Not Yet A Buddha

Speak To The Kitty: NEW OBWI EMAIL ADDRESS And Open Thread

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by Gary Farber

Longtime and valued commenter Uncle Kvetch asked an extremely important question here.

[…] While it was nice seeing a united front of commenters taking on avedis' all-too-familiar mix of dick-waving bravado and abject sexual terror, I do find myself wondering just what constitutes "beyond the pale" when it comes to homophobic remarks around here. I'm not referring to ban-worthy offenses, as the posting rules are clear enough. But I have to say that when the inevitable necrophilia/bestiality comparisons were dragged out and numerous commenters just kept on presuming good faith on avedis' part…well, it makes me wonder.

The answer is that the "New Banning Rules" were last updated, as you can see, by longtime front-pager Edward at 10:25 AM on January 26, 2005.

They include this:

One writer (but only one) from the other side of the fence must agree to the ban for it to move forward (Von can vote as either side of the fence as he wishes). For the record, currently Charles Bird, Andrew, and Sebastian Holsclaw are on the right; Von is in the center; and Hilzoy is on the left.;-) Yes, that's unbalanced…we're working on it.*

This has been discussed many many many times in comments since 2005, by various people.  Many emails to the kitty address have been sent since 2005.

The "New Banning Rules" remain as posted until someone with the ability and authority to post new rules does so.  Wording has been suggested. 

The Posting Rules were last updated 1/19/2007, with a further undated update by an unknown to me user of "SuperUser."  I can guess, but so can you.

Again, much email has been sent to the kitty address since then, and there have been various discussions in comments about this since that time.

The Posting Rules remain as posted until someone with the ability and authority to post new rules does so.

None of this will change until the co-bloggers communicate with each other about it, and appropriate action taken by the appropriate parties with the ability to do so.  As has always been the case. 

As of Wednesday, December 29th, the address to email the kitty has been: ObWings At gmail Dot com

Send Obsidian Wings related email there.

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Ngrams R Us: A Monday Open Thread.

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by Gary Farber

This new Google tool, which Bob Mackey mentioning reminded me that I'd bookmarked for blogging Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers by Patricia Cohen, is truly useful and neat, at first look: Books Ngram Viewer.  Look up key words, and phrases, and thus track concepts over time, and much else, in hundreds of millions of books over the past couple of centuries, by frequency.

Then dig.  Yum.

Some link-dumping for you: How To Use PeaceTalk 101 by Suzette Haden Elgin.  Check out her writings on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense. 

Use of some of these techniques, which I first started reading Elgin's writings on in the early Eighties, might be helpful to some, but not to others. 

See also popularizer Deborah Tannen, though I agree with Elgin's critique of Tannen's extreme over-reliance on gender stereotyping.   As usual, I don't endorse everything either writer says, but they're both worth reading, in my opinion.

Which could lead one to G.K. Chesterton on this topic, if one ever feels cranky:

There is an apostolic injunction to suffer fools gladly. We always lay the stress on the word “suffer,” and interpret the passage as one urging resignation. It might be better, perhaps, to lay the stress upon the word “gladly,” and make our familiarity with fools a delight, and almost a dissipation. Nor is it necessary that our pleasure in fools (or at least in great and godlike fools) should be merely satiric or cruel. The great fool is he in whom we cannot tell which is the conscious and which the unconscious humour; we laugh with him and laugh at him at the same time. An obvious instance is that of ordinary and happy marriage. A man and a woman cannot live together without having against each other a kind of everlasting joke. Each has discovered that the other is a fool, but a great fool. This largeness, this grossness and gorgeousness of folly is the thing which we all find about those with whom we are in intimate contact; and it is the one enduring basis of affection, and even of respect.

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Why Argue On Blogs? The Dunning-Kruger Effect

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by guest poster Gary Farber.

You're biased!

Of course you are.  We all are.  We can't think without basing our thinking on our past experiences and conclusions, and so we are led into all sorts of cognitive bias. 

Errol Morris had a brilliant series  in June on The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is.

You should read Part 1, which includes the tale of the bank robber astonished to find that putting lemon juice on his face didn't make him invisible to cameras.

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Not So Long Ago

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by hilzoy Hendrick Hertzberg has a good piece on the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. In it, he quotes a 1966 article from Time called "The Homosexual in America". It's worth reading as a stunning reminder of exactly how far we've come in the last forty three years. For instance: "Both [male homosexuality and … Read more

Obligatory Sanford Post

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by hilzoy Well, someone has to write one. I watched his news conference, and I thought he looked at or near the end of his rope. I admire him for taking responsibility for what he did, though I don't at all admire what he did, either the 'betraying your wife and four kids' part or … Read more

“They Just Poke, Poke, Poke”

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by hilzoy It's worth bearing in mind the alternative to legal abortions: "BEREGA, Tanzania — A handwritten ledger at the hospital tells a grim story. For the month of January, 17 of the 31 minor surgical procedures here were done to repair the results of "incomplete abortions." A few may have been miscarriages, but most … Read more

Ugly

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by hilzoy Matt Yglesias: "As anyone who knows me can attest, I don't have what you'd call a strong "Hispanic" identity. (…) But for all that, I have to say that I am really truly deeply and personally pissed off my the tenor of a lot of the commentary on Sonia Sotomayor. The idea that any … Read more

And Another Thing …

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by hilzoy In my post last Friday on domestic violence, I wrote: "I will also refer to abusers as 'he', and to their victims as 'she'; this is accurate in the overwhelming majority of cases." I think this was a mistake. I could just as easily have written that I would use these pronouns because … Read more

Battered Women: The Sequel

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by hilzoy

As a followup to my last post on this topic, I wanted to consider this passage from Linda Hirshman's post. She's discussing Leslie Morgan Steiner, author of a memoir about her abusive relationship:

"It is difficult to understand why she stayed in this awful relationship, given that she was not risking starvation and had no children with her abuser. Which is why, no matter how many times Steiner and Marcotte and the others tell them not to, people keep asking the question. And it's terribly important to do exactly that. Asking why women participate in destructive relationships is a mark of respect. The amazing thing is that, four decades after the birth of feminism, we are still arguing about it."

Is it "terribly important" to keep asking why women stay in abusive relationships? And is it true, as Hirshman says, that "the current love affair with understanding stops feminists from calling victims on taking responsibility for their own well-being"? I want to break this topic down into several parts, which I will consider below the fold.

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Why Do They Stay?

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by hilzoy

In a post on a book about a violent relationship, Linda Hirshman writes:

"It is difficult to understand why she stayed in this awful relationship, given that she was not risking starvation and had no children with her abuser. Which is why, no matter how many times Steiner and Marcotte and the others tell them not to, people keep asking the question. And it's terribly important to do exactly that. Asking why women participate in destructive relationships is a mark of respect."

I worked in a battered women's shelter for five years, four as a volunteer, and one as a full-time staffer, so I might be able to answer this question. I'll try to get to the respect part in a subsequent post. Obviously, this will be too general: people stay for lots of reasons. I knew someone once who had a bad heroin habit, and while getting involved with a guy who beat her up if she tried to leave the house would not be my preferred method of detoxing, it worked for her. (She was still clean the last time I heard.) But generalizations might be better than nothing. I will also refer to abusers as 'he', and to their victims as 'she'; this is accurate in the overwhelming majority of cases.

In some cases, understanding why someone stays is easy. A lot of women are afraid that their abuser would try to harm them if they leave. And with good reason: about a third of female homicide victims were killed by a spouse, lover, or ex-lover; and that's not counting the women who are "merely" beaten, stalked, and so forth. Staying in a case like this, at least until you had figured out how to leave safely and cover your tracks, is not mysterious or perplexing.

Moreover, while I think the assumption that battered women stay because they are just dumb, or have staggeringly bad judgment, is wrong and insulting, there are a whole lot of battered women, and it would be very surprising if none of them stayed for such reasons. We asked women who came to our shelter when the abuse had started; one woman told me that her husband had thrown her from a moving car on their first date, at which point I wondered silently why on earth there had been a second date, let alone a subsequent marriage. But in my experience such women were a vanishingly small minority.

What is hard to understand, I take it, is why women who do not have obviously bad judgment, and who do not take themselves to be in serious danger if they leave, stay anyways. So I turn to them.

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