Take Back the Night 1997
Mario Bellabarba
In article <EGxFs...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
dagbrown-new...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Dave Brown) wrote:
>In article <5vop8k$ggs...@promote.uwaterloo.ca>,
>Heather Calder <HLCA...@FEDS.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>: "We march as a symbol of our basic human right to be where we want,
when we
>: want, how we want, alone or with another, without the protection of
men and
>: without violence."
>[...]
>: All women are welcome!
>
>No men are welcome?
Oh God...here we go again.
-Mario
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mario Bellabarba | President, U of Waterloo Federation of Students,
mbel...@feds.uwaterloo.ca | Tel: (519) 888-4567 x2478
Murphy's Miltary Laws:
12. The only time suppressive fire works is when it is used
on abandoned positions.
Heather Calder
In article <EH11M...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
dagbrown-new...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Dave Brown) wrote:
>In article <60aupr$gvg...@learning.uwaterloo.ca>,
>Mario Bellabarba <MBEL...@FEDS.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>: In article <EGxFs...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
>: dagbrown-new...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Dave Brown) wrote:
>: >In article <5vop8k$ggs...@promote.uwaterloo.ca>,
>: >Heather Calder <HLCA...@FEDS.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>: >: "We march as a symbol of our basic human right to be where we want,
>: when we
>: >: want, how we want, alone or with another, without the protection of
>: men and
>: >: without violence."
>: >[...]
>: >: All women are welcome!
>: >
>: >No men are welcome?
Actually, if you go back and read the original post, men were welcome at the
post-march celebrations - and we had lots there. All in all, it was a great
event, with about 250 women taking part in the march, and many more people
joining us afterwards at Kitchener City Hall.
hlc
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heather Calder
VP Student Issues
UW Federation of Students
519-888-4567 ext. 6331
*SIRC online: http://watserv1.uwaterloo.ca/~fedissue/sirc.html
*e-mail expert@feds
for confidential answers to your questions using UW resources
Chris Doherty
In article <60grrd$b68...@promote.uwaterloo.ca>,
Heather Calder <HLCA...@FEDS.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
>Actually, if you go back and read the original post, men were welcome at the
>post-march celebrations - and we had lots there. All in all, it was a great
But were they welcome at the march itself?
--
Chris Doherty cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
James Nicoll
In article <EH55B...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Chris Doherty <cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>In article <60grrd$b68...@promote.uwaterloo.ca>,
>Heather Calder <HLCA...@FEDS.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>
>>Actually, if you go back and read the original post, men were welcome at the
>>post-march celebrations - and we had lots there. All in all, it was a great
>
>But were they welcome at the march itself?
back the night" without requiring or wanting male assistance?
James Nicoll
--
"It's just--well, why is it when we see something beautiful, we want to possess
it? We end up killing, destroying the beauty that made us want it in the first
place." "You fool! That's the whole *point* of relationships!" _WIHS_, Baker
Drew Hamilton
According to James Nicoll <jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca>:
> I wonder if one point of the march might be that women can "take
> back the night" without requiring or wanting male assistance?
Perhaps. Because we all know how God-awful terrible it is when someone
cares enough about you to want to help you.
- Drew
Serje Robidoux
In article <EH8r9...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Drew Hamilton <dr...@drew-hamilton.net> wrote:
>Perhaps. Because we all know how God-awful terrible it is when someone
>cares enough about you to want to help you.
I think maybe the point is that nobody should _need_ to be escorted everywhere.
That whole 'Down with violence' thing.
Serje
--
----------
Children are curly, dimpled lunatics.
email:smro...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca
Neil DeBoni
>> I wonder if one point of the march might be that women can "take
>> back the night" without requiring or wanting male assistance?
>
>cares enough about you to want to help you.
>
Yeah, but it can't be as terrible as having to rely on such people just
to walk home at night.
Neil
--
*** Neil DeBoni 2B Computer Science/Info Systems, University of Waterloo
*** ncde...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca
*** http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~ncdeboni
"I don't have a solution, but I admire the problem." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
Viet-Tam Luu
In article <EH8wx...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Neil DeBoni <ncde...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>In article <EH8r9...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
>Drew Hamilton <dr...@drew-hamilton.net> wrote:
>>Perhaps. Because we all know how God-awful terrible it is when someone
>>cares enough about you to want to help you.
>
>to walk home at night.
Granted, but "n" (can't remember what the exact number was) hundred women
walking together (sans males) hardly constitutes walking "alone" either.
I decry as much as you the fact that many women don't feel safe walking
without an escort (male or otherwise), but excluding men makes it sound
like solely a women's problem/issue. Statistics may (or may not, it doesn't
matter) show that more women [walking alone] are victims of crime, but if
women are less safe (than ideally they should be) then it most likely means
anybody walking alone is also less safe.
_VTL_______________________________________________________________________
Viet-Tam Luu, 3B CompSci | "Look to love / you may dream / and if it should
University of Waterloo | leave / then give it wings. / But if such a love
http://www.csclub. | is meant to be: / Hope is home, and the heart is
uwaterloo.ca/u/vtluu/ | free." - Enya & Roma Ryan, "Hope Has A Place"
James Nicoll
>> I wonder if one point of the march might be that women can "take
>> back the night" without requiring or wanting male assistance?
>
>cares enough about you to want to help you.
>
Hmmm. I only dimly remember being a minor, but I recall that there
were times where doing things on my own was useful to me, no matter how
upsetting my parents might have found it (eg: moving out on my own). Perhaps
an analogous situation exists here? Is it conceivable that the might be
benefits to women from being allowed to occasionally do things without
male help/supervision?
James Nicoll
--
"Your pitiful wapons are no match for ours! People of Mars, surrender!"
"Uh, this isn't Mars, this is Earth." "Earth? Earth-with-nuclear-weapons
Earth?" "Yeah." "Friend!"
Heather Calder
In article <EHAC8...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Chris Doherty) wrote:
>The myth that getting robbed or assaulted when walking alone at night is a
>exclusively women's problem only serves to cloud the real issue and the
>real risks involved.
I wonder where, when I posted that women were invited to "march as a symbol of
our basic human right to be where we want, when we want, how we want, alone or
with another, without the protection of men and without violence", I stated
that violence on the streets is exclusively a women's problem.
Similarly, when we say "Stop Violence Against Women", I have trouble seeing
the text that so many others read:_...but ignore or condone it against men..._
Marching and speaking out about something in particular is not done to the
exclusion of anything else.
What clouds the issue is not that women are marching alone - it's these kinds
of discussions about who isn't and who should be allowed to march. One night a
year women take to the streets to protest violence against themselves and
other women they know. If men would like to march against violence in
solidarity, I wouldn't have any problem with that whatsoever. Just pick
another night.
Finally, if men are concerned about the issue of violence, I would encourage
them to get involved in doing something about it - you could join the White
Ribbon Campaign, you could help with food and beverages after the Take Back
the Night march, you could volunteer for many community organizations dealing
with violence, you could donate money or gifts in kind to shelters like
Anselma House or organizations like the John Howard Society. There are many,
many things to be involved in - and if one of those doesn't suit you, feel
free to begin an initiative of your own.
Paul Prescod
In article <EHAC8...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Chris Doherty <cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>Does marching in force constitute taking back anything? All it seems to
>imply is that women are safe marching in numbers - in which case, the
>gender breakdown of that mob should not be relevant. No lone mugger or
>assailant is going to attack from a position of disadvantage. I would
>hazard that any group of several hundred people would be safe from
>conventional criminal assault or robbery marching just about *anywhere*.
I agree.
>The myth that getting robbed or assaulted when walking alone at night is a
>exclusively women's problem only serves to cloud the real issue and the
>real risks involved.
I disagree.
Violence aimed at women in particular is a large problem and one that should
be addressed directly, not only as part of the larger war on violence.
Part of "naming the problem":) is recognizing that women get singled out
for attack and we should ask why that is and how can we change it? Nobody
complains about Anti Racist Action demonstrating against violence against
visible minorities.
This isn't an argument for a march that excludes men but it is an argument
in favour of a march explicitly *about* violence against women. We have come
a long way in regards to that issue and we have done so, in large part by
attacking the problem directly (e.g. vilifying wife beaters beyond run of
the mill bullies).
We should be careful not to transfer hostility over a sense of exclusion. The
march is one thing and the issue another.
Paul Prescod
Chris Doherty
In article <EHE2H...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Paul Prescod <papr...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>Violence aimed at women in particular is a large problem and one that should
>be addressed directly, not only as part of the larger war on violence.
Excuse me? On what grounds is violence against women a "large problem",
such that it deserves a disproportionate share of funding and attention?
Men are far and away more likely to be victims of violent crime,[1] and despite
the dismissive attitudes of Heather Calder and Prabhakar Ragde, the
evidence is overwhelming that men are victims of domestic violence as much
as women are.[2]
>Part of "naming the problem":) is recognizing that women get singled out
>for attack and we should ask why that is and how can we change it?
Here, let's name a bigger problem: the "violence against women" issue is a
political weapon being used to focus a disproportionate amount of money and
public attention on women as victims of violence. Is there something
special about violence where women are victims that means it should get
more attention, more money, more sympathy, and more political clout?
Nobody
>complains about Anti Racist Action demonstrating against violence against
>visible minorities.
ARA doesn't tell white people they can't march with them, last I checked.
Nor do they *falsely* claim that minorities are victims of violence more
than other groups. In the US, at least, young black men are more likely
than any other group to be victims of violent crime.[1]
>This isn't an argument for a march that excludes men but it is an argument
>in favour of a march explicitly *about* violence against women. We have come
But violence isn't explicitly about women. In fact, more violence is done
to men than women, so why are we focussing on women specifically?
>a long way in regards to that issue and we have done so, in large part by
>attacking the problem directly (e.g. vilifying wife beaters beyond run of
>the mill bullies).
That's not attacking the problem directly. It's attacking one side of it
and ignoring the other.
The step we need to take now is to realize that men are victims of domestic
violence just as much as women are. Your own statement here indicates that
the concept of *husband*-beaters is an unusual one.
>We should be careful not to transfer hostility over a sense of exclusion. The
>march is one thing and the issue another.
The march is about "violence against women". Even if I happen to support
the concept, I'm not welcome because I'm a man. How does excluding one
gender do anything positive for the issue? It's divisive and
discriminatory, and once again emphasizes violence against _women_ as
something more prevalent, more frightening, and more serious than it really
is.
[1] http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_v.htm
[2] http://www.vix.com/men/battery/studies/newsom.html
--
Chris Doherty cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Paul Prescod
In article <EHE50...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Chris Doherty <cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>In article <EHE2H...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
>Paul Prescod <papr...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>Violence aimed at women in particular is a large problem and one that should
>>be addressed directly, not only as part of the larger war on violence.
>
>Excuse me? On what grounds is violence against women a "large problem",
>such that it deserves a disproportionate share of funding and attention?
>Men are far and away more likely to be victims of violent crime,[1] and despite
>the dismissive attitudes of Heather Calder and Prabhakar Ragde, the
>evidence is overwhelming that men are victims of domestic violence as much
>as women are.[2]
The question is not about volume, but about type. People set out to kill or
hurt women specifically. A psychologically disturbed man did this recently in
Toronto. The same happened in that Quebec campus shooting a few years back.
Anecodotal evidence strongly suggests that this is just the high profile
expression of a much larger problem of misogynistic violence.
Our culture has a long history of violence against women and at one time it
was even considered kosher. Thus the point of the march and the white ribbon
campaign is to stamp out the the last dying embers of that attitude -- to
reverse a centuries old belief system. And of course many people come to our
society with misogynistic attitudes from elsewhere so the fight is ongoing
and global.
>>Part of "naming the problem":) is recognizing that women get singled out
>>for attack and we should ask why that is and how can we change it?
>
>Here, let's name a bigger problem: the "violence against women" issue is a
>political weapon being used to focus a disproportionate amount of money and
>public attention on women as victims of violence. Is there something
>special about violence where women are victims that means it should get
>more attention, more money, more sympathy, and more political clout?
Yes. Socially, we have a centuries-old, international norm to undo.
>Nobody
>>complains about Anti Racist Action demonstrating against violence against
>>visible minorities.
>
>ARA doesn't tell white people they can't march with them, last I checked.
That's right. I explicitly asked you to separate the issues of the
exclusionary Take Back the Night March and the work on violence against
women more generally.
>Nor do they *falsely* claim that minorities are victims of violence more
>than other groups. In the US, at least, young black men are more likely
>than any other group to be victims of violent crime.[1]
Sure. But anti-racist action isn't interested in the majority of that crime
which is poverty-related. They are particularly targeting *racist* crime,
a small minority. Really, they are attacking the centuries old myth that
some people have less right to security than others. This also happens
to be the myth that the violence against women campaign attacks.
>The step we need to take now is to realize that men are victims of domestic
>violence just as much as women are. Your own statement here indicates that
>the concept of *husband*-beaters is an unusual one.
I believe it to be. If you poll your friends, and look at the average
difference in size between men and women, you will find that there are very
few couples (statistically) where the woman could do serious damage in an
out and out fight. Lilia and I may well be the most well-matched couple you
know in terms of body size and weight and yet I can "take" her (in a tickle
fight of course!) despite the fact that I haven't done strenuous exercise,
well, since our last tickle fight.
So it would require a LOT of statistics to overcome my anecdotal evidence
which is sufficiently strong that I would call it "common sense." Anyhow,
[1] which I got by following a link you gave says:
* Females were more likely to be victimized by persons whom they
knew (62% or 2,981,479 victimizations) while males were more
likely to be victimized by strangers (63%, or 3,949,285).
* In 1994 for every 5 violent victimizations of a female by an
intimate, there was 1 of a male. Intimates committed over
900,000 victimizations of females and about 167,000victimizations of males.
* For homicides in which the victim-offender relationship was
known, an intimate killed 31% of female victims age 12 or older
(1,394) and 4% of male victims 12 or older (669).
* Women separated from their spouses had a violent victimization
rate (128 per 1,000) over 12 times that of separated men (79 per
1,000), divorced men (77 per 1,000), and divorced women (71 per1,000).
* Females were more likely to be victimized at a private home
(their own or that of a neighbor, friend, or relative) than in
any other place. Males were most likely to be victimized in
public places such as businesses, parking lots, and open areas.
Yes, there were other statistics that point out that men are victimized in
an absolute sense more than women, but the statistics above point out that
there is still an attitude abroad that it is okay for men to beat up women
they know.
>>We should be careful not to transfer hostility over a sense of exclusion. The
>>march is one thing and the issue another.
>
>The march is about "violence against women". Even if I happen to support
>the concept, I'm not welcome because I'm a man. How does excluding one
>gender do anything positive for the issue?
I already said all of that. I'm trying to point out that the merits of the
march and of the issue are separate. You can stop trying to convince me
that the march is exclusionary and bad for "the cause". I believe it.
> It's divisive and
>discriminatory, and once again emphasizes violence against _women_ as
>something more prevalent, more frightening, and more serious than it really
>is.
It is not more prevalent, nor more frightening or serious, but it is a specific
*kind* of violence motivated by a specific kind of devaluation of a class of
human beings. It is that devaluation that we are fighting.
Paul Prescod
Paul Andrew Solomon Ward
> Our culture has a long history of violence against women and at one time it
> was even considered kosher.
It seems to also have a long history of using Jewish religious terms
out of context and in ways that are inaccurate. That, however, seems
to still be acceptable!
--
--paulward (DrGS)
Anita Kilgour
In article <EHF6r...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> papr...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:
>I believe it to be. If you poll your friends, and look at the average
>difference in size between men and women, you will find that there are very
>few couples (statistically) where the woman could do serious damage in an
>out and out fight. Lilia and I may well be the most well-matched couple you
>know in terms of body size and weight and yet I can "take" her (in a tickle
>fight of course!) despite the fact that I haven't done strenuous exercise,
>well, since our last tickle fight.
Well, I don't know Chris from a hole in the ground, Paul, but I'm willing
to be part of that poll.
My husband has about 8" in height on me, with accompanying reach. He has
more muscle mass and is actually trained in wrestling. And I can still
beat him every time when it comes to a fight. In fact, when we're just
ticklefighting, I have to remind myself constantly that I am not allowed
to fight dirty and keep it "light".
I don't have any fancy fighting training.
And I resent like hell your assumption that because a woman is physically
smaller than a man, she couldn't "take" him in a fight, fair or otherwise.
Yes, women get attacked. So do men.
Speaking as one woman who walks late at night, alone or in a group, I don't
need, or support, to be honest, the Take Back the Night walk...I'd rather
see the women showing some brains when they *do* walk at night and taking the
same precautions I'd suggest to *ANYONE*.
Lunatics who're going to attack people don't care if you're male or female.
They care if you look vulnerable. Big difference.
--
Anita Kilgour
akil...@thinkage.on.ca
http://www.thinkage.on.ca/~akilgour/
Chris Doherty
In article <EHF6r...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Paul Prescod <papr...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>The question is not about volume, but about type. People set out to kill or
>hurt women specifically. A psychologically disturbed man did this recently in
>Toronto.
Until you can show me that the overriding factor in violence where women
are victims is that they were female - and not some other reason - then I
might buy that. But you're using incidence rates, not motivational
studies.
In any event, if someone is psychologically disturbed and commits a
violent crime against women, might not the fact that he was mentally
distrubed be an indication that this is *not* normal behaviour?
The same happened in that Quebec campus shooting a few years back.
Marc Lepine was *psychologically disturbed*. He does not constitute a
representative sample of men, engineers, or male engineers. Hey, Loreena
Bobbitt committed aggravated assault with intent to maim because her
victim was male. Therefore, this is all the evidence we need that violence
against men is a large and overwhelming part of violence in general.
>Anecodotal evidence strongly suggests that this is just the high profile
>expression of a much larger problem of misogynistic violence.
Ah, yes. Anecdata. Fortunately, real honest studies which are
peer-reviewed and critiqued suggest otherwise. By this logic, no asian
people know what the capital of Iceland is, since the small handful we
asked didn't know. (Ask Dave; he'll tell you all about it.)
>Our culture has a long history of violence against women and at one time it
>was even considered kosher.
Prove it, Paul. Wife-beating has *never* been legal or socially condoned in
the U.S. or Canada.
>Sure. But anti-racist action isn't interested in the majority of that crime
>which is poverty-related. They are particularly targeting *racist* crime,
Yup. But it's generally not that tough to determine when violence is
racially-motivated. By contrast, the VAW and White Ribbon advocates would
have us believe *all* violence against women is motivated by mysogyny and
some worldwide conspiracy of hatred against women. Some anti-racism groups
make the same mistake - arguing that any incident of violence against a
minority group is racially moticated. It ain't necessarily so in any case.
>a small minority. Really, they are attacking the centuries old myth that
>some people have less right to security than others. This also happens
Ah, yes. The "myth" that says men can't ride the safety van, can't go to
shelters for victims of domestic violence, can't get funding for men's
health issues...
>to be the myth that the violence against women campaign attacks.
No, the violence against women campaign says that women deserve more
security, more consideration, more legal protection simply because they're
women.
>I believe it to be. If you poll your friends, and look at the average
>difference in size between men and women, you will find that there are very
>few couples (statistically) where the woman could do serious damage in an
>out and out fight.
So I can slap my wife around as long as I don't do any real damage? Come
on, Paul, abuse is abuse whether it leaves a bruise or a visible injury or
not. And physical size is irrelevant when weapons of opportunity come into
play - I outmass Lynn by 125 lbs and 1'1", but if she threatened me with
the 8" kitchen knife or by throwing dishes at me, I would be afraid for my
physical safety.
Lilia and I may well be the most well-matched couple you
>know in terms of body size and weight and yet I can "take" her (in a tickle
>fight of course!) despite the fact that I haven't done strenuous exercise,
>well, since our last tickle fight.
Bully for you. Now if she's so angry at you that she starts throwing
textbooks at you, will you be so cavalier? And how exactly do you know
whether or not you could casually shrug her off if she's never actually
tried to hurt you? Any martial arts instructor will tell you that the
largest part of who wins a fight is not training or size, but how willing
one person is to seriously injure another.
>So it would require a LOT of statistics to overcome my anecdotal evidence
>which is sufficiently strong that I would call it "common sense." Anyhow,
If you're basing "common sense" on a study population of _1_, and not even
a terribly objective 1 at that, then you're making a very severe
mistake. A quick poll of the five or so people in the CSC right now (all
of them male) indicates that *all* of them have been assaulted by a woman
at some point with intent to injure. So I've got more "anecdata" than you.
Does that make my common sense better than yours?
>[1] which I got by following a link you gave says:
<BoJ stats conclusions deleted>
>Yes, there were other statistics that point out that men are victimized in
>an absolute sense more than women, but the statistics above point out that
>there is still an attitude abroad that it is okay for men to beat up women
>they know.
They don't point out any such thing, Paul! That's patently ridiculous.
You're generalizing from incidence rates to the assumption of abuse to
motivation of the 'abusers' to generalized social attitudes about the
acceptability of abuse to generalized social attitudes about violence
between intimates in general. The conclusion is invalid and ridiculous.
>It is not more prevalent, nor more frightening or serious, but it is a specific
>*kind* of violence motivated by a specific kind of devaluation of a class of
>human beings. It is that devaluation that we are fighting.
So far I've seen no solid evidence that violence against women in general
is motivated by any such attitude (the paranoid ravings of Robin Morgan and
Andrea Dworkin notwithstanding, of course). Nor, indeed, has any such
evidence ever been presented by feminist or sociological researchers except
in terms of ideology - "we say there's a patriarchy, therefore there must
be one."
--
Chris Doherty cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Paul Prescod
In article <EHFr1...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Chris Doherty <cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>Until you can show me that the overriding factor in violence where women
>are victims is that they were female - and not some other reason - then I
>might buy that. But you're using incidence rates, not motivational
>studies.
How would one construct a motivational study? "If you were a woman instead of
a man, and your wife were a man instead of a woman, would you still want to
kill her?" Right.
>In any event, if someone is psychologically disturbed and commits a
>violent crime against women, might not the fact that he was mentally
>distrubed be an indication that this is *not* normal behaviour?
It isn't normal behaviour but is a reflection of the attitudes of society.
I also cannot prove that there is racist violence because the racists don't
tend to stick around to be polled for your study, but I know it makes sense
because I know that there is racism and there are violent attacks against
certain groups and there is a logical connection there. That behaviour is not
"normal" either, but it is still a reflection of centuries old beliefs.
>Ah, yes. Anecdata. Fortunately, real honest studies which are
>peer-reviewed and critiqued suggest otherwise. By this logic, no asian
>people know what the capital of Iceland is, since the small handful we
>asked didn't know. (Ask Dave; he'll tell you all about it.)
One must bring reason to bear on anecdotal evidence just as one would on
statistical evidence. Either can be misleading. Anecodotal evidence just
happens to be much easier to collect.
>>Our culture has a long history of violence against women and at one time it
>>was even considered kosher.
>
>Prove it, Paul. Wife-beating has *never* been legal or socially condoned in
>the U.S. or Canada.
Wife beating has been illegal in most of Canada and the US for a long time,
but those laws were basically safeguards to protect a woman in imminent
danger of being killed. Their day to day application was spotty:
"The
"criminalization" of domestic violence cases
beginning in the 1970's sought to increase the
certainty and severity of legal responses, thereby
correcting historical, legal, and moral disparities
in the legal protections afforded to battered women
(Zorza, 1992). For many years, societal responses
to domestic violence excluded legal intervention.
Advocates for battered women claimed that male
batterers were rarely arrested, prosecuted, or
sentenced as severely as other violent offenders.
Research showed that these claims were accurate.
Police often exercised discretion in avoiding
arrest in responding to domestic violence incidents
where there was probable cause (Black and Reiss,
1967). In many departments, policies for domestic
"disputes" actively discouraged arrest, focusing
instead on alternative responses such as family
crisis intervention or counseling for batterers
with alcohol abuse problems (Bard and Zacker,
1971). Prosecutors failed to actively pursue cases
where victims and offenders had intimate
relationships, fearing that women might drop
charges (Parnas, 1967). Sentences often were less
serious for males convicted of domestic violence.
For example, Davis and Smith (1982) showed that the
presence of a victim/offender relationship led to
less serious case assessments in prosecutorial
screening, even after controlling for victim injury
and weapon use. The result of these processes was a
higher dismissal rate for domestic cases at the
prosecution stage compared to other violence cases,
and less serious sentences."
...
"The
mobilization of resources and the passage of
(strong) laws signaled societal rejection of
domestic violence and communicated important
cultural messages rejecting norms supporting
battering. Such responses are particularly
appropriate when domestic violence is defined as a
"cultural" problem. The symbolic component of
criminalization policies also may be intended as a
general deterrent, by conveying the message that
legal consequences are likely and severe if a man
assaults his wife."
http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/crimdom.txt
>Yup. But it's generally not that tough to determine when violence is
>racially-motivated.
Really? Without resorting to common sense?
>By contrast, the VAW and White Ribbon advocates would
>have us believe *all* violence against women is motivated by mysogyny and
>some worldwide conspiracy of hatred against women.
Prove that please. It should be pretty easy for you to produce a quote from
VAW or White Ribbon information that claims that all violence against women
is motivated by misogyny.
>Some anti-racism groups
>make the same mistake - arguing that any incident of violence against a
>minority group is racially moticated. It ain't necessarily so in any case.
If you feel like it you can provide evidence of this too.
>Ah, yes. The "myth" that says men can't ride the safety van, can't go to
>shelters for victims of domestic violence, can't get funding for men's
>health issues...
I didn't claim that men don't have issues that should be addressed too. Neither
did Heather. I claimed that there is nothing wrong with targetting particular
issues affecting particular people. If there were a march against violence
against "the Roma" (often called Gypsies) in Toronto, I would support it too.
There is a particular problem with people targetting these new immigrants and
we should particularly address that problem directly and separately. The same
holds for that proportion of violence that is gender motivated.
>Bully for you. Now if she's so angry at you that she starts throwing
>textbooks at you, will you be so cavalier?
I didn't say I would be cavalier if my wife attacked me. I said I could
protect myself. And yes, short of a gun, I wouldn't be too worried about
whatever object she picked up. While I was learning to fight, she was
playing Barbie, as was appropriate for people of our sexes at the time
we grew up.
> And how exactly do you know
>whether or not you could casually shrug her off if she's never actually
>tried to hurt you? Any martial arts instructor will tell you that the
>largest part of who wins a fight is not training or size, but how willing
>one person is to seriously injure another.
Ahh, well then I guess that all of that effort that boxers and wrestlers go
to is
>If you're basing "common sense" on a study population of _1_, and not even
No, I didn't say that I was basing my opinion on that. I also base it on
discussions with people who have been beaten and with cops who have
intervened.
>a terribly objective 1 at that, then you're making a very severe
>mistake. A quick poll of the five or so people in the CSC right now (all
>of them male) indicates that *all* of them have been assaulted by a woman
>at some point with intent to injure. So I've got more "anecdata" than you.
And were any of them hurt seriously?
>They don't point out any such thing, Paul! That's patently ridiculous.
>You're generalizing from incidence rates to the assumption of abuse to
Uhh. Doesn't an incidence of violence indicate an incidence of abuse? Or
would you have us throw out even the statistics we *do* have because maybe
they aren't representative of real abuse?
>to motivation of the 'abusers'
Well, we can't very well ask them, can we?
>to generalized social attitudes about the
>acceptability of abuse
If by generalized, you mean "mainstream", then no. If by generalized you
mean "common" then yes.
>to generalized social attitudes about violence
>between intimates in general.
I'm not sure what you meant by that last step. Probably just a rhetorical
extension of the chain.
> The conclusion is invalid and ridiculous.
Unfortunately, Chris, we *do* have to apply our common sense, our personal
("anecdotal") evidence and our sense of history to these events. When I hear
midwestern farmers talking about "international bankers" "plotting to
take over the world" "through the UN" "bankrolled by the Anti-Defamation
League" and the next day I hear about skinheads burning down a synagogue, I
do draw the opinion that there is an anti-Jew faction in our society and
somehow those incidents are connected through history and society.
I can never prove that, because those people are never surveyed and they
would never answer truthfully if they were. And one could argue that they
really do just hate bankers and a particular group of lawyers. And maybe
the skinheads just choose synagogues at random. But I doubt it.
I can only apply my sense of observation and reason, as I do to women's
issues. I don't claim that this will always give me the right answer,
but if I pretend that issues that I cannot measure do not exist, I will
be much worse off and if we all do so, society will be much worse off.
Paul Prescod
Colin R. Leech
Paul Andrew Solomon Ward (pas...@uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
>> Our culture has a long history of violence against women and at one time it
>> was even considered kosher.
>
> It seems to also have a long history of using Jewish religious terms
> out of context and in ways that are inaccurate. That, however, seems
> to still be acceptable!
I missed that article - probably because I get a very incomplete feed of
uw.general. The one mistake that did jump out at me, though, was when one
man was complaing about being discriminated against "because of my
gender". In fact, "gender" is a quality ("masculine" or "feminine") possessed
by nouns in other languages such as French. The correct wording would
have been "because of my sex", which would be either "male" or "female".
--
#### |\^/| Colin R. Leech ag414 or crl...@freenet.carleton.ca
#### _|\| |/|_ Civil engineer by training, transport planner by choice.
#### > < Opinions are my own. You may consider them shareware.
#### >_./|\._< "If you can't return a favour, pass it on." - A.L. Brown
Ray Butterworth
On Fri, 3 Oct 1997 00:19:50 GMT,
papr...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) wrote:
>In article <EHFr1...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
>Chris Doherty <cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>A quick poll of the five or so people in the CSC right now (all
>>of them male) indicates that *all* of them have been assaulted by a woman
>>at some point with intent to injure.
>
Huh!?!
Husband: Well sure, I did slap my wife around a little,
but how else can she learn her place ?
Police: Was she hurt seriously ?
Husband: No, just a few bruises.
Police: Well then, I guess everything's alright. Have a nice day!
That's exactly the problem with this Take Back the Night thing
and similar protests against violence to women. They look at
the symptoms of the problem and not the causes.
Rather than attacking the idea that it is ok to express one's
feelings by trying to hurt someone else, they attack the
observed result that certain groups of people tend to come
out worse off than others in such encounters.
In general, if a man and a woman hit each other, the woman is
going to finish in second place, since in general most men are
physically superior to most women in both offence and defence.
It is not alright to express one's feelings by trying to hurt
someone else. The fact that some people are less successful
or more successful than other people at causing this pain
shouldn't make them less or more guilty.
Fight the need to hurt other people and you'll help all victims.
But dump all the blame on one "successful" group (which includes
many people that are innocent of using violence) and ignore the
problem in those people that aren't very successful at it,
and the problem might change in character but it will still
continue and there will still be victims. But at least you'll
feel good for having gone out and worked for "a good cause".
Mario Bellabarba
In article <EHFr1...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Chris Doherty) wrote:
>The same happened in that Quebec campus shooting a few years back.
>
>Marc Lepine was *psychologically disturbed*. He does not constitute
>arepresentative sample of men, engineers, or male engineers.
He wasn't a male engineer (or even a male engineering student). He
*was* a man who blamed women for all of his problems.
My apologies for the oversimplification, I just wanted to clear up the
"Male Engineer" bit.
-Mario
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mario Bellabarba | President, U of Waterloo Federation of Students,
mbel...@feds.uwaterloo.ca | Tel: (519) 888-4567 x2478
Thoreau's Law:
If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention
of doing you good, you should run for your life.
Chris Doherty
In article <EHG8x...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Paul Prescod <papr...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>How would one construct a motivational study? "If you were a woman instead of
>a man, and your wife were a man instead of a woman, would you still want to
>kill her?" Right.
So since it's not easy to determine motivation, we should just assume that
every incidence of violence where a woman is a victim is motivated by
hatred against women? That's bogus, Paul, and you know it. The only
conclusion you can come to about motivation in this case is no conclusion.
>>might not the fact that he was mentally
>>distrubed be an indication that this is *not* normal behaviour?
>
>It isn't normal behaviour but is a reflection of the attitudes of society.
That sentence is inherently contradictory, Paul.
>One must bring reason to bear on anecdotal evidence just as one would on
>statistical evidence. Either can be misleading. Anecodotal evidence just
>happens to be much easier to collect.
It is also, as *any Stats prof at this university will tell you*,
completely useless for making any conclusions about a broader target
population. The only conclusions you can come to based on anecdotal evidence
is conclusions about the people you got the evidence from. Basic
statistical methodology, Paul. Hey, here's an example:
I've never seen any homeless people in K-W.
Therefore, there are no homeless people in K-W.
Therefore, there are no homeless people *anywhere*.
>Wife beating has been illegal in most of Canada and the US for a long time,
>but those laws were basically safeguards to protect a woman in imminent
>danger of being killed.
No, those laws existed to keep violent men from beating their wives.
>Advocates for battered women claimed that male
>batterers were rarely arrested, prosecuted, or
>sentenced as severely as other violent offenders.
>Research showed that these claims were accurate.
Really? Whose research? Do we have anything to support this claim other
than "hey, some author said so"? More to the point, the claim comes from
"advocates for battered women". Is it not possible that these advocates
might be biased?
You've presented a nice tertiary source here. But the whole problem with
this issue is tertiary sources. Go to the primary sources and look at
them. Did what the tertiary source say about the study match the actual
conclusions of the study itself? Was the study population representative?
What about the sample taken? Does the methodology actually measure what
the authors say they want to measure?
Basic critical analysis needs to be done on *any* piece of statistical
information presented as a big scary social issue. That's what the
peer-review and scientific critique processes are for. But a lot of the
statistics being bandied about by feminist organizations have never been
critiqued or been through a peer-review process (leaving us poor slobs to
do it). Even if something has been through peer-review, it is worth taking
a few moments to investigate the peer-review process for that discipline to
see if the proper amount of scrutiny is being applied.
>>Yup. But it's generally not that tough to determine when violence is
>>racially-motivated.
>Really? Without resorting to common sense?
Yup. See, common sense is about using your preconceived notions of what
"is" and what "is not" rather than applying an investigative process. In a
lot of cases, the perpetrators of racially-motivated violence will happily
tell you how much they hate the person/group they were doing horrible
things to. If not, then you have to apply an investigative process to
determine if an act of violence was racially motivated. "He's a skinhead"
is *not* sufficient; it's based on preconceived notions about skinheads
(cf. SHARP).
>Prove that please. It should be pretty easy for you to produce a quote from
>VAW or White Ribbon information that claims that all violence against women
>is motivated by misogyny.
Yes, it is. Read the mission statement at www.whiteribbon.ca if you don't
beleive me. It's pretty blatant.
>we should particularly address that problem directly and separately. The same
>holds for that proportion of violence that is gender motivated.
Said motivation has never been demonstrated outside of ideological writings
by the gender feminist establishment. The "War on Women" is a fiction
created by a small handful of particularly paranoid gender feminists.
>protect myself. And yes, short of a gun, I wouldn't be too worried about
>whatever object she picked up.
Whoa. Are *you* in trouble. Do you honestly believe you could casually
defend yourself against someone roughly your size and mass armed with a
knife? I'm *huge*, _and_ I've had martial arts training, and my response
to a knife-wielding assailant would be "here's my wallet".
While I was learning to fight, she was
>playing Barbie, as was appropriate for people of our sexes at the time
>we grew up.
Wow. That is easily the most narrow-minded and stereotypical view of gender
relations I've seen yet on this thread.
>>largest part of who wins a fight is not training or size, but how willing
>>one person is to seriously injure another.
>
>Ahh, well then I guess that all of that effort that boxers and wrestlers go
>to is {something that got lost in transit}
Ever notice how the UFC fighters don't knee each other in the groin, gouge
each other's eyes, or bite each other? Ever notice how boxing and
wrestling have *rules* about how you can fight? Boxers, wrestlers, and UFC
fighters are *not* trying to seriously injure each other - they are playing
a sport by rules designed to *prevent* serious injury.
>No, I didn't say that I was basing my opinion on that. I also base it on
>discussions with people who have been beaten and with cops who have
>intervened.
People who have been beaten and cops who have intervened. No chance that
*that's* a biased or unrepresentative sample at all, of course.
>>of them male) indicates that *all* of them have been assaulted by a woman
>>at some point with intent to injure. So I've got more "anecdata" than you.
>
>And were any of them hurt seriously?
Yup. One narrowly missed having his eyes gouged out, and one was punched
in the face by an ex-girlfriend after *she* dumped *him* because
(apparently) he started dating again too soon. Split his lip, too.
In any event, "were they injured seriously" is flat-out
insulting. Counter: I can slap my wife around as long as I don't injure
her seriously? Would that be okay?
>Uhh. Doesn't an incidence of violence indicate an incidence of abuse? Or
No, it certainly does not. Unless you know more about the nature of the
violence than incidence rates, you can claim no such thing. Basic
statistics, Paul. Type I error.
>would you have us throw out even the statistics we *do* have because maybe
>they aren't representative of real abuse?
If they cannot be verified as representative of real abuse, what good are
they? This is what confidence intervals and study design are all about,
Paul. Is Dave's "study" on how many asians know the capital of Iceland
valid?
>>to motivation of the 'abusers'
>Well, we can't very well ask them, can we?
Why not? Of course, they might lie, but then so might the "victims". We'd
have to correct for that, wouldn't we? And find some way of investigating
the incidents objectively - oh, damn, that's study design. We can't do
that, it isn't common sense.
>>to generalized social attitudes about the
>>acceptability of abuse
>
>If by generalized, you mean "mainstream", then no. If by generalized you
>mean "common" then yes.
So despite the fact that there's two fallacies in the chain of logic that
got you here in the first place, this "conclusion" is still valid? Hey,
let's apply some "anecdata": I just asked about a dozen people whether
domestic violence was acceptable. They all said no. Bingo, therefore
domestic violence is not socially acceptable.
>>to generalized social attitudes about violence
>>between intimates in general.
>I'm not sure what you meant by that last step. Probably just a rhetorical
>extension of the chain.
You're obviously assuming that all violence between intimates is a result
of male on female abuse.
>Unfortunately, Chris, we *do* have to apply our common sense, our personal
>("anecdotal") evidence and our sense of history to these events. When I hear
No, we don't. We can make sound, reasonable decisions by applying
intelligent investigative techniques and some basic statistical
methodology. Quick, does the Sun revolve around the Earth or vice versa?
Well, *obviously* the Sun revolves around the Earth - look at it. Common
sense, personal evidence, and history right there (it's risen and set like
that every day since I was born).
Here's another: who said "640k ought to be enough for anybody"? Well, it
wasn't Bill Gates. He claims he never said it and no one has ever been
able to provide a cite to contradict him.
>midwestern farmers talking about "international bankers" "plotting to
>take over the world" "through the UN" "bankrolled by the Anti-Defamation
>League" and the next day I hear about skinheads burning down a synagogue, I
>do draw the opinion that there is an anti-Jew faction in our society and
>somehow those incidents are connected through history and society.
I would conclude that you're a little too susceptible to conspiracy
theories, myself. Is there antipathy towards women in general by *some*
men? Yes - I've seen it myself. But - and here's a big surprise - there's
antipathy towards men in general by some women, too. Sometimes men commit
violent acts against a specific woman- but only in unusual and extreme
cases is it because she was a woman and for no other reason. And hey,
here's another thing to think about: sometimes women commit acts of
violence against a specific man, too. More often than you might think.
Domestic violence is not a women's issue *or* a man's issue - it's a
problem that has to do with the interpersonal dynamics in relationships,
and it has to be addressed that way, *not* on the assumption that
abuser=man, abused=woman.
>I can only apply my sense of observation and reason, as I do to women's
>issues. I don't claim that this will always give me the right answer,
Well, that puts you ahead of a lot of people.
>but if I pretend that issues that I cannot measure do not exist, I will
>be much worse off and if we all do so, society will be much worse off.
Here's a better solution - instead of making assumptions based on
preconceived notions, why not look for better ways to measure those issues?
And if you well and truly *can't* measure something, how can you say
_anything_ about it one way or the other? Does abuse cause psychological
trauma? I think it does. How do you measure that? What scale do you use?
How bad is psychological trauma compared to physical? Well, there's no
good answer for that. We can try to measure it, but until we know we can
measure it well, *any* general statement about magnitude or severity is
going to be pure speculation. Does it exist? Sure. Can we do anything
about it? We can try. Will we know if it's doing any good? Nope. Might it
in fact be making things worse? Possibly.
--
Chris Doherty cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Alex Lopez-Ortiz
In article <EHHwu...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Chris Doherty <cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
>>One must bring reason to bear on anecdotal evidence just as one would on
>>statistical evidence. Either can be misleading. Anecodotal evidence just
>>happens to be much easier to collect.
>
>It is also, as *any Stats prof at this university will tell you*,
>completely useless for making any conclusions about a broader target
I bet you cannot find one Stat prof that would agree with such statement.
In fact, not so long ago The Economist had an article on a stats researcher
who was using anecdotal sampling to good advantage (see the postscript).
Most Stats professors would say that anecdotal evidence are data
points from which you might or might not be able to draw conclusions
depending on the specific instance.
More importantly, your choice of words is quite useful to illustrate the
inflamed tone that this discussion has taken and your lack of objectivity,
which is particularly relevant here, since you are accusing quite a few
others researchers and "feminists" whatever that means of biased reporting.
>I've never seen any homeless people in K-W.
>Therefore, there are no homeless people in K-W.
>Therefore, there are no homeless people *anywhere*.
Well, if you happen to know, say, that K-W has the average rate of
unemployment in Canada, and you have seen no homeless people in K-W,
and you do travel about in the city, you can safely assume (i.e. with
high probability) that the homeless rate is less than one in 150,000
people on the average anywhere in Canada.
Alex
p.s. In the article in question the researcher used anecdotal evidence
to measure things that people are not likely to admit to a stranger
but would definitely tell to at least one friend, such as VDs, AIDS,
drug addiction, and sexual orientation. (S)He went to great lengths to
estimate the error from anecdotal sampling and the amount of
overreporting due to common friendships... The technique was so
promising that it made it all the way to The Economist.
Quite far from what a balanced person would call completely useless.
--
Alex Lopez-Ortiz alop...@daisy.UWaterloo.ca
http://daisy.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o Research Scientist
Open Text Corp. 185 Columbia St W Waterloo, Ont N2L 5Z5 Canada
Chris Doherty
In article <EHHz7...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Alex Lopez-Ortiz <alop...@daisy.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>In article <EHHwu...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
>Chris Doherty <cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>completely useless for making any conclusions about a broader target
>I bet you cannot find one Stat prof that would agree with such statement.
Okay, I'll ask around. It's a fair bet.
>Most Stats professors would say that anecdotal evidence are data
>points from which you might or might not be able to draw conclusions
>depending on the specific instance.
That last line is the important bit. Paul's citing anecdotal evidence, but
he's not demonstrating that he's made any attempt to correct for all the
things you mention in your postscript. Good study design obviously can go
a long way towards compensating for anecdotal evidence, but I would argue
that anecdotal evidence is in many ways inherently more unreliable than
data gathered according to a rigorous methodology.
>which is particularly relevant here, since you are accusing quite a few
>others researchers and "feminists" whatever that means of biased reporting.
Well, I am aware of a number of cases where statistics promulgated by what
I'm referring to as the gender feminist establishment have been shown to be
completely wrong and in some cases intentionally manipulated. In a broader
sense, I'm concerned about people swallowing statistics that tend to
confirm their own world view without subjecting them to any kind of
critical thought.
And if we want to talk inflammatory, I'll give you this example - for
bringing up the issue the first time, I was falsely accused of vandalism by
Heather Calder, had my motives impugned by Prabhakar Ragde, and received
abusive email from someone I don't even know.
>>I've never seen any homeless people in K-W.
>>Therefore, there are no homeless people in K-W.
>>Therefore, there are no homeless people *anywhere*.
>
>Well, if you happen to know, say, that K-W has the average rate of
>unemployment in Canada,
Ah, well, but I don't. So I can't prove that my conclusion is terribly
valid at all. Also I don't know whether the rate of unemployment relates
to the number of homeless people, and if it does, how.
and you have seen no homeless people in K-W,
>and you do travel about in the city,
A lot of "ifs", none of which I specified, and none of which you know about
my experience.
you can safely assume (i.e. with
>high probability) that the homeless rate is less than one in 150,000
>people on the average anywhere in Canada.
Well, that makes the number of homeless people across Canada about 200.
That's still a long way from "no homeless people anywhere", and to me seems
somewhat low in any event. It's a nice display of Fermat reasoning, but I
don't want public policy and budget decisions made by someone's guess -
even if it's a reasonably good one.
--
Chris Doherty cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Chris Doherty
In article <613beb$c60...@learning.uwaterloo.ca>,
Mario Bellabarba <MBEL...@FEDS.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>Marc Lepine was *psychologically disturbed*. He does not constitute
>
>He wasn't a male engineer (or even a male engineering student). He
>*was* a man who blamed women for all of his problems.
>
>My apologies for the oversimplification, I just wanted to clear up the
>"Male Engineer" bit.
Good thing, too. So why was Marc Lepine used as an example of why
engineering departments all over Canada had to clean up their act?
And about that safety van...
--
Chris Doherty cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Paul Prescod
In article <EHHBF...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Ray Butterworth <rbutte...@math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>On Fri, 3 Oct 1997 00:19:50 GMT,
>papr...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) wrote:
>>Chris Doherty <cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>>A quick poll of the five or so people in the CSC right now (all
>>>of them male) indicates that *all* of them have been assaulted by a woman
>>>at some point with intent to injure.
>>
>
Okay, you got me. That wasn't the question I meant to ask. I know Chris'
sample population, the computer science club hanger-outers is taken to being
extremely literal. So my real question was: "Are these real assaults or trivial
things like tickle fights and childhood encounters with your sister."
This is, of course, also a valid question to ask of statistics about violence
against women, and many people do.
>That's exactly the problem with this Take Back the Night thing
>and similar protests against violence to women. They look at
>the symptoms of the problem and not the causes.
>
>Rather than attacking the idea that it is ok to express one's
>feelings by trying to hurt someone else, they attack the
>observed result that certain groups of people tend to come
>out worse off than others in such encounters.
Huh? Could you please produce a VAW pamphlet that says that it is appropriate
for women to be violent?
>In general, if a man and a woman hit each other, the woman is
>going to finish in second place, since in general most men are
>physically superior to most women in both offence and defence.
Well, this is in dispute, but I believe it.
>It is not alright to express one's feelings by trying to hurt
>someone else. The fact that some people are less successful
>or more successful than other people at causing this pain
>shouldn't make them less or more guilty.
Well, there are a few points I want to make. First, why aren't "attempted
murderers" put away as long as "murderers"? There is a precedent in law
and mass psychology for considering successful evil-doers to be worse than
evil-attempters. I don't support this myself, but I can't completely
blame others for following the example set by our laws.
Second, if I take a swing at Mike Tyson secure in the knowledge that
I can't seriously hurt him, then I consider this is again a lesser moral evil
then if he takes a swing at me knowing that he could kill me. This
distinction pervades our legal system and culture.
Finally, the violence against women campaign is, in my opinion, founded
on the belief that there is a *specific* anti-woman mentality that in part
causes these attacks and the goal of the campaign is to change the specifc
mentality. So from this point of view, the movement does in fact attack
the problem at (one of) its root(s).
I thought I was clear on this last point in the message you replied to,
but obviously not.
>But dump all the blame on one "successful" group (which includes
>many people that are innocent of using violence) and ignore the
>problem in those people that aren't very successful at it,
>and the problem might change in character but it will still
>continue and there will still be victims. But at least you'll
>feel good for having gone out and worked for "a good cause".
There is not a net sum total of violence in the world that gets redistributed
(I hope!). We can attack one type of violence without causing an increase in
another. If by "shift the problem around" you mean "solve one problem so
that another becomes dominant" then I think that that is also called
"progress."
Anyhow, I agree with Chris (and presumably you) that it is not fair or right
to ignore men with a domestic violence problem directed at them. But that
doesn't mean that every rally for VAW should become a Violence Against
People event. Once again, the benefit of separating the issues is in
encouraging people to think about the *specific* causes of a particular type
of violence (gender, racial, etc.) so that they can think about specific
solutions.
Paul Prescod
Paul Prescod
In article <PASWARD.97...@big.uwaterloo.ca>,
Paul Andrew Solomon Ward <pas...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>It seems to also have a long history of using Jewish religious terms
>out of context and in ways that are inaccurate. That, however, seems
>to still be acceptable!
Sorry this bothers you. It seems relatively benign compared, for example,
to the way I've heard Roman Catholic terminology used in Quebec.
Paul Prescod
Paul Prescod
Let me start by helping you to dismantle some straw people. Hopefully we won't
need to erect them yet again:
#1. I have not called statistics either useless or evil. I have merely claimed
that they are *incomplete*. There are many important truths that they cannot
capture. I suspect that the statisticians upstairs would agree with me. You
are attributing an absolutist position to me and I reject it.
#2. I have never claimed that anecdotal evidence will always lead to the right
answer. Again, I reject this absolutist position. Like statistics, anecodotes
are a useful tool. They are useful for two reasons. They provide a filter
that we can and should use to examine statistics. If the government says that
the unemployment rate is 1% but most of the people I know are unemployed,
then I have a valid cause to question those statistics. They could be
misleading or out and out fraudulent. Or my friends might just be
non-representative. Either way, the anecodotal evidence could be an important
clue.
In article <EHnK4...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Chris Doherty <cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>In article <EHnBn...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
>Paul Prescod <papr...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>statistics alone, the we really wouldn't need the arts faculty. But we cannot
>>and we do need them...and they have a lot to tell us about men's attitudes
>>towards women in our society.
>
>And are *they* biased? How can we tell? This is the problem, Paul: accept
>the numbers that support one's own preconceived notions, ignore others. I
>note you haven't yet attempted even once to examine the evidence supporting
>the notion that women commit domestic violence at the same rate as men, and
>for the same reasons.
That's because the question isn't relevant to whether people should be able
to protest against misogynistic violence. When you start a club fighting
violence against men then I will come out and read your statistics before
deciding on my level of support. Frank's analogy is useful: you can fight
AIDs without fighting cancer at the same time.
>>Perhaps that is the only conclusion *you* can come to. I have other sources
>>of information besides statistics alone.
>
>My *point*, Paul, is that the statistics you posted do not support
>your conclusions. Statistics alone *cannot* measure causality, only
>quantity. But you haven't bothered to show your methodology for
>establishing your conclusion, therefore your conclusion is not credible.
>"Trust me, I'm right" doesn't pass peer review.
I did show you my methodology. I provided historical, psycholological and
sociological arguments. You reject those. Fine. That's the messy process of
establishing truth.
>>And if there were, there would
>>be only one, not a historical series as there are with women-hunters.
>
>Whoa! Pretty strong statement. Can I assume you've done an exhaustive
>search of the FBI and the RCMP's serial homicide investigations, and/or
>applied your degree in Criminal psychology to cases suspected to be the
>work of serial killers? If not, then your offhanded statement is no more
>credible than "the moon is made of green cheese" or "domestic violence is
>more often committed by men against women".
This is where your absolutism becomes ridiculous, but more important:
dangerous. The reason that the "moon is made of green cheese" is a ridiculous
statement is because we have *no* evidence in favour of it. This is a very
different statement than having *incomplete* evidence in favour of my
claim about women-killers vs. glasses-killers. We always have incomplete
evidence, even when we have done investigative research. There is no such
thing as "proof" outside of mathematics. Even in issues as predictable as
the workings of the physical world, we only have *evidence*.
>>If this is all of the data you have, then it is reasonable to conclude that
>>is is "unlikely that there are homeless people anywhere."
>
>It's not even logically correct, Paul, let alone reasonable. K-W is not a
>representative study population for the world, nor is the portions of the
>city I visit regularly a representative sample of K-W. It is
>*understandable* that I could come to such a conclusion - that doesn't make
>it reasonable, or any less wrong.
If this is all of the evidence that you have, then you *must* make your
decision on this evidence after weighing the probability of being wrong and
the costs and benefits of taking action or not taking action. Even after
a statistical study, all we have is *more evidence*, not proof.
>I've never seen God.
>I've never heard of anyone else seeing God either.
>Therefore, it is unlikely that there is a God in K-W.
>Therefore, it is unlikely that there is a God anywhere.
If this is all of the evidence that you have, then this is a reasonble
conclusion, and the one that many resaonable people come to. Other reasonable
people feel that they have access to other sources of evidence (direct or
related divine inspiration usually) and come to a different conclusion. I
have *always* argued for a mixing and matching of techniques. You want to
paoit me as promoting a single approach to the truth, but I deny that such
a thing exists.
>>Perfectly reasonable.
>
>Still logically invalid, unless you can somehow demonstrate that you and
>everyone you know is representative of everyone on Earth.
This is absolutely impossible. I don't care how many people you sample, you
can never prove that they are representative. You can only *provide evidence*
based on your knowledge of the population. This evidence must be based
either on reasoning based on anecdotal evidence, or based on another study,
which could in turn be based on a study, etc. until eventually you bottom
out at "anecdotal evidence" and a general understanding of the population.
>Therefore useless as one sample is not representative of all of society.
>It is certainly not sufficient to support your contention that such laws
>are not enforced "often". Show me some kind of study of reported domestic
>violent acts and corresponding arrests,
The point is that these things were often not *reported* because they were
"domestic matters". No one did a study, so we have no statistical evidence.
We only have the "anecdotal record." This anecdotal record is the same one
that is routinely used to construct pictures of the past. We use the anecdotal
record because it is the tool we have at our disposal. Look at the hoopla
when they find a hominid skeleton from a few million years ago. Is that a
useful statistical sample of all of the hominids alive a few years ago? No,
it is anecdotal -- but still extremely useful.
>correct for cases with retracted
>testimony and lack of evidence, convincingly demonstrate that the
>motivation for failure to prosecute was tolerance of the act,
But here you are allowing "common sense" and "psychology" and other
non-measurables to creep back in. So by your absolutist argument, the entire
study is useless!
>AND that such
>a failure to prosecute happens "often" (and do please define that term),
>and then I will gladly examine the work and form my own conclusions. I;ve
>provided you with primary source citations to back up my claim. So far
>you've ignored them and responded with common sense and anecdotes.
I've ignored them because they are *not relevant* to the issue of the march.
They may be relevant to the issue of whether we should hold another march,
but not to whether the first march is valid.
>>because it is a "domestic matter", where is that recorded? This is a perfect
>>example where *all* we have to go on is anecdotal evidence, but there happens
>>to be a *mountain* of it, so we should trust it.
>
>No. Quantity does not mean quality. We should trust it if and ONLY if the
>anecdotal evidence can be shown to be representative of whatever broader
>conclusions are drawn from it, and it can be corrected for systemic bias,
>and the accuracy of the original anecdata can be determeind and corrected
>for, and so on. Of course, by that point, we're into Evil Statistics[tm]
>so I guess we'll just have to shuck that in favour of Public Opinion and
>Common Sense.
Straw person #1.
And also a fallacy. Correction against bias in historic records is not
really in the realm of statistics. You cannot generate an unbiased,
statistically useful measure of, say wife-beating, from records we might have
like diaries, letters, magazine articles, etc. (the sources we have will of
course depend on the time period). But you can still make very useful
non-statistical statements about the past. Almost everything we know about
the history came to us through non-statistical mechanisms. Historians have
mechanisms of accounting for bias that have nothing to do with math or
statistics. When these mechanisms are explained to lay people, they sound
a lot like "common sense" (e.g. asking "what was the benefit for this source
in lieing about this issue.").
>>This "statistics only" approach to seeking out truth is actually pretty
>>frightening. It puts a ton of power in the hands of the dominant class in
>>the society.
>
>All the more reason why *everybody* should learn to start looking at
>statistics more critically, and with the tools necessary to determine
>validity.
Even valid statistics can be misleading. That is why they must be only one
of the tools we use.
>I have reason to believe that blacks are often illegally
>>assaulged by the LAPD but all I have to prove it is the "anecodotal" evidence
>>of the Rodney King tape and hundreds of other testimonies. I guess I don't
>>have any evidence at all.
>
>Nope, you don't.
Enough said. You have obviously developed a definition of the word "evidence"
that goes well beyond the dictionary and statistical definitions. You seem
to think that "evidence" and "proof" are synonymous.
> I have reason to believe that some of those reports may
>be false, or exaggerated, or foaf stories. We have a videotaped case which
>obviously proves that it has happened at least once, so we cannot say it
>_never_ happens. But neither of us has enough evidence to say how often it
>does or does not happen. Fortunately, people with real live statistics
>degrees and sociological training do do research into this sort of thing,
But why would we bother to investigate it? We have *no evidence* (according
to you). Surely we can't waste our community resources on studies of
problems that we have *no evidence* to believe is widespread. We might as
well do a study in cities where *nobody* has been assaulted, because we
have just as much evidence (none) that the problem is widespread.
>so we can examine some properly done studies instead of relying on media
>reports (which of course never lie or exaggerate) and subjective
>experience (which is known for being perfectly objective in all cases).
Nobody ever claimed that media reports and subjective experience are perfect
measures of anything. Nobody (who knows about them) ever claimed that
statistics are perfect measures of anything. They are *all just tools*.
>We know of at least one case where it does. Certainly the amount of
>anecdotal evidence is worth investigating seriously with objective methods.
>(Oh, and if both sides are inclined to lie, and there's no way of
>establishing credibility, how can we even conlcude there's a problem at
>all? This guy says he was beat up because he's black, this cop says it was
>because the guy threatened the cop with physical injury. If you can't tell
>who's lying, how do you conclude anything one way or another?)
The same way that it is done in courtrooms every day, Chris. It's called
"reasonable doubt" and it is based entirely on the concept of "reason".
Sometimes "reasoning" involves math and statistics. Sometimes it involves
anecdotal evidence. Sometimes it involves media reports. Sometimes it involves
psychological profiles. All of these are evidence, and their usefulness
varies widely with the question being investigated.
>>It seems to attribute male violence against women to a variety of causes,
>
>Actually, only one cause: the attacker is male.
Well, that would be a tautology, wouldn't it. Male violence against women can't
be carried out by females, can it.
>Worse, it implies the relationship is transitive.
Well, the whole point of the group is that men can choose *not* to be
violent towards women. So clearly they accept that some men are not violent
towards women.
>I've never hit anyone in anger; where do
>these self-righteous twits get off telling me I'm violent?
I agree that they are probably self-righteous twits, based on their
rhetorically annoying mission statement, but don't you think that you should
do a statistical analysis? You have no evidence that they are twits yet.
>Here's a big
>surprise - men are not the problem. Men didn't make up violence. All of
>humanity has been pretty much a violent kind of species for its entire
>existence. The WRC is a sexist and criminal organization promoting hate
>speech.
I think that that would would be a hard court case. They generalize, sure, but
so does the Globe And Mail (about Gypsies) and many psychologists and so do a
million books: "Men are from Mars, Women from Venus."
>>are a variety of reasons. So I don't think that this backs up your point
>>that misogyny is presented as the *only* reason men beat women.
>
>Fair enough. If it helps any, the WRC's credibility is severely undermined
>by the fact that they present loads of statistics without reference, and
>even go so far as to promulgate the "rule of thumb" myth.
I agree that their fuzzy rhetoric hurts their cause in my eyes.
>
>. Anyhow, even with statistics on
>>situations, one must still use their own judgement to try and guess at
>>what portion is motivated by misogny.
>
>I don't consider my "judgement" terribly useful in that case. I'm not a
>sociologist, I haven't done any studies on the topic, and I have no
>reliable data sources that would help me come to any conclusion.
Right. So your judgement is probably *less* reliable than that of the experts.
That does not make it completely *un*reliable. Given a finite amount of time,
I cannot seek out expert advice on every issue that I must vote on (as a
citizen) and even when I can, I must filter the expert testimony through a
filter of my common sense.
> All those
>caveats apply just as well to you, Paul. Hell, here's a judgement: les
>than 1%. No less valid than any other guess, really, which is what any
>"judgement"-based estimate amounts to.
It depends how you mean "guess". I "guess" that you are sitting at a computer
terminal. If you mean "guess" as in "random guess" then you are dead wrong.
My knowldge of psychology and sociology does provide information so that my
guesses based upon it would be right more often than that of a random
number generator.
>>the study or b) using anecdotal evidence (e.g. the results of psychotherapy).
>>And we're back where we started...depending on anecdotal evidence.
>
>So we may as well cut out all that annoying math and logic in the middle,
>eh?
I didn't say that. You did. I said that we must acknowledge the value of
anecdotal evidence and inductive reasoning because they do provide information
and even form the basis for statistical reasoning.
>So what then, Paul? How can you in good conscience recommend *any* course
>of action without admitting that the only basis for a decision is your own
>preconceived notions?
Not my own "preconceived notions", but my "current", constantly re-evaluated
and updated notions.
Now your real question is: "How can I make a decision based on partial
information." The answer is: "I weigh the costs and benefits of exxagerating
or minimizing the problem, of taking action against a non-existant problem or
ignoring a real problem and I make a decision." Messy, yes, but governance
has always been messy.That's why progress towards Utopia is slow and fraught
with wrong turns. Life is risk.
>>to live in a society run by statistics alone. Statistics are as flawed as
>>any other single form of evidence.
>
>Statistics used properly are invaluable for making decisions about large
>populations that are impossible for studying directly. It is when people
>start claiming causality on the basis of statistics, leaving out vital
>information, and hiding their methodology that we need be concerned. Don't
>throw the baby out with the bathwater, Paul: statistics is a damn good tool
>*if properly used*.
And it seems to me that you are trying to misuse them. You want to ask them
to answer questions that they cannot answer -- subtle questions about
sociology, motivation and history. I agree that statistics are a very useful
tool, within their domain of accuracy.
>Part of what I'm trying to demonstrate here is that if
>we don't hold people to proper standards of review, we get politically
>motivated and manipulated anecdata.
Fair enough. Politics is the business of weighing evidence of various kinds,
including "politically motivated and manipulated anecdata."
>>"Statistical sampling among southern slaves has determined that they have poor
>>English and mathematical skills. This supports the slaveowners claims that
>>they are sub-human.
>
>Nope. Spurious attempt at making a causal connection between the two.
You only know it is suprious because of your understanding of the educational
atmosphere of a plantation. Statisticians *can* claim causality when they
feel that a particular explanation is reasonable and when they feel that no
other particular explanation is reasonable. Check your CS241 text. That's
why they can say: "we believe that smoking causes cancer." They have, using
their knowledge of biology and sociology, eliminated reasonable confounding
factors and they have, using this knowledge, explicitly ignored unreasonable
confounding factors (e.g. social insurance numbers that are prime). So even
statistics depends heavily on the concept of "reaonable doubt."
>Anecodotal evidence indicates that some blacks can
>>achieve literacy and numeracy, but the statistical evidence is lacking."
>
>Similar spurious attempt to show causality.
There is no causal connection argued above. But there is *evidence* (not
proof, but evidence), that the statistical evidence is misleading.
>>Nobody claimed that assaults have no reason other than misogyny. They claimed,
>>rather, that the assaults are misogyny-related. No, I can't measure that.
>>Yes, I still believe it. Yes, I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
>
>Mysogyny implies hatred of women. I can find many, many, *many* more
>examples of misandry being propagated, tolerated, and encouraged than I can
>mysogyny. By that anecdata, I conclude that women's violence against men
>is motivated by misandry much more often than men's violence against women
>is motivated by mysogyny.
That's good. When you start your organization fighting it, I will be happy
to help out as long as its mandate does not include tearing down the VAW
movement.
>Silence implies consent. If and when these organizations stop propagating
>false information about men and women, stop playing political power games
>and start addressing real problems, stop demonizing me and all other men
>simply because of our gender, stop hypocritically violating those very
>same sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Policy 33 that they
>fought to have put in, and *start* practicing the equality they preach -
>then *I'll* stop. In the mean time, I'll be doing my damnedest to educate
>people about the irresponsible abuse of statistics and hypocrisy.
That's a long list of charges. RE: false information -- I don't see the
women's movement as being any worse than most other movements, but maybe
you can still convince me. RE: "political powr games", I don't see women
as having a disproportionate power in our society or government. Re:
"demonizing you and all other men", there are certainly subsets of the
women's movement that do this but that doesn't equate to a condemnation of
the movement itself. We still need feminism, even if we could do without
many particular feminists.
>(Quick - in 500 words or less, justify the safety van ridership policy's
>violation of UW Policy 33 and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms)
I don't have time to go through UW's policies, but I don't believe that the
safety van's policy is at odds with the Charter, though it may be unfair
and may be at odds with some other law. What charter section do you mean?
The section on "equality rights" is about "before the law", not generally
"in society."
>Oh, dear. Well, I can't provide evidence that they're doing harm, as
>"harm" is tough to define, plus there's an assumption of causality involved
>there.
I didn't ask for *proof* but *evidence*.
>I *can* demonstrate that they are disseminating false and/or
>misleading information in many cases; I may be able to demonstrate that
>they are doing this deliberately and knowingly; if you believe those
>things to be harmful, then yes, I can show you some evidence that they are
>doing harm.
I believe you that they are doing a small amount of harm with misleading
evidence, but I think that social movements of all stripes (and social
anti-movements) are similarly guilty. But you are not just attacking their
statistics -- you are attacking the point of the movement. Is the movement
harmful? It doesn't seem so to me.
Paul Prescod
Ray Butterworth
So, were any specific solutions thought of during the event this year?
Did anyone leave thinking that they are now safer as a result of the
march? Does anyone believe that the march had any effect at all on
violence or on the people that commit it?
i.e. did the march actually do any good, or did it simply create
warm fuzzies for a large number of people? And even worse, did it
cause a large number of people to volunteer their time, money, and
effort thinking it was doing some good, when it could instead have
been directed to other, more productive volunteer activities? And
how about the various people that were "offended", "turned off", etc.
by the nature of the march itself? If so, they are two examples of
how the march can do more harm than good.
I'm not claiming that this is in fact the case; it's just the
impression I get from everything I've heard about it so far.
But a related event that is fact, is what we have just seen in this
newsgroup: a great deal of discussion about the march, which at
best does nothing, and at worst possibly causes hard feelings
between people and redirects their time and energies to discussing
issues that have nothing to do with the original problem, which
ironically is something about which they totally agree.
Paul Prescod
In article <EHqJu...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Ray Butterworth <rbutte...@math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>So, were any specific solutions thought of during the event this year?
>Did anyone leave thinking that they are now safer as a result of the
>march? Does anyone believe that the march had any effect at all on
>violence or on the people that commit it?
I don't know. If you read my posts you'll find that I have not offered any
support for this particular march. I have in fact argued that it is
probably not very efficient at achieving its goals.
That doesn't mean that the goal itself is flawed. We should draw attention
to misogynistic and "chauvinistic" violence just as we draw attention to
other particular types of violence (e.g. race related, religious, etc.).
This particular march seems to generate more heat than light, however.
(but maybe that's just uw.general)
Paul Prescod