Bringing Sexism Back
Kerry Howley | June 13, 2008, 4:37pm
In his goodbye to Hillary Clinton, the always entertaining Michael Moynihan writes:
The Democratic primary was a lose-lose proposition for the image of American tolerance: If Senator Obama lost, ours was an irredeemably racist country. Senator Clinton lost, and we are infected by sexism. But whether viewed through the prism of radical gender feminism or a boy's club media conspiracy, the truth is considerably less complicated. The vaunted Clinton machine—devoid of fresh ideas and facing a dynamic, inspirational opponent—simply couldn't compete.
But we need not choose between these two conclusions. It's probable that Clinton ran an inferior campaign, as Moynihan argues. And unless Hillary nutcrackers are somehow emblematic of gender equity, it's blindingly obvious that Katha Pollitt was also right: This campaign inspired myriad public displays of misogyny, many of them deeply dispiriting. Perhaps another woman wouldn't have prompted questions like "How do we beat the bitch," or calls to iron the shirts of hecklers. There is a tendency to dismiss sexism against Clinton because "it's just her." But sexism is no more particular to its object than racism. Surely it matters that instead of saying "I disagree with this policy proposal," Tucker Carlson chose to say of the would-be candidate: "There's just something about her that feels castrating, overbearing and scary." Unless you think there is something new about comparing assertive women to castrators, saying "but there is!" really isn't an excuse here.
There is no need to overplay the relevance of Facebook groups like "Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich"; the misogyny that matters is more subtle. The tacit biases Kristof mentions are quite real, as any social psychologist will tell you, and they suggest that most people are disposed to perceive a woman as either likable or competent--not both. There is tradeoff, and Clinton's noted lack of likability is at least partly attributable to her strength. That's not to say that some women won't be able to strike a balance, somehow coming off as assertive without being tagged a robot, a school marm, or Lorena Bobbitt-esque. But it's a huge disadvantage, and five seconds of watching Chris Matthews sputter through a broadcast should only make that more obvious.
Anyway, this seems like a good time to link to Charles Johnson's wonderful post on what Hayek teaches us about rape. I wrote about sexism and the Clinton campaign here, here, and here.
Mr. Nice Guy | June 14, 2008, 10:28pm | #
"It's not surprising that the campaign found the "iron my shirt" guys at some radio station."
Again, insanity by ideological nuttiness is a marvel to behold.
"The Clinton campaign totally planted those hecklers."
"Actually, if you look it up it started with some shock jocks who do this kind of thing all the time."
"Uhh, yeah totally, they were pawns of the machine."
Jesus man, if you some of you guys want to know why many people who didn't like Hillary all that much still felt the hate on her was irrational to such a degree that it might have been sexist, then look in the mirror.
"People believe exactly what they're told to believe." Well, you're right there, though in a way I kinda doubt you know or would appreciate...
"Hillary is the product of a large dysfunctional family with a weak father and weak male siblings. She dominated that family, and her modus operendi to all males is domination.
When she was in front in the polls, she condescended to all the males. Then when Barak beat her in Iowa, she cried, and made a comeback."
This is why it's kind of hard to take Camille Paglia seriously, or you as a semi-rational human.
Knee-jerk psychoanalysis aside, I know I always associate crying with domination. But you know libertree, there is a psychoanalytic concept that may explain your comments: projection.
HRC plays dirty ball, has few principles, and has a bizarre ambition. Just like Mitt Romney for example or scores of other political canidates. The people who hold her out to be the devil are very strange...
Rad Geek | June 15, 2008, 12:41pm | #
Tommy_Grand:I read that, in the US, more men (usually boys) get raped than women --- but the male rapes go unreported. I never understood how "unreported" statistics get tallied, but I know that the number of rapes I see cited is not the same as the number of rape convictions.
Ross Perot's Trade Policy:Tommy Grand, you can read lots of things on the internet. I suppose with prison rape that's possible, but it wouldn't make much of a dent in Brownmiller's hypothesis if the criminal fringe that compels all women to curtail their behavior in the outside world also behaves the same way on the inside world.
This question I can help out on.
I know of no empirical data that suggests that men are raped more often than women are. It's certainly true that very few rape survivors report what happened to them to the police, and that male rape survivors are even less likely to report it to the police than female survivors are. But there is fairly extensive research on unreported rapes, and it does not indicate that the unreported rapes against men are anywhere near numerous enough to make up the difference.
Obviously, there is no perfect way to determine the number of sexual assaults that aren't reported to the police. However, the best ways at our disposal to get a grip on something like the rough scale of the problem are anonymous victim surveys, in which researchers randomly sample a population of men and women (most often with telephone surveys or paper surveys), ensure the anonymity of the respondents, and ask them whether certain kinds of events have ever happened to them. Victim surveys like these are the kinds of surveys that are generally being cited when writers refer to the large proportion of rapes (over 90% of rapes against women, and an even higher percentage of rapes against men) that go unreported. Since the victim surveys are anonymous, and carefully designed to be as specific and objective as possible in their questions; and since there are no legal or social consequences attached to responding to the survey, as there are for making a report to the police, these tend to give a much more accurate picture of the situation than police report statistics do.
One of the most systematic, largest, and most recent victim surveys was the National Violence Against Women Survey, conducted by Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes, for the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Justice. The surveys were done in late 1995 through early 1996, with the research reports coming out from 1998 to the present, and (in spite of the name) collected a great deal of data about the incidence, prevalence, and nature of violence against both men and women, including battery, rape, and stalking. You can read a great deal about their findings on rape in their
research-in-brief report (1998) (which includes a couple of pages of discussion on survey methodology, pp. 13-15), their
full report (2000), and their recent
research report on rape victimization (2006).
What they found is that about 3% of U.S. men (about 1 in 33), and about 18% of U.S. women (about 1 in 6), have suffered either a completed rape, or an attempted rape, in their liftimes. If you look only at completed rapes, and exclude attempted rapes, the numbers are about 15% (1 in 7) for women, and about 2% (1 in 50) for men.
If rates of rape have remained relatively stable since 1995-1996 (police statistics indicate that, if anything, they have gone up; but as noted, police statistics are hard to rely on) then about 0.3% of U.S. adult women (about 300,000 nationally) and about 0.1% of U.S. adult men (about 100,000) have been raped in the past 12 months; and that there have been about 876,000 rapes committed against women in the U.S. in the past 12 months, compared to about 111,000 rapes committed against men. (The incidence numbers are different from the prevalence numbers because female rape survivors are much more likely to have been raped repeatedly than male rape survivors.)
Thus, while it's appallingly common for men to be raped, and more men have been raped than most people think, women are nevertheless much more likely to be raped than men are.
I have no idea if it's accurate, but (lacking evidence) I cant discount the possibility. Assuming arguendo that it's true (more males are raped than females) how does that affect the Brownmiller hypothesis? I mean, if perception (and therefore fear) is one thing and reality another, wouldn't her hypothesis still be valid?
For what it's worth, Brownmiller is certainly aware of child sexual abuse against boys and the rape of adult men in prison. She discusses the former in her discussions of child molestation and of serial killers. She discusses the later at some length in a section of Chapter 8, "Power: Institution and Authority" (pp. 257-268). Brownmiller was, in fact, one of the first writers to conclude (remember, she published in 1975) that the rape of men in prison was systematic, widespread, and an instrument of prison hierarchies of power. She believed (rightly, I think) that the phenomena tended to support her theories about the use of rape as an instrument of gendered hierarchies of power, not to undermine them.
If it were true that more men were raped than women, then no, I don't think it would much affect her hypothesis, firstly because her hypothesis, as you note, has as much to do with the felt threat of rape as it does with the actual incidence of rape, so with men, if there were in fact widespread stranger rape, but it were never talked about much, and especially not as something that threatens all men in daily situations, you wouldn't expect it to have the same social effects. Similarly, and just as importantly, since the threat of rape (by other men, not by women) doesn't generally lead to men being exhorted to seek protection from women, you wouldn't expect it to have the same dynamics for sex-class that the threat of rape by one group of men has on women, who often are exhorted to seek protection from other men. And, thirdly, what we know about the situations in which men are most often raped (it is extremely rare for men to be randomly targeted for rape by strangers, outside of some well-defined spaces like prisons; but, while most women who are raped are also raped by someone they know, not by a stranger, the existence of a significant number of men, who randomly target women for rape, in everyday situations, at large in the outside world, does create a significant threat, which Brownmiller is describing in her Myrmidon theory, and which does not generally exist for men. (If the rape of men were more common than the rape of women, then no doubt widespread rape might have other systemic effects on men; but not the effects, as discussed by Brownmiller, that the threat of random stranger-rape in the world at large has on women, since the threat profile for men would be different in character.)
But, as I said above, see the victim surveys on actual incidence and prevalence of rape. As far as I know there is no evidence that stranger rape, or intimate partner rape, or acquaintance rape is more commonly suffered by men than by women.
Mr. Nice Guy | June 15, 2008, 5:21pm | #
A lot libertarians are authoritarians. Many versions of libertarians take a point in history in which massive deficiencies in power exist (deficiencies as in differences in economic bargaining power, or permeated stereotypes and prejudices for examples) which were created by past uses of fraud/force and they say "ok, now there must be absolute respect for private choice." They know that such a starting point makes sure that differences due to bargaining power or stereotypes will be supported and all in the name of "liberty."
If I'm a Native American whose lands were confiscated from him, whose culture was often forcibly denied him at gunpoint, who was placed in places of low economic value, who was actively discriminated against via government sponsored force, fraud and propaganda, (which then creates and reinforces permeating stereotypes about how "my people" are lazy, unintelligent, etc., which then makes more people less willing to hire me, loan me money, buy stock in my company, etc), then to, when I start to get a hand in government and start thinking about using its power to offset some of the burdens imposed on people like me, say "whoa, government is bad, property is sacred, you gotta bargain with whatcha got, etc" is of course to support the authoritarian structures in place at the time.
A lot of libertarians know this, and like it, concerning many of the groups they dislike (women, native americans, blacks, the poor, athiests, "hippies", etc). They don't think government is incompetent, far from it, they are actually worried government WILL have an effect, that is taking some advantage they fell ass backwards into and giving it to people they think deserve to suffer...
As to Clinton, I'm not sure what the low and common behavior you are speaking of is. His spineless triangulation strategies? Yeah, I kinda did not like that. But I imagine you mean that he had sex with a woman who wanted to have sex with him when he was married. No, I'm not bothered by that one bit I'm afraid.
You need sexual purity in your leaders?
