Dismal Scientist

New study out (warning -- Canadian):

[A] University of Manitoba researcher suggests women with disabilities may be up to 40 per cent more likely than other women to be abused by their partners.

Douglas Brownridge with the department of family social sciences based his research on more than 7,000 Statistics Canada interviews.

He says disabled women reported higher rates of being threatened, pushed, slapped, choked or sexually assaulted over the five years before the interviews were conducted in 1999.

Here's what makes me a sociopath: this is good news to me. Men are more likely to hit a woman in a wheelchair, a woman with obviously heightened levels of dependence. I read this, and I picture a society where abusers respond to their environment rationally. There's a cost-benefit running through their mind, and the economics dictates, "Yeah, it's okay to hit this wife. She's way less likely to leave or cause trouble!"

Which is to say, this is evidence that the laudable feminist goal of increasing the cost side of the wife-beating equation should work! Increasing women's agency through increased access to better education, the workplace, support systems -- these all move a woman further from the dependent/disabled side of the spectrum. Stiffer penal codes for domestic abuse, zero tolerance policies, etc -- great ways to make a dude think twice. And this helps prove that there is a thought process behind it all, which is a much better society to be in than one where the certain guys who beat up women will continue to do so no matter what.

Denny Hastert Makes It Too Easy

As Foleygate continues to blaze a trail through the House GOP leadership, folks is starting to pick up on the Gay angle. At first it was mostly referred to inappropriate contact with "a minor" or "a page" or any number of genderless references. That lasted about 36 hours. Now, it's pretty much SOP to bring up that Foley and the page are both dudes. (This coincides precisely with my exposure to right wing takes on the scandal.)

So the gay-baiting shoe's dropped, and folks is starting to make with the funny and all, so I'm left wondering: how long into the scourging of Hastert will it take before someone remembers Denny was a junior high wrestling coach? Used to coach the world's most homoerotic sport. Cute little butts bouncing in the air, and all that. This seems like an untapped goldmine.