I was riding home on metro north today, when I looked to my right and realized three men lining the aisle across from me were all reading the New York Post. I have a very serious love/hate relationship with the Post. The hate side is obvious: the paper is exploitative crap. It's filled with overblown, romanticized stories about killings, sex scandals and celebrities. It is always in the poorest of taste, and the news rarely has any relevance outside itself. It is a true tabloid, but it's reputation is better than that of, say, Star. It's, you know, not embarrassing to read on a train. Now for the love side: the paper is BRILLIANTLY HILARIOUS exploitative crap. I really feel I should be writing the tasteless puns that accompany every story as a headline. Seriously, Post folks, call me up. I'll do it in my spare time. It'll be awesome. They, apparently, don't deem a pun as making light of something (I remember seeing "Oh, God!" as the front page headline for a suicide bombing). Which is tasteless, sure...but I think you can kind of set your own rules that way. If they do it for everything, it's not so bad.
But anyway, what I've realized is that people read the Post. A lot of them. And they're all living in this bizarro world I know nothing about. Now, I'm not as much of a news junkie as some people are, but I, for example, know what case went in front of the Supreme Court today, and I don't know, for example, anything about the guy who killed a police officer this week. But lots of people know tons about this guy, just like lots of people knew tons more about Scott Peterson. I'm not saying these people are wrong for enjoying their Post...everyone who's anyone knows that personal stories are more compelling than tragedies and decisions that affect people on a mass scale. It's just strange that there's a population living in an entirely different world of news, even though they live within a two mile radius of me.
On a lighter (or darker) note, I'm not thrilled with the colors of my site. It's blatantly obvious that black is out and Mac white is in. However, I may just ride out the wave and wait for black to return when apple and google go under and, say, alienware rises to the top. Then I'll be SO in.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
She Was Asking For It
This post might offend you. No, really. It might.
I've been thinking a bunch about this post on the amazing blog feministing.com. Jessica, the smart and saucy head of the site, discusses a British study whose main finding was "one in three people in the UK believe that women who 'behave flirtatiously' are responsible for being raped." OK, that's pretty scary. But then she goes on to quote more of the study. I'm interested in this part:
Similarly, more than a quarter of people (30%) said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk, and more than a third (37%) held the same view if the woman had failed to clearly say “no” to the man. (bold theirs)
They clearly find this abhorrent. I'm not so upset, and it's mostly that "partially responsible" category that's doing it. Let's take another example. Say a rathepetitete woman is driving alone in her cute Porsche convertible and wanders into the South Bronx. She realizes she needs gas and hops out in her fabulous Prada heals and Gucci mini-dress. She goes up to the attendant and pulls out a wad of Benjamins and flips through about five of them before she finds a Grant, which she uses to pay the attendant. She wanders around the corner to use the bathroom and is accosted by a man who easily pins her against the wall, holds a switchblade to her throat and demands her money. Would you really say this woman was not "partially responsible" for the mugging? Of course the mugging was wrong. Nobody should mug somebody else. But when you do stupid shit that makes you substantially more vulnerable, I think most people would say you're "partially responsible" when something like this happens to you.
So how, if at all, is this situation different from rape? I have a couple of ideas, but first I'll chat a bit about what's not different. People can be bad and do bad things. We know this from a very young age, where kids talking behind our back preceded the "don't go anywhere with strangers" lecture. It is your job, as an adult, to do your best to protect yourself against this. I do think someone who doesn't say "no" when they mean "no" is doing something wrong. It is your responsibility to say no to salesmen who would con you into buying. It's even your responsibility to say no to people who come up to your car and start washing your windshield in hopes of getting paid. There are ways of forcefully saying no, and everyone should learn them. If not, people will make you do all sorts of things you don't want to do. Rape may be the worst case scenario, but it's certainly not the only scenario. You should also not get fall-down drunk without friends around. Again, people will mug you, mock you, and, again in the worst case, rape or kidnap you. It is your responsibility to care for yourself and to make sure you have trusted backup. If the woman in the car were with a 6'5", 240 lb. man acting as her escort to the bathroom, she wouldn't have had such problems. She also might not have had problems if she had hid her money well or made sure she was in a safe location before getting out of the car. So, that's how they're the same. If you can take simple steps to prevent harm, and you don't, there's some partial responsibility on your part.
It is important to note, however, that you having more responsibility doesn't make the other person any less responsible. This isn't a 0 sum game. Somebody who rapes someone passed out on the kitchen counter is just as morally abhorrent as someone who rapes a fully conscious, fighting person. "It was stupid of them to do this, so I have a right to" is bullshit logic. I believe that if you're hurting someone, if you're generating negative utility, you're being bad. Eso es todo.
Now for my thoughts on how these are different. The first thing that comes to mind, which I don't really believe to ultimately be the answer, is general vulnerability. Taking advantage of someone naturally weaker than you are or in a compromised state is worse than winning a fair fight. It's even worse than holding a gun to the head of someone in what otherwise would have been a fair fight. While I think this argument has merit in general, it doesn't seem THAT bad for someone to mug a drunk person. And raping someone who's you're own size is still abominable.
The second thing that comes to mind (all right, I guess it's actually the first) is the nature of the crime. But it's clearly not just the severity that's the issue. We can think someone who gets killed by doing something stupid is partially responsible. Is it that it's demeaning? That it's a violation? I mean, I think murder is more of a violation than rape. Here's what I think it is...thought 2.5:
I think a lot of it boils down to that age-old double standard of men-should-screw-like-bunnies-but-women-should-be-pure-and-virginal. Especially, it comes down to how people have historically (and, sadly, currently) reacted to rape. If the families and friends of the victims always reacted to rape that might have been prevented by smarter choices the same way they reacted to these other things—"I'm angry at you for not thinking and suffering the worst consequences, but now that it's happened let me hug you and do everything I can to make sure you're OK"—we might view it in a similar light as we view the other crimes. But when men in the Sudan find out the women in their lives were raped and blame them (completely unjustly in these circumstances: This isn't rape by an irresponsible, thoughtless date; this is usually rape by soldiers at gunpoint) they disown their daughters. They break off their engagements. They shun their sisters. They view the woman as unclean. When men rape in these kind of situations, they're not just giving the women a single traumatic, life-changingly depressing experience, they're also ruining everything they have and toppling their support network.
While, thank God, this doesn't seem to be the case in America, I don't think that frame of mind is totally absent. When people give women partial or total responsibility for being raped, they're not saying "you were thoughtless and could have prevented this," I really think the message between the lines is "you secretly wanted this at the time, and now you're just complaininbecauseue you can." I think that's where the problem is. And it goes a step further...even between those lines lies the message "And you're a slut because you wanted it. You're disgusting." That's very rarely, if ever, said (I believe...I may be totally wrong...In fact, there's a very good chance I'm totally wrong). But I think it's there, and I think women know that it's there. And I think that's why it's so, so offensive to say a woman was partially responsible if she put herself in a very compromising situation. Not because she didn't really forsake her responsibility, which she make have, but because the implication is that she was a willing participant. She wasn't.
Am I just spewing the obvious? Am I spewing crap? Am I spewing legitimate thought? I can't tell anymore...
I've been thinking a bunch about this post on the amazing blog feministing.com. Jessica, the smart and saucy head of the site, discusses a British study whose main finding was "one in three people in the UK believe that women who 'behave flirtatiously' are responsible for being raped." OK, that's pretty scary. But then she goes on to quote more of the study. I'm interested in this part:
Similarly, more than a quarter of people (30%) said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk, and more than a third (37%) held the same view if the woman had failed to clearly say “no” to the man. (bold theirs)
They clearly find this abhorrent. I'm not so upset, and it's mostly that "partially responsible" category that's doing it. Let's take another example. Say a rathepetitete woman is driving alone in her cute Porsche convertible and wanders into the South Bronx. She realizes she needs gas and hops out in her fabulous Prada heals and Gucci mini-dress. She goes up to the attendant and pulls out a wad of Benjamins and flips through about five of them before she finds a Grant, which she uses to pay the attendant. She wanders around the corner to use the bathroom and is accosted by a man who easily pins her against the wall, holds a switchblade to her throat and demands her money. Would you really say this woman was not "partially responsible" for the mugging? Of course the mugging was wrong. Nobody should mug somebody else. But when you do stupid shit that makes you substantially more vulnerable, I think most people would say you're "partially responsible" when something like this happens to you.
So how, if at all, is this situation different from rape? I have a couple of ideas, but first I'll chat a bit about what's not different. People can be bad and do bad things. We know this from a very young age, where kids talking behind our back preceded the "don't go anywhere with strangers" lecture. It is your job, as an adult, to do your best to protect yourself against this. I do think someone who doesn't say "no" when they mean "no" is doing something wrong. It is your responsibility to say no to salesmen who would con you into buying. It's even your responsibility to say no to people who come up to your car and start washing your windshield in hopes of getting paid. There are ways of forcefully saying no, and everyone should learn them. If not, people will make you do all sorts of things you don't want to do. Rape may be the worst case scenario, but it's certainly not the only scenario. You should also not get fall-down drunk without friends around. Again, people will mug you, mock you, and, again in the worst case, rape or kidnap you. It is your responsibility to care for yourself and to make sure you have trusted backup. If the woman in the car were with a 6'5", 240 lb. man acting as her escort to the bathroom, she wouldn't have had such problems. She also might not have had problems if she had hid her money well or made sure she was in a safe location before getting out of the car. So, that's how they're the same. If you can take simple steps to prevent harm, and you don't, there's some partial responsibility on your part.
It is important to note, however, that you having more responsibility doesn't make the other person any less responsible. This isn't a 0 sum game. Somebody who rapes someone passed out on the kitchen counter is just as morally abhorrent as someone who rapes a fully conscious, fighting person. "It was stupid of them to do this, so I have a right to" is bullshit logic. I believe that if you're hurting someone, if you're generating negative utility, you're being bad. Eso es todo.
Now for my thoughts on how these are different. The first thing that comes to mind, which I don't really believe to ultimately be the answer, is general vulnerability. Taking advantage of someone naturally weaker than you are or in a compromised state is worse than winning a fair fight. It's even worse than holding a gun to the head of someone in what otherwise would have been a fair fight. While I think this argument has merit in general, it doesn't seem THAT bad for someone to mug a drunk person. And raping someone who's you're own size is still abominable.
The second thing that comes to mind (all right, I guess it's actually the first) is the nature of the crime. But it's clearly not just the severity that's the issue. We can think someone who gets killed by doing something stupid is partially responsible. Is it that it's demeaning? That it's a violation? I mean, I think murder is more of a violation than rape. Here's what I think it is...thought 2.5:
I think a lot of it boils down to that age-old double standard of men-should-screw-like-bunnies-but-women-should-be-pure-and-virginal. Especially, it comes down to how people have historically (and, sadly, currently) reacted to rape. If the families and friends of the victims always reacted to rape that might have been prevented by smarter choices the same way they reacted to these other things—"I'm angry at you for not thinking and suffering the worst consequences, but now that it's happened let me hug you and do everything I can to make sure you're OK"—we might view it in a similar light as we view the other crimes. But when men in the Sudan find out the women in their lives were raped and blame them (completely unjustly in these circumstances: This isn't rape by an irresponsible, thoughtless date; this is usually rape by soldiers at gunpoint) they disown their daughters. They break off their engagements. They shun their sisters. They view the woman as unclean. When men rape in these kind of situations, they're not just giving the women a single traumatic, life-changingly depressing experience, they're also ruining everything they have and toppling their support network.
While, thank God, this doesn't seem to be the case in America, I don't think that frame of mind is totally absent. When people give women partial or total responsibility for being raped, they're not saying "you were thoughtless and could have prevented this," I really think the message between the lines is "you secretly wanted this at the time, and now you're just complaininbecauseue you can." I think that's where the problem is. And it goes a step further...even between those lines lies the message "And you're a slut because you wanted it. You're disgusting." That's very rarely, if ever, said (I believe...I may be totally wrong...In fact, there's a very good chance I'm totally wrong). But I think it's there, and I think women know that it's there. And I think that's why it's so, so offensive to say a woman was partially responsible if she put herself in a very compromising situation. Not because she didn't really forsake her responsibility, which she make have, but because the implication is that she was a willing participant. She wasn't.
Am I just spewing the obvious? Am I spewing crap? Am I spewing legitimate thought? I can't tell anymore...
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Best. Weekend. Ever.
And such a good change of pace. Well, the only bad non-change of pace was Yale losing the game (in triple overtime no less!). Five years in a row we've lost the game. How depressing. But everything else was just stellar. A review, more for my personal records than for public intrigue:
Friday: Got into New Haven around 7 after sneaking out of the office about 90 minutes early to catch my train. I dropped my stuff off at Caleb's room then met Caleb, Lori, Alexandria, Di Franco, Matt Lewis, Marty Rod and Lauren Burke at Neat lounge. I stayed for about 15 minutes and one glass of Pinot Noir and went to the glee club concert. I immediately ran into the '05 crowd, giving massive hugs to Meredith, Reiman and Haninah. The concert was great (I hate to admit it, but the harvard glee club sounded really, really good. Then again, they're all-male: a big bonus to my ears.), and we all went back to the reception for a little while before I was scheduled to meet Caleb at Yorkside. We met up at a very crowded Yorkside (Caleb and Di Franco arrived about 20 minutes late, damn them) and headed to "player Drew's" party in his apartment. BEAUTIFUL apartment. The kind of thing that would cost you 4 grand a month in New York but is probably a quarter of that in New Haven. Good time at the party. Caleb got massively drunk. I hate to say it...but sometimes I like people better when they're drunk. Sometimes I like me better with half a glass of wine slowly filtering through my liver. Here's a sample of drunken dialogue between Caleb and Marty on the way back...Marty's trying to get Caleb to remember some girl:
Marty: Oh, you know...the hot one.
Caleb: Can you be any more specific?
Marty: The one who smoked out of an apple. The hot one.
Caleb: Anything else? Anything about the way she looks?
Marty: Man, she's the one who smoked out of an apple!
Caleb: Right, because I saw her. Because I'm so fucking in touch with the world that anytime someone smokes out of an apple...I KNOW. Because I'm Johnny Fucking Appleseed.
That was about it. Still pretty funny, though.
Saturday: Game time. Woke up around 10:30 to a very unhappy Caleb. Gave him Tylenol. We went to Copper Kitchen, possibly the best place to get breakfast in New Haven. It was crowded as all hell, but the super-efficient waitress got us our eggs and hash relatively quickly. We went to the busses by the gym, and the line pretty much went to Hartford. So we walked the two and a half miles or so to the game. The day was actually pretty nice, and we got there much faster than we would have had we taken the bus. So, good choice, Maggie and Caleb. We found the Branford tailgate and met up with Alexandria, Roxy, Lori, Brad, Haninah and Andrew Korn. After much reuniting and being squashed into small spaces, we went into the game for the beginning of the second quarter. By a couple minutes into the third, Yale was up 21-3. It looked like smooth sailing.
A bunch of us cut out just as the fourth quarter began and Harvard brought the score to 21-16. We drove in Roxy's rented car to Atticus, where I stayed for a few minutes before heading to physics Yorkside. The only one to come reasonably on time was Meredith. Yorkside was packed, and we figured the others would still be at the game, so we just went to Koffee Too and hung out there, meeting everyone else at Yorkside around 5:15. A bunch of those people went to Harry Potter, so Reiman and I hung out a bit before I departed for India Palace. They took forever to seat us and longer to serve us, and our group of 12 had to split up (shocker), but oh did that Indian food hit the spot. And the company couldn't be beat. After Indian, sake bombing (or in my case, hot sake sipping) at Miya's. Good time was had by all. Eric Seymour also joined us at that point, and it was very good to see him. I heard all about the TFAers crazy experiences, and I, of course, asked all the guys whether their kids have crushes on them.
Brad - A couple seem to.
Matt Lewis - No, they're elementary school kids, and his life's goal is to never have a student with a crush on him.
Dave - Yeah, they do. (shocker)
Eric - No, but the captain of the basketball team sometimes touches him inappropriately. ("I was going to buzz the principal's office, because this was the third time he'd come in late without a note, and I go to reach for it and he hugs me. I was like 'WTF? buzz!'")
After Miya's some people went to Rudy's and I went back with a few other people to Caleb's room. They, too, left for Rudy's, so Caleb and I just hung out and chatted, which was great as always. I gave him a backrub I owed him and he desperately needed (what a self-sacrificing girl I am, giving a backrub to an obscenely sexy man...the pictures don't show his general awesomeness). When people came back from Rudy's, they played poker, and Haninah and I chatted on Caleb's bed, as he tried not to flirt with Matt Lewis's girlfriend's friend and instead redirect her onto Brad. It worked. After a while: sleep! And it was good.
Sunday: Woke up to Caleb's alarm, showered, dressed, woke up Alexandria, packed, and went with her and Caleb to Koffee Too for breakfast. Ate with them and the others. Brad drove us to the train station, and Alexandria and I got on the 11:57 to Grand Central, while Caleb waited for his Amtrak to Virginia (where he'll be spending the vacation with Leslie, his girlfriend). Departed from Alexandria at Stanford, where I took the local to Mamaroneck and waited for 35 minutes for a cab. Ah, well. And now I'm relaxing and cursing myself for not bringing the book I have to review for Seed home with me. I wasn't sure I was going to have to review it, and now the reviews are due on Wednesday. Which means I have a book to read tomorrow. Luckily it's shortish and fun. But it's still a book. I kind of miss that kind of pressured work, though. I'm a little excited.
CLARIFICATION (11/24): On the clause "as he tried not to flirt with Matt Lewis's girlfriend's friend and instead redirect her onto Brad. It worked." This is not to imply that this girl was going after Haninah all night and instead he pushed her onto Brad. I believe she was flirting with Brad earlier in the evening at Rudy's as well as before the card game got going. While Brad was playing, she was flirting with Haninah. She was looking for love (in all the...right places?)
Friday: Got into New Haven around 7 after sneaking out of the office about 90 minutes early to catch my train. I dropped my stuff off at Caleb's room then met Caleb, Lori, Alexandria, Di Franco, Matt Lewis, Marty Rod and Lauren Burke at Neat lounge. I stayed for about 15 minutes and one glass of Pinot Noir and went to the glee club concert. I immediately ran into the '05 crowd, giving massive hugs to Meredith, Reiman and Haninah. The concert was great (I hate to admit it, but the harvard glee club sounded really, really good. Then again, they're all-male: a big bonus to my ears.), and we all went back to the reception for a little while before I was scheduled to meet Caleb at Yorkside. We met up at a very crowded Yorkside (Caleb and Di Franco arrived about 20 minutes late, damn them) and headed to "player Drew's" party in his apartment. BEAUTIFUL apartment. The kind of thing that would cost you 4 grand a month in New York but is probably a quarter of that in New Haven. Good time at the party. Caleb got massively drunk. I hate to say it...but sometimes I like people better when they're drunk. Sometimes I like me better with half a glass of wine slowly filtering through my liver. Here's a sample of drunken dialogue between Caleb and Marty on the way back...Marty's trying to get Caleb to remember some girl:
Marty: Oh, you know...the hot one.
Caleb: Can you be any more specific?
Marty: The one who smoked out of an apple. The hot one.
Caleb: Anything else? Anything about the way she looks?
Marty: Man, she's the one who smoked out of an apple!
Caleb: Right, because I saw her. Because I'm so fucking in touch with the world that anytime someone smokes out of an apple...I KNOW. Because I'm Johnny Fucking Appleseed.
That was about it. Still pretty funny, though.
Saturday: Game time. Woke up around 10:30 to a very unhappy Caleb. Gave him Tylenol. We went to Copper Kitchen, possibly the best place to get breakfast in New Haven. It was crowded as all hell, but the super-efficient waitress got us our eggs and hash relatively quickly. We went to the busses by the gym, and the line pretty much went to Hartford. So we walked the two and a half miles or so to the game. The day was actually pretty nice, and we got there much faster than we would have had we taken the bus. So, good choice, Maggie and Caleb. We found the Branford tailgate and met up with Alexandria, Roxy, Lori, Brad, Haninah and Andrew Korn. After much reuniting and being squashed into small spaces, we went into the game for the beginning of the second quarter. By a couple minutes into the third, Yale was up 21-3. It looked like smooth sailing.
A bunch of us cut out just as the fourth quarter began and Harvard brought the score to 21-16. We drove in Roxy's rented car to Atticus, where I stayed for a few minutes before heading to physics Yorkside. The only one to come reasonably on time was Meredith. Yorkside was packed, and we figured the others would still be at the game, so we just went to Koffee Too and hung out there, meeting everyone else at Yorkside around 5:15. A bunch of those people went to Harry Potter, so Reiman and I hung out a bit before I departed for India Palace. They took forever to seat us and longer to serve us, and our group of 12 had to split up (shocker), but oh did that Indian food hit the spot. And the company couldn't be beat. After Indian, sake bombing (or in my case, hot sake sipping) at Miya's. Good time was had by all. Eric Seymour also joined us at that point, and it was very good to see him. I heard all about the TFAers crazy experiences, and I, of course, asked all the guys whether their kids have crushes on them.
Brad - A couple seem to.
Matt Lewis - No, they're elementary school kids, and his life's goal is to never have a student with a crush on him.
Dave - Yeah, they do. (shocker)
Eric - No, but the captain of the basketball team sometimes touches him inappropriately. ("I was going to buzz the principal's office, because this was the third time he'd come in late without a note, and I go to reach for it and he hugs me. I was like 'WTF? buzz!'")
After Miya's some people went to Rudy's and I went back with a few other people to Caleb's room. They, too, left for Rudy's, so Caleb and I just hung out and chatted, which was great as always. I gave him a backrub I owed him and he desperately needed (what a self-sacrificing girl I am, giving a backrub to an obscenely sexy man...the pictures don't show his general awesomeness). When people came back from Rudy's, they played poker, and Haninah and I chatted on Caleb's bed, as he tried not to flirt with Matt Lewis's girlfriend's friend and instead redirect her onto Brad. It worked. After a while: sleep! And it was good.
Sunday: Woke up to Caleb's alarm, showered, dressed, woke up Alexandria, packed, and went with her and Caleb to Koffee Too for breakfast. Ate with them and the others. Brad drove us to the train station, and Alexandria and I got on the 11:57 to Grand Central, while Caleb waited for his Amtrak to Virginia (where he'll be spending the vacation with Leslie, his girlfriend). Departed from Alexandria at Stanford, where I took the local to Mamaroneck and waited for 35 minutes for a cab. Ah, well. And now I'm relaxing and cursing myself for not bringing the book I have to review for Seed home with me. I wasn't sure I was going to have to review it, and now the reviews are due on Wednesday. Which means I have a book to read tomorrow. Luckily it's shortish and fun. But it's still a book. I kind of miss that kind of pressured work, though. I'm a little excited.
CLARIFICATION (11/24): On the clause "as he tried not to flirt with Matt Lewis's girlfriend's friend and instead redirect her onto Brad. It worked." This is not to imply that this girl was going after Haninah all night and instead he pushed her onto Brad. I believe she was flirting with Brad earlier in the evening at Rudy's as well as before the card game got going. While Brad was playing, she was flirting with Haninah. She was looking for love (in all the...right places?)
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
seedmagazine.com is live (and well)
I'll be sending out an email blast tomorrow, but to reward any loyal blog readers, you get to be the first to know that seedmagazine.com is up and running! Yes, this is The Site. Go! Enjoy! And click on the following link to help my personal mission of getting our site to show up when you type "seed" into google: Seed.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Indulgence
Today I made the most indulgent purchase of my life. Here, I'm defining indulgence as (price x emotional kick)/(market value x personal necessity). The purchase was the most beautiful copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ever. Really, ever. The price? $13...over my $50 of gift certificates. YEAH. So that was probably stupid to blow about 7 books on one. But it's great. It's beautifully elegant...just a white cover with the title and author in black type. No dedication, no annotation, no about the author, and most importantly, no introduction from Harold Bloom or Samuel Beckett or Pompous Schmuck-Jerkoff. It's just the text. Black on white, take it as you will, your imagination sets the mood. $63 isn't bad...for love! (as I hear, the going rate's about $200)
And in further news, Phase 1 of Operation Stealth Infiltration of the Adult World (yes, OSIAW's a crappy acronym) is complete, woo! Yeah, that was cryptic, but, like so many parts of this blog, it's public to everybody save one or two people in the world. More thoughtful things some other time...
And in further news, Phase 1 of Operation Stealth Infiltration of the Adult World (yes, OSIAW's a crappy acronym) is complete, woo! Yeah, that was cryptic, but, like so many parts of this blog, it's public to everybody save one or two people in the world. More thoughtful things some other time...
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Will You People Stop Banning Gay Marriage?
That'd be nice. Texas, I'm talking to you. No, not you, Austin. You just keep doing your thing.
Anyway, having just bounced off a blog post where I got a song that sounds like a combination of everything Jason Farago's ever played for me, I thought I'd do a music post of my own. So tonight I give you the songs of a playlist I created last week:
NB: These songs don't all have a literal relation to the Bush administration. They mostly just channel a certain je ne sais quoi that's part of today's zeitgeist...or some other...foreign...words...Anyway, if you think any songs should be added, let me know. And sorry about the running times. I'm copying and pasting from itunes; try to view them as hyphens.
1999 3:37 Prince
All You Can Eat 3:23 Ben Folds
America, Fuck Yeah 2:06 Team America: World Police
Big Yellow Taxi 3:46 Counting Crows
Can't Always Get What You Want 7:28 Rolling Stones
Easy Street 3:17 Bernadette Peters., Carol Burnett, Tim Curry
End of the World as We Know It 4:05 R.E.M.
Enormous Penis 2:45 Da Vinci's Notebook
Fake Plastic Trees 4:50 Radiohead
Fat Bottomed Girls 4:18 Queen
Gay Messiah 3:46 Rufus Wainwright
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next 4:52 Manic Street Preachers
Instant Karma 3:23 John Lennon
Is That All There Is? 4:30 Sandra Bernhard
It's Oh So Quiet 3:38 Björk
Karma Police 4:21 Radiohead
Livin' On A Prayer 4:10 Bon Jovi
Making Love Alone 5:54 Bernadette Peters
Mama, Look Sharp 2:25 Redhot & Blue 20th Anniversary Jam
Molasses to Rum 4:42 1776
My Poor Generation 3:59 Moxy Früvous
Never Been To Spain 3:47 Three Dog Night
Novacaine For The Soul 3:09 Eels
Plastic Jesus 4:30 Jello Biafra, Mojo Nixon
Psycho Killer 4:20 Talking Heads
Right Through You 2:55 Alanis Morissette
Say It Ain't So 4:18 Weezer
Selling Out 2:25 Tom Lehrer
Springtime for Hitler 3:23 The Producers
Sympathy for the Devil 6:27 Rolling Stones
Take A Letter Miss Jones 3:29 Blood Brothers
The Drinking Song 5:09 Moxy Früvous
The General 4:06 Dispatch
The Greatest Man in America (live) 3:09 Moxy Früvous
The Lees of Old Virginia 3:50 1776
The Time Warp 3:16 Stanford Fleet Street Singers
Urinetown 1:40 Urinetown
We Are the Champions 3:03 Queen
We Shall Overcome 5:26 Denver Gay Men's Chorus
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego (Full Version) 2:50 Rockapella
Won't Get Fooled Again 8:33 The Who
You're So Vain 4:18 Carly Simon
Your Redneck Past 3:42 Ben Folds Five
Anyway, having just bounced off a blog post where I got a song that sounds like a combination of everything Jason Farago's ever played for me, I thought I'd do a music post of my own. So tonight I give you the songs of a playlist I created last week:
2000-2008: A Bush Administration Playlist
NB: These songs don't all have a literal relation to the Bush administration. They mostly just channel a certain je ne sais quoi that's part of today's zeitgeist...or some other...foreign...words...Anyway, if you think any songs should be added, let me know. And sorry about the running times. I'm copying and pasting from itunes; try to view them as hyphens.
1999 3:37 Prince
All You Can Eat 3:23 Ben Folds
America, Fuck Yeah 2:06 Team America: World Police
Big Yellow Taxi 3:46 Counting Crows
Can't Always Get What You Want 7:28 Rolling Stones
Easy Street 3:17 Bernadette Peters., Carol Burnett, Tim Curry
End of the World as We Know It 4:05 R.E.M.
Enormous Penis 2:45 Da Vinci's Notebook
Fake Plastic Trees 4:50 Radiohead
Fat Bottomed Girls 4:18 Queen
Gay Messiah 3:46 Rufus Wainwright
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next 4:52 Manic Street Preachers
Instant Karma 3:23 John Lennon
Is That All There Is? 4:30 Sandra Bernhard
It's Oh So Quiet 3:38 Björk
Karma Police 4:21 Radiohead
Livin' On A Prayer 4:10 Bon Jovi
Making Love Alone 5:54 Bernadette Peters
Mama, Look Sharp 2:25 Redhot & Blue 20th Anniversary Jam
Molasses to Rum 4:42 1776
My Poor Generation 3:59 Moxy Früvous
Never Been To Spain 3:47 Three Dog Night
Novacaine For The Soul 3:09 Eels
Plastic Jesus 4:30 Jello Biafra, Mojo Nixon
Psycho Killer 4:20 Talking Heads
Right Through You 2:55 Alanis Morissette
Say It Ain't So 4:18 Weezer
Selling Out 2:25 Tom Lehrer
Springtime for Hitler 3:23 The Producers
Sympathy for the Devil 6:27 Rolling Stones
Take A Letter Miss Jones 3:29 Blood Brothers
The Drinking Song 5:09 Moxy Früvous
The General 4:06 Dispatch
The Greatest Man in America (live) 3:09 Moxy Früvous
The Lees of Old Virginia 3:50 1776
The Time Warp 3:16 Stanford Fleet Street Singers
Urinetown 1:40 Urinetown
We Are the Champions 3:03 Queen
We Shall Overcome 5:26 Denver Gay Men's Chorus
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego (Full Version) 2:50 Rockapella
Won't Get Fooled Again 8:33 The Who
You're So Vain 4:18 Carly Simon
Your Redneck Past 3:42 Ben Folds Five
Monday, November 07, 2005
And No One's Getting Fat Except Leon Kass
[WARNING: the post contains TMI. If you don't care (most of you), read ahead. I will let you know when it's starting and ending]
I had so much blogging I wanted to do over the course of the day, which is always a bad thing, because then I can't focus when I actually sit down to write.
So let's start with Leon R. Kass's The Death Of Courtship, as excerpted on the Focus on the Family website. I encourage you to read the full three parts, but since I don't expect you to suffer for pages upon pages, I'll just give you my reaction and some snippets.
Kass's piece clarified two already-pretty-clear things for me:
1) THAT I am naturally a pretty conservative person.
2) WHY I cannot tolerate people who identify as politically and socially conservative.
TMI STARTS HERE
We'll start with the first. As most people who read this blog know, I dig gay porn. I read and watch it a fair amount. I'm the first person in a group of friends to strike up a conversation on masturbation, and I encourage people to explore their desires, both latent and accessible. I have no moral objection to people using drugs to the point that it does not really hurt themselves or others.
But for me, the talk is the walk. I don't hook up with people who aren't my steady boyfriend. I appreciate romance. The only illegal drug I've tried is one shot of absinthe, and I'm not even sure that that's still illegal. I've never been properly drunk. In many ways, I'm doing much better on the conservatives' demands than most of their children are. And in the ways I'm not? (You know, the pornorgraphy, incessant self-abuse) I'm feeling the effects they talk about.
Just as people now have some trouble enjoying fruit properly because they've experienced freaks of nature such as Rolos and Spree, the standards of whom I'm off-handedly physically attracted to have gone up enormously due to a little too much Lane Fuller in my life. Coincidence? Who knows. And I probably should have read Dan Savage's advice on "varying technique" in masturbation when I was five, but it's a little late for that. I have become erotically desensitized in all respects. Point to the right.
TMI ENDS HERE
So for my first quote from Kass I go to this utterly obnoxious but not-entirely-without-merit blurb:
"The change most immediately devastating for wooing is probably the sexual revolution. For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it? Contrary to what the youth of the sixties believed, they were not the first to feel the power of sexual desire. Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married, between a woman of easy virtue and a woman of virtue simply. Only respectable women were respected; one no more wanted a loose woman for one's partner than for one's mother."
Yeah, I'm wretching too, don't worry. But hidden in that drivel is a point: There probably is an unbalance between men who will want to marry if extramarital sex is easy to obtain and women who will want to marry if extramarital sex is easy to obtain. Note I said "unbalance," not "no men will ever want to get married and all women will." Just "unbalance." If the only way you can have an actual relationship that involves sex is by getting married, you will have an overwhelming proportion of both sexes who want to do just that. While extramarital sex is pretty completely accepted (as it is now), most women will want to have extramarital sex, and then at some point settle down with a husband. Most men will want to have extramarital sex, and then at some point settle down with a wife...but it's a smaller most! I think. And if you think I'm being heterosexist, I am. But I said "most." So I'm still right. I think. And it's not so much "heterosexist" as "totally self-centered."
So in the current situation, for whom does it suck? Meeeee. Ussssss. Well, not all of us. I can't predict whom it won't suck for and whom it will suck for. But this does mean there will be leftover women. Which is annoying and unfortunate for those women.
So we should change things! We should make laws! We should stop prescribing the pill, and make abortion illegal, and teach abstinence only education to prevent promiscuity and force people to have the families I want them to!
No we shouldn't.
And that's where I finally hit number 2: I hate social conservatives (except Steve Schwartz). OK, so some impulses I have are completely different from theirs. I don't think there's anything even remotely wrong with homosexuality...although that not being a choice sort of invalidates the comparison, in my eyes. But I wouldn't think there's anything wrong even if it weren't. I don't think there's anything wrong with having an abortion (see my semi-offensive post from a few days ago), but that's because I don't believe in the abstract notion of the soul. And of course I don't think there's anything wrong with random sex or drug use or everything else Kass criticizes, it just makes for the world that he correctly describes, and that's not the world that works best to my advantage.
And that's completely my problem.
Sure, I can advocate for a culture that more suits my needs if I believe it will more suit the needs of many others. But the presumption, the gumption it takes to want to LEGISLATE that culture? That's just offensive. The fact that Kass (did I mention he was Bush's bioethics advisor 2001-2005?) could write this is unfathomable:
"While some programs also encourage abstinence or non-coital sex, most are concerned with teaching techniques for "safe sex"; offspring (and disease) are thus treated as (equally) avoidable side effects of sexuality, whose true purpose is only individual pleasure. (This I myself did not learn until our younger daughter so enlightened me, after she learned it from her seventh-grade biology teacher.) The entire approach of sex education is technocratic and, at best, morally neutral; in many cases, it explicitly opposes traditional morals while moralistically insisting on the equal acceptability of any and all forms of sexual expression provided only that they are not coerced. No effort is made to teach the importance of marriage as the proper home for sexual intimacy."
That's because sexual education is supposed to teach you. It's supposed to teach you facts. Teachers teach facts (and strategies and ways of thinking about things but hush, teachers, I'm talking about sex ed, not calculus or philosophy). My other radical opinion in life is that teachers generally shouldn't teach morality beyond keeping order in their classrooms. Yes, telling a kid not to call another kid "faggot" qualifies as keeping order. Of course this is a balancing act, but I don't think teachers should even tell their students that giving to the poor is the right thing to do. And I think this mostly so it doesn't get us into binds like these problems with sex ed. If teachers can tell their kids to volunteer at a soup kitchen, they can tell them not to sleep with someone 45 minutes after they meet. Sure, I see the difference between these types of morality, but many people don't, and those many people are the ones we have to deal with.
And along those lines, I don't think the government should legislate ideals. I think the government should pass only enough restrictions to keep people from destroying each other. What does this make me sound like? A Republican. Yes it does. And to be frank, I think I have some conservative small-government impulses also. But, while welfare programs cost money, and taking money is a restriction in some sense, welfare programs aren't at all restrictions in the same sense as a prohibition on abortion would be. It's more of an allowance, even though it's "big government." And I think it's important we do good things when we can. And we can.
All right, it's late and I'm starting to eke into the land of gibberish (Gibber, I suppose). I'm not editing this, so be kind. Some things would have been edited. Buenas Noches!
I had so much blogging I wanted to do over the course of the day, which is always a bad thing, because then I can't focus when I actually sit down to write.
So let's start with Leon R. Kass's The Death Of Courtship, as excerpted on the Focus on the Family website. I encourage you to read the full three parts, but since I don't expect you to suffer for pages upon pages, I'll just give you my reaction and some snippets.
Kass's piece clarified two already-pretty-clear things for me:
1) THAT I am naturally a pretty conservative person.
2) WHY I cannot tolerate people who identify as politically and socially conservative.
TMI STARTS HERE
We'll start with the first. As most people who read this blog know, I dig gay porn. I read and watch it a fair amount. I'm the first person in a group of friends to strike up a conversation on masturbation, and I encourage people to explore their desires, both latent and accessible. I have no moral objection to people using drugs to the point that it does not really hurt themselves or others.
But for me, the talk is the walk. I don't hook up with people who aren't my steady boyfriend. I appreciate romance. The only illegal drug I've tried is one shot of absinthe, and I'm not even sure that that's still illegal. I've never been properly drunk. In many ways, I'm doing much better on the conservatives' demands than most of their children are. And in the ways I'm not? (You know, the pornorgraphy, incessant self-abuse) I'm feeling the effects they talk about.
Just as people now have some trouble enjoying fruit properly because they've experienced freaks of nature such as Rolos and Spree, the standards of whom I'm off-handedly physically attracted to have gone up enormously due to a little too much Lane Fuller in my life. Coincidence? Who knows. And I probably should have read Dan Savage's advice on "varying technique" in masturbation when I was five, but it's a little late for that. I have become erotically desensitized in all respects. Point to the right.
TMI ENDS HERE
So for my first quote from Kass I go to this utterly obnoxious but not-entirely-without-merit blurb:
"The change most immediately devastating for wooing is probably the sexual revolution. For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it? Contrary to what the youth of the sixties believed, they were not the first to feel the power of sexual desire. Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married, between a woman of easy virtue and a woman of virtue simply. Only respectable women were respected; one no more wanted a loose woman for one's partner than for one's mother."
Yeah, I'm wretching too, don't worry. But hidden in that drivel is a point: There probably is an unbalance between men who will want to marry if extramarital sex is easy to obtain and women who will want to marry if extramarital sex is easy to obtain. Note I said "unbalance," not "no men will ever want to get married and all women will." Just "unbalance." If the only way you can have an actual relationship that involves sex is by getting married, you will have an overwhelming proportion of both sexes who want to do just that. While extramarital sex is pretty completely accepted (as it is now), most women will want to have extramarital sex, and then at some point settle down with a husband. Most men will want to have extramarital sex, and then at some point settle down with a wife...but it's a smaller most! I think. And if you think I'm being heterosexist, I am. But I said "most." So I'm still right. I think. And it's not so much "heterosexist" as "totally self-centered."
So in the current situation, for whom does it suck? Meeeee. Ussssss. Well, not all of us. I can't predict whom it won't suck for and whom it will suck for. But this does mean there will be leftover women. Which is annoying and unfortunate for those women.
So we should change things! We should make laws! We should stop prescribing the pill, and make abortion illegal, and teach abstinence only education to prevent promiscuity and force people to have the families I want them to!
No we shouldn't.
And that's where I finally hit number 2: I hate social conservatives (except Steve Schwartz). OK, so some impulses I have are completely different from theirs. I don't think there's anything even remotely wrong with homosexuality...although that not being a choice sort of invalidates the comparison, in my eyes. But I wouldn't think there's anything wrong even if it weren't. I don't think there's anything wrong with having an abortion (see my semi-offensive post from a few days ago), but that's because I don't believe in the abstract notion of the soul. And of course I don't think there's anything wrong with random sex or drug use or everything else Kass criticizes, it just makes for the world that he correctly describes, and that's not the world that works best to my advantage.
And that's completely my problem.
Sure, I can advocate for a culture that more suits my needs if I believe it will more suit the needs of many others. But the presumption, the gumption it takes to want to LEGISLATE that culture? That's just offensive. The fact that Kass (did I mention he was Bush's bioethics advisor 2001-2005?) could write this is unfathomable:
"While some programs also encourage abstinence or non-coital sex, most are concerned with teaching techniques for "safe sex"; offspring (and disease) are thus treated as (equally) avoidable side effects of sexuality, whose true purpose is only individual pleasure. (This I myself did not learn until our younger daughter so enlightened me, after she learned it from her seventh-grade biology teacher.) The entire approach of sex education is technocratic and, at best, morally neutral; in many cases, it explicitly opposes traditional morals while moralistically insisting on the equal acceptability of any and all forms of sexual expression provided only that they are not coerced. No effort is made to teach the importance of marriage as the proper home for sexual intimacy."
That's because sexual education is supposed to teach you. It's supposed to teach you facts. Teachers teach facts (and strategies and ways of thinking about things but hush, teachers, I'm talking about sex ed, not calculus or philosophy). My other radical opinion in life is that teachers generally shouldn't teach morality beyond keeping order in their classrooms. Yes, telling a kid not to call another kid "faggot" qualifies as keeping order. Of course this is a balancing act, but I don't think teachers should even tell their students that giving to the poor is the right thing to do. And I think this mostly so it doesn't get us into binds like these problems with sex ed. If teachers can tell their kids to volunteer at a soup kitchen, they can tell them not to sleep with someone 45 minutes after they meet. Sure, I see the difference between these types of morality, but many people don't, and those many people are the ones we have to deal with.
And along those lines, I don't think the government should legislate ideals. I think the government should pass only enough restrictions to keep people from destroying each other. What does this make me sound like? A Republican. Yes it does. And to be frank, I think I have some conservative small-government impulses also. But, while welfare programs cost money, and taking money is a restriction in some sense, welfare programs aren't at all restrictions in the same sense as a prohibition on abortion would be. It's more of an allowance, even though it's "big government." And I think it's important we do good things when we can. And we can.
All right, it's late and I'm starting to eke into the land of gibberish (Gibber, I suppose). I'm not editing this, so be kind. Some things would have been edited. Buenas Noches!
How To Fuck Up Small Children
As my friends (and Augusten Burroughs) demonstrate, it can be much harder than you think to fuck up small children.
A small child's parents can get divorced when she's two, and refuse to be in the same room as each other for the next couple of decades of her life, and she can still be 25 and in a relationship with a good-hearted, secure-in-all-the-right-ways sort of guy for a solid 50 months and counting.
A small child can be raised in a culture with a violent opposition to education, with people who mock the smart kids and teachers who hate students who do well, and she can graduate from a top school and publish scientific papers in journals.
A small child can be born with doctors saying that if she survives at all she will unquestionably be severely mentally retarded, and she can still turn out on the smart side of the scale. You know. Passable and all.
HOWEVER
There is no question in my mind that AMC has truly fucked up these small children for life.
A small child's parents can get divorced when she's two, and refuse to be in the same room as each other for the next couple of decades of her life, and she can still be 25 and in a relationship with a good-hearted, secure-in-all-the-right-ways sort of guy for a solid 50 months and counting.
A small child can be raised in a culture with a violent opposition to education, with people who mock the smart kids and teachers who hate students who do well, and she can graduate from a top school and publish scientific papers in journals.
A small child can be born with doctors saying that if she survives at all she will unquestionably be severely mentally retarded, and she can still turn out on the smart side of the scale. You know. Passable and all.
HOWEVER
There is no question in my mind that AMC has truly fucked up these small children for life.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Just in Casey?
The site didn't launch, and during my moping period I had the opportunity to read Alito's dissent in PP v Casey. I do feel I learned a lot about the process of how decisions are arrived at and written up just from reading the opinion. It's no surprise that reading these things is a good part of law school. I also learned much more about the conditions that need to be met in a legal state abortion law than I knew before. I quote from the dissent:
"Under that test, as the majority explains, a law that imposes an “undue burden” must serve a “compelling” state interest. By contrast, a law that does not impose an “undue burden” must simply be “rationally” or “reasonably” related to a “legitimate” state interest."
I had heard of "undue burden" before, but I didn't know much about this "compelling" and "legitimate" state interest part. Great language guys...I guess passing the legal buck is all part of the process.
But onto determining whether Alito was, indeed, just in Casey. The first part of the decision I take issue with has nothing to do with Alito: it's the precedent O'Connor sets...or at least the precedent Alito interprets her as setting:
"Justice O’Connor has explained the meaning of the term “undue burden” in several abortion opinions. In Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 462 U.S. at 464, 103 S.Ct. at 2510 (O’Connor, J., dissenting), she wrote that “an ‘undue burden’ has been found for the most part in situations involving absolute obstacles or severe limitations on the abortion decision.” She noted that laws held unconstitutional in prior cases involved statutes that “criminalized all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother,” inhibited ” ‘the vast majority of abortions after the first 12 weeks,’ ” or gave the parents of a pregnant minor an absolute veto power over the abortion decision. Id. (emphasis in original; citations omitted). She suggested that an “undue burden” would not be created by “a state regulation [that] may ‘inhibit’ abortions to some degree.” Id. She also suggested that there is no undue burden unless a measure has the effect of “substantially limiting access.”"
I'm not sure what he means that she "suggested" undue burden would not be created by a regulation that just inhibits abortions and doesn't "substantially" limit them. I would guess from his quote that she was somewhat explicit about it, but if she didn't explicitly state these conditions must be met, I think a justice has some leeway with them. Clearly, Alito doesn't think he does (and wouldn't care if he did). "Substantially" is an interesting word. Does substantially mean "greatly, in some cases" or "at all, in many cases?" I would like to say that it's the former. If even one, even hypothetical, person is greatly inhibited, I believe the inhibiting was substantial. Alito seems to put more stake in numbers, which I think is kind of heinous. This is the part of the dissent I disagree with most:
"Second, the plaintiffs offered testimony that the exceptions in Section 3209 [the spousal notification part] would not cover a case in which a woman did not want to notify her husband for fear that he would retaliate in some way other than the infliction of bodily injury upon her, such as by subjecting her to psychological abuse or abusing their children (see 744 F.Supp. at 1360- 62). The plaintiffs, however, do not appear to have offered any evidence showing how many (or indeed that any actual women) would be affected by this asserted imperfection in the statute."
Admittedly the burden of proof is on the plaintiffs here—Alito makes that painfully clear—but I think that by simply pointing out this imperfection, they've proven a substantial limitation of access inherent in the regulation. Whether or not this substantial limitation would affect zero, one, or tens of thousands of abortions each year does not affect that the limitation is imposed.
Maybe he covered why this point-that few women would be affected-is relevant, but, at least from my first reading, all I see is his earlier comment on O'Connor's definitions of undue burden:
"Taken together, Justice O’Connor’s opinions reveal that an undue burden does not exist unless a law (a) prohibits abortion or gives another person the authority to veto an abortion or (b) has the practical effect of imposing “severe limitations,” rather than simply inhibiting abortions ” ‘to some degree’ ” or inhibiting “some women.”"
Is he taking these phrases a little out of context? Most restrictions will only inhibit abortions "to some degree" or inhibit "some women." They have the clause in this spousal notification regulation that a woman can get around it if she believes her husband will physically harm her. If it did no have this clause, would he still not strike it down because it only inhibits some women (those with abusive husbands) to some degree (a little slapping around here and there...no death...that would be a severe limitation, but a black eye never REALLY stopped anyone from doing anything). I exaggerate for effect, but the "some women" and "some degree" clauses seem pretty bizarre, in the way he takes them.
So who decides when "some women" becomes "all women?" And the restriction here is imposed on all women, even if many are not affected by it. If he's really right in saying that all women must be inhibited to a great degree, I suppose I'm defeated. But that seems like a ridiculous requirement. Perhaps that's what O'Connor meant. As Alito points out, she struck down the two-parent notification not on undue burden, but because it served to legitimate state interest. If he had the ability to determine that "severe limitation" did not necessarily mean all women inhibited to a great degree, as I believe he probably did, there I disagree with him.
Then there's the "rationally relates to a legitimate state purpose" part of the thing, which I'll touch on briefly. The interest at hand is the father's investment in the fetus. Apparently, "The Supreme Court has held that a man has a fundamental interest in preserving his ability to father a child." OK. Then, "The Court’s opinions also seem to establish that a husband who is willing to participate in raising a child has a fundamental interest in the child’s welfare...It follows that a husband has a “legitimate” interest in the welfare of a fetus he has conceived with his wife."
Why this is a state purpose is apparently too obvious to mention. I don't say this sarcastically...it doesn't seem intuitive to me, but for those familiar with law, perhaps it does. Alito quotes, "“[S]tatutory regulation of domestic relations [is] an area *726 that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States."...Accordingly, Pennsylvania has a legitimate interest in furthering the husband’s interest in the fate of the fetus, as the majority in this case acknowledges." Yeah, I don't really get it...why the state's ability to regulate it necessarily implies an interest in every aspect of it.
So that brings Alito to the "rationally related" part:
"The Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands’ knowledge because of perceived problems–such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands’ previously expressed opposition– that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion. In addition, the legislature could have reasonably concluded that Section 3209 would lead to such discussion and thereby properly further a husband’s interests in the fetus in a sufficient percentage of the affected cases to justify enactment of this measure."
This was around the time I got tired reading the opinion and writing this entry. So I'm a little off. But I just don't like the assumption that encouraging women to talk to their husbands, husbands gaining an interest in their child (and then women having or not having abortions) serves a legitimate state interest. Alito (I believe) concedes that it's not a "compelling" state interest; therefore if it placed undue burden on women, it would not be constitutional. Even though I don't see where the legitimate state interest really comes in (anyone's welcome to tell me...although maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and it'll be clear as day), I don't think it's relevant, because I think the law does substantially inhibit women, even if it, in practice, may not inhibit many, and it therefore creates undue burden and does not serve a compelling state interest.
Well, that's my first analysis of a judicial opinion ever. I'm sure law school professors would fail me so hard and fast I wouldn't sit down for a week. But I'd love your lay and/or law-school-informed reactions.
(Also note: I'm not reading this over before I post, so there may be some serious flaws in sentence structure/logic.)
"Under that test, as the majority explains, a law that imposes an “undue burden” must serve a “compelling” state interest. By contrast, a law that does not impose an “undue burden” must simply be “rationally” or “reasonably” related to a “legitimate” state interest."
I had heard of "undue burden" before, but I didn't know much about this "compelling" and "legitimate" state interest part. Great language guys...I guess passing the legal buck is all part of the process.
But onto determining whether Alito was, indeed, just in Casey. The first part of the decision I take issue with has nothing to do with Alito: it's the precedent O'Connor sets...or at least the precedent Alito interprets her as setting:
"Justice O’Connor has explained the meaning of the term “undue burden” in several abortion opinions. In Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 462 U.S. at 464, 103 S.Ct. at 2510 (O’Connor, J., dissenting), she wrote that “an ‘undue burden’ has been found for the most part in situations involving absolute obstacles or severe limitations on the abortion decision.” She noted that laws held unconstitutional in prior cases involved statutes that “criminalized all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother,” inhibited ” ‘the vast majority of abortions after the first 12 weeks,’ ” or gave the parents of a pregnant minor an absolute veto power over the abortion decision. Id. (emphasis in original; citations omitted). She suggested that an “undue burden” would not be created by “a state regulation [that] may ‘inhibit’ abortions to some degree.” Id. She also suggested that there is no undue burden unless a measure has the effect of “substantially limiting access.”"
I'm not sure what he means that she "suggested" undue burden would not be created by a regulation that just inhibits abortions and doesn't "substantially" limit them. I would guess from his quote that she was somewhat explicit about it, but if she didn't explicitly state these conditions must be met, I think a justice has some leeway with them. Clearly, Alito doesn't think he does (and wouldn't care if he did). "Substantially" is an interesting word. Does substantially mean "greatly, in some cases" or "at all, in many cases?" I would like to say that it's the former. If even one, even hypothetical, person is greatly inhibited, I believe the inhibiting was substantial. Alito seems to put more stake in numbers, which I think is kind of heinous. This is the part of the dissent I disagree with most:
"Second, the plaintiffs offered testimony that the exceptions in Section 3209 [the spousal notification part] would not cover a case in which a woman did not want to notify her husband for fear that he would retaliate in some way other than the infliction of bodily injury upon her, such as by subjecting her to psychological abuse or abusing their children (see 744 F.Supp. at 1360- 62). The plaintiffs, however, do not appear to have offered any evidence showing how many (or indeed that any actual women) would be affected by this asserted imperfection in the statute."
Admittedly the burden of proof is on the plaintiffs here—Alito makes that painfully clear—but I think that by simply pointing out this imperfection, they've proven a substantial limitation of access inherent in the regulation. Whether or not this substantial limitation would affect zero, one, or tens of thousands of abortions each year does not affect that the limitation is imposed.
Maybe he covered why this point-that few women would be affected-is relevant, but, at least from my first reading, all I see is his earlier comment on O'Connor's definitions of undue burden:
"Taken together, Justice O’Connor’s opinions reveal that an undue burden does not exist unless a law (a) prohibits abortion or gives another person the authority to veto an abortion or (b) has the practical effect of imposing “severe limitations,” rather than simply inhibiting abortions ” ‘to some degree’ ” or inhibiting “some women.”"
Is he taking these phrases a little out of context? Most restrictions will only inhibit abortions "to some degree" or inhibit "some women." They have the clause in this spousal notification regulation that a woman can get around it if she believes her husband will physically harm her. If it did no have this clause, would he still not strike it down because it only inhibits some women (those with abusive husbands) to some degree (a little slapping around here and there...no death...that would be a severe limitation, but a black eye never REALLY stopped anyone from doing anything). I exaggerate for effect, but the "some women" and "some degree" clauses seem pretty bizarre, in the way he takes them.
So who decides when "some women" becomes "all women?" And the restriction here is imposed on all women, even if many are not affected by it. If he's really right in saying that all women must be inhibited to a great degree, I suppose I'm defeated. But that seems like a ridiculous requirement. Perhaps that's what O'Connor meant. As Alito points out, she struck down the two-parent notification not on undue burden, but because it served to legitimate state interest. If he had the ability to determine that "severe limitation" did not necessarily mean all women inhibited to a great degree, as I believe he probably did, there I disagree with him.
Then there's the "rationally relates to a legitimate state purpose" part of the thing, which I'll touch on briefly. The interest at hand is the father's investment in the fetus. Apparently, "The Supreme Court has held that a man has a fundamental interest in preserving his ability to father a child." OK. Then, "The Court’s opinions also seem to establish that a husband who is willing to participate in raising a child has a fundamental interest in the child’s welfare...It follows that a husband has a “legitimate” interest in the welfare of a fetus he has conceived with his wife."
Why this is a state purpose is apparently too obvious to mention. I don't say this sarcastically...it doesn't seem intuitive to me, but for those familiar with law, perhaps it does. Alito quotes, "“[S]tatutory regulation of domestic relations [is] an area *726 that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States."...Accordingly, Pennsylvania has a legitimate interest in furthering the husband’s interest in the fate of the fetus, as the majority in this case acknowledges." Yeah, I don't really get it...why the state's ability to regulate it necessarily implies an interest in every aspect of it.
So that brings Alito to the "rationally related" part:
"The Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands’ knowledge because of perceived problems–such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands’ previously expressed opposition– that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion. In addition, the legislature could have reasonably concluded that Section 3209 would lead to such discussion and thereby properly further a husband’s interests in the fetus in a sufficient percentage of the affected cases to justify enactment of this measure."
This was around the time I got tired reading the opinion and writing this entry. So I'm a little off. But I just don't like the assumption that encouraging women to talk to their husbands, husbands gaining an interest in their child (and then women having or not having abortions) serves a legitimate state interest. Alito (I believe) concedes that it's not a "compelling" state interest; therefore if it placed undue burden on women, it would not be constitutional. Even though I don't see where the legitimate state interest really comes in (anyone's welcome to tell me...although maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and it'll be clear as day), I don't think it's relevant, because I think the law does substantially inhibit women, even if it, in practice, may not inhibit many, and it therefore creates undue burden and does not serve a compelling state interest.
Well, that's my first analysis of a judicial opinion ever. I'm sure law school professors would fail me so hard and fast I wouldn't sit down for a week. But I'd love your lay and/or law-school-informed reactions.
(Also note: I'm not reading this over before I post, so there may be some serious flaws in sentence structure/logic.)
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