Greg Sanders

John Proctor is the Villain?

This premier play at the Studio Theater in DC is a tale of an honors English class in a one-stoplight town in Georgia grappling with the Me Too movement and countercharges of witch hunts in the Spring of 2018. If the premise and the  critique it explores of the Crucible sounds dry to you, don’t worry; the play, written by Kimberly Belflower, delivers ample comedy and well-characterized high school drama. Teacher Carter Smith (Dave Register) is excited to transition from sex ed to a unit on Arthur Miller’s critique of McCarthyism and Red Panic by way of the Salem Witch Trials and - once the premise is established - both represents the standard read of the play while engagingly drawing out the students. Try-hard Beth Powell (Miranda Rizzolo) and Atlanta transfer student Nell Shaw (Deidre Staples) have done their homework and are in parallel founding a Feminism Club along with friends, which is met with some skepticism by guidance counselor Bailey Gallagher (Lida Maria Benson) for being potentially divisive. The club quickly gives preacher’s daughter Raellynn Nix (Jordan Slattery) a chance to shine, as Jordan’s slightly spacey line delivery is a source of many laughs and recalled for me Osaka from Azumanga Daioh, while still holding up as things got more series.

The lighter tone of the early play quickly encounters complication, romantic heartbreak and betrayal, the return of missing student Shelby Holcomb (Juliana Sass), and the inevitable arrival of accusations of sexual assault and exploitation at this small Georgian town. Under David Muse’s direction the whole 9 person cast (rounded out by Rsea Mishina, Shawn Denegre-Vaught, and Zachary Keller) delivers the comedic, intellectual, and dramatic beats. To be frank, I’m a bit too out of it pop-culture-wise to track all of the Taylor Swift jokes and analysis of Lorde’s Green Light, but I think it gets the teenaged voice right and got enough to follow along and crack up at a discussion of Twilight in the context of sex ed. The strength of the play is the character work, the interactions of the students and their teacher, the patter and even dance, ideas grounded in real people.

Speaking of he ending in vague terms, I think Belflower’s script does succeed at her stated intention of challenging the default interpretation of the Crucible, namely that John Proctor as written is not just a flawed hero, but also abusive to servants and crossed a line worse than adultery by having an affair with a 16-year-old in his employ. The celebration of teenaged girl culture is not just fun but celebrates solidarity, a valuable counterweight to “woman beware woman'” stories. However, I felt that some of the more interesting provocations and questions did not have quite enough room to play out. The rousing finale was well-acted and executed but didactic in a way that left me wanting to be more challenged. Even so, thanks to strong characters well portrayed, I was glad to have seen the play.

Spoilers after the cut.

Supplemental: Hooligans and Convicts

At the end of the trip last week, I’d ask asked my companions what stood out for them in Hooligans and Convicts. Inspiring was the term they’d most often used to describe the play.

One standout was a scene describing the use of hunger strikes by imprisoned suffrage activists and the forced feedings was particularly well done. It was not presented gratuitously or graphically, but both made clear the political logic of the protest and the horror of force feeding. The latter has a special resonance with me, going back to a surgery nearly a decade and a half ago. In my case the purpose was not nutrition so there were no dubious meals to face, but believe me when I say that even in a cooperative and caring environment having a tube down one’s throat is no picnic. In her case, she judged that the British authorities would let her weaken but not die in custody, and then seek to re-arrest her once she gained sufficient strength.

My companions also raised the nature of the disagreements amongst the civil rights leaders. Their efforts were united at the Seneca Falls convention, but as depicted, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wanted Frederick Douglass to delay or oppose the 15th amendment unless women were included in the expansion of the franchise, where he naturally cited the urgency for the African American community and in this portrayal noted that while white women could at least hope to influence partners, women in Black families had no representation whatsoever. Later the 19th amendment passes without provisions against poll taxes and measures to preclude Black women and alongside President Wilson’s backsliding on race. The play addresses this by telling some of the story of Mary Church Terrell and others that fought to make sure all female citizens could vote. The messiness and partial victories are important for an honest depiction of history, and I think they do help ground the nature of progress and show the way people kept fighting even when their part of a broader coalition was neglected.

The debates and speeches excerpted also brought a fresh appreciation of the incisive and clever responses and statements made by the women as they were challenged and told to keep their place. One particular way I feel inspired is to want to engage more with the primary sources and learn more of the figures myself and to bring a similar mindset when facing the challenging problems both within our nation and abroad.

Play: Hooligans and Convicts

Tonight we went to see Hooligans and Convicts at the Winnipesaukee Playhouse. It’s a musical play commissioned by the theater for the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, with the debut delayed one more year due to the pandemic. The play is a historical review, with a modern teenager as the framing mechanism for with seven actresses and actors taking on a multitude of roles. Earnest and didactic at times, I think the play benefits from looking at the relationships between leaders, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. The play also crosses the pond to look at the militant suffrage movement in the U.K. and leader Emmeline Pankhurst. Pankhurst gives the play its name based on the terms of derision a magistrate threw at her. Those [historical figures] included goes beyond some of the bigger names to include a mix of movement members, including African American women whose organization were relegated to the back of the march in support of the 19th amendment.

My favorite performance was from Rebecca Tucker who played both Anthony and Pankhurst, both quite juicy roles of charismatic speakers who brought them alive. Our whole group enjoyed it, learned a few things, and left with some things to think about. In particular, one theme that stood out to me was the role of children and pregnancy in the movement that often isn’t given the same level of attention in histories of civil rights struggles.

[Edits: Some small fixes for clarity and addition of pictures.]

Osaka Human Rights Museum 2014-05-31

While my wife and mother were cooling their heels at the the closed Modern Transportation Museum, I was at a different station, searching for the Osaka Human Rights Museum. It was a bit of a walk from the station, made longer by my misreading of the map. I ultimately gave in and turned on data roaming to pull down some digital navigation assistance. Thankfully for you, dear reader, I'm not subjecting you to another post (primarily) about wars, past or present. This museum is primarily focused on the human rights situation in modern Japan and many of the displays, including AIDS quilts and rainbow flags, were instantly recognizable even though the displays were in Japanese.

The first zone of the single floor of exhibits was entitled Shining Light. This section could be a bit sign-heavy, but there were pictures to help and I got both an English audio guide and a printed notebook with translations to help. The displays were also rich in photographs and pictures taking on issues of gender discrimination, LGBTQ rights, the rights of the disabled, and even a significant section on children. My comprehension level wasn't quite high enough to grasp how some of the displays might have been different than their equivalent in the United States, although I know that the struggle for gender equality in Japan is very much ongoing.

I dwelled the longest in the second zone, Living Together/Creating Society which focused on ethnic minority groups within Japan as well as other communities facing human rights issues, often for health or environmental reasons. Displays included rich coverage of Korean and Chinese immigrants, the Ainu people, and native Okinawans. In the Korean section, I found particularly affecting a set of captioned home videos on the post-War Korean community in Japan including a celebration in Kyoto of the liberation of the peninsula on the first anniversary of Victory in Japan day. The section on the Ainu and the Okinawans both focused on their living culture, although of course in the latter case the U.S. military base adds a whole different set of issues to the discussion.

One piece that did particular catch my eyes was a flag that was both instantly recognizable and unfamiliar. To the left is a was the banner of a Christian group in Japan, a red crown of thorns on a black field. The museum really did do an admirable job getting at the history of a range of groups and the last section on Dreams/The Future as well as the staffers in the front office and bookstore all left me feeling good about the Japanese activist community.

I left a bit before closing, rushing back to the loop train to try to get a half hour in at the Modern Transportation Museum, which unbeknownst to me had been closed this whole time. I somehow managed to miss Kate and Mom on the platform and wandered around the building once before running into them. Happily, we did have one fond train story coming out of that particular excursion. At the transfer station on the way to meet up with Moti and Francis we spied the poster on the right, celebrating the 110th anniversary of Osaka's transit system. One of the booth attendants saw us doing that and rushed up, but gladly this was not a fusspot of the paranoid American-style. Instead, the gentleman had just recognized us as transit geeks and gave us three post card copies of the poster to send out as we wished. That encounter brightened our day and took some of the sting out of the missed connections at the museum.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus: Critique

Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is the power behind a traveling carnival show that on its surface is past its prime. The young Anton (Andre Garfield) is an ineffective hawker, Dr. Parnassus’s daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) is nearly sixteen and dreaming of an escape to an ordinary middle-class life, and voice of wisdom Percy (Verne Troyer) can only do so much. However, as a belligerent passerby learns, the power of the show is quite real and can send patrons on a glorious adventure through their imagination before depositing them at a soul-endangering choice. The “good” doctor has already made a poor choice or two in the past, and as the film starts, the Devil (Tom Waits) is ready to collect. Magic notwithstanding, the situation seems hopeless before the arrival of a mysterious hanged man (Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Collin Farrell).

Heath Ledger’s last film and Terry Gilliam’s latest, the Imaginarium has been out for a few years now, so this post will contain vague spoilers to allow more complete discussion. For those leaving the post at this point, I’ll leave you with a song that gets at the story from Valentina’s point of view.

The stellar cast delivers, the Imaginarium itself shows off Gilliam’s visual genius, and the film contains thought-provoking theological and political critiques. I think the most interesting conflict is between a man largely broken by living with the consequences of his mistakes and another who constantly reinvents himself.

However, the Gilliam makes a critical mistake with increasing  consequence as the film ends: he denies Valentina agency. I think this critique may best come from a film made a few years earlier:  MirrorMask. That film starts with a similar premise: a young woman raised in a carnival environment who desperately seeks escape. She even makes youthful mistakes of spite and at times is dependent on others for rescue. However, the hero of that story consistently maintains agency while Valentina is explicitly objectified as the men of the piece compete for her love and her soul. Even trustworthy Percy says that it’s a mistake to tell her the truth and Tony refers to her as the “prize” without the other characters objecting. I don’t think Valentina needs to be the protagonist nor shouldn’t be allowed to make terrible choices; everyone else certainly does the latter. However, the other characters pursue their own interests while towards the end Valentina largely reacts, bouncing from one patron to another.

The end of the film pivots on the fact that, charmingly, the Devil is a bit too fond of Parnassus to do his job properly. Unfortunately, I’d say the same is true of Gilliam’s plotting. Dr. Parnassus pulls a clever trick near the end, but the story is contorted in order to increase that moment’s importance. I’ll allow the fiendish Mr. Nick to pull his punches, but the big reveal on Tony is over the top, nice guy Anton never grapples with his worst moment, and Valentina explicitly rejects the chance to run her own life.

The price Dr. Parnassus pays and his final relationship with his daughter works, even if I find her end state unsatisfying. I don’t think the problem is that Gilliam is too easy on an alter ego character. Unlike Ghost Writer, which also critiques Tony Blair, I don’t think the film falls apart both morally and thematically if you treat the protagonist as a stand in for the director. Instead, I think the problem is that Dr. Parnassus’s prominence in the end undercuts the arcs of the other characters, a problem that probably would have been avoided if the story had been thought through from Valentina’s perspective.

Source: Think I bought this for myself; correct me if I’m wrong.

Image Source: Promotional image via Wikipedia.

Last Train Home 2012/05/15

I recently rediscovered where to go to get write ups for criticism of video games. the aptly named Critical Distance blog. Game articles are the theme of this round up and if you want a wider selection I certainly recommend checking out critical distance:

• I already mentioned this on my Google+ feed, but I thought Extra Credits did a constructive job of looking at the problem of harassment in online gaming communities and the question of what can be done about it.
• Soctt Juster at PopMatters put his finger on a game trait that I think older games often managed better than newer titles: "One of my favorite aspects of video games is their ability to simulate worlds that reconcile the conflict between huge spaces and quick trips.  Virtual spaces can be big enough to feel large and mysterious but small enough to mentally map as a contiguous whole, even after you get the ability to fast travel via the equivalent of a virtual jet. "
• Krystian Majewski at Game Design Scrapbook wrote a piece noting that the first Suikoden game pull off the team building premise of Mass Effect and in some ways manages it even better. Sadly, many of the later Suikoden games are fairly widely seen as disappointments, although I quite liked Suikoden 2 as well. I'm not sure where the series hit the wall.
• Wondering where the music games have gone and whether they'll return? Adil Sherwani at Medium Difficulty has an insightful discussion on what Guitar Hero and Rock Band did and did not achieve while citing Smule's Ocarina iPhone app as pointing to a possible way forward. I'll have to see if the app is available for Android as well.

A seamstress shop in West Luxor 2011-04-18

In Egypt I was fairly consistently surprised by the high percentage of men in fields that are balanced or dominated by women in the States. Service industry jobs like clerks, maids, wait staff, and the like were disproportionately likely to be male. I think this can be fairly directly traced to low rates of labor participation by females and the high unemployment rate for men. The chart below is from the Population Council and while the labor participation rate increases for men as they age it stays low for women. I found the study via the viable opposition blog, it has a lot of other good demographic information.

 

The trip’s tour company, does charitable work in Egypt through the Grand Circle foundation and took us to see a seamstress shop that they’d provided with some start up capital and sewing machines. The hire widows, unmarried women, and other females who have insufficient other means of support. The west bank of Luxor is some mix of Rural and Urban Upper Egypt and as the chart above shows, women generally don’t find a lot of opportunities to work.

The woman in charge described how they try to reinforce the economic opportunities with education. The workers are told of the benefits of birth control, delaying one’s first child, and of spacing out children. The workers then tell their families and friends in an attempt to leverage the work in the larger community. They claim fairly dramatic success which would suggest that the high rural birth rate is driven in good part by ignorance of family planning methods rather than directly by cultural or religious pressures. This seems consistent with a Rand study by Mona Khalifa, Julie DaVanzo, and David M. Adamson. In the chart space refers to time between pregnancy and limit refers to restricting overall family size. I’d expect the west bank near Luxor to be one of the more prosperous parts of rural upper Egypt, but even so the need for family planning services is striking.

We picked up a few items in the shop and didn’t get a great deal on them, but I’ll skip the bargaining practicum as this is the sort of thing I’m willing to pay a premium to support.

Blog roll addition: Hathor Legacy

Hathor legacy is a cultural criticism site with the tagline “in search of good female characters.”  They recently revamped things by consolidating their multiple feeds into a single one (they also have a LJ feed), so this seemed like a good time to link.  The design of the core site doesn’t excite me, the text is a little big and you need to read more to get the details on any post.  However, that’s not an issue with the feeds, so I don’t really care.

My favorite discussion has been one by guest author Audra on Laura Roslin, the female President in Battlestar Gallactica.  The write-up does a good job of both addressing her strengths and acknowledging that she does make a fair number of iffy decisions.  The discussion went off topic some, but added more analysis and kept the things interesting well after the initial post.

A second post I enjoyed was one I disagreed with put up by Kris Ligman.  She thought Portal did more to advance female protagonists than Mirror’s Edge because the latter’s marketing was really driven by its main character.  Loving both games, I disagreed, as did other commenters, but while the discussion was a bit harsh on Kris I think she handled herself well and updated her views as new info came to light.  Potential for good discussion really is key in my view to a good criticism site.  Another fun series by the same author is a salutary set of pieces on the women of Metal Gear Solid.

The site was started by Jennifer Kesler who both gets a nice mix of writers and wades into comments as a moderator when appropriate, which is key to getting the commenting community that I enjoy.

Redemption for Eliot Spitzer?

Rebecca Traister muses about his attempted comeback and Amanda Marcotte argues against supporting Spitzer's return to political life.

I think, given his prosecution of prostitution rings, that he has some dues to pay before his return.  I think there are definitely ways to improve our handling of this issue, yet I also think the answers aren't as straightforward as say marijuana decriminalization.  So, I'm not trying to mandate a position for him to take, but I'd want to see him take real efforts to square his actions in public life and his immediately relevant and criminal private actions.  This isn't to say I'd automatically support his opponent in a primary election, let alone the general election (not that I'm a New Yorker anyways).  But if he wants support from me, he's got to put some actual work into dealing with the elephant in the room.

What may be the most import story for feminism this year

Michelle Cottle analyzes a New York Times piece on the gender gap in layoffs.  82% of the job losses have hit men and women may soon be the majority of the workforce.  She raises a few possible implications, tense marriages resulting from a change in breadwinner?  Men being less likely to leave women because the men are economically dependent?  Smooth adjustment?

The article itself had a few other points of interest beyond the topline stats:

Women may be safer in their jobs, but tend to find it harder to support a family. For one thing, they work fewer overall hours than men. Women are much more likely to be in part-time jobs without health insurance or unemployment insurance. Even in full-time jobs, women earn 80 cents for each dollar of their male counterparts’ income, according to the government data.

Universal health care will help with the health insurance problem.  The others won’t have direct changes, but I expect increasing economic power of women will improve their bargaining position both economically and politically.  Since some of these male jobs probably aren’t going to be coming back, I don’t think the changes will be as easily rolled back as some were post WWII, the Times throws out one case study:

She switched from being a full-time homemaker to a full-time businesswoman when her husband was laid off previously. She says she unexpectedly discovered that she loves her job, even if it is demanding…

In any event, having more money will help with household bargaining and also working to get better benefits for part time workers.  However, women working in and of itself hasn’t been enough so far to entirely change the home:

On average, employed women devote much more time to child care and housework than employed men do, according to recent data from the government’s American Time Use Survey analyzed by two economists, Alan B. Krueger and Andreas Mueller.

I think the change there will probably be most notable in new relationships.  It gets easy to get in a status quo pattern, I know I still rely too much on my Mom’s housework when I’m at the old family home.  However, I don’t think change will necessarily be generational.  Men who can’t find jobs equivalent to their old ones and that are unwilling to contribute more around the house will be more likely to be dumped if the women can afford it.  Women dating men with weaker employment prospects will likely put more of a premium on home economics skills.    All and all, as money and power are redistributed social norms tend to follow.  The one substantial caveat I’d add is that we’re not talking about economic elites here, that makes a big difference for achieving political change.  (This paragraph is obviously fairly heteronormative, implications differ for those in same sex relationships.)

Dealing with foreign and domestic adversaries

Jonathan Chait recently argued that liberals often seem to favor negotiation with foreign adversaries but oppose concessions to domestic ones.  This resulted in some quick pushback.  Key points from the pushback: negotiating isn’t a concession and that playing hard ball in politics means very different things than playing hardball in an actual war.  Here’s the key points of  his retort:

Certainly, it's a way of thinking about your adversary that's at least somewhat in tension with the kind of thinking liberals prefer on foreign policy. On foreign policy, liberals like to understand that our adversaries' thinking can't simply be defined as the negation of our own values. (I agree, which is why I'm a liberal, albeit a moderate one on foreign policy.) It's fatuous to think that if we believe in freedom, then Islamic radicals must simply hate us for our freedom, or that if we believe in equal rights, then social conservatives must be motivated by a hatred for equal rights. Moreover, our adversaries are not always monolithic, and there are times when concessions can divide or isolate them from the center, not just encourage them to increase their demands.

I think Chait’s summary of how domestic and foreign policy strategy are similar in this regard is accurate.  That said, the pieces he was responding to were more strategic than the excerpt he cited.    So, is there strategic analysis correct?  Well, coming from the other side, here’s Ross Douthat’s read:

If you're an unconflicted supporter of abortion rights, obviously, then you shouldn't support overturning [Roe vs. Wade], period: If second-trimester abortion is really a fundamental human right, then there's no reason to risk it's availability for some nebulous hope of a less polarized America

So, is a lot of the rhetoric about social conservatives hyperbolic?  Sure.   But that’s true of most any set of rhetoric when you’re dealing with an issue you actually care about.  I think Chait may well be right in that liberals should do a better job of practicing what we preach when it comes to domestic strategy.  That said, Obama’s outreach attempts to the House Republicans on stimulus netted him zero votes, so I don’t think this is a problem our leadership suffers from.

To have a meaningful debate, I think Chait needs to throw out an example where liberal strategic logic is flawed rather than one where the rhetoric is overheated.  On this issue, positions don’t flow from your assumptions on human nature, they flow from how strongly you care about abortion rights and how broadly you define them.

A positive legacy of Palin

When Sarah Palin was picked, many derided her as an obvious play for female voters.  I thought and still think, that in the likely event that’s true, it’s still a form of progress.  Every movement loves to pick up token spokespeople from areas where they’re traditionally weak.  However, elected officials are different as they actually have power.

Practical example: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.  As Matt Yglesias notes, five Senate Republicans voted for this bill. They were Arlen Specter and the four female Republicans.  I think the impact on abortion politics will be secondary.  While the ban abortion leadership is mostly male if memory serves the polls are more evenly divided.  On other issues involving women’s rights, I expect more progress to be made.

As the demographics of this country change, winning white males doesn’t cut it.  If the GOP can’t do a better job of crossing ethnic lines they have to try to cross gender lines.  As Democrats field more women the pressure there will increase.  I could be wrong, this will be easily testable, but I think the Palin pick wasn’t a one-off fluke but will be indicative of GOP recruiting strategy in the future

I also suspect that if a stable compromise happens on abortion, it will only happen after there are enough women in the Republican leadership that they could be the point people for the whole caucus.  Otherwise, if I’m wrong and Republican women elected officials will follow the Ledbetter model, then the status quo will prove stable and no compromise will be necessary.

No place like Home

The Playstation 3 just debuted a new social networking based interface.  Basically think second life, avatars wandering around, private rooms, but instead of hordes of customizability you get integration with arcade games and tools for co-op.  Penny Arcade tour it apart for things like pointless scarcity, apparently the bowling lanes fill up and there’s lines for arcade games, not to mention loading screens.

Part of the problem is technology, but as the third panel in the comic wants, there’s a real problem with unwanted attention and personal space.  As the MTV News crew found, females get a constant and obnoxious level of attention.  More from Tracey John:

Wanting to bust a move myself, I left my avatar doing “The Robot” and went to the (real-life) kitchen to grab a snack.

But when I returned, I had some unusual encounters…

Still doing “The Robot,” I had four male avatars dancing around me. One asked where I was from; others said, “hey baby!!!” and “i like your ***s” (censored by PlayStation, but you can guess what that meant). Another asked “will u marry me?” All this without me having said a word to anyone. I had also received three friend requests from players that were not immediately present…

From what I’ve heard there’s a certain amount of this in the background of most MMOs.  Trouble here is that it’s consistent enough to move to the foreground.  This could be because it’s just starting out or could be the demographics of the PS3 Home community are just different.  Anyways, sounds like they need to do some combination of safe spaces and a complaint system.

Pro-Herpes social conservatives?

Currently, social conservatives are trying to defund Planned Parenthood.  The standard liberal response to this is to point out that abortion represents only 3% of Planned Parenthood services.  Ross Douthat pushes back against that noting that they do still perform 250k abortions a year.  He goes on to defend social conservatives against the pro-herpes charge.

But telling people who are against abortion that they're "pro-herpes" because they don't support channeling three hundred million public dollars a year to America's largest abortion provider is the equivalent of me accusing a fierce and moralizing anti-theist like Sam Harris of being "anti-education" because he doesn't want his tax dollars being used to, say, fund the Catholic school system. [emphasis mine] The phenomenon of an institution that does good with one hand and evil with another is a familiar one in human history - even Hezbollah does a lot of impressive humanitarian work, I believe - and it does not by any means follow that those who oppose the evil are morally obligated to support the institution anyway just because it does other, less morally problematic things besides.

There’s a rather key flaw in that argument.  Namely, that Sam Harris presumably supports public schools.  If he doesn’t, than yup, he anti-universal education.  So if you oppose abortion but favor making contraception available then this Sam Harris defense works for you.  The defense doesn’t work if you: opposes contraception, exclusively support ineffective and dishonest abstinence only education efforts, or try to cut family planning services under Medicaid.

So does the defense work at all?  More after the cut.

Bit of follow-up on the Douthat post

Mecha pointed me to another key part of Drum’s post that I must have skimmed over.  Specifically a post by Steve Benen:

Indeed, the evidence of conservative willingness to "compromise" on abortion is surprisingly thin. In 2005, for example, pro-life and pro-choice Democrats crafted the Prevention First Act, which aimed to reduce the number of abortions by taking prevention seriously, through a combination of family-planning programs, access to contraception, and teen-pregnancy prevention programs. Dems sought Republican co-sponsors. Zero -- literally, not one -- from either chamber endorsed the measure.

The bill never got out of committee (this was back in 2005 when Republicans controlled both Houses and thus the agenda) so no vote count is available.  Also, while the immediate ban in South Dakota was defeated there are other laws on the books that could lead to a ban:

• Louisiana, Utah, and Guam have post-Roe laws that have been found unconstitutional but are still on the books.  More states have old pre-Roe laws that might go back in forth.
• Louisiana, Mississippi, and both Dakotas states have laws would automatically ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned.

So getting into the hard ball politics of this, the Republicans probably kept that bill in Committee because they knew it would give political cover to pro-life Dems and pro-choice Dems in districts hostile to reproductive rights.  If it came to the floor, I suspect it would get some votes, but it matters that the Republicans can keep party line discipline on such an issue.  We should expect such discipline to continue in the future.

Similarly, pretty much every political movement tries to achieve all their goals if they think they can.  I tend to think that banning most drugs is a poor public health policy, but if I can just get the ban on pot (in small quantities at least) lifted I’d be a happier camper.  If we get to the point where our prison population is cut dramatically than the issue loses most salience for me.

So the claim of willingness to compromises means that if they try for it all, and lose, then they might accept that loss.  What Douthat is saying is that no middle ground available under Roe is good enough for him to say “fine, I give up.” 

Does he provide compelling evidence of that?  I think he does point to signs of popular support for compromise, but the idea that “crisis pregnancy centers” and “post-abortion counseling” are some sort of compromise position is ridiculous unless those centers are handing out contraception.  I think that might change, abortion attitudes are relatively static when broken down by age, but younger people are more open to contraception.  At this point, politician pro-lifers with proven willingness to cut deals to reduce the number of abortions are called Democrats.  Until the Republican party can’t maintain its discipline on contraception issues there’s no reason to trust there’s a faction we can make a deal with. 

I actually have some trust for Douthat and think he means what he says, but he’s not the one we’d be cutting a deal with.  I think the best hope of getting a faction that would break the party-line would be substantial increases in the number of women in positions of power in the Republican party.  Palin’s certainly not a compromiser, but with the shrinking percentage of white guys in the population the Republicans are going to have to start doing better with women if they want to staunch their demographic bleeding.  Regardless, these are all hypothetical possibilities, none of them are worth giving up Roe for.

Blogroll addition: Ross Douthat

With Democrats on the upswing, I figure now is  good time to be magnanimous in victory.  I’m adding an “opposition” category to my blog roll for those I read on the other side.  I may add a few more or switch over a couple writers, as any furtive alliances with libertarians may well breakdown once Bush is out of office.  Anyways, if someone is their, take it to mean that I consider them worth reading don’t impute their views to me.

Anyhow, my main disagreement with Douthat is that he’s a social conservative, although to my knowledge he’s never said anything against same-sex marriage.  Primarily he focuses on being opposed to abortion rights.  He recently had an op-ed where he argued that opposition to abortion wasn’t what sank the GOP ticket in 2008.

The public is amenable to compromise: majorities support keeping abortion legal in some cases, but polling by CBS News and The Times during the presidential campaign showed that more Americans supported new restrictions on abortion than said it should be available on demand. And while some pro-lifers would reject any bargain, many more would be delighted to strike a deal that extends legal protection to more of the unborn, even if it stopped short of achieving the movement’s ultimate goals.

But no such compromise is possible so long as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey remain on the books…

But so long as the Supreme Court remains closely divided, and a post-Roe world remains in reach, the movement’s basic political task must remain the same. Not because pro-lifers are absolutists who reject compromise, but because any real compromise will always depend on overturning Roe.

Kevin Drum agrees that seeking to ban abortion didn’t sink the ticket, but adds an important caveat.

The truth is more prosaic: pro-life activists have done exactly what you'd expect them to do. They've pushed for the most restrictive possible laws they can get away with, and in many states they've succeeded in making abortion de facto unavailable. If Roe were overturned, compromise would be the last thing on their minds.

That said, while they’ve managed to drive doctors willing to perform abortions out of South Dakota, Denise Ross over at TNR looks into why they keep failing to pass a ban, regardless of whether it would pass constitutional scrutiny.

While it's generally agreed that South Dakotans haven't dramatically changed their view of themselves as "pro-life," Rhoden isn't the only one who thinks the well is poisoned. Blanchard, the political science professor, contends that the rapid-fire repeats of the issue have hurt pro-life efforts in South Dakota. "By making the [2006] bill so extreme, they made the right-to-life movement look like a bunch of nuts," he says. "Coming back two years later without any rest from the issue and producing a more moderate bill--but only a little more moderate--they may have permanently altered people's view of them as just a bunch of busy bodies."

Practically speaking, if at some point Roe vs. Wade proves unsustainable I do think people like Douthat would be willing to make some sort of good faith compromise.  That said, I don’t trust many of his compatriots whose eagerness to also take out contraception shows that they’re basically in a zero-sum game with feminists.  That said, the abortion rights movement is best off not compromising aside from safe, legal, and rare and trying to push the medical technology as far as possible so that if Roe breaks down it will be as easy as possible to provide services to poor women in restrictive states.

Reproductive rights round-up

First off, Amy Benfer over at Salon’s Broadsheet discusses a NY Times article with an obnoxious writer but a subversive photographer.  The piece in question is about surrogate motherhood and it underlines a lot of the class issues involved.

The issues involving surrogacy seem relatively straightforward to me.  As I generally see it described, reproductive rights first and foremost focus on the person bearing the child and deal with the source of the genetic material and of the fetus secondarily.  This does mean that females are the primary beneficiaries of said rights, at least until we develop artificial wombs or a way to splice in seahorse DNA.  That said, I don’t think that, absent considerations of bearing the child, providing the egg is actual deemed a more protected activity than providing sperm.

It seems like the easiest way to deal with surrogacy within this framework is to say that any deal to act as a surrogate does not abrogate the pregnant person’s reproductive rights.  In essence, contracting a surrogate is a crapshoot.  You could get treated as a normal creditor, if they don’t go through with it you get most of your money back unless the person goes bankrupt or something.  Presumably most arrangements would involve a large payment once the deal is done.

In the period immediately after giving birth, I suspect a reproductive rights framework would allow the surrogate to keep the child (again with breach of contract provisions kicking in).  Beyond that we go up to four actors: child, pregnant person, genetic material contributors, and whoever raises the child.  At that point, I don’t think the reproductive rights framework is particularly helpful.

Anyways, so does this kinda suck for people hiring a surrogate?  Yes, but at least it provides them a predictable environment. 

The other post of interest is one that I have a harder time discussing.  Michael Berube, who has a child named Jamie with down syndrom, has a post up discussing a rather civil argument he’s having with Peter Singer who thinks he’s closer in spirit to some rational alien than the average person with relevant genes.  It’s well worth reading and funnier than you might expect.  Earlier on Berube had done a post on how he reconciles rights for the disabled with reproductive rights including an earlier one more focused on the Terry Schiavo debacle.

The short version as I see it is opposition to mandatory genetic testing, providing those that do test accurate and often encouraging data about environmental conditions, government support to improve prenatal and natal care, but ultimately preserving the right of the pregnant woman to ultimately make what call she will.  That said, preserving said right doesn’t necessarily preclude condemning things like sex selection as legal but bad.

Etymology

Catherine Price has a rather depressing entry up about women being murdered because they married for love.  The details are particularly horrific, but worse yet the perpetrators probably won't even be pursued.

The girls died over one and a half months ago and no one has been arrested; when the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent organization, tried to register a criminal complaint about the case, the local police refused. Worse, several male legislators from Baluchistan (the province where the killings occurred) defended the killings in Pakistan's national parliament. "These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them," said one senator from Baluchistan, Israrullah Zehri. "Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid."

One might argue that shooting someone and burying her alive are the definition of an "immoral act," but hey -- why let rationality get in the way of a centuries-old tradition? After all, as Samar Minallah, a human rights activist who investigated the killings, stated to the Globe and Mail, "Never in Pakistan's history have we seen the perpetrators of such crimes punished."

One thought on the matter.  Would we do better describing these murders as lynchings rather than honor killings?  Based on the wikipedia description, it sounds like the key aspect of lynching is that two or more people are involved.  I don't know whether these killings normally have multiple perpetrators, but that protection by the community seems to get at the essence of what constitutes a lynching.  I've never been big on the whole "honor" concept, but it's still a positive word, and I don't think it's one that should be associated with such a dreadful practice.

The utility of thinking of them as lynching is that at least in America we've found techniques to deal with these practices.  (One could argue that some police brutality still qualifies as a lynching, but the order of magnitude is far lower than number of incidents decades ago.)  That may help us have the proper frame of mind when working with reformers in other countries to help them find solutions.

I don't always approve of trying to give things nastier names.  I think calling "suicide bombers" "murder bombers" is just redundant.  We certainly shouldn't call them martyrs, but suicide is the key descriptive term.  It isn't as if suicide has any positive moral connotations in English.

Sigh

I’m with Spencer Ackerman on the latest VP news.

There are many, many, many reasons to be concerned about Sarah Palin’s fitness for vice president. A scurrilous and unfounded rumor about her family is absolutely not one of them. Same goes for her appearance. As progressives, we have an absolute obligation to defend Palin when it comes to the same kind of private crap that the right put on Clinton or on John Edwards or any number of others...

Update: Yeah yeah so Bristol Palin is pregnant, so what.

I believe in playing hardball, but there are times to act like we lived in the country we want to live in and not the country we inhabit. This sort of family stuff should be off the table. I wasn’t bothered by the mentions that Lynn Cheney was gay, she’s out after all, nothing to be ashamed of. Teenage pregnancy is a whole different ball game.

Update: Also agree with Kevin Drum and more importantly, Obama. Not on board with Sullivan, but he provided the Obama link, so hat tip.

Low-fidelity world

So an article covering neuroscience from a New Yorker article made me think of computer games (via Brad Delong):

...The images in our mind are extraordinarily rich. We can tell if something is liquid or solid, heavy or light, dead or alive. But the information we work from is poor—a distorted, two-dimensional transmission with entire spots missing. So the mind fills in most of the picture. You can get a sense of this from brain-anatomy studies. If visual sensations were primarily received rather than constructed by the brain, you’d expect that most of the fibres going to the brain’s primary visual cortex would come from the retina. Instead, scientists have found that only twenty per cent do; eighty per cent come downward from regions of the brain governing functions like memory. Richard Gregory, a prominent British neuropsychologist, estimates that visual perception is more than ninety per cent memory and less than ten per cent sensory nerve signals.

So basically our connection with the real world has low bandwidth and we make up for that with our onboard graphics/sensory processor. I’d be curious what the breakdown is among other animals, is this common for most life forms or do those with less complex brains primarily rely on raw inputs?

In any event, that particular analogy makes it a bit easier for me to process this. It doesn’t mean we’re disconnected from the world, it just means we’ve got a client side intensive way of processing the world. Presumably higher bandwidths proved the more difficult to implement biological solution.

Zimbabwe

I had been optimistic when Mugabe lost the parliamentary elections, it had seemed as if his hold on power had slipped far enough that it was over. It appears I’ve underestimated his capacity for repression.

Mark Bellamy and Stephen Morrison over at the CSIS Africa Policy Forum outline what the U.S. could be doing to help.

It is now possible to transcend this indifference. Mugabe’s unpopularity, his crumbling reputation as a liberation hero, the increasing savagery of his security chiefs, and the regional economic and social costs of Zimbabwe’s meltdown — all favor an external diplomatic push...

A top priority has to be ending South Africa’s patronage of Mugabe through diplomatic pressure that exploits growing regional dissatisfaction with Thabo Mbeki’s leadership. Botswana’s new President Ian Khama, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, Tanzanian President and African Union head Jakaya Kikwete, as well as Mbeki’s presumptive successor Jacob Zuma, all understand the urgent need to act on Zimbabwe. Other strong African voices, such as Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, are also now questioning South Africa’s role in Zimbabwe and calling for change. Once the South African linchpin is removed, the other external props that sustain Mugabe — Angola, Namibia, Equatorial
Guinea, Libya, and China — will cease to matter.

As I understand it, the value added the U.S. provides under their proposal is that of an organizer. Appoint an envoy, the envoy gathers an international team, that team works for the long haul to change the situation. Presumably the envoy would have relevant credibility and be well positioned to answer Mugabe’s constant charges that all criticism is a re-colonization attempt. This envoy then, with the official backing of the U.S. would be able to organize figures ready to criticize government already. Only once that team, with substantial African representation, would we probably be in a position to convert those not critical.

Picture taken by frontlineblogger and used under a Creative Commons license. Here’s the blog of the picture taker.

Belated note on Hillary Clinton's Presidential bid

Between various distractions I didn’t get around to blogging Sen. Clinton’s concession speech (link goes to Rebecca Traister’s write up; for the full text, go here). I caught part of it live and thought it was lovely and went a long way to reuniting the party and I certainly thank her for that. Ezra Klein points to a nice American Prospect article on lasting consequences of Sen. Clinton’s run. The ones I found most notably of the positive observations:

• There’s now precedent for a female frontrunner who was strong on a range of feminist issues.
• Sexism was made obvious by the campaign and did inspire some backlash and greater awareness.
• The Senator figured out an ambitious but achievable health plan.

As is obvious from the above list, I do agree with Paul Krugman that there was some raw sexism deployed against her, although in my opinion fairly little of note from the Obama campaign itself (as compared to some of his supporters). The sexism was certainly a contributing if not the decisive factor in her loss (which is all that most of her supporters are saying). That said, I do agree with Kevin Drum’s commentary that not all the alleged race-baiting from the Clinton camp was a media fabrication. On the upside, Mark Penn makes an excellent scapegoat for almost everything.

Anyways, also in the interest of unity, I tend to accept Kathy G’s argument that Obama should not pick Sen. Webb as VP. As she document, while he presently favors having women in the military, he made life rather hard for some early female entrants. Spencer Ackerman doesn’t dispute her main charges but does add some nuance on Webb’s better relevant positions. Nonetheless, after Sen. Clinton’s loss there are bridges to be rebuilt and legitimate desires to be addressed. Avoiding a Veep who is a great Democrat but has a problematic history on gender relations would probably be a good start.

As for Sen. Clinton, I hope Obama works with her on health care because she does have good experience and is a real wonk on both the policy and politics.

Controversies [relavant] to my blog roll.

I do keep Pandagon on my blogroll and Amanda Marcotte (who along with Pam Spaulding is the main blogger on the site) has gotten in a couple big fights lately that tie into larger issues with women of color and feminism. In the latest one, she’s taken some hard hits from people I respect so I figured it was worth posting on. More after the cut/

Why the good ones are always taken

Interesting Slate article that applies game theory to dating. Specifically the issue of a shortage of eligible bachelors:

The problem of the eligible bachelor is one of the great riddles of social life. Shouldn’t there be about as many highly eligible and appealing men as there are attractive, eligible women?

Actually, no—and here’s why. Consider the classic version of the marriage proposal: A woman makes it known that she is open to a proposal, the man proposes, and the woman chooses to say yes or no... A woman chooses to receive the question and chooses again once the question is asked.

At this point I’ve probably lost some of you, so let me elaborate a bit more. The idea of women being choosers is not inconsistent with the idea of classical marriage being patriarchal. Women had to choose carefully because they would be economically dependent on the man and the structure of society meant that once married he’d have considerable power over her. The one point in the process women could really apply their power was in the choosing and classical setups reflect this. So hopefully I’ve convinced you, why would this lead to an eligible bachelor glut?

You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group "strong bidders" and the second
"weak bidders." Your first thought might be that the "strong bidders"—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.

But this is not true. In fact, game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by "weak" bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the "strong" bidders will hold out for a really great deal. You can find a technical discussion of this here...

The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable "strong bidders."

This makes sense to me. That said, I think this will be a diminishing problem as we move from a classical division of labor model of marriage to a cooperative one. Under the division of labor model, there’s much more of a common pool of desirable picks. Under a cooperative one, the quality of the pairing and not just the groom becomes much more important.

At the same time, the breakdown in patriarcal norms mean that women are in a much better position to choose not to choose. They can get economic prosperity and sex without having to marry. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t advantages in long-term monogamous relationships, but it does mean that there are better alternatives to settling. This in turn should increase the quality of the male meat market. You’re less likely to get paired off by just because of the supply-demand imbalance. Instead men will have to work more to improve their attractiveness, sociability, and employment status, or more niche bonuses. So I expect in another generation or two, the eligible bachelor problem will be largely greatly diminished in the developed world.

Prostitution round-up

In the interest of space I’m going to skip the ideological arguments and go straight to pragmatism. What makes conditions least bad for prostitutes and people who are at risk of getting involved in the sex trade? Emily Bazelon in Slate is a good place to start and provides some interesting data from Chicago. Apparently prostitutes make $27 an hour but typically only 20k a year. There’s "an annual average of a dozen incidents of violence and 300 instances of unprotected sex" and police officers often demand sex to avoid arrest.

Nic Kristof argues against legalization saying the Netherlands’ experiment is a failure that has improved health conditions but has also resulted in more demand, criminal gangs, and increased trafficking. By comparison, Sweden bans buying sex but not selling sex and has apparently managed to push down the trade substantially. Contra that, McArdle argues that the Netherlands is a small country surrounded by large countries where prostitution is illegal.

Via Yglesias, Brad Plumer does a country by country rundown. He generally supports the Swedish model although he does say the aid for getting people out of prostitution is often lacking. On that topic Tyler Cowen notes that in India, helping prostitutes save has helped given them the financial security to say no to clients.

As Ezra Klein notes that pretty much all the liberal arguments he’s seen seem good with the Swedish approach. I’m guessing it may work by redistributing the power. A regulatory regime would also redistribute power and allow sophisticated enforcement. But regulatory regimes cost more money than anyone seems willing to spend, let alone what the U.S. would likely put it. So making only buying illegal is a cheap way of empowering (but not enriching) prostitutes and clamping down on demand. It stays cheap by pigging backing on the criminal justice system rather than creating a new regime.

In which I pre-emptively defend the [nonpartisanship] of my sense of humor

[Split off my last post to keep sizes manageable.]

So, after my last post, my more skeptical readers might be thinking "oh, it’s easy for you to say a piece you disagree with objectively fails at humor." That’s true of course. So, for an example I like and agree with that failed, let me point to Stephen Colbert’s White House Correspondants Dinner speech. That speech was quite funny, but it was also incredibly insulting. I think Colbert did a very brave thing, he just didn’t quite pull it off. Gene Weingarten again says it best:

Stephen Colbert made some serious humor errors in what was at its mean little heart a completely fearless and brilliant presentation. These
errors were so serious they undermined its effectiveness and produced
what was, in the end, something of a failure. He needed an editor,
apparently didn’t have one, and it cost him dearly...

But, sadly, it wasn’t a home run. It was a solid triple to deep left
center, but Colbert got thrown out at home trying to stretch it to a
homer.

I recall reading some arguments that Colbert didn't need to be fun because he was speaking the truth.  That's silly.  The truth will help, but it's not enough in and of itself.  Humor can be used for both good and ill.  It tends to be a tool of the oppressed because they're typically better observers than those with power, this means their comments are more likely to ring true.  Also if you're powerful enough you don't have to be clever, you can just straight up insult people and don't have to woo them to your side. That said, obviously there is a lot of subjectivity in humor.  What was funny a few decades ago may not be funny now.  But the existence of subjective factors doesn't mean that there's no easy calls.

Getting back to the topic at hand, Charlotte Allen is no Colbert.  Humor-wise she struck out but was given a base anyways.  Unlike Colbert, she wasn't playing live.  She had an editor and that editor needs to give a real apology.

[Email from Nic convinced me that nonpartisan was probably the better word here.]

The nature of humor and the nature of John Pomfret's mistake

Following up on my earlier entry on the Post’s "Women are Dim" piece.  My favorite humor writers at the Post and their friends are eviscerating Charlotte Allen’s piece.   Joel Achenbach links to a hilarious takedown by Catlin Gibson and Rachel Manteuffel.  A sample: "Allen’s most effective argument -- that women’s opinions are meaningless and should not be listened to -- is buttressed beautifully by her inability to support her own arguments, even that one." 

Gene Weingarten doesn’t bother rebutting the piece itself noting "he online world has already done a splendid job of savaging this story, forcing lame-ass explanations from the Outlook editors, who officially contend the piece was funny, or satire, or sumpin’."  He then provides a demonstration of what actual satire looks like.  Happily, Allen herself clarifies "I’m not sure whether I’d characterize the piece as satire, but I’d certainly characterize it as humor: my poking fun at the dumb things my
sex does."

Now, there’s a lot of pieces out their poking fun at both sexes.  I tend to find a lot of that humor outdated and tiresome.  That’s true of the stuff aimed both at women and at men including when it’s done by writers I like.  That said, sometime it’s clever enough to work.

I think to make a point by humor it needs to ring true and/or be clever.  As the aforementioned take down shows, it wasn’t at all clever (as a couple conservatives noted).    So basically the only audience that will find it funny are the people that think it rings true.  (Note that rings true doesn’t equal is true, evil lies can be funny, you just have to work a lot harder).  The more insulting a piece, generally speaking, the higher the threshold for ringing true or being clever. 

The piece as originally pitched, comparing Obama fandom to Beatles fandom, doesn’t excite me but could have worked.  The trouble is the piece that was written, while still "tongue-in-cheek" was far more insulting than it was clever or true.  It objectively failed at humor and hiding behind Allen Q&As and saying "if it insulted people, that was not the intent" doesn’t cut it.  I'm sure it rings true for some people., specifically people that think women do act kinda dim.  Publishing the piece as written is a fairly spectacular lapse of editorial judgment.

 

On responding to provocateurs

Kevin Drum has a good new post on how to handle the a bit of misogynist tripe that was published in the Post.

OUTLOOK HELL....Ezra Klein writes about Charlotte Allen’s already infamous op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post:

I don’t want to engage with the article because, sometimes in Washington, editors take controversy as a sign of success. "The response is heated, but that just shows we hit a nerve, forced people to discuss an important issue. Namely, whether women are idiots." So instead, I’ll say this: They should be ashamed of publishing an article of such poor quality.

...I dunno. Take it on a case-by-case basis, I guess. Or do what I’m doing now and and respond to someone else’s post instead of to the original piece itself. But I’ll second Ezra’s further comment: Charlotte Allen may be a nitwit, but the world is full of nitwits. The real fault here is with the Post’s Outlook editor, John Pomfret, who apparently thought it was cute to run a plainly moronic article solely because it would get some attention when lots of people attacked it for being moronic. He needs to find a new job if that’s what he thinks his current job is all about.

I like that approach and am taking it up. My letter to the editor, ombudsman, and Outlook (thanks Feministing for organizing the links) section after the cut. Going after insipid provocateurs is pointless, instead it’s necessary to put pressure on their sponsors, publishers, and other media enablers. In this case, that enabler is Outlook editor John Pomfret. Might not have been his personal decision, but if it wasn’t than I want him directing his wrath at the one responsible.

[Update: According to Politico, the Post is feeling the heat and going with the satire defense. Funny, I don’t think hyperbole regarding something you basically believe qualifies as satire. Regardless, this is why I included the note about Style being the appropriate location for ’light-hearted’ stuff. (Via Pandagon)]

The poor do not exist to earn you light side points

Andrew Sullivan quotes a reader that echoes a point he made in the Conservative Soul.

If I’m forced to act in a Christian manner by threat of law, am I
really a Christian? Seems like this is quite detrimental to the Church.
And to be honest, I’m less afraid of social conservatives in this
regard as I am of fiscal liberals. If the government hijacks my income
to redistribute it into some form of pork designed to help the less
fortunate, especially when it doesn’t go toward its intended purpose
anyway, not only are they stealing from me, but they’re preventing me
from being charitable. It’s destructive for all parties.

The poor aren’t a tool put here for well-to-does personality morality play. They are individuals with their own interests and their "individual freedom" is generally a lot more constrained by economic conditions than the freedom of those capable of noblesse oblige.

This applies to me as well of course. The poor aren’t here to provide fiscal liberals with the benefit of being charitable with other people’s money. What matters is outcomes. Rampant poverty, beyond generating immense suffering, can be a nightmare for society at large. Creating a underclass that lacks hope of advancement almost inevitably leads to crime and violence.

I tend to think that preventing such an underclass is accomplished most easily with government programs that provide some essentials and shift the overall incentive structure. Poorly designed programs can get in the way and should be changed or dropped. But the marginal increase in personal freedom for the poor from an effective programs is much greater than the marginal decrease in freedom that comes from taxation.

Ana article not worth settling for

Lori Gottlieb’s new article in the Atlantic, "Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough" is enjoyably torn to pieces by Amanda Marcotte over at Pandagon.

Gottlieb’s argument in short is that being a single parent is hard and that settling for a guy is much better. Moreover, you’ve got to settle young because by the time you’re in your mid-thirties to forties the dating market sucks for women.

It was fairly obvious it was going to be a terrible piece based on an awful line of argument in the start.

And all I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous.

So, there’s no women that don’t want to have children? Or have settled and got a relationship that wasn’t better to leave? Or settled and were left? This kind of false consciousness argument deals with critics by simply saying their personal experience is invalid or ignorant. It avoids the heavy lifting of making a real argument and makes it easier to use the kind of sloppy thinking common in this piece. There’s no stats, no in depth interviews with people that settled or are happy not settling, just Gottlieb’s personal experience which she generalizes to an argument relevant for all women.

Anyways, I certainly buy the idea that single parenting is hard. In some cases, it can also be fairly inevitable, so I do support subsidized child care and other programs that make things easier for all parents but single parents in particular. But in terms of her immediate practical it sounds like what Gottlieb needs is not a husband but a strictly childrearing partner. She might even want to consider moving in with her other single mother close friend in the same predicament. There’s economics of scale in child-rearing and I don’t think having sex with one another is really that key to successfully raising your kids.

Roe vs. Wade at 35

A now no longer innovative argument is that progressives might benefit if Roe vs. Wade gets defeated. In short it was a somewhat questionable judicial win

So via Yglesias, Scott Lemieux argues against abandoning Roe vs. Wade.

The legislative “compromises” celebrated by the contrarians involve sacrificing the rights of those women and allowing legislators to severely restrict abortion without paying a significant political price.

He also has a multi-part argument that the decision in Roe vs. Wade was not the only justifiable way to resolve the case, but that it nonetheless can certainly be support (part 2 and part 3). I think his judicial argument is persuasive to me but not compelling; however, I find the practical argument genuinely compelling. The compromises an end to Roe vs. Wade offers is one that throws poor women under the bus. Just trading away the parts of abortion rights I find problematic isn’t on the table. Moreover, it is far too easy to trade away rights that I personally don’t need.

Amanda Marcotte had a post where I thought she did a particularly good job of explaining her strong abortion rights position.

I’m one of those who thinks there’s a moral issue when it comes to killing a fetus that’s sentient. I don’t think that that moral issue has any bearing on the legality of abortion,* but I would be ooked severely by a woman who aborted at [like] 30 weeks for no reason. Lucky for me and my potential for ookiness, late term “convenience” abortions don’t happen-most are performed for health reasons...

*Because I think it’s immoral not to donate your organs when you die if you can, but it should be perfectly legal not to. Same principle.

I like that argument even if it’s not where I come down. I think there can still be a distinction, one between omission and commission. Nonetheless it does make quite clear the emphasis on bodily autonomy.

So in short, I think it’s worth fighting for Roe even I don’t find the judicial logic compelling. My analysis of the strategic situation is after the cut.

Do American Feminists care about women in other countries? Yes. Duh.

Amanda Marcotte passed on an open letter from American feminists that was written by Katha Pollitt.

Columnists and opinion writers from The Weekly Standard to theWashington Post to Slate have recently accused American feminists of focusing obsessively on minor or even nonexistent injustices in the United States while ignoring atrocities against women in other countries, especially the Muslim world...

We reject the use of women’s rights language to justify invading foreign countries. Instead, we call on the United States government to live up to its expressed commitment to women’s rights through peaceful means.

The letter goes on to call for promoting women’s rights, offering asylum, putting diplomatic pressure on other countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, and supporting international efforts to improve women’s conditions. Sounds good to me. That said, I don’t have the authority to sign stuff with a meaningful title, so I’ll just express my support here.

I certainly do still support our invasion of Afghanistan and women’s rights, as well as the general human rights situation, was certainly a supporting factor. However, I don’t tend to think that human rights violations short of genocide or politicide can be considered a casus belli in its own right. I’m not aware of a mass killing specifically targeting women, although mass rape or sexual enslavement does qualify as a war crime and often accompanies mass killings. I think that could qualify as a casus belli, but I’m not aware of a case where it happened independent of mass murder.

My logic is that civil war and occupation are such terrible things that the decision to start one over human rights should be made within a country and not by outside powers.

On the same topic, Broadsheet has a round-up the recent women’s rights issues world wide. I recently attended an Afghanistan survey event and when I get my hands on the relevant report I may post a follow-up with data on women’s rights in Afghanistan.

Juno Review

I saw it tonight and quite liked it.  Quick rundown, teenaged girl gets pregnant and deals with the consequences, and it's a comedy.  Really it's the female viewpoint response to Knocked Up.  While not that big on abortion I think it can safely be described as profoundly feminist.  It really is about Juno, the title character, her choices, and her interactions with the people around her.  She can be a bit of a cipher, but the supporting characters are all rather well developed and I like them a lot.

This is also definitely a hipster movie.  I liked a few of the songs, although while the folksy indy music fit the tone most of them, particularly the intro, didn't do it for me.  The characters are constantly witty, to an utterly unrealistic degree, but the acting is also rather good anyways so I think it works.  That said, it really did not work for the <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/custom/today/bal-to.juno21dec21,0,5190317.story">Sun's reviewer</a> so if snarky hip girls aren't your thing than this isn't the movie for you.  It's a bit more life affirming than say Ghost World, but that's probably a good reference point for whether you'll like this.

Anyways, the communal environment of the theater is fun, but you can probably replicate it by renting it with some friends.

Abstinence-Only Education gets results: A rise in teenage birthrates

I read about it in the morning Post and Ygelsias picked up on the story as well. He links to Lawyers, Guns and Money that highlights the key paragraph.

"[T]eenage sex rates have risen since 2001 and condom use has dropped since 2003. Abortion rates have held steady for a decade, although numbers from 2005 and 2006 are not available."

So abstinence only education has been shown to have no real affect whatsoever. As I previously discussed, I’m not sure there’s strong evidence that sex-ed programs work but there is definite support for making methods of contraception freely available. The dependent variable in the studies are often abortions, but I’d suspect the abortion rate is somewhat correlated with the unintended pregnancy rate (aside from those abortions resulting from health reasons).

The one other question of interest to me is how many of these are unintended pregnancies. I’ve heard some arguments that in certain communities young motherhood can be a bit of a norm. Dealing with that problem is really a separate issue entirely.

Surprisingly, cheap food is available in the Forbidden City [Sat. 10-3 Midday]

[More pictures of the Forbidden City (like the Forbidden Planet, but smaller)]

The Forbidden City is actually quite the large palace complex. I’d say it has the area of a couple city blocks. The general design, courtyards broken up by large sub-palaces, is fairly repetitive although the art varies some with each section. Interesting, you can tell a building’s importance by the number of little animal guardians it has at the upper corners of the roof. If it’s eleven, than the building was used for the Emperor’s most important functions. It is neat though being able to freely wander, back when this place was in operation for a guy like me to get in I’d have to be a top scholar or artist or give up hope of children.

There’s a lot of paintings on the buildings, statuary, and carved stone. The statuary and some of the giant water buckets used for fire extinguishing were gold coated. Some of that gold was stripped off when the place was raided by European powers back during the Qing Dynasty. The most precious treasures are actually over in Taiwan, although there is a neat clock museum. I didn’t actually see what they did have in the treasure gallery, Mick said it wasn’t that great and it cost extra. And speaking of costs, there was a quite affordable resturant. I got a good lunch and drink for around twenty five yuan (~$4).

Spending only a few hours wasn’t enough to really explore the place, although if we were guided (it was just me, Rick, and Mick) we may have seen a few more highlights. The audio tour was alright but the wifi proximity sensors didn’t always seem to trigger and there was no rewind or fast forward available. Also my guidebook incorrectly promised Roger Moore. The garden at the far end was quite neat and were I to go back I’d definitely take more time to explore it. There was one neat climbing area that apparently the Emperor and a consort would go up once a year to dine at the pagoda at the top. After we left we climbed the hill in Jingshan park, which was created using the soil from the moat. Good quick hike and a nice view from the top.

Now you too can easily lie using pictures

The Post’s tech column has a review of cameras that will automatically Photoshop your pictures so you look better.

When they work, both can generate a photographic likeness that looks more attractive than the real you -- a SuperYou that you can post on Facebook, MySpace,  Match.com or any other site.  HP’s photo alterations are more ambitious than Fuji’s (and probably more in demand, given the hefty state of many Americans). To use the slimming mode, you take a picture as usual, then switch to the camera’s playback mode.

Bring up the photo, tap the "Design Gallery... " button on the screen, tap "Enhance Photos," and then choose "Slimming." There, you can then select one of three levels of shrinkage to determine how much narrower the person in the shot will appear. The camera will save a new copy of your shot, allowing you to compare the original and the edited version back on your computer....

The camera will then slightly soften the appearance of any faces that it detects in the image. This doesn’t always work out: In many of my tests, either I couldn’t see any difference, or the "enhanced" shot merely looked a bit out of focus.

With the right kind of photo, though -- a close-up portrait with the subject centered or nearly so -- this mode made people’s faces look slightly smoother and younger. Think of it as the reverse of what high-definition TV does to actors: Where one adds five years to a person’s appearance, this feature can knock five years off...

So why not build cameras that know more of the editing tricks creative
photographers have used on their computers? If a camera can make people
look thinner and younger than their physical selves, why not have it
also whiten their teeth, dye their hair and blot out their birthmarks?

On the whole, I’m willing to chalk this up as a good thing.  We’re constantly bombarded by prettied up images of people that are already beautiful.  Meanwhile, almost everyone feels they look bad in photos.  I think this is in part because they do, on average I think people look better in person than in snapshots. 

The ability to edit our own pictures with incredible ease will both make people more attuned to the edits on magazine covers and let them have pictures that look as good as they do in person, if not better.  Admittedly, this is a rather bourgeoise solution and in present form it won’t be available to those with self-esteem issues but not money.  However, if this works, I’ll bet we’ll see it in photobooths and disposable cameras within a few years.  The techniques are widely known and the software should be fairly cheap to replicate.

Using birth control to reduce the number of abortions

I’ve been reading discussion of the new study by the Guttmacher Institute that was published in Lancet. The study found that the legality of abortion didn’t correspond with abortion rates. Instead it corresponded with whether the abortions were safe.

"The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute."

Via YglesiasI saw that Ross Douthat argues:

"[W]e don’t have is any evidence that increasing government funding for sex ed and birth control in a rich country like the United States, has an appreciable impact on the rate of unintended pregnancy, and thus abortion. I’ve seen suggests that it doesn’t."

Two of his pieces of evidence suggest that most sex-ed programs, lime abstinence-only programs, don’t really work. He had only one source that subsidizing birth control and that source mentioned that these programs increased contraceptive "we might increase the number of students using birth control regularly by 22%" (and that’s percent, and sadly not percentage point)." The source, Jane Galt, found this underwhelming and figured it was an outlier study, but unless she’s got a meta-study of her own or can find methodology flaws, that’s hardly a killer argument. In my book, 22% is appreciable assuming you’ve got a fair sample size (I do wish these articles would throw out p-values or r^2s).

That said, she’s on more solid ground with the AGIstudy when she points out that liberal states do seem to have higher abortion rates, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all subsidizing birth control. More importantly, I can buy the argument that non-monetary factors may often have a greater influence in explaining why people don’t use birth control. I think that’s a great argument for R&D to increase convenience though. Also, none of that data covered emergency contraception, which only recently became available over-the-counter (a terrific way of increasing the convenience of usage).

So Douthat seems to have a fair amount of support (without seeing argument from the opposition) on the limitations of sex-ed programs. His case on birth control isn’t really there though. Subsidized access might not be enough, but on its own it seems to help.

Bill Maher is a boob (too easy, but too hard to resist)

In the derogatory sense of the term, based recent comments reported on at Salon's Broadsheet.  In a recent segment he attacked mothers looking to breastfeed in public.

Among Maher's digs against the lactivists, he compares breast-feeding in public to masturbating in public: "Next thing, women will be wanting to give birth in the waterfall in the mall," he jokes. He carps that these moms are just "too lazy" to plan ahead or cover up. And what do these mothers really want, according to Maher? To feed their hungry children and avoid crying fits in public, maybe? Nah, says Maher, what they really want is attention! Yep, what they really, really want is guys like Maher looking at their boobs.

Way to show the libertarian spirit Maher.

This is really quite straightforward. 

1. While it is not a viable option for many women for a range of reasons, breastfeeding tends to make babies healthier and maybe even smarter.
2. U.S. breastfeeding rates are below that of many European nations.
3. So assuming we care about the health of infants (a stretch I know), a logical step would be to stop discouraging people from breastfeeding.

Now I'd accept that not all venues are probably appropriate.  But I'd say that anywhere that you can bottle-feed is fair game and that's most places.