Ah, the Patriarchy

A "Feminist Father" wears a T-shirt with the following "Rules for Dating My Daughter":
1. I don’t make the rules
2. You don’t make the rules
3. She makes the rules
4. Her body, her rules
This is, of course, just as accurately a statement of the law. It's exactly what the law says, it's exactly how any American court will rule should a relevant case appear before it.

So, if he's a "Feminist Father" for declaring these rules, do we have a "Feminist System of Law" as well? I thought we were living in some sort of patriarchy -- even a rape culture. How surprising to learn that, instead, the positive laws perfectly adhere to Feminist principles on the subject of greatest interest to them.

23 comments:

E Hines said...

I disagree with the father to a small degree.

To the extent his daughter is a minor, he is/should be the one making the rules, with his daughter's increasing participation as her maturity increases.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

According to the article, she's 20, so not a minor.

Cass said...

I am going to have to think about this one. Wrt to what she is willing to tolerate in a relationship, I agree. This places part of the onus on women to object when their standards are violated. But that doesn't absolve men of the duty not to be cads.

If we're talking about law (what offenses rise to the level that society takes notice and actively punishes an offense) that standard scares the crap out of me. It's way too subjective.

Grim said...

Maybe so, but I think it is the standard.

So in Georgia, simple battery can be constituted by the slightest touch if that touch is (a) intentional, and (b) insulting or provoking. So the slightest touch to her body is a crime if she decides it is insulting or provoking -- at least, she can have the man arrested and file charges.

Now, in theory, you have to go before the jury to get a conviction. The jury might decide that it was unreasonable to be insulted or provoked by what happened.

However, 95% of cases prosecuted don't go to trial because of plea bargains. The practice is to charge with more serious crimes, threaten a decade in jail, but offer a plea to the lesser charge if you'll just roll over. The jury isn't all that much of a brake if you never get in front of one!

What may be a brake is her own choice not to follow through with the charges -- but that's about her making the rules, too. Unless the DA refuses to prosecute, most likely the guy who touched her without her consent is going to jail for a while.

Grim said...

Also, by the way, if this is your current or former WIFE, the charge increases to "a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature." Likewise if it is a pregnant woman, or certain other protected categories (senior citizens & the police, chiefly, but also nursing home attendants and so forth).

douglas said...

"She makes the rules". If she also believes this, I'd advise any man to stay away- far away. That's simply a reverse sexism, isn't it? It's not the same as saying 'no means no'- another slogan I don't much like, but don't disagree with at least.

Grim said...

I think it's important to distinguish between the claim "She makes the rules for how she can be dated," which is the claim being made, and "She makes all the rules in the relationship." The latter claim wouldn't work very well, but the former claim is just a statement of ordinary principles of the individual right to free association.

Likewise "her body, her rules" is just a restatement of the way the law works on the subject. In a genuinely patriarchal society (such as parts of the Islamic world today, or the Christian world before about 1000 AD when the theologians began to reform ancient ideas about marriage in favor of the idea of marriage-for-love with individual consent being the only valid form), her father would have some rights to decide to give her in marriage. Her husband would then have some rights (depending on the society) to demand something from her. In our society, that's not at all true: she has a complete right under the law to refuse to be touched -- even in the slightest way -- even if she has consented before. Being married doesn't give you more rights, it gives you fewer: the law will punish you for "a high and aggravated" crime if you're married to her.

The point is just that the law couldn't be more in agreement with these allegedly "Feminist" propositions. So does that mean we live in a Feminist state?

Possibly, I think; but we certainly don't live in a patriarchy!

Anonymous said...

Patriarchy? *looks over at increasingly impatient house cat* Well, I live in a feliarchy, perhaps a petriarchy. Does that count?

LittleRed1

Ymar Sakar said...

Is that what Rodham Clinton did to the rape victim when she got child rapists free via smearing the victim?

The supporters of HRC said "her body, her rules"?

Ymar Sakar said...

The US is a theocracy, neither a patriarchy nor a matriarchy, because males and females share power in the Leftist alliance, which also doubles as a death cult, religion, and thus theocratic dogma.

Cass said...

Likewise "her body, her rules" is just a restatement of the way the law works on the subject.

No, it isn't. The law in GA treats women the same as men, for one. So there's no "her rules" - it's the state's rules.

Making statements like that without bothering to reference the laws (or how they're enforced) doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The laws aren't even the same in the 50 states.

Had you written, "I *feel* this is the way the law works on the subject", I'd be hard pressed to argue with you. But feelings aren't the same as objective reality.

Here are the GA statutes:

16-6-22.1. Sexual battery.
(a) For the purposes of this Code section, the term "intimate parts" means the primary genital area, anus, groin, inner thighs, or buttocks
of a male or female and the breasts of a female.
(b) A person commits the offense of sexual battery when he intentionally makes physical contact with the intimate parts of the body of another person without the consent of that person.
(c) A person convicted of the offense of sexual battery shall be punished as for a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature.

16-6-22.2. Aggravated sexual battery.
(a) For the purposes of this Code section, the term "foreign object" means any article or instrument other than the sexual organ of a person.
(b) A person commits the offense of aggravated sexual battery when he intentionally penetrates with a foreign object the sexual organ or anus of another person without the consent of that person.
(c) A person convicted of the offense of aggravated sexual battery shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than 20 years.

Grim said...

Had you written, "I *feel* this is the way the law works on the subject", I'd be hard pressed to argue with you. But feelings aren't the same as objective reality.

Wow, that's harsh! I am guessing you must be reading a subtext into this post that I don't intend, if you think I deserve that.

In any case, I did reference the law -- only not the law you're referencing. If you'll look again, you'll see I was referencing Georgia's "Simple Battery" law, not its "Sexual Battery" law. This is § 16-5-23, if you're in the mood to look up the statute.

The reason I reference this one rather than that one is that simple battery encompasses any form of unwanted touching that is intentional, and also insulting or provoking. It's not limited to sexual touching, in other words: it's any sort of touching at all.

Now that same touch is a crime or not depending on her. If she wants to be touched, it's not a crime. If she's insulted by the touch, it is at least an offense for which you can be arrested and charged. It is a crime if a jury convicts you, or if the DA convinces you to plead guilty to it (as usually happens, given current practices -- I don't think the statistics on this are in dispute, even in objective reality!).

So my point is -- and there isn't any subtext intended -- that the law says exactly what the "Feminist Father" says on the subject. Her body, her rules; she makes the rules, not him nor her boyfriend.

The law in GA treats women the same as men, for one. So there's no "her rules" - it's the state's rules.

As for the first part of that claim, that is also a Feminist principle as I understand it!

As to the second, perhaps it's clearer from what I said above, but I'll say it again. It's "her rules" because she gets to decide whether a touch is insulting or welcome. The same touch either is or is not a crime depending on whether she rules it welcome, or rules it an insult or a provocation.

If she is your wife, the law takes her will to be an even more serious matter against you than against some stranger. If she is insulted or provoked by a stranger's touch, that's a misdemeanor offense; but it's a 'high and aggravated' one if her husband does it.

Now, sure, exactly the same rule applies to her -- she has the right to rule over what touches she is willing to accept, but everyone else has the same right in terms of what kinds of touches they'll accept from her. But, again, my understanding is that this equality under the law is explicitly a Feminist principle.

So, I stand by what I said before. The rules printed on the t-shirt are the same rules that the positive law enforces, at least in Georgia. What interests me is that the father's t-shirt is taken as a bold stand, when really he's just saying what we've all already agreed to and codified in law.

Cass said...

I didn't mean it to be harsh (or personal) - if I offended, I offer my heartfelt apology. I tend to be far more direct with you than I am with others, but I meant no personal offense.

I was trying to explain why what you said seemed so wrong to me (and why it still seems wrong). At any rate, if everyone has the same legal right not to be touched in an insulting/provoking manner in Georgia, then I'm not sure what 'her rules' has to do with it? They're not "her" rules, but *everyone's rules*. She doesn't get to make them up on the fly - if she decides she has been touched in that manner and wants to sue, she'll have to prove the contact would have been insulting/provoking to a reasonable person standard, not her own subjective standard.

I'm also not sure about the conflation of simple battery and sexual battery. On a date, is it more likely one would be touched in a sexual manner or in an insulting/provoking manner?

The bar's a *lot* higher for sexual assault.

On the patriarchy thing, I think you're entirely correct. The law is facially neutral. I wouldn't say that enforcement is necessarily neutral at all - the large volume of unprocessed rape kits and the extremely low conviction rates for rape, for instance, suggest that if a woman believes she has been sexually assaulted consistent with the state's definition of rape, the overwhelming odds are that the accused will walk away scot free.

I don't think that's consistent with what most Feminists want, though it may be inevitable given the fact that something like 3/4 of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows and there are no witnesses.

So are rape laws a "polite fiction"? I don't think so, actually. I think it's more a case that the competing rights of the accused in the criminal justice system prevail in cases where there's little physical evidence. And perhaps the costs to rape victims of testifying are so high that they are deterred from doing so. That's unfortunate, but I don't see an easy answery.

Cass said...

And perhaps the costs to rape victims of testifying are so high that they are deterred from doing so.

...particularly when, despite having gone to the police, the evidence is never processed.

Grim said...

I never said that rape laws were a polite fiction! I said that I thought the law lined up perfectly with Feminist principles (the particular principles expressed by this t-shirt).

She doesn't get to make them up on the fly - if she decides she has been touched in that manner and wants to sue, she'll have to prove the contact would have been insulting/provoking to a reasonable person standard, not her own subjective standard.

We're not talking about a lawsuit, though. We're talking about simple battery, which is a criminal offense. She doesn't have to sue. She can call the police and have them arrest the guy, and take him to jail. At least that far, if the police do their job he'll be removed from her vicinity and kept off the streets for the night.

Now, probably there will never be a jury test of whether her sense was "reasonable" or not -- almost all (90% of Federal charges; I can't find the exact figure for Georgia, but it's quite high) criminal charges that go before a court are plead rather than tried. But even if there is a jury trial, before that ever happens he'll have spent a night in jail and will now have an arrest record.

As by 'her body, her rules,' I mean only what I've said: that any sort of intentional touch is brought under the simple battery statute, provided that it is insulting or provoking. Now the only person who knows what she finds insulting or provoking is her. She makes the rules about what constitutes insult or provocation, at least as far as calling the police and getting the guy picked up. (It could work the other way -- should a girl touch a guy in an insulting or provocative way, he could have her arrested under the law too. His body, his rules? Presumably; but that equality, as I think we've agreed, is in line with feminist principles.)

Now, you raise the problem of enforcement. Enforcement may indeed be a place where the system falls down -- it often is just where the system falls down, not only on this issue. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the law is badly enforced. Whether this is grounds for believing that the laws are a polite fiction or not depend on how much blame you put on the police, the courts, or other involved parties. It could be that -- as you say -- it's just practically too difficult to enforce the laws with limited evidence.

You can understand what I mean, though, when I say that there's a distinction between 'having the right principles, but not enforcing them well or consistently,' and 'having the wrong principles.' The father in this case is expressing some principles. It is striking to me that the positive law seems to express the same principles.

Cass said...

We're talking about simple battery, which is a criminal offense. She doesn't have to sue. She can call the police and have them arrest the guy, and take him to jail. At least that far, if the police do their job he'll be removed from her vicinity and kept off the streets for the night.

It's not quite that simple, Grim.

For the kind of touching you're referring to (simply "anything she doesn't like according to her rules, whatever they may be"), it's extremely unlikely that the police would arrest a guy. This is very much what I objected to earlier - the suggestion that all a woman has to do is say, "WAAAAH! He touched me without permission!" and Wallah! the police show up, the DA decides to prosecute, and the poor guy is thrown in jail.

That's not at all how it usually works in real life, though. The State decline to prosecute all the time, and in the kind of case you're talking about there would be no evidence of the touching other than her word. Now if he hit her and left marks or raped her forcibly, that's a different crime and simple battery doesn't apply.

Now the only person who knows what she finds insulting or provoking is her. She makes the rules about what constitutes insult or provocation, at least as far as calling the police and getting the guy picked up.

No, she doesn't Grim. The state and the courts set that standard. Again, you're acting as though it's automatic that you call the police and someone gets arrested. But it doesn't work that way in real life at all.

I don't think the father is even talking about the same thing. He's talking about social interaction, not criminal statutes. Two very different things.

Individuals set the rules for what they're willing to tolerate. Governments and societies set the rules for what they're willing to punish. You're mixing the two (a completely subjective standard not enforceable in law, and an objective standard punishable by law).

They're not at all the same thing, except that one deals with the non-enforceable right not to be touched at all and the other deals with an enforeceable right not to be touched in a fairly specific manner with intent - and that's a crucial element of criminal law. No intent, no conviction.).

Grim said...

What you're saying now is that, should she call the police and insist that she had been subject to simple battery, they might not take her word -- or might not take her seriously -- or might not conduct an arrest. Or the DA might not prosecute (which I've said several times from the beginning; this is not news to me).

These are all enforcement issues. I'm willing to concede that enforcement is imperfect, or even that there may be other practical questions that make perfect enforcement impossible or even undesirable.

In principle, though, she has a right not to be touched in an insulting or provocative way. In principle, if she feels she has been, she has a right to appeal to the police, and if she insists on pressing charges they are supposed to conduct an arrest and take the other appropriate steps.

I agree that, in reality, it is probably the case that this doesn't always happen. I still think the law is structured according to those principles. It is not -- for example -- structured to give her father the right to decide whom she'll date or marry, or how she'll be touched; nor to give her husband the right to do so. The feminist critique of the legal structures of patriarchies has been fully incorporated into the system.

So a feminist might ask the state to do more to take women's complaints seriously, to conduct arrests when arrests are asked for, to prosecute charges she wishes to press; but it's not clear to me that they would want to actually change the laws on this point. The laws are already what I think these father's principles suggest they should be.

Is it conflating personal/social preferences with the law to say that? Not if -- another feminist principle! -- the personal is political.

Grim said...

In having this discussion, by the way, I'm not intending to minimize the problem of enforcement. I am aware that it's a very serious problem.

What I'm trying to highlight is the degree to which the law has -- in principle, at least -- accepted and codified the critique. It should be interesting (it is interesting to me) that this issue strikes people as "bold" or "controversial" when it is just a restatement of the principles underlying the law.

That realization should break something free in terms of how we seem to be stuck talking about these issues. Maybe it won't, though: maybe we can't get past the idea that the structures themselves are unfair, as opposed to the decisions of the people who do the work of enforcement.

douglas said...



But most people haven't studied the law, or philosophy, or feminist theory. So, when the law is made to correspond with feminist theory, and fails to stop that undesirable behavior, they, not knowing that the law has already been made 'feminist', seek to 'feminize' the law (again). What hasn't been learned can't be seen to have been not working and so will be tried again.

douglas said...

Hmmm, I had this at the beginning of that last post, but it disappeared-

"...that this issue strikes people as "bold" or "controversial" when it is just a restatement of the principles underlying the law."

Cass said...

In principle, though, she has a right not to be touched in an insulting or provocative way. In principle, if she feels she has been, she has a right to appeal to the police, and if she insists on pressing charges they are supposed to conduct an arrest and take the other appropriate steps.

Which is *very* different from the right not to be touched in a way she doesn't like (defined solely by her).

That's why I say they're not the same - because they aren't! :)

I don't even agree that the police are "supposed" to do any of this. They should investigate, but I doubt we want police arresting people unless there is at least some evidence to back up the accusation.

And in practice, this is why the police so often can't act - under our system, they need evidence to do so, and a cause of action must be presented that's actionable in law. The law defines the right being defended, not the girl. It's not "her rule".

It's *ours*.

Cass said...

...when the law is made to correspond with feminist theory, and fails to stop that undesirable behavior, they, not knowing that the law has already been made 'feminist', seek to 'feminize' the law (again). What hasn't been learned can't be seen to have been not working and so will be tried again.

Once again (I know I'm being pedantic, but this is an important distinction) I'm not sure the law conforms to feminist theory at all. It does so ONLY in that it bestows the same (equal) rights on women as it does men.

Yet my beef with feminist theory has been that it often seeks to bestow MORE rights on women (based on some vague theory that we're fully-equal yet weaker and in need of special protections) :p

At any rate, the (stupid) notion that the goal of law is to prevent Bad Things From Happening is prevalent on both the right and left. The law can't do that. The best it can do is provide a legal remedy for a breach of rights after the fact.

It can also help shape social norms and discourage (but not eliminate) wrongful conduct. I can't name a single law that has ever eliminated the act it criminalized, and I'm pretty sure feminists can't either.

Grim said...

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree about the law conforming to Feminist theory, Cass -- oddly because my view of Feminist theory is less hostile! :) I think that there are some Feminists who believe as you say they do, but that a lot of others exist who really are focused on equality per se; and still others who are focused principally on the idea that the woman -- and not a man -- should have the right to consent to what is done with her body.

So in a way, I guess you could say that the law both does and doesn't conform to Feminist theory, depending on which Feminist you mean. The movement does have some serious divisions.

Now obviously there are exceptions -- Homeland Security doesn't care if you want to be touched or not, if you want to get on the airplane you'll submit. But that issue is just as problematic for me as for anyone; I haven't flown since they instituted the mandatory choice between death-ray scans and submitting to a physical search of your body.

I may have to fly again someday, of course. Still, for years now I've taken the motorcycle or the truck if I had to go places.