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Dear Amanda Marcotte,
I’m puzzled by a blog post you’ve written that mentions me. Reacting to a post I wrote at The Atlantic, you hone in on the part of my argument I’ve boldfaced in the excerpt below:
The narrow assertion I want to make is that the social norms we are inculcating are working to safeguard reproductive choices for women, and to undermine men’s investment in pregnancies and child-rearing. Given that progressives and feminists are especially invested in pushing back against the notion and reality that rearing children is the province of women, I’d be curious to hear whether they agree with my diagnosis, and how they think these questions ought to be navigated. Is there an inherent tension between the social norms that advance your agenda on reproductive rights, and the ones that better bring about the world you’d like to see more generally?
Here is how you characterize that passage:
Conor is less interesting to me. He uses the phrase “your agenda on reproductive rights”, making it exquisitely clear that he doesn’t consider women’s rights to be human rights, and there’s not much you can do with someone whose argument is premised on the belief that “women” are a separate category from “human”.
On reflection, does that strike you as sound chain of reasoning? If so, could you please explain it to me, because not only do I know your conclusion to be incorrect, but I am baffled by how you got there.
You also write:
He also buys into the fallacy that child support constitutes 100% of the expense of raising a child, when of course single mothers usually pay far more than 50% of the money and 90% of the time and 100% of the physical creation effort that goes into making a child. Okay, 99.9%, but I’ll get back to that in a second.
Actually, I neither argue nor believe that child support constitutes the entire expense of raising a child, and I defy you to provide the quote the demonstrates otherwise.
In your next line, you write of Damon Linker and I that “Both authors, due to their obvious emasculation fears, fell for the ‘abortion party’ story hook, line, and sinker.” Obvious emasculation fears? Anyway, here’s what I actually wrote about the “abortion party” article:
Last week Alternet published a controversial essay wherein the narrator attended a party thrown to raise money for a friend’s abortion. Numerous conservative bloggers wrote obligatory posts. The piece took heat from the left too. Tracy Clark-Flory posted a worthwhile example. “I hadn’t heard of an abortion party until today. That’s despite growing up in the liberal sanctuary of the San Francisco Bay Area and attending a passionately feminist women’s college,” she wrote. “I’ve seen women unabashedly announce “I had an abortion” to friends and strangers alike, out loud and on T-shirts and bumper stickers, but an abortion party is an entirely new concept to me.”
In a followup comment, Mary Elizabeth Williams astutely writes that “the story reads like it was calculated to provoke the most apoplectic reactions of the right. The wimmins are celebrating baby killing, and men aren’t welcome!” It’s that last bit about men not being welcome that I’d like to focus on. The piece’s numerous flaws notwithstanding, it affords an opportunity to discuss an issue that all the critical responses I’ve seen have mostly ignored.
Can you possibly think what you wrote is a fair characterization of what I wrote? For shame. I guess that’s what I get for noting that you and Andy McCarthy employ a similarly flawed approach to public discourse. If you criticize me again in the future, I hope you’ll do a better job addressing what I am actually arguing, as opposed to gross mischaracterizations. At the very least, you could provide a direct link to the blog post at issue so that your readers can make up their own minds about who is right.
Sincerely,
Conor Friedersdorf
Conor, To expect qualities such as grace, carefulness, or caution in Amanda Marcotte’s writings is to deny the reality of who she is— someone who became famous through ranting and has nothing else going for her. Pandagon is the Bitch-Session from Hell and it does you no harm to ignore them.
— Andrew Berman · Jul 24, 01:13 AM · #
levin of the left.
— razib · Jul 24, 01:39 AM · #
The abortion debate would be irrevocably tempered if we were marsupios.
— Josh Xiong · Jul 24, 01:44 AM · #
The less said about Marcotte’s arguments the better.
But I wonder if you’re mischaracterizing the natural pro-choice position. By the time that you’re having sex, I think it’s necessary to talk about what your views are well before anyone is late. And this is a case where it’s ok for a man to face a forced choice—deal with her view or hit the road.
To some extent, that always has to be the way it is. One aspect of choice has to be that a woman can always decline an abortion, even if she’d thought that she would have one if she became pregnant. And no matter how much that would surprise the father, that’s her decision.
I don’t think what I’ve said is incompatible with the ideal of relationships as partnerships. While a partnership involves developing your view of a good life together, it depends on a certain degree of pre-existing agreement about moral boundaries, one that can rarely be produced while the partnership is developing.
— Justin · Jul 24, 02:10 AM · #
Razib is right, Conor. Marcotte is basically a Friedersdorf troll.
— Matt Feeney · Jul 24, 02:39 AM · #
Levin, now Marcotte. Hopefully we’ll get a post on Jerry Springer’s shoddy reasoning soon.
— Criminally Bulgur · Jul 24, 04:04 AM · #
You need to think up better material.
— Art Deco · Jul 24, 04:16 AM · #
Amanda Marcotte simply believes that absolutely any kind of pro-life stance, no matter how carefully hedged, is morally depraved, and doesn’t think it’s possible to come to any such position without a contempt for women as one of your ingredients.
It’s a popular game to try and maximize one’s share of the opposing brands of moral superiority that typically accrue separately to the pro-life and pro-choice camps. Amanda doesn’t bother to distinguish much between people who take shots at reproductive freedom from a vaporous, centrist position, and people who throw blood on teenage girls. That might seem crazy, but there’s to my mind a clear and reasonable calculation behind it.
For my own part, I disagree. Since I arrived, late in life, at a position of full-blooded support for abortion rights, I feel that I’ve come to embody awesomeness. And I believe in a distinction between those who fear the awesomeness, and those who both fear AND crave it. I think it’s great that people who want to take potshots feel the need to do so from a defensive crouch, and encourage the practice with praise. Your emasculation fears are not obvious at all!
Best,
Dave
— Dave Hunter · Jul 24, 04:28 AM · #
Stealing my gig!
— Freddie · Jul 24, 04:57 AM · #
I agree that the attack on Conor is a bit ridiculous. But I’m surprised that you say you disagree with her conclusion. The two categories, ‘women’ and ‘human’ are indeed distinct, as the existence of some non-women humans proves. And that also implies that the categories ‘human rights’ and ‘women’s rights’ are distinct, at least if women’s rights spring from femininity and not humanity. And, presumably, if there were no rights that were particular to women it wouldn’t be very helpful to go around talking about women’s rights.
So as far as I can see Marcotte is accusing you (in the first excerpt) of believing things that are obviously and non-debatably true. (I wanted to say ‘uncontroversially’, but that seemed false given the circumstances. But they certainly are non-debatable – I don’t think one could do anything properly called ‘debating’ with someone who thought that ‘women’ and ‘human’ refer to the same category.)
— John · Jul 24, 12:43 PM · #
Game, set, match and trophy: Friedersdorf.
— Christian L. · Jul 24, 02:18 PM · #
John wrote, The two categories, ‘women’ and ‘human’ are indeed distinct, as the existence of some non-women humans proves. And that also implies that the categories ‘human rights’ and ‘women’s rights’ are distinct, at least if women’s rights spring from femininity and not humanity.
The bad logical move isn’t in saying the categories are different but in assuming that this entails that they’re seperate. My guess is that Conor would hold women’s rights to be a subcategory of human rights. All women are humans, but not all humans are women. That “human” and “woman” mean different things doesn’t entail that women don’t count as human, which is what Conor’s being accused of claiming. As I said, there’s a subcategory relationship. (If we were doing this in set notation or even Venn diagrams, this would all be perfectly clear.)
— william randolph · Jul 24, 02:28 PM · #
Marcotte presents an interesting opportunity for political/sociological study. She really is the lefty version of the Rush/Levin sickness that has spread throughout conservatism. Yet, in the liberal blogosphere, there are counterweights to Marcotte and her brand of discourse. The folks at Daily Kos, for example, may be sharply partisan but they rarely froth at the mouth quite like dear Amanda.
The question is if the Left can police their own discourse and thinking better than the Right has over the last 16 years. There were signs during the Obama-Hillary primary battle that they might be able to pull it off, but it’s something that has to be done constantly.
Mike
— MBunge · Jul 24, 03:15 PM · #
Will wrote, “That “human” and “woman” mean different things doesn’t entail that women don’t count as human, which is what Conor’s being accused of claiming.)”
That may be what she “means”, but that isn’t what she says. What she says does arguably follow from what Connor says, but is trivially true. What she “means” could only be taken to follow from what Connor says by someone totally deranged. So I’m not sure which interpretation is more charitable.
— John · Jul 24, 03:51 PM · #
Women’s rights flow from the uterus.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 24, 04:00 PM · #
Dave,
It’s not. You don’t have to meet many pro-lifers to confirm that, but, of course, as you meet more and more it becomes more and more obvious. That’s why pro-life also means anti-conception, even for “moderate” pro-lifers; that’s why the pro-life toolbox is mostly full of clinic harassment and pictures of bloody fetuses, even as they proclaim their support for the dignity of the unborn and of women.
— Chet · Jul 27, 07:42 PM · #
Isn’t this woman the one who bought into the Duke Lacrosse rape hoax? And falsely accused the victims? Remind me why we’re giving her any attention? It’s pretty outrageous that she’s tolerated in public discourse.
— Joe Bingham · Jul 28, 08:45 PM · #
I like kind discourse and attributions of good faith, but Marcotte’s screeds really approach the status of unmitigatedly evil. I’m not sure we should put up with them or humor them with thoughtful responses.
— Joe Bingham · Jul 28, 08:50 PM · #