Help! The radical feminists are coming!
Watching the responses to Zuzu’s post and other feminist responses to Matt’s piece has been… enlightening. It’s a classic example of how concepts like rationality and logic become gendered, with men automatically assumed to be exercising them when they’re challenging women, and women automatically assumed to be bypassing them when we challenge men or widely-held assumptions.
The run-down: Matt puts up a post questioning the interpretations of the WHO study, which revealed that abortion rate are no higher in countries where abortion is illegal than in places where it is legal. He describes Jessica’s characterization of the study as “questionable”:
A new study by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization shows that abortion rates are similar in different countries whether the procedure is legal or not. Shocking, I know. Of course, what wasn’t similar was the risk to women’s health.
Now, that happens to be exactly what the study said. Matt says:
The trouble with these kinds of cross-national statistics, though, is that there are all kinds of correlating variables and there’s no way for the kind of survey we’re talking about to isolate the impact of legal change on abortion. In the United States, when abortion was legalized in the 1970s, the number of abortions went up.
Sure, there are all kinds of correlating variables. And it is important to isolate the impact of legal change. The thing is, though, the study did that. It pointed to South Africa, for example, of one country that saw a significant drop in abortion-related infections and deaths after it liberalized its abortion laws. It flat-out says that unsafe abortion is highly correlated with illegality, but that legality does not seem to play much of a role in a country’s abortion rate; contraception access, however, does.
Matt thinks that conclusion is not what one would expect. Fair enough. It’s not what most people would expect. He claims, without offering any actual evidence, that the abortion rate went up after Roe v. Wade. Fine. As far as I can tell, Matt and other detractors are misunderstanding both the conclusion of the study and the feminist response to the study. The study says — and we’re saying — that when you look at abortion rates around the world, there is no correlation between illegality and incidents of abortion; there is, however, a strong correlation between safety and legality, and a strong correlation between access to contraception and incidents of abortion. That is not the same as saying that if one country outlaws abortion, there will be absolutely no change in the abortion rate for that country. So Matt & co are arguing against a contention that no one really made in the first place, which I think is important to point out.
Now, despite my series of posts picking on him, Matt is actually not an asshole, and I really don’t think he put up that post to stick it to feminists or to try to invalidate a very solid study. I just think his post demonstrates a disjoint in the conversation, and he seems to think that we’re saying something we’re not. I think Matt approached the conversation honestly, he just misinterpreted the study based on what he’s read about it, and he’s misinterpreting what we’re saying about it. Matt is a smart dude and a thoroughly decent guy and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. But it’s not Matt’s post that I want to discuss; it’s the reactions to it.
Here’s what I think is really interesting: When feminists responded to Matt’s post, the self-appointed Logical White Men stepped in and started to put us in our place. For example, the third comment over at Matt’s place:
What’s this? A man using logic and facts to qualify the assertions of Jessica Valenti! Get ready for a world of libtardsphere circle-jerk disavowals.
It’s kind of like Bizzaro-World, isn’t it? Jessica summarizes the findings of a well-researched study conducted by a well-respected international health organization. She doesn’t inject her opinion into it, other than sarcastically saying, “Shocking, I know.” Matt responds by calling the statistics “questionable” because, well, he just doesn’t think that’s what happens. He doesn’t present any actual evidence, but something just don’t feel right. He then argues against a point that neither Jessica nor the study ever made. Which, hey, that’s fine — I’ve certainly responded to some studies the same way when I think they’re clearly full of it. I don’t usually respond that way to studies that are meticulously researched and that come from really well-respected and highly responsible international organizations, but to each their own.
Somehow, this all gets framed as Jessica and Teh Feminists making wild, unsubstantiated assertions, and Matt speaking truth to power with his logic and facts.
There’s a small group of self-identified liberal bloggers who are young-ish, male, and white, and who dislike “identity politics.” They’re pretty well supported by a handful of the Big Liberal Bloggers. A few of them link here on occasion. I’m sure they’re decent enough guys, but it can be irritating, since otherwise they’re pretty interesting bloggers. But this one is just so over-the-top on this one, I can’t resist. So, take this blogger as one example:
Jessica Valenti over at Feministing had two posts on Monday about studies that told her exactly what she wanted to hear. Unfortunately for her, they’re both pretty flawed, and the conclusions Jessica is drawing from them are ridiculously overstated.
The first, from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization, claims that abortion rates are constant across all nations, regardless of abortion’s legality. Matt Yglesias and Megan McArdle have already done a good job debunking this, so I’ll just sum up by saying that there are too many outlying variables across countries to really make this conclusion on solid footing, and when you look at just one country over time, abortions tend to rise after legalization.
“Debunked” is a funny word, isn’t it? Last I checked, one does not “debunk” a study by saying, “Well this doesn’t seem right,” as Matt did, or “I haven’t actually read the study, but this really doesn’t seem right,” as Megan did. Neither of them did anything close to debunking the study, since neither of them really seem to grasp what the study actually said. As for the study being “pretty flawed,” I’m not seeing where Soberish got that, either. In fact, no one seems to be pointing to any flaws in the study. They’re pointing to what they think are flaws in what feminists are saying about the study.
Further, if anyone is mischaracterizing the study, it’s Soberish — nowhere, in the study or in any article about the study, have I seen anyone say anything to the effect of, “[the study] claims that abortion rates are constant across all nations, regardless of abortion’s legality.” In fact, the study says that abortion rate are highly variable across nations, but that the rates tend to correlate with contraception access and not legal access to abortion. So if we’re going to talk about “debunking” or “flaws,” we might as well get our facts straight. Or, you know, read the actual study. Whatevs.
We might also include some sort of evidence for the statement that “when you look at just one country over time, abortions tend to rise after legalization.” I would imagine that’s true, but for all of this dude’s complaints about Jessica’s bad science and lack of factual analysis, he’s not supplying much to back up his own contentions.
I also think it’s funny that Jessica is characterized as drawing conclusions which are “ridiculously overstated.” Here is the entire text of what Jessica wrote about the WHO/Guttmacher study:
A new study by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization shows that abortion rates are similar in different countries whether the procedure is legal or not. Shocking, I know. Of course, what wasn’t similar was the risk to women’s health.
The study indicated that about 20 million abortions that would be considered unsafe are performed each year and that 67,000 women die as a result of complications from those abortions, most in countries where abortion is illegal.
Moral of the story? Safe, legal abortion is the best bet. Always.
Wow, what a crazy bitch!
Jessica took a comprehensive study of abortion world-wide, which showed that maternal death from abortion is highly correlated with illegal unsafe abortion and concluded that, since illegality is very closely tied to safety, and lack of safety is tied to lots of women dying, it’s better to have safe and legal abortion. Ridiculously over-stated indeed.
He also criticizes Jessica’s response to the Feminists Do It Better study which, come on. Does he really think that feminists read that study and went, “YES! This is totally and undeniably true, always!” No. Of course we didn’t. It was a small study and it doesn’t prove a whole lot, but it was fun and interesting to read, and led to larger discussions of how gender equality influences relationships. Most of us posted on it in a tongue-in-cheek way. I can’t speak for Jess, but I know that I don’t take that study nearly as seriously as the WHO/Guttmacher study. So I’m not going to bother addressing that one, because, in my humble opinion, it’s a non-issue.
Then he goes after Zuzu. He characterizes her position as this:
In other words, Matt’s purely scientific concerns with the study’s methodology are without merit, because the study agrees with zuzu’s ideology. Also, Matt is sexist.
See how that works? If Matt says, “Well this doesn’t make sense to me,” it’s a purely scientific concern. If Zuzu says, “Well, Matt, the parts of the study that are confusing to you are actually addressed in the study, which you may want to read; and also, here are some explanations for why this doesn’t make sense at first glance, but when you think about it from the view of a person who may be pregnant when they don’t want to be — a situation that you’ll never find yourself in — it all starts to come together,” she is a whore to feminist ideology. And a castrating bitch for pointing out that Matt’s position as a man might lead him to overlook certain aspects of the abortion debate that are obvious to women.
It’s almost funny to see what lengths these guys will go to in order to prove that us identity-politickers are totally tied to ideology above all else, while progressive dudes are the height of logic, reason and fact-based analysis.
And then there’s this:
As I noticed in one of my very first posts, it seems we’re so desperate for our arguments to be right that we look to science to bless them its authority. It’s absolutely ridiculous to think this way, though; different people can look at the same set of facts and come to wildly differing conclusions, that’s called politics. It’s only when you start to lie or willfully delude yourself about those facts that we have a problem.
Think of the possible conservative positions on global warming, for instance (excluding any sort of heterodox environmentalism). In this position, one could take a look at the facts and decide that any sort of drastic action to stem global warming was not worth the economic pain it would bring, and that our hope should lie in technological progress. I would disagree with this position, but at least it’s factually based and logically defensible. On the other hand, one could take a look at the facts, ignore them, cherry pick from bad studies, and conclude that global warming isn’t happening. This is a completely different thing altogether; here our hypothetical conservative is denying objective reality. The first position is a rational opinion based on the facts, the second is an attempt to change those facts to fit one’s opinion.
Ok, let’s try this again. Here’s what feminists are saying: Legalized abortion is not correlated with a high abortion rate, and illegalized abortion is not correlated with a low abortion rate. A high abortion rate, however, is correlated with lack of access to contraception. Unsafe abortion is highly correlated with illegal abortion. Legality is highly correlated with safety. That is not the same thing as saying that if you outlaw abortion in a single country, the abortion rate will stay exactly the same; and yet that’s the argument that people like Soberish are arguing against.
He uses the example of anti-global-warming conservatives cherry-picking information to draw ideologically-based conclusions. He doesn’t come out and say it, but the inference is that feminists who cite the WHO study are in the same camp. To which I would say to Soberish: Find me me a study done by any reputable public health organization that does not demonstrate exactly what I wrote in the above paragraph. Really. If the implication is that we’re cherry-picking, then show me the whole tree.
Soberish continues:
Abortion should be legal because women should be free from onerous and discriminatory state control over their bodies, among other reasons. Feminism is a force for good because it seeks to stop discrimination and violence against women, and to change the culture so that we’re all treated equally without regard for sex, among other reason.
Amazingly, I wrote that last paragraph without even putting on a lab coat.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Let me clear up what is apparently another fundamental misunderstanding: Feminists are not saying that the fact that legalization has no impact on the abortion rate is the only argument for keeping abortion legal. Not at all. And if that’s what Soberish thinks, then I would encourage him to actually read a feminist blog or two. In fact, I haven’t read a single feminist writer who has read this study and said, “Aha! Now this is the one golden reason why abortion should be legal!”
No. What we are saying is that this study provides one arrow in a whole pro-choice quiver. Reproductive freedom advocates, by definition, believe that abortion is a necessary and fundamental right. We hold that belief for a variety of reasons, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to make a multi-pronged argument, bolstered by actual evidence of what actually happens when women lack that fundamental right. We’re also pointing out that anti-choicers claim to want to lower the abortion rate, but they’re using methods that aren’t at all proven to get to their alleged goal; in fact, the only discernible purpose of their strategy is to punish women.
So really, the concern-trolling over feminists’ misuse of a study is really ill-placed when (a) you obviously haven’t read the study yourself, (b) you seem to be totally misinterpreting what we’re saying, and (c) you’re arguing that reproductive justice advocates, of all people, think we need statistics and only statistics to back up what we think is a fundamental human right.
Soberish, Mike Meginnis, Matt Zeitlin, et al are offended by any inference that any of them, or any liberal dude, might be sexist. So I’m going to try to phrase this as simply and straight-forwardly as I can: Most people do sexist things at one point or another. Most people have sexist thoughts. Most people are influenced by sexist social structures in ways that we’re unconscious of. I include myself in that. That doesn’t excuse sexism, but it does mean that when someone points out that it’s a little odd how you rail against identity politics and automatically characterize feminists as irrational and anti-intellectual when we seem to be the only ones providing actual facts and data points, you might want to actually listen for a minute.
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UPDATE: Mike disagrees with my characterization of him, Matt Z and Soberish. He’s asked me to either change or update the post, so here it is. I’m actually not all that familiar with Soberish, but I am more familiar with Matt Z and Mike. They’re highly intelligent men who are passionate about politics. I don’t read either of their blogs regularly, but when I do read them I generally find them to be well-written and interesting. I will give them both credit for covering issues of race and gender. However, I do take issue with their treatment of so-called “identity politics.” You can read Dana Goldstein’s response to them here. Mike has pointed out that when he writes about race or gender in any sort of thoughtful way, he gets attacked. I can see where he’s coming from — I’ve felt the same way when writing about race issues and LGBT issues. And so I don’t mean for this to come across as condescending or lectoring, because I’ve had to learn it the hard way (and I’m still learning it). I’ve been at the point where I’ve said, “Gosh, they say they want me to cover [whatever issue] and then when I do they rail me for it. What do they want from me?” And I’m realizing — and it’s taken me a while, and I’m still working on it, but I’m realizing — that “they” want me to listen to what they’re saying and to take what they’re saying, and their experiences, seriously. They want me to realize that when they talk about whiteness, or heteronormativity, or racism, that it’s not about me. That when they talk about white privilege, it’s not about me. Even when I’m the person they’re criticizing for racism or heteronormativity or ableism or whatever else, even when my post was the example or the jumping-off point, it is not about me. It is about a larger system of which I am only a very, very small part, but which I am unconsciously helping to perpetuate. I am still not the best ally I could be. I am making a very sincere effort to work on that.
So that’s the thought that I’ll leave Mike and others who might be offended by their inclusion in this post.
I did make some changes to the paragraph describing Mike’s circle of blog-friends, which, like much of my writing, tends to be purposely hyperbolic. But he’s right that there is something of a power imbalance, and I’m not particularly interested in going on the offensive against people who I think could be potential allies. I am not interested in starting a flamewar with Mike, and I don’t think he’s interested in starting one with me. Hopefully this clarified where I’m coming from. I don’t know if it’ll be sufficient to re-build bridges that I apparently just burned, but it’s what I’ve got.