ROE, ROE,-- WAIT, DON'T ROE THAT BOAT

So "Roe vs. Wade" was overturned last week. I've said little about the topic of abortion on this blog, aside from this conclusion from THE ILLEGITIMACY OF 'LEGITIMATE RAPE':

I am opposed categorically to the politicized sentiments of Akin's kind.  Their only solution to the multifarious problems relating to unwanted conception-- which include, but certainly are not limited to, conceptions through rape-- is an absolute refusal of the state's power to kill the unborn. 

And, unpleasant though it may seem, the unborn cannot be given special rights, despite any and all societal instincts to protect future generations.  It goes without saying that the state probably has made many mistakes in executing particular abortions, just as it has in executing particular prisoners.  But it does not follow that all of the executions were mistakes.  There are times when the unborn, innocent though they may be, simply have to suffer from living in an imperfect world.

I sympathize somewhat more with those individuals-- none of whom are affiliated with the anti-abortion crowd-- who recommend, not an absolute ban on abortion, but merely restrictions as to how *often* citizens might "choose" to have abortions.  But it's seems almost certain that our society, having become polarized between two extremes, will never explore this area of legal theory. 

Over the years I've heard many of those on the Far Right voice the opinion that the 1973 SCOTUS decision was rooted in "activism," and that its extrapolations of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights were out of line. I would agree only in one respect: of the various rights that the Constitution spells out, none of them relate to medical matters. One may speculate that lawmakers of the 18th and 19th centuries did not foresee the politicization of medical concerns, particularly abortion. So they never spelled out whether or not changing ethics regarding such subjects would truly fall under the so called penumbra of the "life, liberty, and property" guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment (that is, one could not be deprived of these without "due process of law.") This essay from CNN alleges that abortion was available under common law in the U.S. until 1880, though CNN may not be the best arbiter of our national history.

Though I may have become somewhat more conservative on this or that topic over the years, I've never had a problem, as shown above, with the notion that the state may expedite the termination of new life, simply because that state always has that power in essence. I favor neither of the hardcore absolutisms regarding the physical act, be it religion's arbitrary dictates about when the soul enters the fetus, or materialism's screeds about how the fetus just ain't alive until science says so. Neither are worthwhile guides as to whether a contemporary society should consider the option of abortion to be part of the "life, liberty and property" troika. 

I also noted in the segment above that I'm less than impressed with the extremism of some pro-choicers, who would not accept any restrictions whatsoever in their favored form of liberty. Yet it's possible that even if we lived in a time dominated by Classic Liberals rather than Progressives, the SCOTUS Judges would have made the same decision: that abortion could not be viewed as a federally mandated "right" that trumped the local politics of states. 

I do not know all the reasons that the Judges chose to nullify Roe v. Wade. I don't disbelieve their stated reasons, nor do I dismiss all of the animadversions expressed by those who hate the verdict. Nevertheless, I think it possible that, just as the 1973 decision had the effect of breaking down the power of the Religious Right, the 2022 decision may be a challenge to the power of the ultraliberal Left, which enjoyed a boost in cultural hegemony in response to the presidency of Trump and the devastation of Covid, which Lefties blamed on Trump.

In many ways, the Right's crocodile tears for the slain unborn are a way of stoking emotional response from the faithful, in much the same way that the Left sheds similar tears for the sufferings of marginalized women and POC. I think that in recent times the fanaticism of the Left has been more harmful to the culture as a whole, but I won't claim that a return to the values of the Right might not be worse. 

In other words, I cast a plague on both their houses-- albeit with the caveat that I don't really have a dog in the fight.

A REALLY LONG DEFINITION OF VIOLENCE PT. 3

Although the definition of "violence" is my titular purpose, I've been obliged to discuss the topic of "might" first.  The formula "might makes right" is practically the unacknowledged motto of those practicing the politics of ressentiment, as I pointed out here  with respect to Noah Berlatsky's rewording of that motto:

"For the superhero genre, the best person in the world is the one with the greatest power; beating evil is a matter of hitting it harder."

Parts 1 and 2 of the long definition have thus situated "might" as every kind of conceivable activity.  Though the person who conceived the aphorism almost surely was thinking of "might" as a superior capacity for violence, "greater might" does not really make right in all circumstances, either in fiction (WATCHMEN) or in the real world (the struggles of Nelson Mandela).  It is demonstrable that "lesser might" can make right even as "greater might" does.  Admittedly one sees "lesser might" in ascendance, both in fiction and real life, far less often than the converse.

So violence cannot be equated with might. In fact, many forms of might in modern society depend on money rather than guns.  An easy example would be the current battle regarding state-sanctioned abortion, in which some organizations attempt to "freeze out" the government by refusing to let their tax dollars be utilized for that purpose.

It is sensible, then, to see violent activity-- as well as sexual activity, to which the former is inextricably linked, if only in a cultural sense-- as a subset of a larger set comprising "all forms of activity/might." I propose this arrangement even though I realize that most ressentiment-critics will fail to make such distinctions, and fall back on the equivalence of might and violent expressions of power.

The next question is, what if anything distinguishes violence and sex-- which I see as violence's "mismatched partner in a buddy-cop film"-- from all other forms of activity?  In literary analysis I've usually referred to them as "kinetic elements" or "kinetic effects," but these determinations are not sufficient for a definition taking in both fiction and the real world.   This essay approached the question by negotiating the intellectual insights of Francis Fukuyama and Georges Bataille.

First Fukuyama:

Fukuyama's re-defines Plato's *thymos* as a spectrum of esteem ranging from how an individual seeks his own esteem from others to the way whole societies seek such validation. He then provides a dualistic schema as to how differing versions of thymotic action manifest in society. One version is "megalothymia," whose prefix means "great or exaggerated," and the other is "isothymia," with a prefix meaning "equal

Then Bataille:

There is certainly a somatic sense in which sex resembles violence, which is the principle reason why Freudians in particular have associated the two. But Bataille concentrates too much on the somatic similarity, the arena of an eros that may include the "sensuous frenzy" to destroy an enemy as much as the frenzy to consummate the sex-act.

This is where Fukuyama's formulations about thymos provide a theoretical guide to steer one clear of the rocks of Freudianism.

While there are ways in which sexual partners can attempt to "assault" one another-- ways which include, but are not confined to, rape-- sex is dominantly isothymic, in that sex usually requires some modicum of cooperation. Violence, then, dominantly conforms to Fukuyma's megalothymic mode insofar as it usually involves a struggle of at least two opponents in which one will prove superior to the other, though in rare cases fighters may simply spar with no intent of proving thymotic superiority

 So of all forms of human might/activity, violence and sex are the perfect exemplars of competition and cooperation, and therefore of the thymotic tensions that pervade all human societies and cultures.  Further, violence and sex are also the primary sources of what Bataille calls "sensuous frenzy," which may be termed the perception that one's thymos has become so expanded as to escape the confines of one's body.  People may love their money-- or, if they give it up, love dictating what it should or should be used for, as with the Little Sisters of the Poor-- but few real people get a feeling of ecstasy from it, a la Uncle Scrooge.

Assuming that the ressentiment-critic is even aware of the arguments that posit violence as a fundamental aspect of human nature, said critic will almost certainly reject the argument out of hand.  Attempts to conflate superheroes-- or violent heroes generally-- with fascism are always built upon the supposition that violence is not intrinsic; that it is a demon that can banished by invoking comparisons to anti-liberal forces like the KKK and proponents of eugenic control, as Berlatsky does in the cited essay.  Though Berlatsky knows that American superheroes were not produced in a literally fascist society, the spectre of fascism-- supposedly the worship of force-- is an ever-present danger, if one happens to swear by that great insight: "monkey see monkey do." Here's Berlatsky in the comments-section:

...fascism in particular tends to equate violence and goodness, and power as itself righteous. That’s not the case for left ideologies, which are about equality, and so don’t tend to elevate individual power as the apotheosis of goodness.

Berlatsky's "violence=goodness" equation misrepresents the appeal of fictional violence as being one of crypto-fascism.  It's also significant that where he's willing to invoke "the hermeneutics of deceit" to find fascism in violent conflict irrespective of the circumstances, he doesn't apply the same hermeneutics to those supposedly more "equal" societies:

Fascism is particularly inclined to promote might as right; it’s a worship of power. Like I said upthread, liberal and communist philosophies don’t do that; they tend to be interested in promoting equality (though of course they’re perfectly capable of supporting state violence.)

By framing his observations on "liberal and communist philosophies" in this manner, Berlatsky contrives to make it sound as if the exercise of force is not a central aspect of those philosophies, as it is with fascism.  A true hermeneutics of deceit would assume, with Machiavelli, that states built on those philosophies would simply have more roundabout ways of expressing their might, even when they are not "supporting state violence."  Certainly, though I support Obamacare in its overall intention, I would never deny that it is a manifestation of might, even if its purpose is to promote a particular form of "equality."

To keep the more liberal philosophies from being temporarily affected by fictional displays of violence-- that is, to keep the monkey from seeing, and perhaps imitating what he sees-- the ressentiment-critic must constantly harp on the supposed similarities between Superman and storm troopers. 

This is the last of the essays under this heading, though some of the following essays will also investigate issues of violence in fiction.  So the really long definition is hardly concluded.

THE ILLEGITIMACY OF 'LEGITIMATE RAPE'

A week or so has passed since Missouri Representative Todd Akin recanted his comments on "legitimate rape."  Originally he claimed that certain unnamed "doctors" had demonstrated that in the cases of real rape (as opposed to those that were falsified, presumably by the woman) pregnancy was unlikely to occur, because "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."  Following a firestorm of objections, including pregnancy specialists who claimed that the body had no such "rape-prevention" potential, Akin claimed that he had simply "used the wrong words in the wrong way."

For a short period following Akin's original comments, I wondered if he had, against all likelihood, been exposed to a scientific theory like the one expressed by Leonard Shlain in his book SEX, TIME, AND POWER:

...the resting PH level of a woman's vaginal lining creates an environment deadly to sperm. Responding to a lover she desires, a woman secretes a lubricating fluid that has as one of its primary properties the ability to neutralize her vaginal PH level's spermicidal effects.  The more foreplay, the more lubricated a woman becomes, the stronger the likelihood that a man's sperm will survive.  A rapist's sperm would enter a killing field."-- p.220.
 

However, in the ensuing days, I never heard any of the health professionals consulted bring up this theory, so it may be that Shlain's interpretation of the female biological mechanism is not one held by the majority of professionals.  (To be sure, though the "killing field" concept is presented as simple fact, Shlain does toss out some heuristic speculations throughout the book, some of which are more than a little wild.)

Further, Shlain would be an unlikely choice for the conservative Missouri congressman to consult. Far from being a soldier in the Republican "war on women," Shlain's book is if anything a valentine to the importance of the female human being (whom he calls "gyna sapiens," as against the androcentric "homo sapiens") in the biological and cultural development of the species.  In addition, Shlain (who passed away in 2009) was not the sort of marginal medical man favored by the far right, having served as the Chairman of Laparoscopic Surgery at a San Francisco hospital.

Later, thanks to a post on a comics message-board, I was exposed to a more likely source for the Republican congressman's politcized views on female reproductivity.  This essay from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch raises the possibility that Akin and his fellow travelers may be basing their "rape-prevention biology" on a rather questionable source of scientific data: that of Nazi concentration camp doctors.

Comparisons between Nazis and Republican anti-abortionists are of course just too easy to be worth making, and of course neither Akin nor any of his few defenders are going to affirm that the roots of their research lie in the Nazi death-camps.  And certainly there's nothing new about people devoted to a given cause asserting that their "ought" must and should outweight any "is" that might contradict it.   

What interests me about the situation is that even though Akin's anti-abortion position is rooted in religion, which should need no buttressing from scientific data, he adopted the language of science in order to promulgate a religiously-based theory.  It is as if he really wants to say, "A just God, such as I worship, would not allow innocent children to be conceived through acts of rage and violence; therefore it must be that the female body has been given the propensity to prevent such things by simply 'shutting down.'"  This is quite different from Shlain's theory, which asserts that the vagina does have a potential defense against unwanted sperm, but never claims that such a defense is absolute.

Like many liberals, I don't believe that Akin simply "mispoke."  Dozens of sites on the web have reported similar remarks by Akin and his fellow travelers (including vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan), so I need not rehearse those here. 

Now, it's possible that I give the congressman too much credit in assuming that he might have some real feeling for the "innocents" that he and his anti-abortion fellows say that they want to protect.  It could well be that he's doing so with no personal feeling whatever, as a cynical attempt to manipulate the more conservative members of the electorate.

Yet, whether Akin's protective emotions are sincere or not, I think that many of his target citizens are moved by a sympathy for the innocent, for the defenseless child.  On one messageboard I aroused considerable net-ire by saying that this sympathy in itself was not political in nature.  The ultraliberals that attacked me wanted to believe that to say this was to give tacit support to the anti-abortion movement.  Anything that did not demonize that movement was the equivalent of aid and comfort to the enemy.  I also cheesed off the ultraliberals by saying that while I didn't oppose others using the term "pro-choice," I thought it was a little dodgy in that "choice" is not the main issue.  The main issue is the right of the state to speak for its citizens in deciding questions of life and death, for the "innocent unborn" as well as those who are already full, functioning citizens.

Though individual Christians have been known to oppose the state's use of that power in respect to
military induction and to the death penalty-- both of which have the manifest power to take life, whether in service to the state or for the protection of it-- I know of no organized churches who oppose these particular instances of "rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's."  Only the lives of the unborn cause this upsurge in popular sentiment.

I am opposed categorically to the politicized sentiments of Akin's kind.  Their only solution to the multifarous problems relating to unwanted conception-- which include, but certainly are not limited to, conceptions through rape-- is an absolute refusal of the state's power to kill the unborn. 

And, unpleasant though it may seem, the unborn cannot be given special rights, despite any and all societal instincts to protect future generations.  It goes without saying that the state probably has made many mistakes in executing particular abortions, just as it has in executing particular prisoners.  But it does not follow that all of the executions were mistakes.  There are times when the unborn, innocent though they may be, simply have to suffer from living in an imperfect world.

I sympathize somewhat more with those individuals-- none of whom are affiliated with the anti-abortion crowd-- who recommend, not an absolute ban on abortion, but merely restrictions as to how *often* citizens might "choose" to have abortions.  But it's seems almost certain that our society, having become polarized between two extremes, will never explore this area of legal theory.