Loving the Sinner

When someone commits a crime, or otherwise breaches the moral code, there are expanding circles of victimhood.

First and foremost, there is the actual, literal victim -- the person robbed or cheated or abused -- followed by the victim's family and loved ones.

But I think after that, the persons hurt most, and hurt in a distinctive and devastating way, are the perpetrator's family.

When someone is arrested for a serious crime, it is normal for the media to seek commit from the perp's loved ones. On occasion, you'll see someone seize upon a letter written by perpetrator's mother to the judge pleading for clemency, juxtaposing the letter's description of the perp (which is, of course, written through the lens of parental love) against the usually vicious facts of the underlying offense. How out-of-touch, how classless, how blind.

For my part though, I have no idea what we expect them to say. The position they are in seems unbearably cruel, and I hate -- hate -- the people who treat the family as an easy target. It is of course true that a serious crime doesn't become less serious because a person you love committed it. And yet, it strikes me as unreasonable to demand a parent partake in what would otherwise be the obvious, perhaps even obligatory, practice of condemnation. In concept perhaps there is a tightrope one can walk of still expressing love while in no way diminishing the underlying offense; in practice I doubt it's possible to anyone's satisfaction. A columnist who concentrates on a convicted arsonist's volunteer work and urges others to see him in the light may be guilty of himpathy; the arsonist's father is not. The acquaintance who remains friends with the serial catfisher may be judged harshly for not cutting someone who hurts others out of his life; the swindler's mother should not be. This doesn't mean we abide by the parental perspective -- we know full well it is skewed -- but they're not wrong to hold it. They are in a fundamentally unfair and cruel position; the best thing we can do is just ignore them.

And that, too, is part of the cruelty. At least the primary victims have an obvious claim to our empathy, care, and concern. The perpetrator's family has, at best, a much shakier claim to emotional support. The fact that this order of prioritization is obviously justified -- of course we care more about the immediate circle of victims than we do about the feelings of the perpetrator's family -- in some sense compounds the wound; they don't even have the salve of knowing that their social abandonment is unjust. Or worse -- we know families come in for attack by people who think they must in some way be culpable too, looking for ways to accommodate a thirst for retribution that cannot be solely slaked on the body of the actual wrongdoer. They are blamed for not anticipating the misconduct, or they are blamed for somehow facilitating it, or they are blamed for not cutting loose the bad guy once his crimes became clear. 

Of course, occasionally the family really will have been complicit in a direct way (the parents who give their obviously disturbed teenager free access to firearms, for instance). But more often than not, they are victims who are not treated as victims. And I suspect there is, lying underneath everything else, a feeling of betrayal -- surely, they had to know that doing these dreadful things would hurt us; was our relationship of love not enough of a reason to refrain? What a terrible thought, and how much more terrible to have to endure it alone.

I'm soon going to start raising a son. I hope he turns out to be kind and smart and generous and every other quality one would hope to have in a person. I hope that for all the obvious reasons (I'd hope that everyone turns out that way!), but also for the more (selfish?) reason that if he doesn't turn out that way it would be heartbreaking, and I don't know what I would do. Brining a child into the world means committing to unconditionally love someone you haven't even met yet -- that is a terrifying vulnerability, when you think about it. To be sure, the overwhelming majority of the time it goes fine -- most people, whatever foibles and missteps they might make as part of a normal human existence, don't do anything so egregious as to provoke this sort of crisis. But if it goes wrong, boy does it go wrong.

As one moves away from the most intimate circles -- parents, spouses, siblings -- the obligation to be clear-eyed about the wrong waxes, while the indulgence we might concede for one who loves the perpetrator probably fades. But in any relationship of love -- familial, romantic, platonic, even political -- it hurts when someone or something you love does something objectively cruel, shameful, or even monstrous. It hurts because it is wrong, and it hurts because nobody's empathic attention will be focused on you, and it hurts because you know at some level that this loneliness and abandonment isn't even unjust, and it hurts because all of that means that even trying to articulate this sense of loneliness and abandonment and pain is inevitably going to be viewed as trying to wrongfully redirect care and concern from those who need and deserve it more.

What a terrible cruelty to endure.

Sorry Because You Got Caught

Often times, when a public figure is revealed to have engaged in some misconduct and is in the process of apologizing, you will hear dismissal of that apology via some variation of "he's only sorry because he got caught."

I've been reflecting on this for the past few days, because I think it is a more interesting problem than often given credit for. What are the conditions for which we might think sorrow is genuine notwithstanding the fact that it follows after "getting caught"?

After all, temporally-speaking I suspect it is the case that most public gestures towards repentance only follow getting "caught" or called out. It's not impossible to repent for wrongdoing without ever being caught -- one can turn oneself in -- but most of the time the former follows the latter. And I actually suspect it is true that most people who are not caught doing X wrong are unlikely to unilaterally engage in public actions of repentance. At most, they'll feel ashamed and bad in private. Which is not nothing, and can yield genuine changes in behavior. But it's also typically not viewed as sufficient expressions of remorse for the person who is "caught".

So if most public figures are, in some sense, "only sorry because they got caught", does that mean that most public figures are insincere in their apologies? Or that their apologies are inherently unreliable and insufficient?

I don't think that can be right. The very fact that the vast majority of repentance work occurs after being caught should make us leery about saying that such work is inherently suspect when it follows being caught. For most people, "getting caught" is a triggering event in a process that one hopes will lead to genuine repentance, remorse, and repair. It strikes me as implausible to dismiss any gestures of remorse that follow getting caught, unless we think most human beings are basically incapable of true remorse but are low little sociopaths.

This doesn't mean that any individual person -- observer or (especially victim) is obliged to "forgive" a public wrongdoer upon the first gesture of apology. Your relationships are your business, and if you decide that you need to write someone off temporarily or permanently due to something they've done, that's up to you. I think we vastly overweight obliging forgiveness. Himpathy and all that. And more over, "being sorry" doesn't liquidate one's obligations to try and make right what one has done wrong. Repentance should come at cost.

But on the flip side, there's a version of the "we're too quick to forgive" politic that acts as if people are at best suckers, at worst complicit, if they don't view essentially all efforts at remediation and reparation as so much manipulation -- being taken in by someone who is "only sorry that they got caught." And to that, I'd also say "your relationships are your business," you're allowed to believe that someone is actually remorseful and wants to go through the steps to make a repair. If you're the victim, it can be doubly traumatizing to hear that you're a dupe or a sellout for trying to work with the wrongdoer to mend the break. If you're an observer, you can't forgive on behalf of the victim, but you're allowed to come to your own judgment about what the wrongdoer is trying to do and assist them on a journey towards repentance.

Friendly Rivalry

Without a doubt, the most important thing about this story is that JDate and Christian Mingle collaborate on an annual survey.

Also, Jews are less likely to cheat. So that's good.

Hate Crimes Protect White People Too

Commenting on a horrible Buffalo, NY attack where a White man was beaten by a crowd of Black men for dating a Black woman, the Black Snob asks whether the perpetrators (if caught) should be charged with a hate crime.

I think the answer is a pretty clear yes. This was a racialized crime of violence predicated on antediluvian notions of proper racial (and sexual) station. It is wrong -- always, in every case -- to attack someone because they are dating "your" women. For starters, the women aren't yours, they are their own, and it is their business who they do and do not find attractive. And second, the policing of racial purity and authenticity that reached its apex in this attack is always dangerous and needs to be put in check.

The purpose of hate crimes is to help achieve a racially egalitarian society, where we can live with, work with, and love each other inside and outside of racial lines without bias or fear. This is a dream that applies as much to White people as it does to people of color.

Happy Valentine's Day

The science of kissing. As anyone whose seen Jill and I together can testify, we "escalated".

Rejected in the Times

I really hoped these two kids had a "clarifying talk" before this New York Times magazine article, on pro-virginity students at Harvard (there's a novel topic! [/sarcasm]) came out:

Keliher smiled and said he was “a little bit” attracted to her [Fredell] — “in very superficial ways,” he added. “It’s something we laugh about — if we dated.”

But Fredell did not laugh. “No!” she erupted, and with increasing volume, “No! No! No! I can’t emphasize enough that there is nothing between me and Leo! It’s just that we’re not compatible in that regard.”

Otherwise, that would really suck.

As for the article itself: meh. I totally agree that feminism fundamentally means women have control of their own body. If they don't want sex, fine -- and I agree that there are a lot of sexualizing messages out there that push women towards sex when they might not want it. But if women do want sex, also fine -- and there are a lot of really harsh memes out there as well that judge women as sluts and whores, or say that they're worthless, or warn that they'll never be happy, if they do engage in sexual activities. And that's bad too. Being feminist means breaking down these damaging perceptions on both sides. But I'll tell you -- while I've seen plenty of feminists get really annoyed when "virginity advocates" get self-righteous and imply that they're better than women who have pre-marital sex, I've never seen feminists condemn the choice to stay abstinent in of itself. Because that would be utterly inconsistent with what feminism means.

Via WWPD

Friends and Lovers

A new study shows that guys mistake friendly gestures by women as sexual come-ons, and sexual come-ons as friendly gestures. Thus guaranteeing us a life of misery and solitude unless by sheer dumb luck we're tackled on the sofa by our to-be paramour. So to all my female "friends" who really were just willing me to jump them, much apologies.

Also, Ezra's right: examples of which signals were which would have been a nice addition to the article.

(Men, of course, as so tastefully commented by LitBrit, er, "wear their hearts on their sleeves", if you will).

Women Are Not Like Cows. Sex Is Not Like Milk

Bridget Crawford on the well-worn (and worn-out) expression. Offensive for many reasons, the one Prof. Crawford focuses on is how it treats women like a commodity. My girlfriend would rightfully slap me if I called her a cow, and do not conceive our relationship, or any relationship I might have, progressing to the point where I would "buy" her (and if I ever did start thinking along those lines, I'd hope she'd break up with me immediately).

But beyond that, "why buy the cow when the milk is free" acts as if sex is the only thing a woman has to offer a man. While I certainly think sexuality is an important part of a relationship, at least for me there are many other wonderful things that come from being in a relationship. Companionship. Emotional support. Fidelity. I could go on. It's unbelievably objectifying to act as if that one attribute is the only thing of value a woman has that a man might want. And, I might add, it displays a pretty degrading view of men, to think we're that shallow. It's amazing how my gender loves to revel in how backward we can be (anyone who's seen a beer commercial knows what I'm talking about).

Women are not cows. Nor are they talking sex toys. They're real people.

Ughhh....

Paul Abramson's provocative new book, Romance in the Ivory Tower, argues that there is a "right to romance" implicit in the 9th Amendment to the US constitution. This right nullifies collegiate policies which prohibit professor's from having relationships with their students.

In a more foolish comment than normal (an impressive achievement), Dineesh D'Souza argues that "If professors had a constitutional 'right to romance,' then a student's refusal to sleep with them would constitute a violation of their rights." Well, no, it wouldn't, if for no other reason than rape is not romantic (and believe me, there are plenty of other reasons).

Abramson locates the right to romance in the 9th amendment to the Constitution, which states that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Or put more simply, just because it isn't written, doesn't mean you don't have it. Of course, that raises the perplexing question of just which rights you do have. D'Souza, needless to say, doesn't even bother to answer this question, instead ducking back to the classic parade of horribles ("[D]o I have a Ninth Amendment right to take drugs? To travel without a passport? To conduct my own foreign policy?" I wish I was making these up). D'Souza may take the Robert Bork position that the 9th amendment is an "inkblot", but for the rest of us whose professions of fidelity to the constitution are more than conservative posturing, this is not a sufficient response.

Historically, the Supreme Court has given certain practices that don't have specific textual grounding constitutional protection (right to educate one's children in private schools, Pierce v. Society of Sisters; right for children to learn foreign languages, Meyer v. Nebraska. Needless to say, both of these cases refer to negative rights; they do not create positive entitlements). In my opinion, such acts gain their authority implicitly, if not explicitly, through the ninth amendment. There are two standards the court has used to determine whether an action fits within this framework, either one of which appears to be sufficient: first, if having the right is "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Palko v. Connecticut, and second if the right is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition," Moore v. City of East Cleveland.

Within this framework, I think Abramson has a far stronger case than D'Souza gives him credit for. The ability to choose one's own intimate associations can fairly be said to be "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty"--it is difficult to imagine a free state in which the state tells you who you can and cannot date (or worse yet, mandates who you must date). Such a right seems to me to be very closely tied to the freedom of association recognized as inherent in the 1st amendment, and has strong precedential ties to cases like Loving v. Virginia (striking down laws barring interracial marriage) and Lawrence v. Texas (striking down anti-sodomy laws).

That being said, I still disagree with Abramson. Courts have typically allowed restrictions on the formation of relationships where there is a substantial risk of an abuse of power. Adult incest laws are partially predicated on such concerns, as are rules prohibiting fraternization in the military, and employer/employee relationships at many companies. A relationship between a professor and a student seems broadly analogous to these cases, and raises many of the same concerns.

But wishing the Ninth Amendment away is not the way to deal with these issues.

Via WWPD