Ignoring Victims

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

Not as charming as it looks.
Photo by Brandon Stanton

I love Humans of New York, the photographer who runs a blog and Facebook page dedicated to a 'photographic census of New York.' Most of the time it's lightearted photos of interesting people doing interesting things. And puppies and babies, of course. But every once in a while, it sparks a controversy. I only caught the aftermath of this one because I didn't check the page for a few days, but Feminist Media has the whole story, including the original photo (at right) that sparked the whole thing.

HoNY took the portrait, and found out afterwards that the man had twice (out of the blue) allegedly offered the woman money for sex. She turned him down, twice, and afterwards told HoNY that this was a common occurrence. In his words:

When the man left, the girl’s demeanor changed completely. She seemed shaken. Her eyes were tearing up. “He just offered me five hundred dollars to go out with him,” she said. “And then when I said ‘no,’ he offered me one thousand. Why does this always happen to me?”

“It happens a lot?” I asked.

“All the time,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m getting emotional. I just can’t go out of my house without this kind of thing happening. I have a son. I’m a mother. I would never degrade myself like that. I just don’t understand why this keeps happening.”

“Do you mind if I tell this story?” I asked.

“Please,” she said. “Tell it.”

Let’s hope this man, and all men, realize the emotional damage they are inflicting on the women they try to buy. In the meantime, feel free to SHARE.

For some reason, the man's religion because the flashpoint of controversy. Apparently so many Orthodox Jews complained that HoNY was ruining the man's reputation (by publishing the story alongisde his photo) that HoNY took it down. In the words of one of those who complained (whose words HoNY still has posted, even though he's taken down the woman's story):

Nobility is a slippery slope, and often, in our quest to do justice, we rush to false judgment. To be virtuous, it seems we must be patient. We must be incredulous even about our own suppositions—especially about our own suppositions—in order to do right by others.

This young man is correct: we ought not rush to judgment. We shouldn't assume that the man in the photo did what he was accused of doing, and we should give him every chance to tell his own side of the story. But that doesn't mean that we have any right to silence the victims of harassment and objectification. And make no mistake, that is what allegedly happened to this young woman: a stranger on the street suggested that she was a good for sale. Even those who think that prostitution should be legal ought to be able to condemn this sort of behavior.

Did the man do what he's accused of? I don't know. But I do know that the woman deserves to have her story told. HoNY did the right thing by posting the story and the picture; he did exactly the wrong thing by taking it down. He sent the message that communities can protect their image by silencing their victims. This is a deeply disturbing message, especially in light of other recent efforts by related communities to protect their image at the expense of victims of child abuse.

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Everyone who's accused deserves the right to defend themselves before people judge them. But they do not have the right to silence their accusers.

Misaligned Regulatory Incentives: Required Pro Bono Work in New York

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

Rob Vischer at Mirror of Justice calls attention to a new policy of the New York state courts which will require prospective lawyers to perform 50 hours of pro bono (free) work in order to be admitted.

Lawyers should do pro bono. That's a given. It's unfortunate that today's lawyers do no where near enough, and that mandatory pro bono is probably necessary, but here we are.

Regardless, this policy is a perfect example of what happens when regulators' interests aren't properly aligned. Any competent regulator who was trying to increase the availability of free legal services for the needy with a minimal impact on the legal profession would institute a completely different policy. For example:

Assume that the average lawyer has a 20 year career. (Adjust the numbers as needed. And technically you don't just take the average — but the details are unimportant). You could get the same number of hours by requiring that every licensed attorney do 5 hours of work a year, each year, starting 10 years after they're first licensed.

Advantages: Individuals in need get competent aid from experienced attorneys. More can get done in the same time (or the same amount can get done with fewer required hours) because the attorneys in question will likely have staffs, and also won't have to figure out what they're doing while they're doing it — they'll already know the ropes. The burden is spread out over a large number of years, and is thus extremely small at any given point, rather than being a more significant one-time burden. 

Disadvantages: ?

But of course, the New York state courts are not competent, public-spirited regulators. They're filled with lawyers who work with other lawyers every day. And so, from their perspective, the scene looks very different. Why put a small burden on current lawyers (themselves, their colleagues, and their friends) when they can put a large burden on their prospective competitors? Besides, poor people might make their nice offices smell bad.

Regulation is doomed to idiocy so long as we don't pay attention to the incentives of the people we put in charge.

Why Tokenism Is Bad: Naomi Schaefer Riley

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

Brainstorm is the Chronicle of Higher Education's "ideas and culture" blog. It mixes popular science with politics and random musing by academics.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is Brainstorm's token rabid conservative. She lately wrote a post that generated a little bit of anger (1 2 3 4 5 6 ... I really could keep this up forever) on the blogs. Naomi is an odd choice for a blog like Brainstorm: she has no postgraduate education, and has never been an academic. But then again, she's not really that odd a choice: she's token "diversity": she was brought on to make the pro-academia parts of CHE seem more reasonable, and to make it look like they gave a legitimate voice to conservatives. (Honestly, conservatives should be more upset than anyone else about the crap that Naomi writes. She's doing the "movement" no favors.)

I suppose I should be upset about her post. I suppose I should point out that it's funny she didn't know that "natural birth literature" refers to the corpus of academic writing about natural birthing. I suppose I should feel outraged that someone would seriously suggest that the election of a black president makes all discussions of racism irrelevant. I suppose I should stand up for the academic legitimacy of studies which suggest black conservatives are betraying policies that benefited them.

But at the end of the day, it's just hard to get worked up about someone who's oblivious enough to write a post titled:

The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations.

And then defend the poor research for that post by writing, three days later,

Finally, since this is a blog about academia and not journalism, I’ll forgive the commenters for not understanding that it is not my job to read entire dissertations before I write a 500-word piece about them.

Naomi was added to be a token and a rabble rouser. And whatever else she's doing, she's doing a great job at that. And while it's fun to take potshots at the easy targets, it's really not worth the time.