Hate Speech at Stanford
Cathy Young | April 18, 2005, 5:29pm
University of Michigan law professor Catharine MacKinnon, the surviving half of MacDworkin, gave a speech at Stanford University the other day about how every day is Sept. 11 for women in America (or should that be "Amerika"?). Noting that "the number of people who died at [the terrorists'] hands is the same as the number of women who die at men's hands--every year," MacKinnon asserted, "A kind of war is being fought, but there is no name for this war in which men are the aggressors and women the victims."
It's true that about 3,000 American women and girls are murdered every year (about 10% of them by other women). Of course, that number is dwarfed by the roughly 10,000 males who are also murdered every year, but never mind: "Just like terrorist attacks, acts of violence against women are carefully planned, targeted at civilians and driven by ideology." This is, of course, nuts. There may be a few woman-killers who are driven by misogyny, but MacKinnon's broader claim is akin to the notion that every interracial violent crime is part of a race war. This analogy brings to mind another point. Anyone who blamed African-Americans as a group for violent crimes committed by black perpetrators, or Arabs or Muslims as a group for radical Islamic terrorism, would be branded a bigot -- and rightly so. Yet MacKinnon can say things like, "half of society is attacking the other half" -- and it's "incisive" and "thought-provoking," according to one female law student who attended the talk.
a | April 19, 2005, 2:04pm | #
holdfast:
"There is only one, however, where the explicit penanlty for leaving said religion is death - and I think we know which religion that is."
What does that have to do with violence against women?
holdfast:
"that make up for the numerous honor killings "
"Honor Killings" are not acceptable, but do you have any evidence that they are more numerous than crimes of passion in Latin American countires, for example?
"Tell me - what is the ratio of women to men at the top Eqyptian universities?"
I'm not sure about Egypt, but in Arab Gulf countries (including Saudi Arabia, the most conservative of the bunch), the ratio of women in universities is more than 50% (i.e, there are more girls than boys in universities). Source:
Cathy Young | April 19, 2005, 2:26pm | #
Joe:
Actually, I am not "picking at the margins." At the margins, I think, is where MacKinnon has something of a valid point: yes, violence against women is a serious problem. What I think is rotten is the very core of her argument: that this violence represents a conscious effort by men to oppress women.
Because remember, again, MacKinnon is not talking merely about men being "socialized" to be violent. She's talking about a conscious effort akin to terrorism. Note, too, that she is blaming all 3,000 or so homicides of women and girls every year on this patriarchal terrorist conspiracy, presumably including, as Dagny points out, the drive-by shootings.
Ms. Young, how does the fact that gay males commit domestic violence upon their partners at roughly the same rate that straight males commit violence against their partners lead you to conclude that males are not socialized to consider violent, controlling behavior towards their partners to be normal? That - the belief in the rightness of using force within a relationship - is the ideology at play here.
I'm curious. Where did you see a reference to "gay males" in my statement, Joe? I was referring to gay relationships. Last time I checked, that term covers lesbians relationships as well.
I direct you to a 1994 article by University of British Columbia psychologist Donald Dutton, a preeminent researcher on domestic violence:
The prevalence of violence in homosexual relationships, which also appear to go through abuse cycles is hard to explain in terms of men dominating women (see Bologna, Waterman and Dawson, 1987; Island and Letellier, 1991; Lie and Gentlewarrior). Bologna et al. (1987) surveyed 70 homosexual male and female college students about incidence of violence in the most recent relationship. Lesbian relationships were significantly more violent than gay relationships (56% vs. 25%). Lie and Gentlewarrior surveyed 1,099 lesbians, finding that 52% had been a victim of violence by their female partner, 52% said they had used violence against their female partner, and 30% said they had used violence against a non-violent female partner. Finally, Lie, Schilit, Bush, Montague and Reyes (1991) reported, in a survey of 350 lesbians, that rates of verbal, physical and sexual abuse were all significantly higher in lesbian relationships than in heterosexual relationships: 56.8% had been sexually victimized by a female, 45% had experienced physical aggression, and 64.5% experienced physical or emotional aggression. Of this sample of women, 78.2% had been in a prior relationship with a man. Reports of violence by men were all lower than reports of violence in prior relationships with women (sexual victimization, 41.9% (vs. 56.8% with women); physical victimization 32.4% (vs. 45%) and emotional victimization 55.1% (vs. 64.5%).
Most of the references, by the way, are to research by feminist scholars.
Btw, some years ago there was a hilarious incident in Massachusetts where a high-level staffer at a battered women's shelter was arrested for beating up her girlfriend. You should have seen the anti-DV activists twisting themselves into pretzels saying things like "Oh, domestic quarrels can be a really complicated matter," etc. These are, of course, the same people who are usually up in arms about domestic violence being dismissed as mere "quarrels."
When the number of men sent to the emergy room or the morgue by their partners rises to, say, 25% of the number of women sent there by their partners, this analysis might be revising.
Oh, interesting, Joe. Can I hold you to that?
Victims of murder and non-negligent manslaughter by intimates, 2002:
Female: 1,202
Male: 388
That's about 33%, actually.
"Intimates" is defined as current or former spouses or partners.
And that's
excluding "justifiable homicides," i.e. self-defense.
Revising time, maybe? (Of course not -- I can see the next round of excuses coming: But all those homicidal women are victims of male abuse
*sniffle* *sniffle* ... But all those violent lesbians are victims of a misogynistic society
*sniffle* sniffle* *sob* ...)
Finally, you say:
"I think equality demands that women be held equally accountable for hate speech as men." And I think that Muslims ranting against Jews are to be considered a great threat than Catholics ranting against Freemasons. Muslim anti-semitism, misogyny = big problems. Catholic anti-Masonism, misandry = not big problems.
I think you're engaging in (probably intentional) sleight of hand by choosing, as your hypothetical target of "unimportant" hate spech, an obscure and almost mythical group like "the Freemasons." How about Catholic anti-Semitism, Joe -- which, unlike the Muslim kind, is not linked to terrorism? I agree that it does not pose as much of a problem as Muslim anti-Semitism, but does that mean that we should not condemn a Catholic anti-Semite as vigorously as we would a Muslim one?
Finally, about feminsts and the Taliban. Yes, the National Organization for Women did speak out about the plight of women in Afghanistan. But it wasn't NOW or the feminists that liberated Afghan women from the Taliban's rule. It was the United States military. Quite a few prominent feminists, including, as I recall, Gloria Steinem, opposed the intervention.
Steven | April 19, 2005, 4:05pm | #
Cathy,
Thank you for that last post. I was never caught up in the DV
INDUSTRY (thank you God!), but I've seen it happen. My mother was a master (mistress?) of inflicting violence or using humiliation, pushing buttons to GET a reaction, and other "typically female" (men do it too!) ploys to GET a reaction, and then acting as the victim.
What bothers me also about MacKinnons drivel, is that she makes no mention of the rapes of men in prison (let alone gay relationships).
The (from memory, so be kind) 2003/2004 Prison Rape Elimination Act found that around 10% of all prisoners are raped. And this is not a date-rape situation where the victim gets up, leaves, and can easily seek out support (though it may be emotionally hard), no ... these men are often gang-raped. And, in prison, once your status is that of "bitch" (not being offensive, just using the slang he is then called) ... that's pretty much it. And he will be raped repeatedly, traded for commisary items or drugs, and has a HIGH risk factor for AIDS.
The number of incarcerated men is (about) 2 million? So 200K men are raped REPEATEDLY and the whole "every victim counts" crowd is nowhere to be seen.
It is only recently that lesbian rape has been seriously studied, and it turns out to be comparable with heterosexual rape.
Rapists, male or female, rely on fear, the victim keeping quiet (homophobia - in prison of being a "snitch"), and keeping power over their victims.
It's sad, truly and without sarcasm, it's sad, that after 2-3 DECADES of rape literature, rape prevention/recognition classes, and changes in our penal system, that MacKinnon et al don't seem to have a viable solution, nor a true desire to expost ALL rapists.
Keeping women in fear and promoting false statistics to keep herself in the limelight, and the victims rehashing their pain, IMO, is just fine by her.
Nice.
rob | April 19, 2005, 4:37pm | #
"ok, Rob, if you feel that you need someone to protect you and your victimized brethren from those mean, scary feminsits with their, uh, word processors, then I agree: we probably shouldn't be lumped together." - joe
Gee, does that mean I won't get to come to your "He-Man Man-Haters Club" meeting, joe? Darn... I'm all broken up by that. Is it still held in the treehouse in your Mom's back yard? (Way to demonstrate childish, by the way.)
For the record, it's not women with word processors who scare me (unless they're throwing them at me). What does scare me is a justice system that is unfairly biased against men who have been attacked and women who get a free pass for attacking other people because of their gender.
Here's a little more personal info than you paid for... My girlfriend happens to weigh roughly half of what I weigh. But considering how much time she spends in the gym and the dojo, she's certainly more capable of hurting me than most men - especially Sensitive, New Age Guys like you.
She'd never try to hurt me, but I suspect this comes from the realization that the price for violently losing her temper is considerably greater than that of the average woman. But I'm sure you're such a BIG, STRONG, RUGGED HE-MAN that NO woman could ever hurt YOU.
Just like I'm sure that women who can't be empowered without your big, strong help think you're the Second Coming of Alan Alda. Time for a reality check, joe: Your condenscension towards women comes through so clearly it couldn't be cut with a chainsaw.
Cathy Young | April 19, 2005, 5:11pm | #
Joe, dear: get your left-of-center bloggers straight. It's not Joshua Micah Marshall, of whom I've never had a bad thing to say. It's Eric Alterman, who is utterly and completely irrelevant to this discussion.
And is "*sniffle* *sniffle* *sob*" considered an argument in some intellectua circles?
Well, I'm not sure, Joe. Probably no more so than snide comments implying that your foreign-born opponent has problems with English comprehension, or sneering at the masculinity of an opponent who's afraid of (ha-ha!)
women and, worse yet, doesn't mind other little girls coming to his defense. These supposedly "feminist" comments are oozing contempt for women.
As for the statistics: I made a reference to homicides because MacKinnon was talking about murders, in the article I linked at the start of this thread. If you're interested in nonfatal injuries, according to the Centers for Disease Control about 15% of those seeking emergency room aid for injuries inflicted by a spouse or partner are males. It's reasonable to assume that this figure understimates male injuries from domestic violence because (1) it's a well-known phenomenon that men are less likely to seek medical aid than women with comparable problems, and (2) a man would be far less likely to disclose that he was injured by a female partner than vice versa. Meanwhile,
a comprehensive analysis of domestic violence studies by British researcher John Archer (published in
Psychological Bulletin in 2000) finds that about 38% of those injured in heterosexual domestic violence are men.
(By the way, I notice that you chose to completely ignore the data I presented on lesbian violence.)
I am not denying that domestic violence is a more serious problem for women than for men because, on average, men
are bigger and stronger. (I'm sure the disparity in injuries would be greater if men weren't held back by the Western cultural prohibition against using force toward a woman.) On the other hand, men are far more vulnerable than women to other forms of abuse, such as
false accusations.
I'm afraid it's not enough to say that "violence against women is a serious problem." Tornadoes are a serious problem, too. To describe the pheneomenon as such while lashing out at all those who perceive any ideological meaning is an act that goes well beyond discrediting a "global male conspiracy."
Not enough for what? To qualify as an enlightened human being in the World According to Joe?
Incidentally, I don't "lash out" at everyone who believes that male-chauvinist attitudes play a role in some or many male assaults on women (a view shared by a number of researchers, such as Murray Straus, who also take a larger and more nuanced view of domestic violence that includes female aggression). I am "lashing out" specifically at Catharine MacKinnon, who believes that, basically, all men are waging a war against all women ("half of humanity is waging war on the other half"). This despite the fact that severe and chronic spousal violence happens in maybe 3% of heterosexual couples.
Incidentally, a growing number of feminists are now recognizing that the MacKinnonite model of domestic violence as patriarchal oppression is false. Ellen Pence, a leading feminist battered women's advocate and a founder of the Duluth, Minnesota Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP), writes in a 1999 essay:
By determining that the need or desire for power was the motivating force behind battering, we created a conceptual framework that, in fact, did not fit the lived experience of many of the men and women we were working with. The DAIP staff ... remained undaunted by the difference in our theory and the actual experiences of those we were working with. ... It was the cases themselves that created the chink in each of our theoretical suits of armor. Speaking for myself, I found that many of the men I interviewed did not seem to articulate a desire for power over their partner. Although I relentlessly took every opportunity to point out to men in the groups that they were so motivated and merely in denial, the fact that few men ever articulated such a desire went unnoticed by me and many of my coworkers. Eventually, we realized that we were finding what we had already predetermined to find.
(In Melanie Shepard and Ellen Pence,
Coordinating Community Responses to Domestic Violence, Sage 1999.)
In my view, the ideology of domestic-violence-as-patriarchal-terrorism has done incalculable harm to efforts to combat domestic violence, leading the "domestic violence industry" to ignore not only female aggression but also such crucial factors in male violence as mental illness and substance abuse. (In many PC-dominated jurisdictions such as Massachussets, state-certified domestic violence counseling programs are actually
forbidden to focus on substance abuse or psychopathology because, well, that would go against the dogma that battering is "ideological" male terrorism against women and we can't have that, can we?)
So yes, I'm going to "lash" out at this insanity, because in my view it's hurting both women and men (and children).
The Masons, mythical? We have a Masonic Hall across the street from City Hall.
What I'm trying to say, Joe -- as you know full well -- is that Masons are not really an identifiable social group in American society. Men are.
We most assuredly should condemn Catholic anti-semitism. What we should not do is seize on the most repugnant anti-semitic ravings of Father Coughlin as an excuse to demonize Catholicism in general.
I agree with that. However, if leading Catholic institutions welcomed raving anti-Semites as their spokesmen (the equivalents of Dworkin and MacKinnon), they would only have themselves to blame if all Catholicism was "demonized" by association.
Steven | April 19, 2005, 5:32pm | #
Rob said:
"For the record, it's not women with word processors who scare me (unless they're throwing them at me). What does scare me is a justice system that is unfairly biased against men who have been attacked and women who get a free pass for attacking other people because of their gender."
I would second that.
(slight stereotyping here - full disclosure)
Since women are generally smaller
they don't have to hit you.
It's called Violence By Proxy (specifically using the state). Any person can pick up the phone and make spurious allegations, with full knowledge before-hand that they face little in the way of recriminations if the allegations are proven false.
This applies in DV cases, to be sure, but the scary one is a false allegation of rape.
I can hear the cry from MacKinnon et al now:
"They can be charged! But false allegations rarely happen!"
Yea, sure, you betcha. Charging a false accuser of rape with "filing a false police report" is like charging a rapist with disorderly conduct: it's not much of a deterrent and it trivializes the magnitude of the crime.
And as to the "rarely happens" idea: "
The 2% of rape allegations are false" comes NOT from a federal crime data base, not from a national study, but from a single source.
In (from memory) 1974(?) Susan Brownmiller wrote a book about rape. "Rape: against our will". In it she cited this now famous, but eroneous, statistic.
Where did she get it? Well, for years she wouldn't say. But finally she admitted that this was from the
opinion on a
memo from one
appealate (?sp?) judge in one district in one city.
Brownmiller must have looked around good and hard and finally found a "statistic" that supported her position.
In contrast there have been two actual studies (and if anyone knows others - plz do chime in) concerning the false allegation of rape.
The first was done by the USAF. In this
**60%** admitted lying just as a polygraph was to be administered. That's a pretty rock hard floor. Notice I didn't say the
investigators determined if the charge was valid: the accuser admitted lying.
The second was done by Eugene Kanin (often called the Kanin Report). Short version: of the cases he included (all the cases from one mid-sized city - full disclosure) he found that in just over
**40%** of the cases the woman admitted to have falsely accused. No other criteria was allowed except her
confession as to make the case a "false allegation".
Some could say:
"but, maybe some confessed falsely"
to which I would reply:
"yes, and many probably didn't confess to lying".
The problem is one of a complete lack of deterrent to false allegations.
Hope I added to the discussioin.
Aegis | April 20, 2005, 4:42am | #
Hi Cathy,
I am a male freshman at Stanford. Thanks for writing this article, because I highly doubt that anyone is going to criticize MacKinnon over here (unless I decide to put my neck on the line with a letter to the editor). I did not attend MacKinnon's first talk mentioned in the artice, but I attended the one the next day (on her book "Women's Lives, Men's Laws"). She was of course advertised and introduced in ecstatic, completely non-critical terms as a "pre-eminent feminist legal scholar."
One of her main premises was that laws were biased against females because they were mainly written and interpreted by males and consequentially reflect the "male experience." She was not specific on exactly which laws she was talking about, or what time in history (which allows her to blur the line between women's past legal inequality and current status).
To be fair, perhaps MacKinnon backs up these claims with real evidence in her book. But I don't have to be a legal scholar to see that laws made by males don't necessarily advantage men and disadvantage women. Just because a law is written and interpreted by males, it doesn't follow that the law will necessarily benefit males, unless you believe that all men are conspiring to protect some kind of male "class interests." Unfortunately, MacKinnon probably does believe something like that.
In reality, there are plenty of laws enacted by men, or by feminists with male cooperation, that do disadvantage males. MacKinnon is completely ignoring the way paternalism and chivalry can influence male lawmakers to enact laws that discriminate against males and advantage females.
Some other random things from the notes I took:
- She eulogized a bit for Andrea Dworkin.
- She spoke in glowing terms of VAWA and her hand in making it.
- She talked about her experience helping female victims of various stripes, such as Linda Lovelace/Boreman. This allowed her to make a bunch of unsupported generalizations about the "oppression" and "exploitation" inherent in pornography.
- She believes that privacy as a doctrine is dangerous for women (because men supposedly have more power in the private sphere)
- She also made some convoluted PC statement about how "male dominance is what is damaging gay men," and that "homophobia is a form of male dominance." That seems like a very simplistic view of homophobia, because it implies that homophobia always comes from male dominance. Yet homophobia also comes from other sources, such as some types of Biblical interpretation (but maybe the Bible is "male dominance" also).
- Throughout her speaking, she referred to "men" and "women" as collective entities, which is not surprising consider that it is a staple of radical feminist rhetoric. I wonder if she has ever heard of category errors and fallacies of composition.
During the question and answer period, only ONE person gave her anything remotely resembling a challenge (I would have, but I didn't raise my hand until time had nearly run out because I was a bit intimidated being the only freshman in a room full of law students). He asked her about false accusations of rape
