The recent discovery of Jaycee Dugard, who as you undoubtedly know by now had been kept in a shack/collection of tents in the backyard of her kidnapper and rapist for 18 years before she surfaced last week, with her two children aged 11 and 15, has given me the head of steam I needed to write this post, but it’s been something I’ve been thinking for awhile. It appears, though accounts are still rather confused, that neighbours did see and talk to either Jaycee or her children during their imprisonment. And while this quote comes from the Daily Fail – apologies – I suspect that even if fictitious, it rather accurately portrays the attitude most neighbours had towards the strangeness going on at the house:
Neighbour Diane Doty said she could see the tents and often heard children playing in the garden.
She said she even suspected they lived in the tents, but her husband said she should leave the family alone, saying: ‘Maybe that is how they like to live.’
I guess what I want to say is this – this “live and let live” attitude – it’s got to go.
Oh, I know it emerges from notions of democracy and abstract equality that we’d like to hold dear. In the United States, and frankly in Canada too, people are fond of saying that it’s a free country. And most people now use rights-talk, which is to say, they frame every little petty incident of your life as either an exercise or a violation of some fundamental right. “I have a right to like oranges better than apples!” “I have a right to like pornography!” “I have a right to do what I want, when I want!” I once, on a bus from Montreal to Ottawa, had a young woman inform me, when I politely asked her if she could not put her seat so far back, that she had a “right” to put it back as far as it could go.
Like everyone else, of course, I like having rights. And I think others should have them too. I think that it is a matter of continuing to recognize each other as human beings that they be inalienable. I think they have the potential keep the state from acting out our worst instincts for revenge, for violence, and for domination.
But even though I love my rights, I am not a card-carrying member of the ACLU. I am not a First Amendment absolutist. I think that the police should have the ability to investigate the backyards of people like Philip Garrido. I cannot ratify the “you have a right to be weird without interference” attitude. I do not think that people should be allowed to carry semi-automatic weaponry. I do not think, in short, that the right to privacy and the right to live without state intrusion should extend to the right to rape women in your backyard undisturbed, “because that’s how you like to live.”
I think , in short, that there comes a point where “it’s a free country” becomes a weapon against rather than protection for the marginalized. Legal guarantees of freedom are only useful for those who have the ability to get at the system, and when you think about it for more than twenty seconds, the people who have the easiest access to the system? Are definitionally not the marginalized.
Rights have their natural limits in the degree to which they interfere with the well-being of other people, and of all people, the marginalized know this best. Because as soon as they begin to suggest that their right to equal opportunity ought to be respected, and that more effort is needed to ensure they too enjoy the equal protection of the law, the powerful tell them it’s not “fair.”
So I think, as feminists, we have a responsibility to be skeptical of rights discourse. I get a little confused when I see feminists thinking that rights are unqualified goods, given that they are defined and mostly wielded by the powerful in this society and have been used, in the last decade or so, as a tool to try and claw back programs like affirmative action or access to birth control under the aegis of “equality rights” and “freedom of religion.”
If feminism is going to mean something, it is going to have to formulate its liberatory program in terms other than those that all too often serve to reify, rather than break down, the positions of those in power.
I’ll say, I’m sorry if I’m getting a little pissy – it’s been a long day personally too – but all I want to do is talk about the way we conceive of rights without once being told by some American how great your Constitution is.
” I cannot ratify the “you have a right to be weird without interference” attitude . . . I do not think, in short, that the right to privacy and the right to live without state intrusion should extend to the right to rape women in your backyard undisturbed, “because that’s how you like to live.””
So then what do you think should have happened in this case? Multiple people should have called in vague reports of “weirdness?” Clearly, this man was more than weird, but it’s not at all clear that the neighbors were aware of anything more nefarious and were therefore neglectful. I don’t accept that the neighbors knew he was raping women in his backyard and did nothing because they were respecting his American right to privacy.
Nah, I don’t think that either pediMD. I think they were trying to be respectful of his privacy without imagining exactly what was going on next door. But it seems clear, from multiple sources, that several people thought something was off. Indeed, the Berkeley campus police, who blew this open, were going on a hunch that something was wrong. I am saying we should more feel comfortable in reporting those hunches, yes, without worrying about trampling on privacy rights.
PS, I don’t think anyone is arguing that the right to free speech is absolute, or that the American system always functions properly/successfully. I appreciate your point that when rights are protected via the courts, those already in power are most likely to benefit. But is there an alternative?
Garrido got away with it for a variety of reasons, but not because people thought he had a natural or legal right to keep people in his backyard. I think the quote you use implies that the women had a right to live in the backyard–which I think has more to do with our tendency to blame the victim and engage in rationalization/denial.
Anyway, I don’t see how it does feminism any favors to abandon (nuanced, logical) rights rhetoric. I’ve read many arguments that Roe v. Wade is weak because it relies on privacy, rather than human rights.
From this week’s New Yorker’s profile of Michael Ignatieff: “We are not, and have never been, the Canadian collectivists argue–in conscious opposition to older Anglo-American traditions–the rational individuals of liberal contract theory. No man is an island, and rules made for imaginary islands ignore the fragile ecology of the actual archipelago. We are people who live in communities, and our sense of who we are derives from what the people around us are like. To exalt the individual and his rights at the expense of the nurturing the tenuous threads of togetherness leads to violence, alienation, political apathy, and the growth of crazy movements that can supply, in moonshine form, the sense of solidarity that pure “rights” liberalism can’t–the very traits that Canadians see in a nearby country, they name no names.” So maybe I was responding to you, Pilgrim, like you were making a legal argument when you were making an argument regarding culture and attitude. My bad. Though I won’t stop talking about rights just because other people (i.e. pharmacists who say freedom of religion means they have a right to refuse to fill bc prescriptions) use the term incorrectly or in bad faith.
OMG the New Yorker profiled that douche? Kill me now.
I work with kids who have been abused, so I fully support making reports without regard to privacy issues. But I want to add that from a practical standpoint, reporting vague “hunches” is probably not going to lead to prompt investigative action, and, again, I don’t think it’s related to issues of privacy, but more to understaffed agencies with underpaid workers, or maybe just incompetence, as was discussed earlier in the thread, or maybe because, with a hunch, what exactly are the police going to investigate?
And in defense of the American justice system — all states have some version of mandated reporting, and in some states
EVERYONE is a mandated reporter, which means to me that the law values reporting more than privacy, at least in the case of possible harm to children.
Regarding Jaycee Dugard, you say: “I do not think, in short, that the right to privacy and the right to live without state intrusion should extend to the right to rape women in your backyard undisturbed, ‘because that’s how you like to live.’” There is no evidence that any of the neighbors knew that Garrido was doing this. As others have said, there was evidence that something was off, and some people did call the police. There was a failure of enforcement, to be sure, but not because the police couldn’t fully investigate without violating Garrido’s right to privacy. I really don’t see this as a case where we let the concept of personal rights go so far as to turn a blind eye to something horrible.
As for the Yay America!, intellectual dishonesty you perceive, when different people express nuanced views about the value of free speech, I think it’s fair to expect disagreement. What’s not fair is taking that disagreement about one aspect of the U.S. legal landscape and making it the basis for reducing the whole conversation to: oh, all those tiresome Americans just blindly and uncritically kowtow to their Constitution. Sure, some do. But I find that charge especially curious in this forum, amongst these women. Perhaps it’s unfortunate that the rights conversation veered to free speech. If it had veered to, say, the right to bear arms, perhaps it would have been more clear that not all of us unthinkingly believe that every right, even when enumerated in the Constitution, is without limit or of unqualified good.
Tallgirl, with great respect, I’m not arguing with an imaginary American, earlier in this thread Becky says she does think rights are an unqualified good. And she was the one I was arguing with. And I’m sorry you feel it’s reductive or curious, but I have to say, this thread almost immediately turned into a referendum on the First Amendment, which, I do find, personally, is a peculiarly American maneuver. And while I’m always surprised to find it happen among people I think of as thoughtful in other arenas, and on other subjects. But meanwhile, do I think all American are like this? No. Not even all the Americans in the thread appeared to agree with this position.
However, as a stranger in a strange land, I have to say, I have noticed that the quickest way to get myself delivered a tiresome lecture about the joys of the First Amendment is to question the American approach to rights-having. It may be a cultural thing, sure, but let’s put it this way: from that perspective, I don’t think I’m the one who reduced this conversation.
Please, let’s move on.
As to your other remark, as I say, I do not think people were respecting privacy as a matter of personal right so much as I am saying a culture which believes so absolutely in individualism is bound to encourage wilful blindness and apathy in its citizens.
@tallgirl: Word. Especially when those “different views on free speech” you mention are dismissed with “do you know what Guantanamo is?” And I’m the one accused of being reductionist and tiresome?
Well, the thing is that that’s where we often perceive to be the greatest clear and present danger so to speak in terms of a harmful abridgment of rights. Look at how France treats the Muslims — the first amendment is what prevents that sort of thing from happening here.
The thing is, the sort of communal spirit that you’re advocating doesn’t work well in a pluralistic society. There are places that work like you propose — Japan, for example, has much more interest in acting according to the wishes of the community than we do. And it is really, really hard for anyone to live in Japan if they don’t want to live in the same way as everyone else, especially for women. I agree with you that we have some willful blindness and some apathy, and that those things could largely be fixed by nuanced rather than black and white views. But, and perhaps this is my American ignorance, I cannot think of a single culture in all of history where the majority of the population had nuanced views of their system of government and society. If people are going to go too far to one side, I’d rather it be towards freedoms than towards government restrictions on the same, especially when those government restrictions are more likely to be abused than used properly.
Damn, I was afraid you would have a poor opinion of Michael Ignatieff. I haven’t followed his new political career, but Charlie Johnson in the Flames is one of my favorite novels, and his work on nationalism and the Balkan wars is great (if quickly dated). I would inquire into said doucheyness but probably shouldn’t further threadjack your post…
Baraqiel: I think you are incorrect about the First Amendment preventing what happened in France. The French will tell you – and mind, I do not agree with them – that they are simply observing the separation between church and state. The model is different, but it does not reduce to the French having no regard for freedom of religion. It is them making different choices, and yes they are the wrong ones, IMHO, but it’s like where we were earlier in this discussion: separation of Church and State =/= First Amendment.
This is, I suppose, in sum, what I was trying to say all along. It is not that I have a principled objection to free speech or separation of Church and State, etc etc. It is that I do not agree the American model is the only model of implementing these goals. And again, I tire of Americans, in many instances, glossing over significant inconsistencies and problems concomitant to their approach because they feel everything is a competition which they must win – and they do this at the cost of productive discussion. And then they get pissy when I mention that this country has some significant church and state problems as well, or I bring up Guantanamo, because that’s not as comfortable a discussion for them as “those ignorant French people with their crusade against hijabs” is.
The liberal version of backtrack here is: well, but I’m not like those Americans. Fair enough. I don’t think you’re all alike either. What I do think is that it would be nice, just once, to have a discussion about rights culture in the United States that did not act as if other countries had zero regard for any of these values. As a non-American, I find your arrogance in this regard at least as insulting as you may find my eyeroll when the virtues of the First Amendment are extolled to me. Folks, I’ve read the brochure too; I just think it’s time to go a little deeper than “my country lets me practice my religion! other countries don’t do that!”
It’s like Spark said earlier: these are cultural differences. But as soon as I tried to open a discussion on that in this post, this turned into Becky trying to argue that without the American approach (read First Amendment) she would not be able to practice her religion. Which is preposterous, as any number of Canadian Jews would tell you. That’s the kind of maneuver I’m calling uniquely American, and I’m not trying to pick on you Becky, but yes I find it reductive and tiresome and I’m tired of hearing it. I like America and Americans a lot, as you know. But I cannot abide the sheer arrogance of the maneuver, I’m sorry.
Spark: Yeah, back in the day I did some work on Ignatieff. It’s really the politics that have made him douchey…
What a fascinating thread! One of the things that has made me ambivalent about this blog is that it often seemed to be a bunch of people who just wanted to be agreed with all the time. But seeing Pilgrim Soul & BackySharper going at it tooth & nail over free speech forces me to revise that assessment and adds an element of creative tension that’s missing from this site.
No, the French won’t tell you that, because that’s not what they’re doing. In fact, they were never trying to make that claim in the first place. That’s the reason they banned “obtrusive” religious symbols in schools rather than banning all religious symbols whole cloth — their laws are specifically framed to make Muslim observance less visible to them because it makes them uncomfortable. It’s clear to me that the 1st Amendment has a very good chance of preventing something like that from happening here because banning certain religious symbols and not others, or deliberately defining a cross as unobtrusive and a hijab as obtrusive, is clearly unconstitutional. (And no, I don’t think the French are ignorant, I think many of them are racist, and my evidence here is not news stories but the words of French people I spoke to, in France.)
I don’t think that other countries have no regard for rights, nor do I think that Becky thinks that. No one’s saying “the American constitution is the only way that people have any sort of protection at all”. Obviously people have protections in other countries — in fact, I think it’s a little rich that you bring up Canadian Jews since Canada also has a bill of rights that guarantees free speech and freedom of religion, which means that what the French are doing would be illegal there, too. (Obviously I’m not saying that Canada based its government entirely on the U.S. government, or even mostly, but come on, two bills of rights that both include clauses explicitly defining freedoms of speech and religion are, for the purposes of this conversation, the same approach.)
But here’s the crux of it: some other countries have cultural respect for freedoms, others don’t. Some other countries have a legal establishment that protects the same freedoms, others don’t — and these groups aren’t congruent. I would much, much rather have the legal establishment without the culture than vice versa because there are many people who will respect a legal establishment even when they don’t respect what I do with my freedoms under that establishment, whereas if people don’t agree with my culture they can just have another one that’s equally legitimate under the legal system. Culture changes quickly, laws change slowly, and nothing that you’ve said has been convincing that protecting freedoms through culture is superior to protecting them through laws. The American model isn’t the only model. No one has said that it is. We have significant problems with our government and our history like any other country does, and concepts like manifest destiny have clearly done more harm than good (I don’t believe that our concept of rights and freedoms is responsible for many of the harms that we’ve done as opposed to other parts of the American ethos, but that’s debatable). However, I think the American model is at least among the better models, and it is not clear to me that you have advocated for a realistic alternative. We’re discussing America because the case you mentioned happened here and most of us live here — and because you haven’t offered a counterpoint. Is there another country that you think has a better idea? Or is there a better idea that no country has implemented yet?
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t say the French weren’t cynics. Nor did I say rights should not be legally entrenched. Nor did I say “Americans suck!”
I despair of having this conversation rationally. You win. There’s no point in talking about rights critically.
Your post seemed to be offering the opener: “the American concept of rights is problematic”. You’ve explained some of what you believe to be the problems and I and others have offered rebuttals. You have not, to my understanding, offered a different concept or construction. I would love to discuss one, I think this is a very interesting conversation, but you’re not giving a lot to work with here.
Baraqiel: I did offer one, but it doesn’t offer as many opportunities for rhetorical flourish as accusing me of wanting to do away with the legal entrenchment of rights. That is what you and others have been rebutting, but it is a straw argument. And that is why you’re all pissing me off. I really can’t tell you how irritating it is to write a post wherein I say, “I like having rights” and have it turn into an accusation that I obviously wish to abolish rights.
To reiterate: the alternative is having a perspective on rights that views them as greatly contingent on context, and views their exercise as something to be engaged in with caution. This means: allowing that in societies where the status quo is power inequality (read: all societies), absolute conceptions of rights often reify class/race/gender divides rather than break them down. Thus, an alternative model is one that sets down the exercise rights in the overall concept of achieving a greater level of social justice. This is a society in which conversation and compromise is valued over individual “I do what I want” nonsense. It is not that rights have no place in such a society, but that they operate as a check on other priorities rather than the very basis of political morality itself.
Okay — that’s a reasonable way to look at rights. But it raises a lot of questions. Rights operate as a check on other priorities; what are these other priorities? What concept do we rest our arguments for equality on, if not the concept of rights? The good thing about rights is that they’re at least somewhat objective, compared to concepts like “fairness” and “what society should be”. It’s reasonable to say that rights shouldn’t be paramount in a conversation about social justice. But then how do you convince people of the merit of social justice in the first place, or of the fact that our society is unjust?
Other priorities: compromise and conversation. I really think these are the real challenges of living in a pluralistic society.
We rest our arguments for equality on the notion that we are all human, and we’re all in this together, and that at a certain point, that means we owe it to each other to keep lines of compromise and conversation open at all times.
Rights aren’t really objective at all, IMHO, which is why you see white dudes making philosophically plausible (at least in the eyes of the courts) arguments that they are “discriminated against” and receive “unfair treatment” when that treatment is actually aimed at guaranteeing equality rights.
Pilgrim, I also find this conversation interesting, and I’m sorry if the responses feel like a pile-on or people missing your point. My confusion comes from the fact that I find the alternative you describe not so different from the reality of rights in the US. Our rights ARE qualified, constantly. (Even if we don’t always agree, on a case by case basis, with how rights are defended or abridged.) Maybe we talk about rights instead of common good because we’re so often talking about the rights of minorities. In the US, we say, you can have freedom of speech even if you’re a communist, or a dissenter, or a religious minority, etc. Of course, as you pointed out, reality does not always live up to the ideal. But my conception (from an American perspective) is actually the opposite of what you’re saying: the courts and constitution are there to preserve the rights of minority groups, that the majority might walk all over instead of bending to a benevolent common good.
I honestly don’t think that has enough force without some kind of legal framework behind it. How do you enforce that sort of compromise? A binding arbitration? And then who are the arbiters?
Moreover, there are certain circumstances where we don’t owe it to each other to compromise. What about marriage rights should queer people compromise on, for example? What about abortion rights should we compromise on? The problem with emphasizing compromise is that it promotes the fallacy of the middle ground. Sometimes some people are wrong.
(Not that I’m saying I think this idea is without potential, rather that I see some issues with it.)
Like baraqiel, I don’t see how it works legally. Though I say this with the understanding that maybe Pilgrim Soul is promoting a different cultural attitude/way of talking, and not a legal concept. But thinking about putting it into practice, it sounds a little like how libertarianism sounds to me–yeah, that would be nice, but it would never work. You can’t always gently persuade the majority to be friendly to you. Sometimes you need to stand up and demand your right to abortion, to integrated schools, to marriage equality, to the vote.
Well, I’m not proposing that everyone start Playing NiceTM . What I am proposing is that public conversation is a start towards persuading bigots that they are wrong, and I do think that the tenor of public “conversation” in America is the antithesis of productive. Health care town halls have been reasonably good evidence of that, and even if the events themselves were not so bad, the coverage of them has been horrific. Doubt anyone here would disagree with that.
I think what needs to happen overall is that people need to be more communally interested than individually interested.
But how would our communal interest be meaningfully different than the communal interest of people who say that working women destroy society and gay marriage hurts their families? Obviously we’d be saying different things, but I’m not sure I can see a clear difference in kind there.
And yeah, we should definitely be encouraging more thoughtful, constructive conversation. But conversation in and of itself is a hard value to promote because it’s normally a means to an end. This is perhaps cyclical: it’s hard to convince people of the need for social change without conversation and it’s hard to convince people of the need for conversation directed at social change without them recognizing the need for social change.
I hear you on how unproductive our public conversations tend to be, but I disagree that talking about rights is by its nature unproductive. For instance, in the whole people who don’t like abortion but don’t necessarily want to outlaw it situation. Talking about legal rights–when the state should be permitted to interfere and when it should be forbidden–is an important argument. Personally, I’m ok if we can reach agreement on the morality of abortion if we do reach agreement that it’s a right to be protected.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090828/ap_on_re_us/us_kidnapped_girl_found
Actually, he was a registered sex offender. one of the neighbors found out this, realized kids lived there, and called the police back in 2006. the police then did nothing. but anyway…yes, it was obvious that something not-quite-right was going on in the house, and that Garrido was not just an eccentric, but neighbors and cops did nothing.
@CeeGee: To quote the great Fred Rogers, would you be my neighbor? Well done, CeeGee.
@HillRat: I’m not one of the Harpies, but it seems to me that this site isn’t necessarily here to promote controversy. One of the great values of women talking together is that we learn from and support each other. The fact that we may be in agreement on the general principle involved doesn’t mean the conversation isn’t worth having, even though it may not be of interest to you. I enjoy your comments a lot and I’m not trying to go all “male=bad” on you, but I’m more interested in whether it works for us than whether it works for you.
I know this is a long thread and I’m getting in very late, but I do want to say that I understand where you’re coming from, PS, in your concern that the value of individuality comes at the cost of the value of community. The reality, though, is that whoever has power has power, and society will be run to their advantage. To the extent that a society allows for those not in power to assert it, that society is commendable. There are different ways to do that; ours is the one we Americans tend to know best.
We’ve just come through a terrible 8 years in this country, and if we celebrate the survival of our Constitution, I’d ask you to have patience with us. We’re all too well aware of the shortcomings of both the document itself and the way it’s put into practice, but for now we’re just so, so happy that it survived the outright assault waged against it by King George and his evil minions.
Which isn’t to say that Obama is getting a free pass. He could do a hell of a lot better too. And his efforts at bipartisanship show very clearly the failure of discussion and consensus as methods of societal regulation.
Hang in there, PS, we love you!
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“Oh, I know it emerges from notions of democracy and abstract equality that we’d like to hold dear. ”
(With apologies to SNL) Oh, really?
It emerges as a consequence of fight-or-flight compiled in the modern context.
Jaycee is a Kitty Genovese of the Twentyfirst Century. My use of ‘a’ is not in error. A Google is insufficient to explain. If you really want to understand basic packed-like-a-rat urban behavior read Harlan Ellison’s ‘Whimper of whipped dogs’ in ‘DeathBird Stories’ (1973 or 4). Then read the rest of Harlan Ellison if you can find him.