Review Essay: Janet Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism

[Excerpt] “My overarching reaction to Janet Halley\u27s recent book, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism, can be summarized with a one sentence cliché: The perfect is the enemy of the good.\u27 She holds feminism to a standard of perfection no human endeavor could possibly meet, and then heartily criticizes it for falling short. Though Halley\u27s myriad observations about feminism occasionally resonated with my own views and experiences, ultimately I remain unconvinced that taking a break from feminism would, for me, be either justified or productive. But I did (mostly) enjoy reading it. Halley is well read, cleverly provocative, and a gifted writer. Below I give a somewhat glib and superficial overview of the book, and my reactions to it. I explain why I think Halley is too hard on feminists generally, and on Catharine MacKinnon specifically. And I take her to task for being harshly critical of feminism without offering realistic, pragmatic, or lawyerly alternatives. You can\u27t theorize your way into an abortion, or out of a rape. You can have to rely on a legal system that may fail you, in which case you can work to improve it so that others don\u27t suffer as you did. This is part of the very essence of feminism, which Halley gives short shrift.

Desperately Seeking a Moralist

In a recent issue of “Unbound”, Janet Halley reviews my book “Caring for Justice”, criticizing it for exhibiting a broad range of the problems she sees in all forms of identitarian legal writing, and therefore worthy of detailed critique. Halley begins her review by listing the representative missteps she finds in both my book and in identitarian politics generally, including, although certainly not limited to, an identification of the site of the subordinated group\u27s injuries-for women, reproduction and sexuality with the site of its ethical lives and insights; a tendency to differentiate and present the interests of subordinate and dominant groups, such as women and men, as inevitably opposed, such that women\u27s injuries work to men\u27s advantage and vice versa; an inclination to substitute the language of harm, injury, and ethics for the language of subordination, exploitation, and the like; and both an unhealthy aversion to politics and an insistence that changing the hearts and minds of the dominant will somehow magically reduce the amount of suffering in the world. Whether or not the list accurately captures my views on these questions, or those of identitarian scholars for whom I did not purport to speak, it is misleading in a more fundamental sense: by the end of her review, it is clear that Halley finds much more troubling sins in “Caring for Justice”, sins that are assuredly much more particular to feminism, to my feminism, and maybe just to this book, than to identitarian politics across the board. Thus, in the bulk of the review, Halley suggests that “Caring for Justice” exhibits tendencies toward both totalitarian[ism] and a slave morality, asserts an ethical view that is infantile, conveys a sense of sexual injury that is panick[ed] (this latter is not just a sin; in Halley\u27s moral ordering, it has all the markings of original sin), shows frightful signs of female- ... supremac[y], is politically paranoid, and, in toto, amounts to something she calls derisively mother feminism. The punishing epithets and psychoanalytic diagnoses flow promiscuously. Whatever else one might say about these charges, I cannot imagine why anyone would regard them as shared characteristics of identitarian scholarship. In this response, graciously invited by the editors of “The Harvard Journal of Law & Gender”, I will address some of these charges, and I will respond in some detail to the thrust of Halley\u27s complaints about the politics of injury. However, what I want to focus on first, albeit briefly, is just one of Halley\u27s characterizations of my work that, on first blush, I found to be extraordinarily peculiar and on one argument of sorts that is built on top of this characterization. I believe that this argument is at the heart of much of Halley\u27s Freudian and Nietzschean lambasting of my work

The ESA mission to Comet Halley

The Europeon Space Agency's approximately Giotto mission plans for a launch in July 1985 with a Halley encounter in mid-March 1986 4 weeks after the comet's perihelion passage. Giotto carries 10 scientific experiments, a camera, neutral, ion and dust mass spectrometers, a dust impact detector system, various plasma analyzers, a magnetometer and an optical probe. The instruments are described, the principles on which they are based are described, and the experiment key performance data are summarized. The launch constraints the helicentric transfer trajectory, and the encounter scenario are analyzed. The Giotto spacecraft major design criteria, spacecraft subsystem and the ground system are described. The problem of hypervelocity dust particle impacts in the innermost part of the coma, the problem of spacecraft survival, and the adverse effects of impact-generated plasma aroung the spacecraft are considered

Comet Halley returns: A teachers' guide 1985-1986

This booklet has been put together as an aid for teachers in elementary and secondary schools. It is divided into two distinct parts. The first part is a brief tutorial which introduces some of the most important concepts about comets, including their historical significance. A list of selected readings is provided at the end of the booklet. The second part of the booklet contains a number of suggested activities, built around the comet. These include both classroom exercises and carefully described field work to observe the comet. Guidance is provided on where to look for the comet, how to observe it, and to photograph it

Modern Observational Techniques for Comets

Techniques are discussed in the following areas: astrometry, photometry, infrared observations, radio observations, spectroscopy, imaging of coma and tail, image processing of observation. The determination of the chemical composition and physical structure of comets is highlighted

A pilot level decision analysis of thermionic reactor development strategy for nuclear electric propulsion

The development policy for thermionic reactors to provide electric propulsion and power for space exploration was analyzed to develop a logical procedure for selecting development alternatives that reflect the technical feasibility, JPL/NASA project objectives, and the economic environment of the project. The partial evolution of a decision model from the underlying philosophy of decision analysis to a deterministic pilot phase is presented, and the general manner in which this decision model can be employed to examine propulsion development alternatives is illustrated

Comets

The IUE was used to study comets including the first dynamically new comet to approach closer than 3 AU. Differences between old and new comets are studied. Results relevant to the nature of cometary nuclei are discussed. Identification of species in the spectra; relative abundances; variability of comets; and comet mass are considered

Origin and evolution of planetary atmospheres

This report concerns several research tasks related to the origin and evolution of planetary atmospheres and the large-scale distribution of volatile elements in the Solar System. These tasks and their present status are as follows: (1) we have conducted an analysis of the volatility and condensation behavior of compounds of iron, aluminum, and phosphorus in the atmosphere of Venus in response to publish interpretations of the Soviet Venera probe XRF experiment data, to investigate the chemistry of volcanic gases, injection of volatiles by cometary and asteroidal impactors, and reactions in the troposphere; (2) we have completed and are now writing up our research on condensation-accretion modeling of the terrestrial planets; (3) we have laid the groundwork for a detailed study of the effects of water transport in the solar nebula on the bulk composition, oxidation state, and volatile content of preplanetary solids; (4) we have completed an extensive laboratory study of cryovolcanic materials in the outer solar system; (5) we have begun to study the impact erosion and shock alteration of the atmosphere of Mars resulting from cometary and asteroidal bombardment; and (6) we have developed a new Monte Carlo model of the cometary and asteroidal bombardment flux on the terrestrial planets, including all relevant chemical and physical processes associated with atmospheric entry and impact, to assess both the hazards posed by this bombardment to life on Earth and the degree of cross-correlation between the various phenomena (NO(x) production, explosive yield, crater production, iridium signature, etc.) that characterize this bombardment. The purpose of these investigations has been to contribute to the developing understanding of both the dynamics of long-term planetary atmosphere evolution and the short-term stability of planetary surface environments