Forced into the fold again,* an op-ed appears in the New York Times by feminist icon, Gloria Steinem and gender studies professor Michael Kimmel in support of California’s Senate Bill 967, dubbed the affirmative consent bill. It’s proposed as the cure to the epidemic of rape, a rhetorical disease spread only by word of advocates’ mouth.
The op-ed opens with an analogy:
SUPPOSE someone you know slightly arrives at your home, baggage and all, and just barges in and stays overnight. When you protest, the response is, “Well, you didn’t say no.”
The op-ed then goes straight into another analogy:
Or imagine that a man breaks into your home while you sleep off a night of drunken revelry, and robs you blind. Did your drinking imply consent?
Powerful stuff, right? Analogies are a rhetorical device, which can be used to reduce a complicated, perhaps obtuse, concept into a more easily understandable, more easily digestible, example that drives home a point in a different, usually more familiar, context.
Then again, they are more likely to be a trick played on the unwary. To be used logically, an analogy must reflect the same issues, concerns, problems as that which it seeks to illuminate. More often, analogies mix apples and Fords, falsely comparing concepts that are materially different, but similar enough that it requires a degree of thought to recognize that the analogy is false, and more still to explain why.
It’s a very effective trick. It’s also very dishonest. Most people will gloss over the analogy, accept it at face value and move on. The effort required to recognize and deconstruct the analogy in order to ascertain whether it’s apt or nonsense is greater than most people are willing to do. After all, we’re busy, and have no plans of dedicating our life to distinguishing good analogies from bad on our calendar.
At Slate XX Factor, Amanda Hess wrote with regard to the hacking of nude images of celebrities:
The act is the digital equivalent of approaching a woman on the street, pulling down her shirt, snapping a photo, and passing it around.
While Steinem’s analogies at least give pause, since no one who isn’t part of her choir doesn’t read it with the sense that there is something wrong there, even if you can’t quite put your finger on it, the Hess analogy smacks one in the face with a healthy, “this makes no sense at all.”
The first question to ask when the rhetorical device of analogy is used is why? Is the underlying concept so difficult to understand that it warrants an analogy? There are legitimate uses of analogy that don’t bear on persuasiveness, such as ridicule. Ken White at Popehat is the king of ridicule by analogy.
Trying to brush off the EFF or Steinbaugh with a DMCA notice is like trying to get a dog to stop humping your leg by petting it and feeding it bacon.
Key here is that it’s obviously intended as ridicule, rather than to be taken seriously. When analogy is offered for its persuasive comparison, however, while the underlying concept requires no analogy to grasp, it’s almost invariably done to confuse and conflate. It serves to create a mindset that inhibits the ability to fairly assess the issue at hand by introducing inapt context. It’s a trick.
Three issues reflect the value or poverty of an analogy:
- The relevance of the known similarities to the similarity inferred in the conclusion.
- The amount and variety of the examples in the analogy.
- The number of characteristics that the things being compared share.
The adequacy of an analogy lessens in proportion to its failure to satisfy these criteria. A false analogy, as reflected by the example used by British philosopher John Stuart Mill:
One of Mill’s examples involved an inference that some person is lazy from the observation that his or her sibling is lazy. According to Mill, sharing parents is not all that relevant to the property of laziness.
While this may sound obvious when explained, bear in mind the saying, “the apple never falls far from the tree,” suggesting that the characteristic of laziness is highly probable to be pervasive in the same family. See how that works?
Returning to the analogies Steinem uses to begin her op-ed, the only similarity between her analogy and the inference she hopes the reader will draw is lack of affirmative consent. Aside from that, having sex and visitors coming for a stay unannounced bear no material similarities. The former is not merely an accepted, if not preferred, social norm that she wishes to change, while the latter violates a fairly universally accepted social norm. As tricky analogies go, it’s not a particularly good one.
Her second analogy, of the man (notably, not a person, but a man) breaking into a house after a drunken revelry and robbing you blind, is even worse. It contrasts consensual sex with crime, and assumes bad consequences for failure to accept her inference. She thus double loads her analogy, by throwing in the additional logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc: Drunken revelry leads to a man robbing a woman blind. This analogy fails miserably as well.
As for Amanda Hess’ “digital equivalent…of pulling down her shirt,” there is nothing about the analogy that makes any sense at all. What’s unfortunate is that the hacking of celebrities’ cloud accounts is a serious wrong, and yet its seriousness is diminished by a ludicrous analogy. The point is that the use of really bad analogies not only fails to serve the purpose of the trick, but when so apparent that no one misses them, can seriously undermine a point by, standing alone, reducing it to an absurdity.
And as to Ken’s analogy, not only does it serve its purpose superbly, but it includes bacon. Enough said.
* While I would have preferred reading an op-ed this morning about a subject other than the latest feminist effort to criminalize male conduct, I have no control over what appears in the New York Times. Don’t judge me.
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I’m not sure what’s wrong with the Hess analogy. Pulling down a woman’s shirt, and hacking her iCloud account, are both gross violation of privacy. But nobody argues that if a woman doesn’t want somebody to see her boobs, she should cover them with more than just a shirt that somebody can easily yank down.
This is why people like Hess use analogies like the one she uses. There will always be someone who latches on to a tiny, abstract piece without considering how it otherwise is totally off the wall.
This is also why we can’t have nice things, like good laws.
Just off the top of my head:
1) You can’t steal a photo that doesn’t already exist.
2) Tugging someone’s shirt down is impossible to do without them noticing during the act. It is an attack that you would be aware of during the commission.
A better analogy (if one insists on using them in this context) would be a pickpocket stealing nude pictures a woman was keeping in her purse and selling them. The woman finds out when they are public, not while they are taken. She knows it was not sneaky paparazzi hiding in a tree behind her house because she already had the photo. That’s why you can’t call it a “digital equivalent” to a theft.
What’s wrong with it? Well, for one, grabbing someone’s shirt is probably battery, depending on your jurisdiction.
You could’ve at least linked to the original op-ed.
Oops. My screw up. It’s in there now.
Analogies make the mind lazy,
Make the reference frame obscure, hazy.
The apple, you see,
Does not fall from the tree.
The Earth rises up. Ain’t that crazy?
An homage to Newton? How sweet.
Au contraire. One legislative analyst’s synopsis of SB-967:
Student lovers, though sweet, must assume
The Earth moved to smite them to their doom.
Now both must recite
Throughout their delight,
Incantations to make Molly Bloom! [1]
FN 1: “…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish Wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
Fubar, have you ever considered submitting some of your comments in MP3 format?
I had to explain the iCloud hack to someone, this is the analogy I used:
The celebrities got safe-deposit boxes at “Steve’s Credit Union” to store some personal files. The system at Steve’s is that all you need to do is present the key, and you access the box. Later, some miscreant managed to copy their key, went to Steve’s (who was happy to allow access since they had the key), got the files, published a sample, and tried to sell the rest.
The victims are the people whose files were published, the criminal is the miscreant who copied the key and fraudulently gained access to the box, the idiot is Steve, for having a lame security system. It was a poor choice to use Steve’s, but that doesn’t make the miscreant any less of a criminal.
Not bad. I would add two additional pieces: Steve had no issue if some miscreant kept trying key after key until she found one that worked, and there were a bunch of stories in the papers about Steve having a really lame security system, but the victims either didn’t read them or didn’t think it was worth changing or keeping their valuables elsewhere because it was too much work and nobody thinks anything bad will ever happen to them.
Ken’s analogy might have been deeply offensive to EFF.
But bacon.
“Might have” being the key words. But bacon.
~~~“Yes means yes” completely redefines that gray area~~
NYT
It’s true, yes means yes, you silly goose. Would you like to see how that works?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CMIAm1V1W3s
The other day you were wondering in your back pages here at SJ why there were no law profs and very few writers and blawgers willing to put fort and sustain any critical examination of affirmative consent and its potential unanticipated consequences.
The vote tally in CA via Senate Bill 967 might be a hint as to why. It the passed the Senate unanimously after a 52 to 16 vote in the House.
Be afraid be very afraid..
Never mind. What could possible go wrong, she said yes.
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/20/61/66/206166111f98f87b491527765f35922e.jpg
She’s not sure anymore what she said. She was afraid. Now she is angry with you. She is now in fact certain you did not grant her the right to define her full female sexual agency during that encounter.
Relax, it will never happen that way. That’s not the way the world works. The NYT’s washed all the gray away.
Whee…..only sunshine remains.
My sense is that most people have no clue that this is going on, and rarely do legislators get a chance to show off their tough-on-crime plus sensitive to feminist credentials at the same time. When reality filters through, people will start to take notice as the unintended consequences (or the intended consequences, according to who you speak to) start happening.
Remember zero tolerance? Remember three strikes? They seemed like such great ideas. So I’m doing the unpleasant yeoman’s work now, but it’s not enough. If there was some guts and a bit more intellectual honesty among the academy, maybe the California Senate vote wouldn’t be unanimous. But with no one (except a few misogynists like me) saying boo, what else would you expect?
Safety first!
~~~ An affirmative consent standard in the determination of whether consent was given by both parties to sexual activity. “Affirmative consent” means affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity. It is the responsibility of each person involved in the sexual activity to ensure that he or she has the affirmative consent of the other or others to engage in the sexual activity. Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent. Affirmative consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time. The existence of a dating relationship between the persons involved, or the fact of past sexual relations between them, should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent.~~~
CA Senate Bill 967
Affirmative consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual activity
Yes, yes, oh yes, YES, YES, YES!!!
I don’t think I can ever read SJ again.
There should have been some kind of trigger warning. Need some brain bleach now.
This is going to turn into a He said/She said thing and the guy is always going to get the short end. Unless the man gets the woman on video saying yes, the woman can always say she didn’t give consent after the fact. It’s happened before and will undoubtedly happen again.
Yup. The proof problem remains he said/she said, but the burden shifts to the accused to prove his innocence rather than the accuser to prove his guilt.
omg, yes, with bacon!
And of course the legislature can’t be sued for the alienations of affection this will undoubtedly cause (“Honey, I just wasn’t sure you were still consenting…”) because of sovereign immunity.