Economic growth, morality, and obnoxious terror analogies

Yesterday, I attended a discussion at the American Enterprise Institute on a new book by Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. The book, which I have yet to read, is rather provocative, as the Publishers' Weekly review makes clear:

This probing study argues that, far from fostering rapacious materialism, economic growth is a prerequisite for the creation of a liberal, open society. Harvard economist Friedman, author of Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy in the 1980s, contends that periods of robust economic growth, in which most people see their circumstances palpably improving, foster tolerance, democracy and generous public support for the disadvantaged. Economic stagnation and insecurity, by contrast, usher in distrust, retrenchment and reaction, as well as a tightfisted callousness toward the poor and—from the nativism of 19th-century Populists to the white supremacist movement of the 1980s—a scapegoating of immigrants and minorities. Exploring two centuries of historical evidence, from income and unemployment data to period novels, Friedman elucidates connections between economic conditions, social attitudes and public policy throughout the world. He offers a nuanced defense of globalization against claims that it promotes inequality and, less convincingly, remains optimistic that technology will resolve the conflicts between continual growth and environmental degradation. Friedman's progressive attitude doesn't extend to his cautious approach to promoting growth in America; a critic of Bush's tax cuts and deficits, he advocates fiscal discipline to free savings for investment, along with educational initiatives, including "school choice," to boost worker productivity.

There's something here for everyone, or rather something to annoy everyone. Friedman's celebration of prosperity and consumerism is bound to upset many leftists; his view that economic growth is best fostered by government policies encouraging investment and not by a laissez-faire approach to the market will not sit well with libertarians and conservatives; and his definition of moral progress solely in terms of tolerance, fairness, and ohter liberal is sure to ruffle conservative and communitarian feathers.

There weren't many leftists in evidence at the AEI symposium, but libertarian, conservative and communitarian objects were indeed offered, both by audience members and by discussants Chris DeMuth and Amitai Etzioni. DeMuth, among other things, chided Friedman for a rather simplistic equation of the Reagan and Bush 41/Bush 43 periods with stagnation and moral regression, and the Clinton years with growth and moral progress. Etzioni was particularly concerned about the effects of economic growth on human relationships and families, and about the fact that a lot of growth in recent years has been achieved by more people working longer hours. I don't think Friedman had a response to the former; on the latter, he gave assurances that his book pays due attention to moral and religious values, and to the importance of human relationships -- particularly marriage -- in creating happiness.

I won't comment further until I've read Friedman's book (which I want to do); I wonder, among other things, if he deals with the relationship between economic growth and moral growth -- as he defines it -- in countries other than the U.S., including non-Western cultures. And while I'm not a conservative or communitarian, I was somewhat troubled by the fact that he seems to define moral progress exclusively in terms of liberal social values rather than, say, the health of families. (Conversely, however, I think that conservatives who talk about moral decline often act as if the waning and stigmatization of racism were not a substantial moral achievement.)

One somewhat off-topic observation. One of the questioners during the Q & A was Michael McManus of Marriage Savers, who faulted Friedman for omitting marriage, divorce, and out-of-wedlock birth rates from his measurements of moral progress. McManus opened his question thusly:

"Three thousand people died on 9/11, but since 9/11 we have had six million divorces in this country ..."

McManus may have an entirely legitimate concern, but did he have to tie it to 9/11 and suggest that somehow, the toll of divorce is equivalent to that of terrorism? One post-9/11 blight has been the proliferation of terrorism metaphors in discussions of domestic policies and issues -- metaphors promiscuously used by both left and right to indict everything from hog farming to teachers' unions. Enough is enough. I believe it was Midge Decter who once called for a moratorium on the Nazi metaphors in debates of domestic American issues. Maybe it's time for such a moratorium on terrorism and 9/11 metaphors.

More on the new VAWA

My Boston Globe column on the new Violence Against Women act can be found here.

As you may notice, I take a somewhat more positive view of the new VAWA in the column than in my blogpost last week. This is because, on reflection, I think the new text in VAWA -- particularly the section directing the GAO to conduct a study evaluating not only the extent to which men as well as women are victims of family violence, but also the availability of services to them -- is more of an opportunity than I initially realized. If such a study is conducted fairly, and if its findings result in some action being taken, it could strike a serious blow against anti-male bias in the domestic violence "industry." Now, activists whose goal is gender equity in domestic violence policies should focus their efforts on ensuring that the study doesn't end up being a formality or a whitewash.

Pat may be a loon, but he's our loon

Yesterday, after Pat Robertson's inspired remarks about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke as divine retribution for giving up the Israeli settlements in Gaza, I asked if we can all finally agree that Robertson is beyond the pale. A lot of us, apparently, can: the White House has condemned Pat's remarks as "wholly inappropriate and offensive," and Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's ethics and religious liberty commission, says he is "stunned and appalled that Pat Robertson would claim to know the mind of God concerning whether particular tragic events ... were the judgments of God." But tonight, I was pretty stunned myself when former Congressman-turned-Fox News talk show host John Kasich, subbing for Bill O'Reilly on "The O'Reilly Factor," offered a sort-of defense of Robertson, whom he judged to be guilty only of poor timing.

After offering some mild criticism of Robertson while questioning Christian radio talk show host Janet Folger, Kasich inquired of his other guest, Fordham University media studies chairman Paul Levinson:

John Kasich: Your feelings about this, Mr. Levinson? I mean --- is the media sort of grabbing onto everything Pat says and tries to blow it up? I mean, you saw his statement, right? It wasn't a statement out of some mean guy -- he claims that he was quoting the book of Joel, and if you read the Book of Joel and what it says here -- he's basically saying, it wasn't him, it was something he quoted out of the scripture.

Paul Levinson: I have an enormous amount of respect for the scripture, but when people in our modern age try to apply it literally in a fanatical way, it leads to graceless, absurd statements such as Pat Robertson made. If you think about the fact -- the only other public figure who' commented about Sharon's dying being appropriate in any way is the President of Iran, who's a fundamentalist Islamic nutcase.

John Kasich: (chuckles) You're not trying to compare Pat Robertson to the--this lunatic over in Iran, are you?

Janet Folger: I hope not.

Paul Levinson: I'm comparing two people who are fundamentalists and who don't seem to have a modern view of the world -- who don't seem to understand that the Prime Minister shouldn't be judged according to scripture when he's on his deathbed.

John Kasich: So let me ask you this, then. I mean -- are you saying that what is written in the Bible cannot be applied today? You said that, you know, what we're doing is trying to apply things too literally -- don't you think that in America today, we don’t apply it at all, too much of the time?

Paul Levinson: No, I think we apply it just fine in the United States.

John Kasich: Yeah, but when we look at --

Paul Levinson: We have a diversified --

John Kasich : Yeah, but when we look at problems of character, integrity -- whether it's professional athletes, pop culture, whatever -- aren't you basically saying that, you know, let's modernize the whole book? And I think what Pat Robertson is saying, rightly or wrongly, is -- that book shouldn't be modernized. It ought to reflect what that Old Testament says.

Paul Levinson: I'm not saying that the Old Testament is wrong. I'm saying that the literal application of it to a Prime Minister who is trying to bring peace to his region when he is on his deathbed is a very inappropriate statement.

John Kasich: Fair point. Now, Janet, what I need to know from you is, when Pat does things like this or says things like this -- and I think you would agree, it wasn't the appropriate time. Agree with that? It was just not the right time to be talking about this.

Janet Folger: Look, the time you make statements like that is when you can do something about it -- don't divide the land.

John Kasich: So, inappropriate time. The question is, does Pat sort of undermine the movement when he makes a statement like this -- that he might -- which he says was taken out of context or whatever -- does it undermine the movement, the Christian movement? People say, I’m not gonna listen to that.

Janet Folger: You know - again, I'm not gonna be another voice to bully up or beat up on PR. He's free to defend himself and he's very capable of it --

John Kasich: Yeah, but I want to know what you think.

Janet Folger: -- but I don't think we should blame him for reading from the bible. And I'll be honest with you -- the way I read the Bible, it talks about -- nations that bless Israel are gonna be blessed, nations that curse Israel are gonna be cursed -- and I'll be honest with you, where I worry about the judgment being cast is that I think we need to look in the mirror -- because we're one of the groups, the nations that actually strong-armed the prime minister into giving up land, making Israel less secure. And --

John Kasich: I got you. Now -- People for the American Way, professor -- you know -- against flag desecration -- they're not like some mainstream group, you know -- they're way out there. It's like they grab everything that Pat says, they monitor everything he says. You're in communications -- have we gotten to the point now in America where, with the blogs and the 24-hour news cycle, you can't say anything? It's going to be analyzed, overanalyzed, taken out of context? Don't you think that's fair?

Paul Levinson: No. Criticism of what public figures say is a crucial part of dialogue in a democratic society, which we have. We don't live in a totalitarian state where religious or political leaders can say whatever they please and they're beyond criticism. Pat Robertson chose to say this in a public forum and I think that he's fair game for criticism. It's not the end of the world that he said it -- I don't think he should be executed, I'm not a fanatic myself --

John Kasich: Yeah, and I wouldn't compare him --

Paul Levinson: Well, it's an indication of what happens you apply in a fanatical, fundamentalist way --

John Kasich: Look, I don't think it's a fanatical way -- it's a reading of the Old Testament -- he has his view, to label it somehow, you know, off the deep end, I don't think is fair. Janet, what I'll say to you is, I know Pat, I like him very much, he's been a great leader. He's got to be a little more careful with how he says things and when he says things.

(The complete transcript of the segment can be found here.)

So, let me see if I'm getting this straight. What Pat Robertson says cannot be labeled as fanatical or "off the deep end," because his views are rooted in his reading of the Old Testament. And, of course, you can't possibly compare him to "this lunatic over in Iran," whose views are rooted in his reading of the Koran.

And no, I'm not saying that there's no difference between Pat Robertson and fundamentalist Islamic fanatics. Pat isn't urging people to strap on explosives and go blow up the infidels, nor is he calling for unchaste women to be stoned to death. But, just out of curiosity, if Pat did call for the stoning of adulteresses, would Kasich consider that "fanatical" and "off the deep end," or not? After all, that's based on a very literal reading of the Old Testament.

There's been a lot of talk in recent years about how religiously based opinions have the same right to be heard in the public square as opinions rooted in secular ideas. That's all good and fine; I certainly don't think that someone's position on any given issue is illegitimate because it's influenced by religion, and I think that a lot of the time, secular liberals have been dismissive of certain conservative views for no other reason. But if religiously based ideas should have equal access to the public square, they should not be off-limits to harsh criticism and even ridicule, any more than secular ideologies. If you can spout vicious nonsense and then have it excused on the grounds that it's your interpretation of the Bible, then maybe you don't belong in a public forum.

And how pathetic that, instead of firmly repudiating the odious Pat Robertson, Kasich should try to shoot the messenger and bizarrely suggest that it's unfair for the statements of public leaders to be analyzed too much.

More: Some of my commenters have suggested that Pat Robertson is not that important a political figure, and that his comments are being blown out of proportion. Robertson was the founder of the Christian Coalition, which played a leading role in organizing the conservative Christian base as a voting bloc in the 1990s. It's true that he stepped down as head of the Christian Coalition in 2001, and that the Coalition's political influence has waned. It is also quite true that, as this Washington Post article published last October points out, Robertson's own influence in the GOP is not at all what it used to be. Nonetheless, he is important enough that his endorsement of Bush Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers (remember her?) was treated as news by conservative media. Robertson has also met with Bush and Karl Rove; we're hardly talking about a minor figure.

Everything you knew about Hurricane Katrina was wrong

We've heard it over and over again: Hurricane Katrina was not just a natural disaster, and not just a tragic case of government bungling, but a searing indictment of American racism and social injustice.

Apparently, this conventional wisdom is completely wrong.

Knight Ridder reports:

Four months after Hurricane Katrina, analyses of data suggest that some widely reported assumptions about the storm's victims were incorrect.

For example, a comparison of locations where 874 bodies were recovered with U.S. census tract data indicates that the victims weren't disproportionately poor. Another database of 486 Katrina victims from Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, compiled by Knight Ridder, suggests they also weren't disproportionately African American.

Both sets of data are incomplete; Louisiana state officials have released no comprehensive list of the dead. Still, they provide the most comprehensive information available to date about who paid the ultimate price in the storm.

The one group that was disproportionately affected by the storm appears to have been older adults. People 60 and older account for only about 15 percent of the population in the New Orleans area, but the Knight Ridder database found that 74 percent of the dead were 60 or older. Nearly half were older than 75. Many of those were at nursing homes and hospitals, where nearly 20 percent of the victims were recovered.

Lack of transportation was assumed to be a key reason that many people stayed behind and died, but at many addresses where the dead were found, their cars remained in their driveways, flood-ruined symbols of fatal miscalculation.

The addresses where bodies were recovered were compiled by Louisiana state officials and released earlier this month. Knight Ridder charted the locations on a map of Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, then compared them with census data on income in those neighborhoods. The analysis excluded 216 bodies that were recovered from hospitals and nursing homes, as well as 63 recovered at collection points where people had dropped off bodies in the days after the storm ...

The comparison showed that 42 percent of the bodies found in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes were recovered in neighborhoods with poverty rates higher than 30 percent. That's only slightly higher than the 39 percent of residents who lived in such neighborhoods, according to the census data.

Similarly, 31 percent of the bodies turned up in areas with poverty rates below 15 percent, where 30 percent of the population lived.

The median household income in neighborhoods where Katrina victims were recovered was about $27,000 a year, just under the $29,000 median for the overall area.

One-fourth of Katrina deaths fell in census tracts with median incomes above $35,300. One-fourth of the area's pre-storm population lived in tracts with median incomes above $37,000.

About 67 percent of the mapped deaths fell in the central and western portion of New Orleans, an area thought to have flooded primarily because of the failure of man-made structures.

The separate Knight Ridder database of 486 Katrina victims was compiled from official information released by state and federal authorities and interviews with survivors of the dead. It catalogued deaths according to location, race, age, name and cause of death.

In that database, African Americans outnumbered whites 51 percent to 44 percent. In the area overall, African Americans outnumber whites 61 percent to 36 percent.

In Orleans Parish, 62 percent of known Katrina victims were African American, compared with 66 percent for the total parish population.

In St. Bernard Parish, 92 percent of the identified victims were white. Census figures show that 88 percent of parish residents identified themselves as white.

Among hurricane victims on the Knight Ridder list, men outnumbered women 51 percent to 49 percent, about the same as in the overall area before the storm.

(Hat tip: Eric at Classical Values.)

Of course, deaths are not the only measure of Katrina's impact. It may well be, for instance, that the people left dispossessed by the hurricane are disproportionately poor and/or black; it is very likely that people with few resources will find recovery more diffcult. But Katrina's dead were certainly the starkest evidence of the hurricane's devastating impact; and we were told that those dead had been killed by racism and economic injustice, by societal and political indifference to the plight of black people and poor people. So the Knight Ridder investigation does, in fact, seem to knock down Katrina's central myth.

Eric inquires:

Is it reasonable to expect apologies from the people who claimed that the deaths were a form of "genocide" caused by Bush racism?

Reasonable, yes; realistic, no.

Meanwhile, GayPatriot.com suggests one obvious conclusion: "George Bush hates old people!"

On a more serious note: the paucity of coverage this story has received is disappointing, and rather remarkable. The article was released by Knight Ridder on December 30 and picked up by 22 Knight-Ridder newspaper, but few featured it very prominently. Only three -- The Charlotte Observer, The Akron Beacon Journal, and The Bradenton Herald (Florida) -- ran it on the front page; most buried it well inside. The analysis has received no mention in The New York Times, The Washington Post, or USA Today; there has not been a single editorial commenting on it, from any of the papers that told us all about how Katrina has exposed the inequities of race and class in America.

No wonder a lot of people think there really is a "liberal media."

Rather surprisingly, the blogosphere has also paid little attention to this debunking of Katrina myths. Yet this is an important story which says a great deal about the knee-jerk acceptance of claims that support conventional wisdom about America's social ills. It should be reported more widely, and there should be more apologies.

Unhinged, revisited

Dave Neiwert responds to my posts responding to his critique of Michelle Malkin's book, Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild.

Neiwert believes I'm wrong to equate political nastiness on the right and the left when the right is clearly so much worse. (Of course, a lot of my conservative commenters think I'm wrong to equate political nastiness on the right and the left when the left is clearly so much worse.) It may well be that I'm wrong. I'm not a believer in balance for the sake of balance, an approach which Dave summarizes with this acid quote: "If two groups are locked in argument, one maintaining that 2+2=4, and the other claiming that 2+2=6, sure enough, an Englishman will walk in and settle on 2+2=5, denouncing both groups as extremists." There are certainly many instances ("intelligent design" vs. Darwinian evolution, communism vs. anticommunism) where I don't think that each side has its good points.

But what about Dave Neiwert's specific rebuttal?

Look at the examples Young proffers:

-- Some Democratic Underground commenters who intentionally chose not to stop and help a Bush supporter with auto trouble by the roadside.

-- Markos' "screw them" comment regarding the four contractors killed at Fallujah.

-- Some Manichean "us and them" rhetoric from Howard Dean.

-- Some remarks from Michael Moore and Garrison Keillor that even Young admits are not really all that ugly.

Notice something missing? How about the fact that none of these people on the left come even close to having the kind of mass audience that Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh enjoy?

Time out. Michael Moore and Howard Dean don't have a mass audience comparable to O'Reilly & Co.? All right, neither of them broadcasts daily, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily less influential. (Dean routinely adresses and fires up Democratic audiences around the country.) Markos Moulitsas -- the Daily Kos -- has a huge Internet following. Garrison Keillor has an audience of about 4 million on National Public Radio. (I should clarify, by the way, that my example of Markos' "Screw them" remark was cited as a specific parallel to Rush Limbaugh saying that the peace activists who were taken hostage in Iraq were asking for it.)

Neiwert goes on:

But the main element lacking in these examples is pretty self-evident: None of these remarks are eliminationist. None of them describes a desire to simply eliminate a significant bloc of one's opposition, let alone its entirety (though Keillor's, which wishes for the disenfranchisement of born-again Christians, comes close).

In particular, Neiewert takes exception with this comment from my second blogpost:

No one really thinks (I hope) that Limbaugh, Coulter, and O'Reilly are seriously advocating the murder and incarceration of millions of liberals. What makes their rhetoric so poisonous is that (a) as Neiwert points out, it amounts to "a declaration of enmity" rather than a desire to debate, and (b) certain ideas, such as killing or rounding up one's political opponents, are too vile to be broached even as a "joke."

Viewed that way, there isn't that much distance between urging deportation and urging secession.

(Bold added by Dave Neiwert.)

Neiwert comments:

Perhaps Young finds this distance so short because her description elides the most significant component of this: the desire to inflict harm. If you go back and read the post that Young cites, you'll see that I describe the problem with eliminationism thus: "It's simply a declaration of enmity and the intent to cause harm."

Viewed this way -- that is, as reality -- there is a significant distance between deportation and secession. The former indeed wishes serious harm upon its victims, including deprivation of their rights, their livelihoods, and their property; while the latter wishes not to be politically obligated or connected to their opponents any longer -- it merely severs the relationship, instead of inflicting actual harm.

As reality? Does Dave Neiwert think that Bill O'Reilly really thinks it would be okay for the Al Qaeda to blow up San Francisco, or that Rush Limbaugh really thinks that it would be a good idea to kill all the liberals except for a couple who should be preserved as living relics? I don't. As much as I loathe Ann Coulter, I don't think even she really wishes that Timothy McVeigh had driven his explosives-laden truck into the New York Times building.

Neiwert cites his earlier post discussing "eliminationism" in which he says:

And yes, it's often voiced as crude "jokes", the humor of which, when analyzed, is inevitably predicated on a venomous hatred.

But what we also know about this rhetoric is that, as surely as night follows day, this kind of talk eventually begets action, with inevitably tragic results.

As surely as night follows day? Examples?

I think the liberal-bashing rhetoric Neiwert rightly finds appalling is bad because it's poisonous and hateful, because it treats the opposition as the enemy, and because it precludes dialogue or engagement or any search for common ground -- not because it is an actual declaration of intent to harm. I guess we simply disagree on that one. I will note that in his examples of the hatefulness of this rhetoric, Neiwert quite rightly cites not only comments threatening liberals with harm, but also things like this Coulterism: "They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down."

Neiwert also points out that in the 1990s, extremist conservative speech -- specifically the wild rhetoric about Clinton -- had no real counterpart on the left, and that the rise of left-wing nastiness was simply a reaction. I think it's quite true that in the 1990s, right-wing talk radio vitriol had no counterpart on the left in terms of crudeness, name-calling, overt polemical vitriol, conspiracy-mongering, etc. But as I noted in my first "unhinged" post, there definitely was a lot of nastiness (and demonization) of a more genteel sort -- the "Republicans are evil people who want to poison the air and water, starve kids, throw Grandma out on the streets, enslave black people and kick puppies" variety, the portrayal of Republicans and conservatives (not only in overtly political speech, but also in movies and on television) as cloddish, bigoted, selfish, greedy, dumb, etc. etc. And I do think that many conservatives' hostility to liberals was driven by this sort of contempt -- just as, for many conservatives, the politics of demonization began with the attacks on Robert Bork (who, for all his manifold sins, certainly did not deserve to be accused of wanting a return to "segregated lunch counters") and Clarence Thomas.

Neiwert asks:

Indeed, one has to wonder where Young was during most of the 1990s, when the right was frothing over with hatred of Bill Clinton and the mainstream left. Much of the eliminationist right-wing rhetoric that flourishes today, as well as the utter lack of civility and decorum on both sides, originated in those years.

For the record, I was writing a column for The Detroit News (no longer available online thanks to the Supreme Court decision protecting free-lance writers like me from having their work electronically reproduced without their permission, and to my own negligence in returning the permission form), in which I criticized, more than once, the Republicans' Clinton obsession. But I also remember other things from the 1990s. There was, for instance, the rhetoric suggesting that conservative critiques of big government had helped set the stage for the Oklahoma City bombing, or that Timothy McVeigh was driven by the same kind of ideas that led to the 1994 Republican victory in Congress. There was Al Gore's 1998 speech to the NAACP, in which he said that opponents of race-based affirmative action "use their colorblind the way duck hunters use a duck blind -- they hide behind it and hope the ducks won't notice," and went on to implicitly link them to hate crimes against blacks.

Finally, about solutions to the problem: Dave Neiwert says that if the left makes a conscious effort to stigmatize political hate speech in its ranks, it won't do much to promote civility or dialogue because the right will only get nastier. I think that, in the current climate, unilateral disarmanent is unlikely to work, on either side. That's why my suggestion from the start was a liberal/conservative coalition against hate (so to speak). I was thinking of a joint initiative by politicians, but in the meantime, why not us bloggers right here on the Internet? We already have a "Porkbusters" initiative; how about "Hatebusters"?

Nutty Pat strikes again

Today, a prominent religious leader has declared that Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution.

Was it some fanatical jihadist mullah?

Nope.

Here's a hint: his initials are Pat Robertson.

"God considers this land to be his," Robertson said on his TV program "The 700 Club." "You read the Bible and he says `This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, `No, this is mine.'"

Sharon, who ordered Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last year, suffered a severe stroke on Wednesday.

In Robertson's broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach, the evangelist said he had personally prayed about a year ago with Sharon, whom he called "a very tender-hearted man and a good friend." He said he was sad to see Sharon in this condition.

He also said, however, that in the Bible, the prophet Joel "makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who 'divide my land.'"

Sharon "was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU (European Union), the United Nations, or the United States of America," Robertson said.

In discussing what he said was God's insistence that Israel not be divided, Robertson also referred to the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had sought to achieve peace by giving land to the Palestinians. "It was a terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless he was dead," he said.

This is a guy who has been a fairly regular guest on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes as a spokesman for religious conservatives.

Recently, Pat Robertson has called for the assassination of Venezuela president Hugo Chavez and threatened the citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania with God's wrath for voting out anti-Darwin school board members. And now, this.

Can we all finally agree that Pat Robertson is beyond the pale?

Gender and job risk

In this comment on my thread on careers, marriage, and the gender imbalance in college education AprilPNW writes:

Just curious, since we've been discussing gender issues and work.

Has anyone come across any feminists/bloggers etc. decrying the gender imbalance of the 12 miners recently killed in the mining accident? After all - not a woman to found among them.

I'm not going to hold my breath, but I do frequently find that the holy grail of a 50/50, perfect gender balance in the workplace doesn't look so appealing when dirty and dangerous jobs are considered.

If anyone knows anything about affirmative action in the mining industry, I'd love to hear about it. After all, are these not some of the highest paid jobs in the area?

Actually, I was going to post something about this, though I was a little hesitant to use a horrible tragedy as fodder for gender politics. But I do think that it serves as a grim reminder that being killed on the job is primarily a male risk. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, women now make up 46% of the workforce but account for only 8% of on-the-job fatalities. (The non-fatal injury rate for men is 76% higher than for women, and 90% higher for reportable injuries.)

This is one area that men's rights advocates such as Warren Farrell often cite as evidence of hidden male disadvantage, and I think they have a point, even if they often cross the line into a male version of the victim mentality. The mine where the explosion took place reportedly had a deplorable record of safety violations and on-the-job injuries, and was still allowed to operate. If, in such circumstances, the tragedy had involved female-only casualties, it's likely that there would have been an outcry about our society's low regard for women's lives. While Farrell's claims that our society treats men as "disposable" are, in my view, greatly exaggerated, the attitude that it's more acceptable to put men's life and limb at risk certainly does exist.

And there is also a tendency to downplay or disregard the gender aspect of this problem facing men. The most egregious example I've ever seen was an October 3, 1993 New York Times story about a Department of Labor report on workplace fatalities. The story ran under the title, "High Murder Rate for Women on the Job: 40% of women killed at work are murdered, but figure for men is only 15%." This woman-as-victim spin disguised the fact that, according to the data cited within the article, 93% of the 6,083 people who were killed on the job in 1992 were men. 848 men and 170 women were murdered at work. In fact, male victims of homicide on the job outnumbered all female on-the-job fatalities nearly two to one. And this translated into "High Murder Rate for Women on the Job."

(Incidentally, in a critique of Warren Farrell on his blog, Thomas Volscho, a Ph. D. student in sociology at the University of Connecticut, uses a similar, more recent set of figures to make this assertion:

They [women] are also likely to be victims of violence, not only in their own homes, but in the workplace. A recent CDC report documents that homicides account for 11% of all occupational injury deaths among male workers, but for 42% of all occupational injury deaths among female workers. Men face a greater risk of violence in the workplace, but women are more likely to die from violence in the workplace.

Maybe the graduate sociology program at UConn ought to do a better job of teaching Ph.D. students how to count.)

Does the disproportionate presence of men in hazardous jobs partly account, as Farrell claims, for higher male earnings? Ampersand says no, citing a study that found no correlation between earnings and risk of fatal injury on the job; but apparently, these results change if agriculture is taken out of the equation, and agriculture is an industry that generally employs people with very few other options (including illegal immigrants). But that's not my main point here.

It's quite true that women who have gone into mining generally haven't found a very welcoming reception from men, and have faced a lot of discrimination. Ironically, the first woman miner to be killed on the job, Marilyn McCusker, who perished in an accident in 1979, had gotten the job due to a sex discrimination suit she had filed in federal court.

But it's also true that not a whole lot of women have been beating down the doors to take hazardous, dirty, physically arduous jobs, even when those job offer fairly high pay levels.

More: Today's New York Times has a poignant story about the victims' families that offers some insights into the miners' culture.

No one wanted to face the loss of the men who were the linchpins of their families - the tough, wiry wage earners who awoke each day at dawn for their 6 a.m. shift. The men who died ranged in age from 28 to 61, but most were veteran miners in their 40's and 50's. They were the sons of miners, the brothers of miners, and by and large they married miners' daughters. But they knew the danger of their work; at least two forbade their sons to take it up.

Martin Toler, 50, the crew boss, was the father of two and grandfather of four. Alva Martin Bennett, 50, worked in the mines for 30 years. Jim Bennett, 61, liked to sing in church. David Lewis, 28, stood out as the 6-foot-1 son of a dairy farmer. Terry Helms, 48, was a "fire boss" who monitored gas levels. The rest were identified by family members and news reports as Tom Anderson; George Hamner Jr.; Fred Ware Jr., 59; Jack Weaver, 52; Marshall Winans, 49; Mr. Groves; and Mr. Jones. The one survivor, Mr. McCloy, known as Skinny, was the youngest, at 27. He was in critical but stable condition Wednesday with a collapsed lung and kidney damage, a spokeswoman at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown said.

They were a stoic bunch, friends and relatives said.

"He never missed work," said Terry Helms's son, Nick. "He'd be sick as a dog and go into work. He worked double shifts. The day it happened he would have worked from 1:30 in the morning to 6 at night."

...

Mr. Perry said his father, Roger Perry, was still mining despite an accident on the job when he was 16 that left him with a wooden leg. Roger Perry's eyes were injured in Monday's explosion, but he was among those who turned back to try to rescue the trapped miners, his son said. Owen Jones, too, was one of those who escaped the explosion, while his brother Jesse remained trapped inside. On a normal day, a third brother, Lyndon, would have been in the mines as well, but he was on sick leave.

"Up in this area, when we was graduating from high school, that's what it was, was coal mines," Lyndon Jones said.

Mr. Jones said the perils of mining were overstated. But his wife, Carry, disagreed. "I heard him say that," she said dryly, taking the phone after he spoke with a reporter. Families worry about miners "every day," she said.

Career women, downwardly mobile men, and ... misogyny?

John Tierney's latest column about women, men, higher education, and marriage (sadly, a prisoner of Times Select) is raising some hackles. Echidne of the Snakes, the feminist blogger who just the other day made mincemeat of a much-trumpeted new study of gender differences in Internet usage, accuses Tierney of nothing less than misogyny -- though she says this harsh judgment is also based on some earlier columns of his. She even urges readers to stop subscribing to the Times in protest against the "woman-bashing" dished out by Tierney and David Brooks, who the other day rhapsodized about the power and fulfillment enjoyed by stay-at-home moms.

At Salon.com's Broadsheet blog, Lori Leibovich is equally unimpressed.

So, what is this horrible thing John Tierney said?

Here are some excerpts from his column, titled "Male Pride and Female Prejudice":

When there are three women for every two men graduating from college, whom will the third woman marry?

This is not an academic question. Women, who were a minority on campuses a quarter-century ago, today make up 57 percent of undergraduates, and the gender gap is projected to reach a 60-40 ratio within a few years. So more women, especially black and Hispanic women, will be in a position to get better-paying, more prestigious jobs than their husbands...

Tierney notes that while some men are reluctant to marry a higher-earning woman out of masculine pride, such attitudes seem to be dwindling:

In 1996, for the first time, college men rated a potential mate's financial prospects as more important than her skills as a cook or a housekeeper.

In the National Survey of Families and Households conducted during the early 1990's, the average single man under 35 said he was quite willing to marry someone earning much more than he did. He wasn't as interested in marrying someone making much less than he did, and he was especially reluctant to marry a woman who was unlikely to hold a steady job.

Those findings jibe with what I've seen. I can't think of any friend who refused to date a woman because she made more money than he did. When friends have married women with bigger paychecks, the only financial complaints I've heard from them have come when a wife later decided to pursue a more meaningful - i.e., less lucrative - career.

Nor can I recall hearing guys insult a man, to his face or behind his back, for making less than his wife. The only snide comments I've heard have come from women talking about their friends' husbands. I've heard just a couple of hardened Manhattanites do that, but I wouldn't dismiss them as isolated reactionaries because you can see this prejudice in that national survey of singles under 35.

The women surveyed were less willing to marry down - marry someone with much lower earnings or less education - than the men were to marry up. ...

You may think that women's attitudes are changing as they get more college degrees and financial independence. A woman who's an executive can afford to marry a struggling musician. But that doesn't necessarily mean she wants to. Studies by David Buss of the University of Texas and others have shown that women with higher incomes, far from relaxing their standards, put more emphasis on a mate's financial resources.

....

"Of course, some women marry for love and find a man's resources irrelevant," Buss says. "It's just that the men women tend to fall in love with, on average, happen to have more resources."

Which means that, on average, college-educated women and high-school-educated men will have a harder time finding partners as long as educators keep ignoring the gender gap that starts long before college. Advocates for women have been so effective politically that high schools and colleges are still focusing on supposed discrimination against women: the shortage of women in science classes and on sports teams rather than the shortage of men, period. You could think of this as a victory for women's rights, but many of the victors will end up celebrating alone.

Tierney's conclusion is a bit snide and smacks of the "uppity women will end up as old maids" cliché. But is he really, as Echidne claims, warning of "the dangers that women face if they veer away from the path traditionalists hold as the ideal one for women"? Nowhere in his column is there a suggestion that men are likely to shun successful, ambitious, high-earning women -- quite the opposite! Nor is he saying that it would be a good idea for women to avoid a higher education because it might harm their marriage prospects. Rather, the main point of his column is that in celebrating female achievement, we should not disregard male underachievement. Echidne claims that Tierney is calling for "affirmative action for men in college admissions," but he's not. He specifically says that educators must tackle the male/female gap in academic proficiency long before college. (His column is a response to the recent Weekly Standard article by Melana Zyla Vickers, "Where the Boys Aren't: The gender gap on college campuses.")

What's so outrageous here? The problem of the partner shortage faced by college-educated black women due to the huge gender gap in college attendance among African-Americans (among black college graduates in recent years, women outnumber men two to one) has been a subject of a great deal of discussion, certainly not just among conservatives.

Echidne seems particularly put off by the suggestion that women marry for money. In a separate post, she writes:

One quote in Tierney's column struck me with unusual vividity. It is by an evolutionary psychologist David Buss:

"Of course, some women marry for love and find a man's resources irrelevant," Buss says.

Color me naive but I assumed that most people in the western world who marry do so at least believing that it is for love. Am I totally mistaken in this? Is it true that only "some women" marry for love and that the others, presumably, marry for money? I don't know a single case of anybody, man or woman, marrying for money amongst my acquaintances but perhaps my acquaintances are atypical?

Leibovcih, quoting Echidne, repeats the same point. But they are both quoting a truncated version of the Buss quote. The second half is:

"It's just that the men women tend to fall in love with, on average, happen to have more resources."

Or, to quote the old saw: "It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man."

Now, I'm not David Buss's biggest fan. I read a lot of his articles while researching my book, Ceasefire (which has a chapter on sex differences), and I think he often tends to "spin" his findings in a way that magnifies male-female differences. But come on, folks. Is anyone going to seriously argue that a man's resources -- income, power, status -- are generally irrelevant to women's preferences in the mating game in modern-day American culture? That doesn't mean most women are calculating golddigers (as some men's rights folks like to depict them), but yes, women generally prefer not to "marry down," and not just in terms of money but also in terms of prestige, education and intelligence, for which a college degree is considered a marker. To deny this fact is, shall we say, not very reality-based. Unlike many conservatives, I'm not saying that this is the way it should be or the way it always will be. But for now, such a trend is definitely there.

Leibovich's reaction is especially puzzling because her magazine, Salon.com, has published several interesting articles by Ann Marlowe dealing with this very problem. In a passage particularly relevant to this discussion, Marlowe writes:

Yes, there are plenty of young women who decry marrying for money, but how many of them would marry a man they knew would never make as much money as they do? Money is too tied to power, and hence to our perceptions of sexiness, to be removed from the marital equation.

In another article, Marlowe notes:

We rarely examine the values implied by the kinds of remarks we let slip constantly -- "She married badly," "He's a meal ticket," "She's too high-maintenance." Very few women would react well if a man asked their price, but many will casually boast of their boyfriend's expensive presents or recent promotion, or imply that a lover's income offsets other less stellar qualities.

Marlowe, it should be noted, is a feminist who strongly believes that women can break these patterns. I personally think that she overstates her case somewhat and draws too stark a picture, and tends, not unlike the conservatives, to overgeneralize about women and men. But, in broad terms, she is certainly on to something. Another feminist who has addressed this is writer Peggy Orenstein, whose 2000 book, Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World, based on interviews with about 200 women in their twenties and thirties, makes it clear that most young women -- including ones with professed feminist values and aspirations -- place a very conscious value on a prospective husband's earning potential and ambition.

However, once again, it's not just about money. It's about status, intelligence, personal growth, if you will. A friend who teaches at a state university told me that she has noticed a pattern among female students from a working-class background: having gotten a college degree, or even some college education, they dump their boyfriends or husbands who have not continued their eudcation beyond high school, mainly because they feel that they have "outgrown" these men. I would add that, today, most college-educated men would probably not see a woman without a college degree as a suitable marriage partner -- whether or not her degree enhances her earnings.

So yes, the gender gap in college attendance is very likely to create a skewed marriage market (pardon the utilitarian terminology) in which educated, career-oriented women will face a shortage of marriageable men. It's hardly anti-feminist to acknowledge this fact.



By the way, Leibovich's post is followed by some very interesting reader comments discussing these issues.

Domestic violence and male victims

Following up on my VAWA post: there has been a lot of heated debate about the issue of men as victims of abuse in heterosexual relationships. I don't think that domestic violence is a 50/50 problem, as some men's activists have claimed. Men are bigger and stronger than women, though I think that their advantage in size and muscle is often neutralized by the societal taboo against using violence toward women. British psychologist John Archer's meta-analysis shows that more than more than a third of people sustaining injuries from domestic violence are men. Whether the ratio of abused men to abused women is 3:2, 2:1, or even 4:1 for that matter, the bottom line is that the problem is serious enough to warrant attention (as is female aggression in mutually violent couples). And it's not just an issue of concern for male victims (or children). It's an issue of respect for women as adult human beings fully accountable for their actions.

For an interesting example of both female-to-male violence and societal attitudes toward it, see yesterday's advice column by Cary Tennis in Salon.com. ('fraid you'll have to watch an ad, first.) The letter-writer said that while he was sulking after an argument and refusing to talk to his fiancee about what had happened, his fiancee physically attacked him.

Now here's the thing: I'm a man who stands well in excess of 6 feet, and I outweigh my fiancée by 100 pounds. It's unlikely she could injure me. She was punching me as hard as she could, but even so, it only took me a few seconds to get hold of her wrists to stop her from hitting.

Once so restrained, she kicked me a couple of times in the shins and tried to knee me in the groin, but I was also able to easily parry that, and only had to hold on to her tightly for a minute until she calmed down. But still, it bothers me a lot that she resorted to violence, even if it was ultimately not injurious.

When we talked about it later, she was sorry. She was emotionally abused as a child and this has left its scars, including apparently this tendency to lose control and hit. But in the end she basically blamed it on me. She told me that if I hadn't been stubborn, she wouldn't have been driven to the point of loss of control. Now, I've been taught since childhood that resorting to violence against another, and particularly against your significant other, is NEVER justified. I know that were the genders reversed, many would advise me to get out of the relationship. But I love this woman. She is so good for me in so many ways. This has happened only three times in the two years we've been together, and as I said, she can't actually hurt me. Is this a deal breaker?

In response, Cary Tennis basically advises the man to learn to communicate better and stop avoiding emotional confrontations. He does say that the girlfriend also needs to learn to express herself non-violently, but he clearly sympathizes with the girlfriend's plight:

You shut her out, and she feels herself cease to exist, so she leaps over and tries to punch through the jail of your ribs; she tries to make a dent in you; she tries to prove to you that she is there.

If, in writing of a male batterer, I were to entertain notions of what legitimate emotional needs he might be meeting by battering his wife, if I were to suggest any objective other than the satisfaction of his rage and her subjection to his will, if I were to even hint that it might also be, for him, a form of connection, I would be scorned, and perhaps rightly so, because the idea is fundamentally abhorrent.

It is abhorrent to the extent that it serves to exonerate the batterer. And yet in the case of this woman, though we edge perilously close to the taboo, might we ask this: Is she expressing certain needs in this way -- needs that, if she could learn to articulate them without violence, might be met to the great satisfaction of you both? That is, it is possible that she is seeking not so much to kill you or injure you but to force you to feel her presence?

To their credit, a lot of the readers at Salon (including women) have lambasted Cary Tennis for his double standard. His attitude, though, is a fairly typical one. And it makes very little sense. Most male batterers don't seek to "kill or injure," either. As for the notion that a woman cannot cause any real damage to a bigger and stronger man, it is substantially inaccurate. In one well-documented case which I discuss in my book Ceasefire, and which has also been featured on ABC News' 20/20, a man built like a football player ended up sustaining several injuries requiring medical intervention at the hands of his rather petite wife. On one occasion, she slammed the door of a hot stove on his arm while he was getting something out of the oven; on another, she tripped him on the stairs and pushed him down, breaking his arm; and, when their divorce was already complete and he was taking away some of his possessions, she hit him in the face with a framed picture and broke his nose. (The judge who heard the divorce case decided that domestic violence should not be used as a factor against the wife in determining custody because the husband's "psychological abuse" -- such as joking in front of the children about the wife"acting crazy" -- was just as bad.)

I think that men are inclined to minimize and deny the harm a woman's violence can pose to them because, well, it's not very masculine to admit that a woman could hurt you. A lot of these dismissals exhibit a kind of macho condescension toward the "little woman" that feminists, of all people, should not be supporting.

And there is another risk factor that is ignored by both Cary Tennis and his letter-writer. His fiancee's violence could put him at risk of arrest and prosecution for fending off her attacks. I am familiar with several cases in which men were prosecuted for assault for restraining their wives or girlfriends a little too forcefully while being attacked (and no, I'm not talking about a "she slaps his face and he breaks her arm" scenario but cases in which the woman may have been slightly bruised).

Overall, in general, domestic violence by women toward men is not as dangerous as the reverse. But that doesn't mean it should be neglected or dismissed, or that discussions of domestic violence should be based on assumption of male wickedness and female innocence.

"There is no excuse for domestic violence" should not be qualified by, "... unless you're a woman."

The new VAWA

In other end-of-2005 gender news, the Violence Against Women Act has been re-authorized, with new language that pleases men's rights advocates. Here it is:

SEC. 2000A. CLARIFICATION THAT PROGRAMS RELATING TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ARE GENDER-NEUTRAL.
In this part, and in any other Act of Congress, unless the context unequivocally requires otherwise, a provision authorizing or requiring the Department of Justice to make grants, or to carry out other activities, for assistance to victims of domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, sexual assault, or trafficking in persons, shall be construed to cover grants that provide assistance to female victims, male victims, or both.

SEC. 512. GAO STUDY AND REPORT.
(a) Study Required- The Comptroller General shall conduct a study to establish the extent to which men, women, youth, and children are victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking and the availability to all victims of shelter, counseling, legal representation, and other services commonly provided to victims of domestic violence.
(b) Activities Under Study- In conducting the study, the following shall apply:
(1) CRIME STATISTICS- The Comptroller General shall not rely only on crime statistics, but may also use existing research available, including public health studies and academic studies.
(2) SURVEY- The Comptroller General shall survey the Department of Justice, as well as any recipients of Federal funding for any purpose or an appropriate sampling of recipients, to determine--
(A) what services are provided to victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking;
(B) whether those services are made available to youth, child, female, and male victims; and
(C) the number, age, and gender of victims receiving each available service.
(c) Report- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Comptroller General shall submit to Congress a report on the activities carried out under this section.

I think this is a good start -- though gender-neutral family violence/sexual violence legislation should have had a gender-neutral name. The very existence of legislation called the Violence Against Women Act perpetuates the idea that violence against women is a problem deserving special consideration and special attention (an idea embraced by some VAWA backers for feminist reasons, by others for chivalrous ones).

But there are other problems as well. I will quote something I wrote in a paper on domestic violence commissioned by the Independent Women's Forum and published in September 2005. (In the eyes of some of you, the fact that I wrote a paper for the IWF will no doubt boost my anti-feminist rep. There are things on which I disagree with the IWF, and over which I have criticized them. However, I was able to write a position paper that said exactly what I wanted to say, with no attempt to influence or modify my views. If I got a similar offer from the National Organization for Women, I'd have done it for them, but that's not very likely.)

So, here's what I wrote that relates to VAWA:

The battered women’s advocates greatest triumph came in 1994 with the passage of the Violence Against Women Act. Co-sponsored by Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the bill had broad bipartisan support when it was passed, and most of its backers undoubtedly saw it as a practical measure and a moral imperative rather than an ideological crusade. VAWA and its successor, the Violence Against Women Act of 2000, contained many positive practical measures in the area of victim services and criminal justice – for instance, making restraining orders issued in one state enforceable in another, or making it possible to bring federal charges against abusers who cross state lines to stalk or assault their victims. It also encouraged some solid research on domestic violence, sexual assault, victim services, and related issues.

However, VAWA has also helped enshrine the dogmatic and one-sided approach to domestic violence described in this report: the unrealistic assumption that in every domestic violence situation there is a clear-cut and usually gender-based distinction between abuser and victim, the almost exclusive reliance on criminal justice measures, the substitution of dogmatic feminist “reeducation” for interventions that address the specific problems of individuals and families. Another troubling aspect of VAWA is that it creates a symbiotic relationship between the federal government and the battered women’s advocacy movement, which is dominated or at least heavily influenced by radical feminist ideology. (Such a nexus also exists on the state level.) The state coalitions against domestic violence, which formally require their member organizations to embrace the feminist analysis of abuse as sexist coercion, play a vital role in the allocation of VAWA grants and in overseeing the implementation of VAWA-based programs and policies. At a 1998 symposium on VAWA at the New York Bar Association, Andrea Williams, a staff attorney with the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund, proudly declared that "VAWA is the advocates’ bill."

The evolving understanding of domestic violence, based on 30 years of research and policy experiments, should incorporate aspects of the feminist analysis but also embrace a broader and more nuanced view of the realities of family violence. This new vision is already being advanced by a growing number of women and men, from researchers to shelter workers, law enforcement representatives, and mental health or social work professionals who are moving beyond simplistic slogans and gender polarization. The orthodoxy of the battered women’s movement is on its way to becoming outmoded – yet at the moment, much of it is entrenched in American public policy.

Here are some of the steps that could move us forward from this point.

1. Arrest and prosecution: Appropriately, our society now views domestic violence as a crime, not a private matter. However, if in the past battering was often treated as a family squabble, current law often treats every family squabble as battering. Instead of a blanket one-size-fits all approach, there needs to be more differentiation between serious and potentially dangerous cases, and one in which one spouse grabs the other’s arm during an argument. More studies are needed on the enforcement and the consequences of mandatory or presumptive arrest policies. Anti-dual-arrest clauses, which often serve as vehicles for gender bias, should be repealed and it should be left to the discretion of the police officers (as it already is in stranger assault cases) to decide whether there is one primary aggressor, or both parties are at fault. Unless the victim is in danger or has suffered serious injury, her or his wishes not to prosecute should be respected.

2. Restraining orders/orders of protection: Restraining orders seem to be of some use in protecting people from non-violent harassment. However, their issuance and enforcement has troubling implications for civil liberties, and more steps need to be taken to ensure that restraining orders are not used a weapon in divorce/child custody cases. One solution would be an expedited evidentiary hearing soon after a restraining order is issued. Furthermore, domestic violence victims need to be educated about the fact that a restraining order is unlikely to stop a truly dangerous batterer. In extreme cases, criminologist Lawrence Sherman has suggested the equivalent of the “witness protection program” – state-subsidized relocation and resettlement under a new name – for victims who fear for their lives once the abuser is released from jail. Another possibility that should be considered is civil detention for some abusers after they have served a jail or prison sentence (akin to the current practice of civil detention for dangerous sex offenders), if a review determines that they pose a danger to their victims. However, if such a remedy is introduced, it should be used very cautiously and sparingly because of obvious potential civil rights problems.

3. Batterer treatment and victim counseling. A major review and overhaul of state guidelines for batterer treatment programs is in order. Political orthodoxy should not be allowed to dictate appropriate methods of counseling, nor can a single counseling model be appropriate for everyone. Thus, for some batterers, violent behavior may well be an outgrowth of the patriarchal belief that a husband should not allow his wife to “get out of line” – but many others do not fit that profile. Court-certified abusers’ programs should rely on a variety of approaches including anger management, substance abuse and mental health treatments, couples counseling, and individual counseling that avoids the confrontational ideological approach of the strict feminist model. Advocacy groups should not have a central role in determining and enforcing the standards for batterers’ programs; instead, in trying to find the best approach, states should draw on a diverse community of scholars, mental health professionals, social workers, family counselors, and activists.

4. The relationship between the government and advocacy groups. The close relationship between the federal government (and state governments) and state domestic violence coalitions and other politically militant advocacy groups raises troubling questions about the state subsidizing radical ideologies. The advocacy groups should obviously have a say in shaping domestic violence policy, but not an exclusive one. The next version of the Violence Against Women Act should direct each state to create a domestic violence board on which no more than a quarter or a third of the seats can be filled by members of battered women’s advocacy groups. The rest should be filled by scholars, mental health professionals, community activists, etc. These boards should take over the present functions of state domestic violence coalitions in adding their input to domestic violence programs.

Trudy Schuett, a leading advocate of an inclusive approach to domestic violence, is also highly critical of the reworked VAWA. Says she:

In a lot of ways it reminds me, though, of people selling a house who glue newspaper over holes in walls, then add paint to match over the whole mess, in hopes nobody will notice the real problem.

Trudy's post is extremely critical of people working in the battered women's movement and in the shelter system. I'm sure there are many fine and dedicated people working in the shelters, people who have nothing but sincere concern with helping victims. But from my own fairly extensive research and interviews, I believe that there are far too many people working in the system who are inclined to demonize men, deny the reality of male victimization and female aggression, and place ideology over the needs of actual people. It's an ideology to which many adhere with a quasi-religious zeal, and in this case, the state happens to be entangled with this particular religion. Other voices are urgently needed in the field.

Trudy quotes this statement from the website of the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence:

As long as we as a culture accept the principle and privilege of male dominance, men will continue to be abusive. As long as we as a culture accept and tolerate violence against women, men will continue to be abusive.

All men benefit from the violence of batterers. There is no man who has not enjoyed the male privilege resulting from male domination reinforced by the use of physical violence . . . All women suffer as a consequence of men's violence. Battering by individual men keeps all women in line.

I agree with Trudy: this is hateful stuff. Is this the kind of ideology that should be federally subsidized? Are these the kinds of people who should play a leading role in shaping domestic violence policy?

By the way, Trudy Schuett's post contains another remarkable piece of information. She assails "the premise that 3 equals 120," and explains:

The 120 figure represents the length in days of a domestic violence shelter program offered to unemployed women without male children over the age of 12. This is a residential program featuring round the clock security, access to counseling and group activities, divorce assistance, and some rudimentary job training assistance.

The 3 represents the program they offer to everybody else – three days in a fleabag motel, and maybe some meal vouchers. Some off-site counseling may or may not be provided. And that’s it.

“Everybody else” includes the overwhelming majority of those likely to seek assistance – women with jobs, women with boys, and men.

I don't know if the "no male children over 12" policy is universal at shelters, though I know it's fairly common. So it's not only that men are discriminated against; so are women who, in a regrettable lapse from sisterhood, have had a male child. (Since shelters for the homeless routinely accommodate families without regard to gender, I assume this is not a logistical problem of mixed quarters.) Why is this rampant gender bias being subsidized with our tax dollars?

"Breaking the Silence" update

In November, I wrote, on this blog and in my Boston Globe column, about the PBS documentary Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories, which deals with abusive husbands/fathers who win custody of their children after divorce (and suggests that the vast majority of fathers who win custody in contested cases are abusive and that the main reason fathers seek custody is to achieve "the ultimate victory over the mother, short of killing her").

At the time I wrote the column, PBS was reviewing the program as a result of complaints. On December 20, PBS announced the results of the review.

Some fathers' rights groups have claimed the result as a victory because PBS has said that it is commissioning a new film on the subject. But that's a bit of spin. The headline at RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting), "PBS Whitewashes Flawed Documentary," is far more accurate.

Here's the full text of the statement:

BREAKING THE SILENCE: CHILDREN'S STORIES chronicles the impact of domestic violence on children and the recurring failings of family courts across the country to protect them from their abusers. In stark and often poignant interviews, children and battered mothers tell their stories of abuse at home and continued trauma within the courts. The producers approached the topic with the open mindedness and commitment to fairness that we require of our journalists. Their research was extensive and supports the conclusions drawn in the program. Funding from the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation met PBS's underwriting guidelines; the Foundation had no editorial influence on program content.

However, the program would have benefited from more in-depth treatment of the complex issues surrounding child custody and the role of family courts and most specifically the provocative topic of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). Additionally, the documentary's "first-person story telling approach" did not allow the depth of the producers' research to be as evident to the viewer as it could have been.

PBS has received a substantial body of analysis and documentation from both supporters of the documentary and its critics.

It is clear to us that this complex and important issue would benefit from further examination. To that end, PBS will commission an hour-long documentary for that purpose. Plans call for the documentary to be produced and broadcast in Spring 2006. We expect that the hour-long treatment of the subject will allow ample opportunity for doctors, psychologists, judges, parent advocates and victims of abuse to have their perspectives shared, challenged and debated.

Open-mindedness? Commitment to fairness? Please. When I interviewed producer Dominique Lasseur for my Boston Globe column, he told me in so many words that the one-sidedness of the film was a part of its concept and mission. According to Lasseur:

In a lot of the cases where there has been domestic violence and the woman often makes allegations of domestic violence or child abuse, it becomes dismissed because it's he said/she said. In the cases that we featured, they're clearly very embattled issues. I didn't want to recreate on the screen a way for these people to be dismissed, to dismiss the reality of what we were talking about.

And so, by design, we get only the "she said."

Lasseur also said that none of the women interviewed for the documentary had a political agenda or were involved in "organized groups that were a part of men versus women issues," while the fathers' rights activists to whom he had spoken "had a political agenda." Yet one of the experts interviewed in the film, law professor Joan Meier, has an extensive history of feminist commitments (see her resume). Not that there's anything wrong with that, as they say, but surely that's a "political agenda" -- though, evidently, not to Lasseur.

It is worth noting that the day before PBS issued its review statement, Corporation for Public Broadcasting ombudsman Ken Bode posted a scathing critique of "Breaking the Silence." According to Bode:

There was no alternative point of view presented in "Breaking the Silence," and the producer admits it was intended to be that way. It might be difficult to find a clearer breach of PBS editorial standards unless one concludes there is only one side to child and spousal abuse issues in the country's custody cases.

Earlier, the PBS ombudsman, Michael Getler, had come to a conclusion nearly as negative:

My assessment, as a viewer and as a journalist, is that this was a flawed presentation by PBS. I have no doubt that this subject merited serious exposure and that these problems exist and are hard to get at journalistically. But it seemed to me that PBS and CPTV were their own worst enemy and diminished the impact and usefulness of the examination of a real issue by what did, indeed, come across as a one-sided, advocacy program.

I'm not saying that there is necessarily another side to tragic cases where a child is abused and handed over to the abuser. But this is a broad issue, often complex, hotly debated and contested, with dueling statistics pouring out of both sides. Yet, there was no recognition of opposing views on this program. There was a complete absence of some of the fundamental journalistic conventions that, in fact, make a story more powerful and convincing because they, at a minimum, acknowledge that there is another side.

This presentation made no concession to the viewer and to the legitimate questions one would have or expect. Not only were no fathers heard from to state their side of the individual stories presented, there was no explanation (with one exception) as to whether the producers even tried to get their views, or if the fathers were asked but declined, or, as we now know from Lasseur's statement, that there was a decision not to give air time to critics or groups holding opposing views.

....

I am not claiming here that PBS editorial guidelines were clearly breached, although many critics argue precisely that point, some citing references to the Public Broadcasting Act and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which calls for "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature." Rather, my assessment is that the totality of the presentation came across as quite tilted to me, as a viewer who understands that the vast majority of fathers do not behave badly and that women are also capable of being abusers, and who is quite open to the idea that there are miscarriages of justice in this field that need to be exposed and corrected. The way this topic was presented actually distracted from the message it was sending because it was so noticeably devoid of any balance.

While Getler feels that PBS editorial standards calling for fairness and objectivity were "bumped up against and maybe breached," Bode emphatically believes that they were breached.

And what is this "depth of research" that the PBS statement refers to? Are there studies that were used in the film beyond the ones listed on Tatge/Lasseur's resources page? (Two of the articles listed there are overviews of public policy rather than studies of actual cases.) Nor does the PBS statement ever acknowledge a blatant falsehood perpetrated in the film: Breaking the Silence states that the American Psychological Association has "thoroughly debunked" the so-called Parental Alienation Syndrome, while in fact the APA takes no position on the validity of PAS.

Incidentally, Trish Wilson (The Countess) reported on November 18 that Breaking the Silence had been shown at the statehouse in Massachusetts, followed by a panel discussion with (as she notes with satisfaction) "nary a fathers' rights activist in sight." In other words, this biased and overwrought film is now being used to "educated" family court personnel -- to promote the notion that there is no such thing as parental alienation, that a mother's charges of abuse against the father in a divorce case should be treated as presumptively true, and that three-quarters of fathers who seek custody of their children are abusers.

Wilson sees the PBS statement as a vindication of the film (rather than a pathetic exercise in covering one's behind), and rightly notes that some fathers' rights activists are spinning the statement; but she commits her own sin of omission, saying not a word about the conclusions of the two ombudsmen. Wilson also suggests, in the comments in this thread, that the PBS statement implicitly exonerates Sadiya Alilire, one of the women profiled in the film: "So all the speculations here about Sadiya Alilire supposedly being a child abuser and husband beater are off the mark." But actually, as I pointed out in an earlier post, the fact that Alilire had a history of assaulting her husband is acknowledged in the documents that Wilson herself has cited as supporting Alilire.

PBS has not acquitted itself well in this case, rallying to the defense of a piece of propaganda masquerading as a documentary. We'll see what the follow-up will bring. RADAR is concerned that" in Breaking the Silence Part II, PBS will simply present biased experts and one-sided research that will reinforce the propaganda-like conclusions contained in Breaking the Silence Part I." One can only hope that this will not be the case.

There has been a lot of discussion on this blog recently of women's career/family issues, and of the need for fathers to take on a greater share of child-rearing tasks -- and for more cultural encouragement for paternal involvement. Vilifying fathers as abusers does not do much to promote such a cultural climate.

Hyping sex differences

It's a frequent complaint that in our politically correct climate, talking about behavioral, psychological, and intellectual differences between men and women has become a taboo, at least in enlightened academic circles (as Larry Summers found out the hard way). I am certainly not even favor of any such taboos. But the truth is that on the popular level -- and also among the anti-PC set -- talk about sex differences often tends to lapse into unwarranted generalizations and rather egregious stereotyping.

Echidne of the Snakes has two good blogposts about it, analyzing a new Pew Research Center report on gender differences in Internet use and its popular coverage. A Reuters headline said, "Men want facts, women seek relations on Web - survey." A Chicago Sun-Times story elaborated:

Women like to go online to use e-mail to nurture and build personal relationships, look for health information, get support for health and personal problems, and to pursue religious interests. Meanwhile, men go online to check the weather, read news, get do-it-yourself information, check sports scores, investigate products and download music.

In fact, Echidne points out, according to the study:

More men, 30%, than women, 25%, said the internet helped them a lot to learn more about what was going on, while more women, 56%, than men, 50%, said it helped them connect with people they needed to reach.

There's a Mars-Venus gap, indeed!

Other Internet behavior differences found in the study:

-seeking health information: women 74%, men 58%
-getting support for health problems: women 66% men 50%
-pursuing religious interests: women 34% men 25%
-checking the weather: women 75% men 82%
-reading the news: women 69% men 75%
-getting DIY information: women 50% men 60%
-checking sports scores: women 27% men 59%
-investigating products: women 75% men 82%
-downloading music: women 20% men 30%

Yes, a lot more men check sports scores. Surprise, surprise. The other gender gaps strike me as ... well, not exactly of Grand Canyon magnitude. Or Mars/Venus magnitude.

There's similar hype from Rand Simberg at Transterrestrial Musings (and, apparently, quite a big of gloating at The Free Republic) over another study telling us that "Boy monkeys like toy cars, and girl monkeys like dolls." So, what's this study? Actually, it's about three years old, and here's how it was reported in 2002:

It’s commonly believed that boys and girls learn what types of toys they should like based solely on society’s expectations, but psychologist Gerianne Alexander’s work with vervet monkeys is challenging that notion.

Alexander, whose research focuses on sex differences in behavior and the biological factors that influence them, examined the monkeys as they interacted with toys. She and her collaborator, Melissa Hines of the University of London, found that the monkeys’ toy preferences were consistent along gender lines with those of human children. The study was published earlier this year in "Evolution and Human Behavior."

Though the monkeys had no concept of a "boy" toy and a "girl" toy, they still showed the same gender preferences in playing with the toys, Alexander says. That is, compared to female monkeys, male monkeys spent more time with "boy" toys, and the female monkeys, compared to their male counterparts, spent more time with "girl" toys, she notes.

The full article in Evolution in Human Behavior is not available online (not for free, at least), but I paid for access to the full text, and here's what I found out.

Of the 88 laboratory-living vervet monkeys in the study, 33 males and 30 females had some contact with one or more of the toys they were offered (playing with a toy or picking it up and examining it).

For the males, about 16% of the contact was with a toy police car. For the females, the corresponding figure was about 8%. Another toy rated as "masculine," an orange ball, was handled by males about 20% of the time and by females about 10%. (The figures are approximate because the article shows them as bars on a diagram, not as specific numbers. The graph can be found here at Obsidian Wings.)

A red pan, also classified as a "girl toy," accounted for about 27% of the females' contact with the toys. And for about 17% of the males'.

The biggest difference was in the handling of a doll. About 22% of the females' toy contact consisted of picking up, handling, and examining the doll. The corresponding figure for males was about 8%. (There were no significant gender differences in monkey interest in a furry dog toy.) It should be noted that among vervets, adult males do not participate in infant care at all, though juvenile males apparently handle infants; the females' behavior toward the doll was rather similar of female vervets' handling of infants.

Let's say that all these differences are solid and related to gender and biology (though I find it hard to believe that female monkeys would perceive a pan as a "feminine" object -- last time I checked, monkeys don't cook). They still clearly show a great deal of intra-gender variation. So why is it that, if male monkeys play with a toy car 16% of the time and female monkeys 8% of the time, this is translated into "boys love trucks"?

Incidentally, there was no overall difference between male and female monkeys in favoring "object toys" versus "animate toys" (the doll and the dog). So much for the notion that females are person-oriented and males are object-oriented.

More: I looked up the leading study on people-versus-object preferences in human infants, as measured by the amount of time infants spent looking at a human face and a mechanical object. The results: 25% of male infants showed a preference for the face, 43% for the object, and 31.8% showed no marked preference. Among female, 36% preferred the face, 17% preferred the object, and 46% preferred neither. To me, these are fairly modest differences -- especially modest against the backdrop of sweeping claims about "men" and "women" as categories. But even those figures don't tell the whole story. How strong are these preferences? On average, it turns out, the male infants spent 45.6 seconds looking at the face and 51.9 seconds looking at the mechanical object. The female infants spent an average of 49.4 seconds looking at the face, 40.6 seconds looking at the object.

The author of the study, Simon Baron-Cohen, proposes a theory that men are more likely to be "systemizers" and women "empathizers," though he stresses that there is a great deal of overlap between the two. In an op-ed in the New York Times last August, Baron-Cohen wrote:

Our research team in Cambridge administered questionnaires on which men and women could report their level of interest in these two aspects of the world - one involving systems, the other involving other people's feelings. Three types of people were revealed through our study: one for whom empathy is stronger than systemizing (Type E brains); another for whom systemizing is stronger than empathy (Type S brains); and a third for whom empathy and systemizing are equally strong (Type B brains). As one might predict, more women (44 percent) have Type E brains than men (17 percent), while more men have Type S brains (54 percent) than women (17 percent).

But how "stronger" is stronger? In fact, on average, men score about 42 and women 47 on the empathy test, while women score about 24 and men about 30 on the systemizing test. Mars and Venus, indeed.