Monthly Archives: March 2002

It’s All Tolkein’s Fault

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The New York Times this week ran a bizarre column by MIT sociology professor Sherry Turkle which decried the male-dominated computer culture and blamed JRR Tolkien, of all people, for its limitations.

The major criticism that Sturkle offers of both the computer culture and Tolkein is that, according to her, they both entail worlds bounded by extreme absolutes. Sturkle writes that, “In many ways, Middle Earth, the universe of “The Lord of the Rings,” is like a computer program, rule driven and bounded.” Of course, one of the reasons for this is that the ethics of Middle Earth are largely Christian, although this is nowhere near as explicit as it is in something like C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles.

Turkle may be uncomfortable with moral absolutes, but in a world where people feel justified in hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings, young readers could do a lot worse than Tolkien’s vision of right and wrong (and especially, Tolkien’s warnings about the corrupting nature of power).

Turkle connects this obsession with rules in Tolkein, computers and role playing games, writing,

Like the rings, the inhabitants of Middle Earth behave according to a set of rules. This is part of what makes it so easy to translate Tolkien’s work into game worlds. In “Dungeons and Dragons,” for instance, character attributes like charisma or strength are assigned according to a point system. There is little room for psychological ambivalence or complex motivations in such a personality.

Frodo, the hero of “The Lord of the Rings,” is part of a fellowship, although it is more properly called a fraternity: in Tolkien’s world, the men bond. The few females are loved and feared as icons or charms.

And the computer culture, by and large, is a world built by engineers for engineers, by men for men. (This is a culture that found it natural to have “abort, terminate, and fail” as three choices on a screen prompt.) Like Tolkien’s world, most computer games are about mastery through violence; they serve as a socialization into the computer culture for adolescent boys.

Before proceeding to dissect this nonsense, note that not only does Turkle object to a lack of moral ambiguity, but she also has an ambiguous relationship with truth and accuracy. There was never a screen prompt with the three options, “abort, terminate, fail.” The actual prompt, given by MSDOS when a file could not be located on a disk, was “abort, retry, fail.”

In addition, it is absurd for Turkle to claim there are 856,000 web sites devoted to Tolkien. She seems to have arrived at this number by simply typing in “Tolkien” into Google’s search engine. That indeed returns 856,000 search results, but that in no way represents 856,000 distinct web sites devoted to Tolkien.

Most of her other claims suffer from similar problems — it is not that they do not contain a grain of truth, but rather that they are nothing more than one person’s biased observations not backed up by any data.

For example, she complains that since characters in role playing games like “Dungeons and Dragons” are assigned numerical attributes that this leaves “little room for psychological ambivalence or complex motivations in such a personality.” But, in fact, such numerical abstracts allow a lot of room for psychological ambivalence and complex motivations. In fact, such numerical ratings are rarely seen as the end-all be-all of a character’s motivations (and, of course, one could also point out that this is meant to be a game, which by definition must be simplified in order to be playable. Monopoly does not incorporate many of the complexities of real-life real estate markets, but it is nonetheless an enjoyable way to spend an evening).

Similarly Turkle complains that “most computer games are about mastery through violence.” You have to wonder exactly what she means by “most computer games.” Here is a list of the 20 top-selling computer games of 2001:

1. The Sims (EA)
2. RollerCoaster Tycoon (Infogrames)
3. Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone (EA)
4. Diablo 2 Expansion: Lord of Destruction (Vivendi)
5. The Sims: House Party Expansion (EA)
6. The Sims: Livin’ Large Expansion (EA)
7. The Sims: Hot Date Expansion (EA)
8. Diablo 2 (Vivendi)
9. Sim Theme Park (EA)
10. Age Of Empires 2: Age of Kings (Microsoft)
11. Black & White (EA)
12. Frogger (Infogrames)
13. Roller Coaster Tycoon Loopy Landscapes Expansion (Infogrames)
14. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 (EA)
15. Backyard Basketball (Infogrames)
16. SimCity 3000 Unlimited (EA)
17. Backyard Baseball 2001 (Infogrames)
18. Age Of Empires 2: Conquerors Expansion (Microsoft)
19. Max Payne (GodGames/Take 2)
20. SimCity 3000 (EA)

Of those 20 games, only 6 (Diablo 2 Expansion, Diablo 2, Age of Empires, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires and Max Payne) involve “mastery through violence.” The really odd thing is that Turkle complains that computer games and players are excessively rule bound with no ambiguity, and yet half of these games are so-called “god games” in which a major feature is that there is usually not set winning/losing condition.

There is, for example, no way to “win” playing The Sims. There are no victory or loss conditions and the game can be played pretty much however the player wants. Some people, for example, play it by imposing such conditions — i.e. they try to have their characters accumulate the most money possible, etc. Others focus on extensive social relationships. Still others don’t play the game so much as use it a backdrop for telling stories about the characters. The game has some constraints, obviously, but contains a tremendous amount of ambiguity as far as what the goals (if any) of the game are.

Turkle’s claim that the computer culture, computer gamers and role playing gamers are rule bound binary thinkers is nothing more than an inaccurate prejudice of Turkle’s. In fact you could say that it is a rigid oversimplification that does not allow for any ambiguity. It is Turkle who apparently insists on seeing her world in black-and-white with no shades of grey.

Just as Turkle claims that “Tolkien’s work says more about us than it does about Tolkien,” so Turkle’s comments on computer culture seem to say more about her than they do about the computer culture.

Source:

Lord of the Hackers. Sherry Turkle, The New York Times, March 7, 2002.

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Is Virginia’s Proposed Marital Rape Statute a Good Idea?

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Virginia’s legislature is considering altering its laws to make it easier for married women to file rape charges against their husband. Some critics of feminism are up in arms over this proposed change, but, in fact, passing the law would be the right thing to do.

The issue here is pretty straightforward. Under current Virginia law, a woman who wants to accuse her husband of rape must first meet two criteria — she must no longer be living with her husband or she must provide some evidence of a serious bodily injury. If she is still living with her husband or did not sustain a serious bodily injury, she cannot accuse her husband of rape.

The proposed law would eliminate those two requirements, giving married women the same rights under the law that single women have.

This seems like a pretty obvious change that probably should have been done a long time ago, but critics both in the Virginia House and on the Internet have criticized the bill on a number of grounds. Stuart Miller wrote a critique of the law, Martial Rape — What a “Can of Worms”! that presents two arguments against the marital rape statute. Lets look at those.

First Miller opens his critique with the bizarre view that a marital rape statute might discourage men from getting married. Since data show that married women suffer less violence from their partners than do non-married women, the law might actually increase violence against women by lowering marriage rates. It is also true that children living in married households are less likely to be abused by their parents than are children living in unmarried households. Does it follow, then, that we should decriminalize child abuse among married couples? Besides, I thought it was the radical feminists who were obsessed with groups rather than with protecting the rights of individual. Presumably women who are raped by their husbands would prefer to be treated like individuals rather than figuring in some grand collective calculus by Miller and others.

The second argument Miller offers is also an argument that was made in opposition to the law on the floor of the Virginia House — some unscrupulous women might use this law to file false rape charges against their husbands to gain leverage during divorce proceedings.

Certainly, if this law passes, some women will in fact do this. So what? The fact that some women might twist and abuse the law is hardly much of a justification for jettisoning the rights of women who do not abuse the system in that way. The solution to that problem is not saying that married women must jump through all sorts of extra hoops to charge their husbands with rape, but rather demand that more be done about the problem of false allegations.

Virginia’s current law is absurdly antiquated. That a woman in Virginia cannot file a rape charge against her husband if she is currently living with him and did not sustain a serious bodily injury boggles the mind. The Virginia legislature should pass this change to its statute on marital rape, and it should also pass legislation toughening treatment of men or women who file false allegations.

Source:

Marital Rape — What a “Can of Worms”!. Stuart A. Miller, Strike-The-Root.Com, March 3, 2002.

Domestic violence a priority. Pamela Stallsmith, Virginia Times-Dispatch, February 24, 2002.

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Do Rape Shield Laws Forbid Questions about False Allegations?

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In February 2001 the United States District Court for the Eastern District issued a ruling in an odd rape case that boiled down to this: do rape shield laws protect accusers from being questioned about previous false allegations of rape that the accuser may have filed?

The case involved Wisconsin resident Jessie L. Redmond who was convicted in 1993 of raping and providing cocaine to a 15-year-old girl. Redmond worked as a counselor at a group home for alcohol- and drug-abusing youths. In December 1992 he was arrested and later convicted after one of these youths claimed that Redmond had supplied her with cocaine and had sex with her.

Redmond’s case took a very odd turn which involved the eventual suspension of his attorney. His original lawyer, Mike Sandy, showed up at the court and passed himself off as the girl’s attorney in order to illegally obtain the girl’s juvenile court file. Among the things that file contained was detailed information about another allegation of rape that the girl had made in early 1992. Police investigated that allegation and determined that it was a false allegation and the girl was charged with contempt of court.

Sandy would eventually have his law license suspended because of that and other incidents. At Redmond’s trial, however, Sandy wanted to ask the girl about the previous false allegation of rape that she had made. The judge in the case, Dennis Flynn, refused to permit that. Although Wisconsin’s rape shield law includes a specific exemption for false allegations, Flynn ruled that the line of questioning about the previous allegation would be prejudicial while having little value for determining the truth of the case against Redmond.

Redmond’s case was then taken up by Howard Eisenberg, the dean of Marquette University Law School. The case ended up in the U.S. District Court which eventually overturned Redmond’s conviction. It noted that since the only evidence against Redmond was the testimony of the girl, the girl’s previous false allegation indeed had probative value. The opinion of that court reads, in part,

But the fact that the girl had led her mother, a nurse, and the police on a wild goose chase for a rapist merely to get her mother’s attention supplied a powerful reason for disbelieving her testimony eleven months later about having sex with another man, by showing that she had a motive for what would otherwise be an unusual fabrication.

…

And thus the court’s ruling, though ostensibly based on the rape-shield statute, derives no support from that statute. The statute protects complaining witnesses in rape cases (including statutory-rape cases) from being questioned about their sexual conduct, but a false charge of rape is not sexual conduct

Redmond was ordered released by the court. He was somewhat vindicated by the decision, but in the process lost 8 years of his life due to an incredibly bizarre interpretation of a rape shield law — an interpretation that the U.S. District Court dismissed out of hand.

As Attorney Mark Richards, who represented Redmond in his first round of appeals, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “A lot of people will point to this and say it is proof the system works. But it’s not proof that the system works, because this guy has been sitting there (in prison) for 7 1/2 years.”

Sources:

Redmond v. United States. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 99-2333, February 14, 2001.

Court reverses rape case conviction. Tom Kertscher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 21, 2001.

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NOW Celebrates Abortion Doctor’s Release

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Dr. James Pendergraft is about to be released from prison, and the National Organization for Women is celebrating the release of the man it says was wrongfully imprisoned. Why doesn’t NOW speak up about other men who have been released after their convicitons were overturned?

Pendergraft was convicted as part of a bizarre case in which he was accused and convicted of extortion. The case is complicated, but it boils down to this — Pendergraft was angry that police in Marion County, Florida apparently refused to allow their officers to moonlight as security guards at his abortion clinic after hours. In a meeting, Pendergraft threatened to sue the city claiming he would bankrupt it if they did not meet his demands.

Prosecutors construed that as attempted extortion and managed to convict the abortion provider in May 2001. Pendergraft’s sentence was overturned on February 27, 2002, however, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ordered him to be released immediately.

NOW sent out a press release a couple days later saying, among other things, that,

The charges against him were based on the flimsiest of evidence and appear to be just another attempt to limit reproductive health services in the state. …

Both the imprisonment and release of Dr. Pendergraft underscore the need for fair judges and prosecutors at every level of the judicial system. NOW’s Judicial Justice Project is keeping a close eye on Bush’s nominees to the federal courts. We’re also mobilizing activists to demand that their senators only vote to confirm nominees who will rule with fairness and to firmly oppose those who seek to promote their ultraconservative agendas.

This is a bit odd. With the advent of sophisticated DNA testing, more than 100 convicted criminals have been released from jail after it turned out that they could not have committed the crime that they were charged with. A significant number of those cases involves men who served often very long jail terms for rapes that they did not committ. Moreover, looking back at many of those cases it is apparent that, like Pendegraft, those men were convicted on the flimsiest of evidence in trials whose fairness was questionable at best.

And yet I do not recall NOW sending out a press release in any of those instances to decry the systemtic injustices in the system. In fact, NOW has generally supported such injustices.

Oliver Jovanovic was originally convicted of rape based on an absurd interpretation of rape shield laws by a New York judge. Jovanovic claimed his sexual encounter with a young woman was consensual, while his accuser said it was rape. On the stand, his accuser testified that she had never told Jovanovic that she was interested in sadomasochistic sex, but, in fact, she sent him numerous e-mails before their meeting describing in detail her sadomasochistic fantasies and experiences. A judge ruled those e-mails inadmissable based on New York’s rape shield laws, and Jovanovic was convicted.

Eventually his conviction was overturned. Did NOW celebrate the righting of such an injustice? Are you kidding? A man serving time for a rape he did not committ? That sort of injustice isn’t even on NOW’s radar.

Source:

NOW President Applauds Release of Wrongfully Imprisoned Abortion Provider, Says Case Underscores The Need For Judicial Justice. Rebecca Farmer, National Organization for Women, Press Release, March 1, 2002.

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Contraceptive Patch Coming Soon to Europe and the United States

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The BBC reported this week that the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products has approved a contraceptive patch that has already received Food and Drug Administration approval in the United States. Women on both sides of the Atlantic should be able to buy the patch with a prescription sometime later this year.

The patch contains the same hormones as the pill — though in lower concentration since it is absorbed directly into the blood stream — and needs to be changed once a week. The patch has been designed to withstand exposure to water such as from bathing and swimming.

Clinical research of the patch found that it has fewer side effects, a higher compliance rate than the pill (i.e. women were more likely to use the patch consistently than they were to take pills consistently) and is not affected by condition by problems such as vomiting or diarrhea which can cause the pill to be ineffective.

About the only caveat with the patch is that heavier women — those weighing in excess of 196 pounds — may not receive a high enough dose of hormones and it may not be appropriate for them.

Source:

Contraceptive patch set for Europe. The BBC, February 26, 2002.

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