Lopez: “Who asked for this promise? When?”

Roderick: “Does someone have to ask for it? Why? We’re talking about a promise, not a contract.”

Lopez: “Isn’t a contract just a formalized promise? I honestly don’t see the distinction you’re trying to make, here.”

Trying to channel the shade of J.L. Austin for a moment…

I think the speech act here is neither a contract nor a promise; it’s an oath, which is similar to both in certain respects but also importantly different.

A contract, to start out with, is more than a formalized promise. You can make (ethically binding) promises that fail to meet the conditions of being a contract. For example, if I promise to get you a pony for your birthday and then renege, I’ve broken a promise (and done something which is blameworthy unless there are extenuating circumstances). But I haven’t breached a contract: among other things, there is no quid pro quo.

The lack of quid pro quo is connected with another feature of promises as against contracts: they can be more unilateral; you can make unasked-for promises (my promise ethically binds me to get you the pony whether or not you asked me to make it), whereas contracts by their nature have to be (in some important sense) reciprocal.

But while promises can be more unilateral than contracts, they cannot be completely unilateral. There are such things as unasked-for promises, but there is no such thing as a promise made to no-one in particular, and there’s no such thing as a promise made to someone not in a position to receive it (e.g. if I say “I promise to buy Lopez a pony for his birthday” in my room and never tell you about it, I haven’t made you a promise; if I say “I promise to buy you a pony for your birthday” and you reject the promise—“I don’t want a pony for my birthday,” say—then I’m not bound by a promise either). Similarly, as Austin points out, while there can be such a thing as an unasked-for promise to benefit someone, there is probably no convention for an unasked-for promise to harm someone (“I promise to bean you on the head” may be binding if you’ve asked me to bean you on the head for some reason, but not if you haven’t asked me; contrary to the cheesy quip, that’s a threat, not a promise).

Oaths, of course, are different; their binding force, unlike that of both contracts and promises, is entirely self-regarding. You can make an oath to someone, but you don’t have to; you can, e.g., take oaths of vengeance without the knowledge or consent of anyone else (least of all the intended victim). Importantly, when you break an oath of this sort, if it’s blameworthy, then it’s blameworthy because of what it means about you—whereas the blameworthiness of breaking a promise or breaching a contract primarily comes from the fact that you are doing wrong by someone else.

All of these conditions, of course, are relevant to what a n office-holder is doing when they swear to uphold the Constitution. Among other things, it’s unclear whether they are swearing this to anyone in particular. You could say it’s a promise to each of the citizens of the U.S., and the fact that they never asked for it wouldn’t count against taking it as a promise; but the fact that it is clearly made whether or not we consent to it (you and I and Lopez, for example, don’t), and the fact that some of the terms of the unasked-for “promise” involve harming us, do count against so taking it.

Is it extra-blameworthy to break an oath to do evil? I don’t know; I suppose that’s a question that the epics have grappled with in a lot more depth than I could here. Of course, you have to distinguish breaking an oath to do evil in order to do good (which is probably praiseworthy courage, in most cases at least, although courage may require taking a heavy cost for having taken an oath that you couldn’t ethically fulfill) from breaking an oath to do evil in order to do even more evil than the oath provided for (as in the case of most everyone currently in the U.S. government). In the latter case, my suspicion is that the oath-breaking makes the oath-breaker more contemptible but probably doesn’t make the acts themselves any more evil than they otherwise would be. But I’m not firmly convinced either way.

Aeon, of course I can speak only for myself and not for Roderick, but if he’s citing the statistic that appears in our essay (which seems likely), the figure comes from the CDC / NIJ National Violence Against Women Survey, whose results are reported on at length by Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes (2000) at http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf. The full Methodology Report is apparently available only in print, but there is a discussion of the methodology on pp. 13-15 of the research brief at http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/172837.pdf.

The report is horrible stuff; what’s more horrible is that the experiences tha I have learned about from my friends don’t even leave me with cognitive dissonance about its truth; the survey methodology is solid but I can also believe the numbers because they have been proven true in my life. Which is a horrible thing to realize.

That said, here’s a dry and abstract discussion of the figures that we know.

Section 5 of the report discusses “Intimate Partner” Violence (including a survey of the past literature), and reports that NVAWS found (p. 38, exhibit 9):

• 24.8% of women surveyed had suffered, at the hands of an intimate partner, rape, attempted rape, or physical assault, in their lifetime.

• 25.5% of women surveyed had suffered, at the hands of an intimate partner, rape, attempted rape, physical assault, or stalking, in their lifetime.

“Intimate partners” are current and former spouses, male or female cohabiting partners, boyfriends or girlfriends, and dates. (Figures elsewhere demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of the intimate partner violence against women reported in the survey is committed by male partners. Although findings of widespread violence against women in lesbian relationships would hardly be reassuring, either, from a feminist standpoint.)

“Rape” and “attempted rape” are defined quite conservatively—that is, the categories include significantly fewer activities than would be prosecutable under existing sexual assault laws. The screening questions can be found on p. 13 of the research brief. Part of the reasons for the narrowness of the screening questions is, I think, to avoid the controversy around Mary Koss’s findings (controversy which I happen to think is unwarranted and which I know in some cases — Katie Roiphe’s and Christina Hoff Sommers’ attacks, for example — to be based on mischaracterizations, but which is beside the point here).

“Physical assault” was screened using the Conflict Tactics Scale, with assaults ranging from slapping or hitting to using a knife or gun. (Abuse was usually repeated: women who reported being physically assaulted by a partner in the past 12 months had been assaulted, on average, about 3-4 times that year.)

As we mention in the footnotes to the essay, a full discussion of the validity of common statistics on violence against women was beyond the scope of our essay; our effort was to make some progress on the philosophical issue of how radical feminist class analysis and libertarianism can be reconciled, and to mostly bracket the empirical question of whether the evidence and arguments commonly given to support feminist class analysis are cogent. Of course, that’s an awfully important issue, but we ran long on talk as it was, and for myself I think it’s an issue that is already thoroughly discussed in the existing feminist literature.

That said, it is an important issue for the claims made in our paper, even if it’s one we bracketed at the time, and I’d be glad to discuss it further here as you like.

“Might not one argue that one reason, if not the reason, that the State attempts to undermine the family is that it is one patriarchal institution competing with another?”

Geoffrey, I think this is an excellent point. I think that paleolibertarians (for example) drastically overestimate the degree to which father-right and State prerogative come into conflict with one another, but I think this is incisive remark on why they do where they do. It’s worth thinking about this in light of, for example, the rape ritual of the so-called jus primae noctis in feudal Europe.

I think two issues need to be separated here.

1. There’s a philosophical issue as to whether or not class analysis of any sort involves premises that qualify as “collectivist” in some way that should make them objectionable to libertarians.

2. There’s an empirical issue as to whether or not there is, in fact, a class system of male supremacy over women in the culture and society being discussed.

It’s important to note that these are two different issues. Of course, if (1) goes against class analysis, then there’s no point in going on to (2). But it doesn’t go the other way; whether you answer (2) positively or negatively, (1) remains open; there are a lot of class analyses in the boat with feminist analysis based on claimed hierarchies other than sex (e.g. economic class, race, sexuality). Historically radical individualists such as Spencer, Tucker, Spooner, de Cleyre, etc. have been willing to apply class analysis in more or less all of these cases. You might argue that conditions have changed since the 19th and early 20th century in relevant ways, and that class analysis that was once factually well-justified no longer is. O.K.; I’d disagree, and we can argue about that, but if that is the response, then you have already conceded the ground on (1) by admitting that there are historical cases in which this sort of class analysis is legitimate and useful.

“As a man, if I commit a rape, or batter anyone for that matter, I will be prosecuted and imprisoned.”

This shows a considerable faith in the reliability of the criminal justice system that I don’t happen to share. In point of fact I know that it’s false, if intended as a universal claim or even a statistical generality: the vast majority of rapes, for example, go unreported and unpunished. (I, for one, personally know men who raped or otherwise assaulted friends of mine and walk the streets today.) Given how rape survivors have been and still are typically treated when they make allegations public—and, for that matter, given what I, as a libertarian, know about the workings of government law-enforcement—I don’t find this at all surprising.

I don’t find the fact that violence against women is nominally illegal in the United States—as opposed to, say, some parts of Pakistan, or Afghanistan under the Taliban, or modern Europe and America up to the mid-19th century—tremendously reassuring. This only refutes the feminist class analysis if the only means by which a class system can be created and enforced is through State power. But why believe that? Lynch law in the post-Reconstruction South was nominally illegal too—it was conspiracy to commit murder—but I would not know what to make of a claim that that fact made lynch law irrelevant to the class relations between black and white Southerners. How much does nominal illegality mean when widespread, frequent violence can usually be practiced with impunity and with a considerable weight of cultural hostility towards the victim and sympathy for the attacker?

“If you really want to combat a system of male supremacy, then, sounds like you should devote your energy to pushing for liberalization of the Arab world.”

There may be many things that feminists, in the United States and abroad, could be charged with, but I don’t think that too little awareness or political commotion around the cause of women in the Arab world, East Africa, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. is one of them.

I asked: “do you think that there are any prevalent libertarian complaints against radical feminism that are based on misunderstandings (whether through ignorance or misreading) of what radical feminists have historically said and done? And if you do, how prevalent do you find them to be?”

Aeon responded: “I haven’t made an exhaustive study of this specific question, but my general sense is that most libertarian criticisms of radical feminsim, incl. those made by libertarian feminists, is that radical feminism errs by being, well, illiberal. But hang on, when you ask about libertarian criticisms, are you referring to cranky letters in Liberty Magazine, or to real work by libertarian academic philosophers and political theorists? My guess would be that the former may well be prone to misunderstandings and caricature, but so what? The latter is surely not.”

Fair question; although I am interested in the “cranky letters to Liberty” (and “crude remarks at conventions”) genre—since some of my interest on this point has to do with actual libertarian and feminist practice, and the attitudes and actions of the rank and file are relevant here—my main question was about academic libertarian theorists. For myself, I can think of several examples of serious misunderstanding of radical feminist claims—sometimes apparently from lack of acquaintence with the material, and sometimes apparently from misunderstanding material in spite of familiarity with it.

Here are some examples:

1. Murray Rothbard’s 1970 tirade against WL, in which, among other things, he clearly mischaracterizes feminist arguments on pay equity and apparently misreads Robin Morgan as a lesbian separatist, among other things, in the course of an obnoxious polemic that ends up describing the “quintessence” of the WL movement as “a bitter, extremely neurotic if not psychotic, man-hating lesbianism.”

2. The popularity, amongst libertarian academics, of the claim that Andrea Dworkin and/or Catharine MacKinnon claims that all sex is rape, a claim that neither one ever made and which they have repeatedly denied when asked.

3. Wendy McElroy’s claim, in Liberty for Women, that class categories in radical feminism are not fluid because they are fixed by biology rather than the use of force.

4. The popularity, in some libertarian circles, of Christina Hoff Sommers’ distinction between “equity feminism” and “gender feminism,” a pair of opposed categories that—so far as I can tell—actually track no historical tendency of thought and no shared premise whatsoever. (I don’t know what “gender feminism” is supposed to actually be, but I do know that if you put Kim Gandy, Andrea Dworkin, and Mary Daly into the same political boat, you are surely misunderstanding something.)

More examples could be mentioned at length, but a number of these are discussed in the essay, so maybe it will be best to just post the URI when it goes up momentarily, and ask for comments on what is said there.

“Actually, I haven’t seen much glamorization of rape in the popular culture.”

Aeon, what about: the works of Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, John Updike’s Rabbit series, Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul On Ice, A Clockwork Orange in film or print? How about Hitchcock’s Frenzy, Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, or perhaps less enlightening fare such as Revenge of the Nerds? The musical stylings of the Rolling Stones (“Midnight Rambler,” for example), 2 Live Crew, NWA, or Eminem?

Or, need I say it, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead?

The glamorization of rape and sexualized violence is not exactly an underground phenomenon. Feminist works such as Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will, Susan Faludi’s Backlash, Sut Jhally’s documentary Dreamworlds and others discuss the matter at considerable length and with plenty of examples from various domains and periods of the culture.

(Note also that this is also bracketing entirely the contents of pornography, which should not be set aside in a discussion of popular culture, but which is whole new can of worms to open.)

The cultural treatment of rape has improved, somewhat, since the heydey of windbags like Mailer and Thompson, or the age of (incredibly mean-spirited) 1980s sex “comedies.” But there is still a lot to confront out there, and if there have been any substantial changes for the better it would be pretty hard to say what might have caused that if not the sustained critique of rape culture by folks such as Dworkin, Millett, Brownmiller, Faludi, etc. for the past three decades.

Roderick, regarding alcohol-prohibitionist abolitionists:

would the fact that the person in question was un-libertarian on the alcohol issue be a reason not to quote him or learn from him on the slavery issue? I can’t see why.

Aeon:

Because it’s cherry-picking at best, and misleading at worst. If the underlying reasons for the person’s saying something that, on the surface, you agree with, are wrong, then it’s IMO not much use to quote that person.

I don’t get it. Does having anti-libertarian reasons to favor one position preclude having libertarian reasons to favor another? Are we supposed to treat any analysis written by someone who held a non-libertarian position as fruit of a poisoned vine?

Are you willing to apply the same standards to the author of this “cherry-picked” quote?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

After all, he not only endorsed but personally practiced, on a large scale, crimes against liberty far worse than anything Andrea Dworkin has ever countenanced (and made the protection of those crimes a significant part of his later political career).

Sheldon, I think Kennedy’s point is that it would be illegitimate to seize people’s money for tax-funded disaster relief even if it were authorized in the Constitution—if, for example, the Bushists suddenly became strict constructionists and rushed an amendment through the Congress and state legislatures allowing them to disburse the funds, that wouldn’t change the moral or political case against tax-funded state-to-state transfers one bit. Ergo, the appeal to the Constitution seems out of place—since the transfer is illegitimate whatever the Constitution says, why point out its silence?

David,

Word is that there is a TV movie of Their Eyes Were Watching God made for ABC, featuring Halle Berry as Janie, which should be airing March 6:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0406265/

Thought y’all might be interested.

-C

Thanks, Jeanine, for your kind words about our essay. I think that you and I may disagree about many things at the end of the day but the need to bring vigorous feminist debate into the world of libertarian activism is certainly not one of them. I agree with you that there are many feminists—and, contrary to what many libertarians seem to take for granted, radical feminists significantly more so than liberal feminists—who are open to libertarian insights, if we will only take the trouble to acknowledge gender as a serious issue in its own right and talk about a respectful alliance of equals. There’s a long history of feminist activism independent of, or directly in opposition to, State power and both libertarians and feminists would be wise to look to it.

Thanks also for your enlightening comments elsewhere in the thread.

My last general overview touched on a lot of things I wanted to say, but I realized that I spent enough time on it there that I never got around to directly answering Robert’s direct questions. Again, speaking for myself; what Roderick agrees or disagrees with I’ll let him say.

The essay that we presented at APA (with the sections we didn’t have time to read restored for your reading pleasure) should be posted online as a draft-in-progress soon. I’ll post a URI when we have one.

Let me start by saying that when I single out “I Want a Twenty-Four Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape” for praise, I really mean it—it’s an essay that fundamentally changed how I think about myself as a feminist. I don’t think of it as a great piece of libertarian feminist writing, but as a great piece of feminist writing simpliciter. Which, I’d argue, is good enough on its own; the problems with patriarchy aren’t all reducible to problems with sexist governments (although there are many such problems), and insofar as patriarchy is a system of oppression often allied with, but independent from, statism, feminist activism and theory can have independent merit without saying much or anything about the need for anti-statism on a particular occasion.

Of course, that’s a raft of assertions that are contentious. I’ll bracket the discussion of whether patriarchy is in fact real, pernicious, autonomous from statism, objectionable even when autonomous from statism, etc. for now; it’s an important discussion to have, but right now let me put it out there as one position among many in the space of libertarian positions, and address to what degree Dworkin’s work is compatible with that sort of feminist libertarianism. Here’s what Robert mentions regarding “I Want a Twenty-Four Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape”:

“Here is one passage that I think might deserve comment. Keep in mind that the essay is not based on a speech that Dworkin gave to the tribal elders of Waziristan. It is based on a speech that she gave to the National Organization for Changing Men, in St. Paul, Minnesota:

‘We women. We don’t have forever. Some of us don’t have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us.’”

How you react to this passage is likely to depend a lot on what you think about the prevalence and effects of male violence against women. Since Robert marks out this passage without any comment further than saying it deserves comment and that it was given in Minnesota rather than Waziristan, I’m not sure what he means to ask about it, but it seems that he might find it an overstatement. (If that’s not what he meant to say, I apologize, and look forward to being set straight.) What I can offer is this: in a society in which (according to rather conservative measures of the CDC’s National Violence Against Women Society), about one out of every four women has been attacked, in the form of battery or rape or both, by her husband, fiancee, boyfriend, or date, Dworkin is right. I think we know enough about rape and battery at this point to know that she is also right that they are part of a larger cultural system that denigrates women and proclaims men’s right to control “their” women (wives, girlfriends, daughters), and that rape and battery are the nominally illegal but frequently excused expressions of that system in the form of violence.

The point of the passage is to urge pro-feminist men to take serious political action against gender violence now, because the problem is overwhelmingly large and urgent, and women who are facing the threat of rape or battery don’t have time to wait on the sort of touchy-feely guilt politics that was somewhat popular in the “pro-feminist men’s movement” of the 1970s and 1980s. I agree, and I think that the point applies quite broadly to a number of political tendencies that have urged feminists to hang out and wait until some magic bullet (e.g. overthrowing capitalism, ending racism, smashing the state, creating a culture of individualism, etc.) solves the problem.

Back to Campbell:

“A good deal more in this speech is worthy of comment, but I want to give priority to Dworkin’s conclusion:

‘Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.

‘I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don’t mind begging you to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?

‘And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can’t begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives—both men and women—begin to experience freedom. If you have a conception of freedom that includes the existence of rape, you are wrong. You cannot change what you say you want to change. For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.’”

Well, what needs comment here? Isn’t it true that if you have a conception of freedom that includes the existence of rape, you are wrong? Isn’t it true that a society in which rape is extremely prevalent will therefore be seriously retarded in any attempt to practice both equality and love between those who are made to live in fear of rape and those whom they are made to fear? Shouldn’t we long to experience a day of freedom from the threat of sexual assault?

Of course, no-one seriously thinks that a one-day “truce” like this is possible. I take it that if someone is reading this as a suggestion of political strategy for pro-feminist men rather than a visionary political fantasy intended to get the point across—that a commitment to freedom for women needs to include a serious commitment to ending rape—then that is a pretty curious form of uncharitable interpretation.

I comment a bit, briefly, on the issue of collective guilt and class analysis in reply to Aeon; Roderick’s talked about the need for libertarian class analysis at somewhat more length elsewhere.

“Keep in mind, too, the definition that Dworkin puts forth in the same essay:

“And by rape you know what I mean. A judge does not have to walk into this room and say that according to statute such and such these are the elements of proof. We’re talking about any kind of coerced sex, including sex coerced by poverty.”

I think that Dworkin is mistaken to assimilate otherwise unwanted sex that results from economic necessity with rape. But I think she’s right that the two have more in common than many people care to admit and that it’s important not to lose sight of those similarities even as we insist that, from the standpoint of the law and the defensive use of force, the two have to be strictly distinguished.

As for the use of “coerced,” well, I think there are two different ways the term is used, as I mention in my response to Mark Fulwiler, and that the important thing here is to give the standard libertarian arguments that violence is only justified as a defense against coercion in the narrow sense. But Dworkin’s use of “coercion” here is not particularly unusual or any more egregious than the broad use of “coercion” by Leftists and conservatives alike (Leftists frequently use it in reference to harsh economic realities; conservatives often use it in reference to pervasive cultural pressures; I think that both have a right to use the word that way but that both are quite wrong to take that as a grounds for calling in State violence).

“The same goes for Dworkin’s views on sexual intercourse, which she insists have been so grossly misrendered.”

Dworkin’s views on heterosexual intercourse have been grossly misrendered. Broadly, the theses of INTERCOURSE and similar work elsewhere are: (1) that patriarchal culture makes penis-in-vagina intercourse the paradigm activity for all sexuality; other forms of sexuality are typically treated as “not real sex” or as mere precursors to penis-in-vagina intercourse and always discussed in terms that analogize them to penis-in-vagina intercourse; (2) that penis-in-vagina intercourse is typically depicted in ways that are systematically male-centric and which portray the activity as iniated by and for the man (as “penetration” of the woman by the man, rather than “engulfing” of the man by the woman, or as the man and woman “joining” together—the last is represented in the term “copulation” but that’s rarely used in ordinary speech about human men and women); (3) that the cultural attitudes are reflective of, and reinforce, material realities such as the prevalence of violence against women and the vulnerability of many women to extreme poverty, that substantially constrain women’s choices with regard to sexuality and with regard to heterosexual intercourse in particular; (4) that (1)-(3) constitute a serious obstacle to women’s control over their own lives and identities that is both very intimate and very difficult to escape; (5) that intercourse as it’s actually practiced occurs in the social context of (1)-(3), and so intercourse as a real social institution and a real experience in individual women’s lives is shaped and constrained by political-cultural forces and not merely by individual choices; (6) that, therefore, drawing the ethical lines in regards to sexuality solely on the basis of individual formal consent rather than considering the cultural and material conditions under which sexuality and formal consent occur makes it hard for liberals and some feminists writing on sexuality to see the truth of (4); that (7) they therefore end up collaborating, either through neglect or endorsement, with the sustanence of (1)-(3), to the detriment of women’s liberation; and (8) feminist politics require challenging both these writings and (1)-(3), that is, challenging intercourse as it is habitually practiced in our society.

(Which is, I will add, not the same as declaring the anatomical mechanics of intercourse somehow antifeminist, or equating all heterosexual sex with rape, or coming out against sex.)

“Finally, I am curious to know what Roderick and Charles think of an op-ed from 2002, which praises the city council of Glasgow, Scotland, for enacting a ban on lap dancing. Including their interpretation of the final line.”

Well, I think that she’s wrong about the law and right about lap-dancing (and strip clubs, generally). But libertarian feminism broadly, and a libertarian feminist appreciation of Dworkin’s valuable work on rape and battery specifically, is to some degree a separable issue from whether you agree or disagree with her about whether strip clubs and lap-dances are pernicious. “Libertarian feminism” as such leaves that question open for feminists to argue over, and only demands that whatever they decide, government force neither used nor be confused with cooperative community action.

As for the last line, I take it to be a pretty common form of rhetorical excess. People often talk about beating people that they think hold scummy positions, forcing them to read some important work at gunpoint, etc. as a way of sharply pointing out what a sleazebag or doofus they think the person is, without seriously meaning it. It is enough to point to Dworkin’s endorsement of government force to find a point at which she is wrong; there’s no need to make an uncharitable reading in order to manufacture others.

This is only the beginning of what should by rights be a vast discussion; but I hope that it’s helped Robert understand my position a bit better.