24.9.04

Field Camp

No posting until Monday.
Stentor Danielson, 07:54, ,

21.9.04

Putting Slurs In Their Place

(Warning: This post will mention, but not use, some coarse language.)

There's been a good deal of discussion going around about the use of bigoted insults, in particular anti-woman ones like "bitch" and "pussy." Hugo Schwyzer brings homophobic insults into the mix as well:

You'd be amazed how few [of my students] understand that "suck" is derived from "cocksucker", and thus to say something or someone "sucks" is to use anti-gay/anti-woman language. They are also stunned that "asshole" is also anti-gay, misogynistic speak; "asshole" is invariably only used for men, despite the fact that women also possess this part of the anatomy -- it is used to refer to men who allow themselves to be penetrated like women.[*]

I think Schwyzer misses the mark a bit by going for the argument from etymology. What he's giving is a causal explanation of why "suck" and "asshole" have anti-gay baggage. But that's not the same as a moral argument for not using the words.

The decision factor is really how the words are recieved. Numerous female bloggers have testified to feeling targeted and excluded when they read a male blogger calling someone else a "pussy." That, not the origins of the use of "pussy as an insult, is why you shouldn't say it.

Schwyzer gets back on the right track later in the post, saying:

I do think, however, that if one is going to use these words, one has to save them for "safe places." In environments where you can be certain as to how these words will be received, I think it's sometimes acceptable to cuss with abandon.

If "asshole" were inherently homophobic, then it would never be acceptable to say it in any context. But if the problem is that it carries homophobic meanings to certain people, then the key is to avoid using it in situations where the word will carry those meanings to, and hence offend and exclude, part of your audience. Indeed, even sexist-insult-purveyor extrordinaire Atrios seems to get this on some level, since one of his excuses for using "pussy" is that he knows it would bother Republicans to be called that. His problem is that he doesn't realize the collateral damage he's doing (both by offending female readers and by validating the insultees' view that being a "pussy" is a bad thing).

* I had always understood "asshole" to connote a sort of bullying or boorishness that is stereotypically associated with men -- i.e., an overdose of machismo, rather than the overdose of femininity that underlies typical anti-gay slurs.
Stentor Danielson, 10:22, ,

The Pristine Myth On The Mall

Covering A Lot Of Ground In A Little Space The building that is the National Museum of the American Indian is refreshingly shocking for button-down Washington, suggesting some Western butte in its honeyed and chiseled Kasota limestone. But over its five years of construction, we have had time to get used to it. Wait till you see the landscape around it. ... Bringing rude nature to the hallowed ground of the Mall takes guts, of course. But this is not rude nature. No wilderness actually looked like this. It is as calculated a built artifact in its own way as is Tomorrowland. It is nature to which human intelligence and imagination have been applied. It is an Indian's image of Eden. ... Twelve years in design and construction, the landscape consists of four environments -- wetlands, an upland hardwood forest, meadowlands and traditional crops. These are meant to recall vast and different ecosystems, an entire Native American paradise shoehorned into a city block off Independence Avenue.

An "artificial" ecosystem strikes me as rather appropriate for the National Museum of the American Indian. To some degree the whole American landscape was an artifact of Indian inhabitation when Europeans first arrived. Perhaps the NMAI grounds can serve as a reminder to people that "natural" lands can't be taken for granted or simply left to their own devices.
Stentor Danielson, 01:27, ,

19.9.04

Genes Can Vary

Lauryn points to an article discussing the possible roots of men's shameful refusal to take on their fair share of unpaid labor. While generally good, the first argument offered is quite odd:

The animal kingdom is too full of bizarre exceptions to suggest that the roots [of gender differences in work] are chromosomal. Lionesses bring home the bacon, seahorse dads tote their young in pouches.

By this logic, size isn't genetically determined -- after all, some animals (like humans) are big, while others (like seahorses) are small. I have no doubt that seahorse parenting is entirely genetic, though I would imagine there's at least some small proto-cultural/learned element to lions' gender roles.

What's going on here is, I think, a confusion between the old moral idea of naturalness and the newer scientific idea of genetics. To justify something as "natural" is to give it the imprimatur of universality, a principle woven into the very structure of the universe. But while the basic principles of genetics (e.g. how DNA replicates) may be universal, the outcomes are not. (This is what makes the "there are gay chimpanzees and giraffes" argument so strange. It does counter the claim that animals provide evidence that homosexuality is "unnatural." But that claim is wrong independent of any empirical evidence about animals' mating habits. Homosexuality among chimpanzees does not logically tell us anything one way or the other about the origins or appropriateness of the practice among humans.)
Stentor Danielson, 13:24, ,

Justice And Decisionmaking

Ampersand points to a series of posts by Jason Kuznicki proposing a typology of political arguments:

Almost invariably, we justify our political thoughts based either on the will of the majority [argument from democracy]; or on some theory of justice, understood as a proper apportionment of reward and punishment; or on pluralism, the idea that life is somehow better (though not necessarily more just) when a country permits many different modes of life to exist simultaneously.

Kuznicki claims that the argument from democracy is the weakest of the three. As an argument for the rightness or wrongness of a policy, he's correct. Argumentum ad popularum is a logical fallacy. But the argument from democracy is not often used in this fashion.

The argument from democracy is a decision procedure. Justice and pluralism can't put themselves into practice. Given the obvious disagreements about justice and pluralism, some person or group must act as arbiter of what justice and pluralism require. The argument from democracy is typically parasitic on arguments from justice and pluralism, as it's on the basis of those arguments that the majority make their decision. The argument from democracy is based on the idea that we're more likely to realize the requirements of justice into practice if we let the majority decide.

For example, Kuznicki opens his series by proposing that the argument from democracy would lead us to mandate that all radio stations play rock music, since rock fans outnumber fans of all other types of music. But if you were to actually implement democracy as a decision procedure -- say, hold a binding referendum on what people think we should do about the airwaves -- I'm confident that country and jazz would stay on the air, because most people agree with Kuznicki's argument from pluralism. Thus, the argument from pluralism would be put into action by the decision procedure of democracy.

Democracy can be wrong, of course -- I agree with Kuznicki that censorship by the FCC is unwarranted, but I suspect most Americans would vote in favor of banning on-air obscenities. This fact lies behind the argument that we need anti-majoritarian measures in our system of government, to correct for tyranny of the majority. In some cases this means some form of super-majoritarian measure -- for example, the requirement of a two-thirds vote to override a veto or the need to get half of the Senate and half of the House, rather than simply half of Congress, to approve a bill. Super-majoritarianism is simply a more stringent form of majoritarianism, requiring a broader consensus. The real issue is when the proposed anti-majoritarian measure is truly unrelated to the will of the people. In this case it's not enough to invoke the threat of the tyranny of the majority as a justification. What's needed is a further argument that the particular form of anti-majoritarianism in question is more likely to approximate the demands of justice. For example, one might argue that by virtue of their training, judges are able to make consistent and valid deductions from constitutional and legal principles, whereas the masses can be sloppy and self-serving in their thinking.
Stentor Danielson, 11:08, ,

Children Are The Future

Deaf Kids In Nicaragua Give Birth To New Language Deaf children thrown together in a school in Nicaragua without any type of formal instruction invented their own sign language -- a sophisticated system that has evolved and grown, researchers reported on Friday. Their observations show that children, not adults, are key to the evolution and development of language, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

No real comment; I just thought this was really cool -- or perhaps, given that children drive the development of language, I should get out ahead of the curve and say that "OMG th1s r0xx0rz LOL!!!!11!"
Stentor Danielson, 10:38, ,

Arrrrrrr!

Avast! Yo ho ho and a bottle of fire* management policy! There be no timbers left to shiver after that scurvy Healthy Forests Initiative be done with it. Aye, and how many pieces of eight have the logging companies gotten with the help of their matey Bush?

*(Fi-arrrrrr!)
Stentor Danielson, 01:08, ,