Doghouse: "It’s interesting that you focus on the “minorities/women” aspect of my argument without addressing its more fundamental premise: that the conflicting public reactions to Andrea Yates’s deed have a common source in moral relativism. The fact that she’s a woman certainly makes it easier to find relativistic justifications for some reason… "
I think the way you’re defining and applying moral relativism here is pretty slippery. For one thing, an insanity defense is not predicated on moral relativism: it’s predicated on the solidly moral notion that its inhumane to punish people who can’t control their acts. This is the morality of the Enlightenment: that it’s uncivilized to harshly punish those who, like children or the insane, aren’t fully in control of themselves.
Now, let’s say, for arguments’ sake, that women are more successful than men in invoking the insanity defense. That does not necessarily boil down to moral relativism. It might mean that some people are more willing to believe that women are subject to insanity; or it might mean that some people feel more compassion for women defendants than for men. But in neither case is their morality relative since in both cases what they’re saying “I don’t want to punish an insane person as I would a sane person.” What would be relative here, rather than morality, is the assumptions the person holds about each gender.
That may seem subtle to you but it’s actually a very important difference since moral relativism is usually used to describe a kind of postmodern attitude of “anything goes:” no fixed sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. What you seem to have in mind, on the other hand, is best described a double standard based on beliefs about and attitudes towards each sex. This can go hand-in-hand with a very strong and strongly fixed sense of morality. Depending on the circumstances, the double standard sometimes benefits women and sometimes harm them. Ultimately, I’d say, it harms both sexes just because it’s so pernicious.
When you add to that the fact that Andrea Yates was not found guilty by reason of insanity, we also don’t see much of a double standard at work, do we?
I had written previously: “*t’s important to recognize that, on the whole, the kind of people who tend to make the second argument (more victimization), are usually very opposed to the biologically-founded double standard articulated in the first (innate differences of morality between men/women).”
Doghouse replied: “I can’t quite grasp what point you’re trying to make here…”
My point is simply that your post invoked two different ways of differentiating between the sexes. One way is to believe that women, like minorities, are socially disadvantaged with respect to (white) males. Another, much more old-fashioned idea, is to believe that there’s an innate biological difference between men and women (in your example the biological difference is said to translate into women’s have a higher morality, though nowadays it would be more common to have it invoked to say that women are “from Venus”).
My point was that people who argue the first position usually dispute the validity of the second position.
My point was also that where the first position links women and minorities, the second doesn’t since minorities are not generally thought to have a biologically “higher” morality, or, for that matter, to be from Venus ;).
“My point wasn’t really about what society should have done before her crime so much as the allocation of blame afterward. Society is blamed as cruel for not giving its tacit acceptance of Andrea’s deed, as reflected in outrage directed toward the jury and toward the criminal justice system.”
Okay, but what has that got to do with moral relativism–or even double standard?
The people who are saying this are saying it because they believe that Yates was not guilty by reason of insanity; and/or they believe that Yates’s husband behaved negligently. Both responses rest on a very moral proposition: that justice should be served; that it’s unjust to punish the insane; that it’s unjust to to overlook complicit negligence of one parent while apportioning unmitigated blame to another. People aren’t saying society is “cruel”; they’re saying that mental illness isn’t understood.
“Of course “insanity” exists as a legal precept… As for accusing me of favoring more lenient treatment for white males vis-a-vis the insanity defense, puh-leeze…”
I made no such implication. I merely indicated the obvious flaw in your reasoning. By assuming that those who believe Yates to be not guilty by reason of insanity were responding to her gender, you implied that insanity involving a woman always a question of of her sex. It doesn’t seemed to have occurred to you that people might consider Yates’s behavior (suicides, hospitalizations, diagnoses for psychosis, bizarre murders of her children) prima facie evidence of her insanity with her sex playing little if no role.
Do you, for that matter, doubt that Yates is insane?
“If Russell Yates had deliberately bought a shotgun, blown the head off of each of his five children, and then calmly called the police afterward and confessed to the deed, do you think the issue of insanity would have even come up?”
If he’d had Yates’s past record, yes, absolutely. I believe that if he’d been under a suicide watch, diagnosed as psychotic, etc.,etc. and his wife left him alone with the kids, and he killed them while claiming to hear voices, that that a lawyer might very well advise him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
I’m curious, btw, why you introduce the shotgun. Surely that is a very different way of killing people and one that might influence a jury one way or another. Do you think it impossible that a psychotic father hearing voices might drown his children?
[citations from the Pit deleted]
“In the words of the Church Lady, now isn’t that special?”
Well I’d say that’s the Pit.
I don’t read any threads in the Pit (or only rarely), so I meant what’s going on in Great Debates, and what’s being said in editorials, talks shows, etc.
“I believe that the whole issue is moral relativism, though the condescending manner in which some folks use this to lower the moral bar for women and minorities is certainly an important side issue.”
And, again, I think what you’re talking about is better described as a double standard.
As I hope I’ve demonstrated, people are not lowering any moral bar for women even if it’s the case that women are statistically more likely to be successful in pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.
In addition, Andrea Yates was found guilty and punished to the full extent of the law. So here the double standard did absolutely nothing for her.
At the same time, as Dave Simmons was attempting to say, there’s simply no evidence that minorities (male or female) are given any sort of break by the criminal justice system. On the contrary, minorities are much more likely than whites to be arrested, tried, found guilty, sentenced harshly, and executed. So why you bring them up in this context is just rather bizarre.
“I don’t “condemn” anyone, and if you wipe the foam and spittle from your monitor I think you will be able to see that fairly easily.”
No foam and splittle Doghouse, though your remarks were likely to offend.
As I said in my last, my your logic women are damned if, like Andrea Yates, they’re punished to the full extent of the law, and damned if, like Yates might have been in a different state, found not guilty by reason of insanity. When you add that to your utterly groundless assumptions about minorities benefiting from a lowered “moral bar,” you’ve got ideas that are bound to raise some hackles.
Your thoughts on moral relativism are not, however, offensive; they simply weren’t well-defined. You think there’s a double standard, pure and simple.