 2001.

‘Morning-after’ pills offered online. Bennie M. Currie, The Associated Press, June 18, 2001.

Doc urges ‘morning-after’ pill. Lindsey Tanner, The Associated Press, April 30, 2001.

Wendy McElroy has an excellent look at an outrageous example of administrators running roughshod over the rights of students accused of rape, How to Ruin a Man’s Life.

The Washington state Supreme Court recently upheld a $1.5 million judgment against Gonzanga University which committed one outrageous act after another to deny a teaching certificate to a student over an alleged rape. It didn’t help the university that the alleged rape victim testified that not only wasn’t she raped but that the university’s claims about her contained falsehoods and that a university official threatened her in an interview — when she refused to go along with the university’s claim that she had been raped, the alleged victim testified that one of the university interviewers asked her if she knew “where people who life go.”

Yet another unconscionable example of how little regard many universities have for things like due process (amazingly, the university conducted an investigation and decided not to award the alleged rapist a teaching certificate without once interviewing him.)

Source:

How to Ruin a Man’s Life. Wendy McElory, IFeminists.Com, June 12, 2001.