Protecting children from internet pornography May 24, 2013

A call for better sex education:

A report released on Thursday by the commissioner’s office found that children who watch pornography are more likely to develop sexually risky behaviour and become sexually active at a younger age.

It called for urgent action to “develop children’s resilience to pornography” after discovering that a significant number have access to sexually explicit images. It also called on the Department for Education to ensure all schools delivered effective relationship and sex education, including how to use the internet safely.

I’m really pleased to see this. I naively thought when I first came to the UK that students here would have far superior sex ed to what students in the US have. Years of conversations with my students have shown me otherwise. None of them have been taught such basic things as that sex should be enjoyable for everyone involved, and that you should make sure that the person you’re having sex with is happy about it. (My favourite student anecdote was about one school where the girls were taken into a room to watch a film about menstruation while the boys watched a film about cars.) Thanks, Mr J!

Reader query about response to sexual harassment

A reader writes:

I don’t know if this normal sexual harassment policy or if my school is just off its rocker. Since I have had issues with the administration before, such that I quit a few months ago and am merely finishing up the term, I think they are treating this inappropriately, but I wanted some input. A student posted publically, in the class’s online forum, some personal messages to one of the female students. They were kind of strange; he said that he missed her and asked where she was. The girl doesn’t know this boy, and I figured that just based on their lack of class interaction, and his strangeness in relationship to the conversations I have had with him after class and his forum posts made me think something was a bit off.
It turns out that this student had emailed the female student in my class a bunch of sexually graphic messages in the private online messaging center in the education management system the school has. When this came to my attention I told the student that I was reporting the information, and I would not let him in the class because she felt uncomfortable. He showed up to class five minutes late, and as politely as I could be, and without providing too much detail told him he couldn’t come into the class, but that I, or someone else, would contact him in a couple of days regarding the public posting. I didn’t mention the private messages for fear of escalation. I walked back in the classroom. The student continued to remain outside the door, and this made me nervous, so I decided to call the campus police. The student then walks in, sits down, and with his hands, by making the hang-up the phone gesture, tells me to hang up the phone. Of course, I am terrified at this point and I reach for my cell phone and call 911 because the campus police dispatch still have me on hold. He does this for a minute or two and then leaves the classroom. I have the students barricade the door while we wait for the police, on a campus I could walk in less than five minutes (it took the police over 10 minutes to get there). But the doors open outward and lock from the outside, so we are just holding the doors in. The student then comes back and tries to get back in the classroom, and keeps loitering outside the classroom and trying to peek in until the police come. It is after the police come that things seem to go insane in a way I didn’t think that they could.
The police keep saying that they cannot prove the student sent the emails, and at one point the officer demands my class list in order to make sure some other student isn’t in my class. I wasn’t made privy to why, but perhaps he is an email hacker. So, here is a situation in which the female student doesn’t know the male student, she has sexually graphic emails from him, and he is acting aggressively and threatening toward me when I don’t let him in the class. The dean of student affairs, and the go to person for sexual harassment is in there the whole time with the officer. She isn’t comforting to the student. She is acting like this is not a serious incident and comes in all cocky and starts playing drum on the table with her fingers. I think to myself, what a lack of sensitivity; and even the girl says to me, “I feel like I have to prove he sent these emails.” We are both asking what her safety on campus will be, to which we aren’t given very comforting answers. Finally she goes, by the way no one offered to walk her to her car, and I am asked to write up a letter to the dean of student affairs (the woman who came in a decided to play drum on the table) who will pass it on to campus police.
The outcome of the situation is that the student has been dropped from my class, but he can be on campus and attend his other classes while this investigated. I am told that the reason he came back into my classroom was because he misunderstood and thought I was coming back out to talk to him. I think, how can a ‘get off the phone gesture’ and trying to re-enter the classroom again after I am calling the police while the doors are barricaded and the other students are yelling at him to leave, be seen as a miscommunication. The dean of student affairs tells me that she has to be concerned for his rights and that the dean of the social science department will attend my class next Wednesday, as if that’s enough. So, I feel like, this is a clear cut case of sexual harassment by someone who has aggressive tendencies, and basically the only evidence this girl has is in question, not to mention how many times they asked if she knew this guy; and it seems his actions in the classroom don’t matter. I think, and I am not sure, and this is why I am asking, if he had said, bomb, or gun, he would have been not allowed on campus during this investigation. Any advice or thoughts would be deeply appreciated.

Guardian Witness: New shoots of student feminism May 23, 2013

From the Guardian Witness (part of the UK-based Guardian newspaper’s website):

Lad culture appears to permeate all aspects of student life – from Facebook newsfeedsto the debating chamber of Glasgow University. But women are fighting back – or at least that’s what the recent surge in the number of student feminist societies suggests.

From burnt bras to feminist graffiti and event flyers, we want to see the shoots of the new feminism on your campus. Share your images and videos.

Well, go on, then! Head over there and share!

Stereotype threat: scaling up the interventions May 22, 2013

Great stuff.

For example:

A controlled, incremental and systematic approach to the application of interventions is a possible path to scaling up interventions. For example, PERTS(http://www.perts.net/home/PERTS.php), created by doctoral students Dave Paunesku and Carissa Romero of the Department of Psychology at Stanford University, features such an approach. This method uses the Internet to deliver interventions to students. Teachers volunteer to have their students go to computer terminals to complete the interventions in a standardized fashion on designated days. As the procedure for delivering the interventions is highly controlled, the treatment message is given as intended, minimizing the potential for error. Interventions delivered in this manner have yielded reliable increases in GPA in studies of thousands of students across the country—particularly for low-performing ones.

Abercrombie and Fitch May 21, 2013

They don’t sell plus sizes because their brand is only for ‘cool, good-looking people’ according to the CEO Mike Jeffries. Well, Mike, what did you make of this?

Constructing the Myth of the Crack Baby

Ta Nehisi Coates has a short blurb about about the crack baby ‘epidemic’ in the early 1980s in the US.  You can also watch a ten minute video / short documentary about it here.

a pregnant woman with one hand resting on her belly.

Coates mentions the influence of racism in how women were being prosecuted for being pregnant while addicted to cocaine. In fact, there’s a whole confluence of racism, classism, misogyny, and ableism that feed into the crack baby hysteria:
–the racism and classism that goes into poor WoC being more easily seen as irresponsible mothers who were recklessly endangering their unborn children
–the general misogyny that a woman’s health (like helping her with her addiction) is not nearly as important as the health of the her unborn child (so she should be prosecuted for potentially harming it.)
–the ableism that influence our standards of health.  Part of the hysteria was that babies would be born with physical and cognitive disabilities, which not only lead us to think of them as not being fully human, but we were then also concerned about all the extra money they disabled kids would cost us.  Because you know, the *tragedy* here is not that there are a bunch of women addicted to a dangerous drug, but that people’s taxes will go up from from all these costly, disabled babies.

Eek, it’s like a messed-up game of “spot how the -ism influences our moral concerns.”

Ever lay for two months staring at the ceiling?i

That’s what pregnancy might have landed you with. The alternative, your doctors said, was the possible death of you and ‘the baby.’ That’s quite a motivator.

Well, all that may have been unnecessary.

Of course, if you are pregnant, your doctors may fell entitled to disregard the rest of your life in deciding treatment. The rational use of probabilities can go out the door.

NOTE:

The article does not list pre-eclamsia as not really requiring bed rest. High blood pressure is one sign of pre-eclamsia, but there’s more to it:
G

Eclampsia (described above). [ajj: life threatening stroke]
Liver, kidney, and lung problems.
A blood clotting disorder.
Bleeding into the brain (a stroke).
Severe bleeding from the afterbirth (placenta).
HELLP syndrome. This occurs in about 1 in 5 women who have severe pre-eclampsia. HELLP stands for ‘haemolysis, elevated liver enzymes and low platelets’, which are some of the medical features of this severe form of pre-eclampsia. Haemolysis means that your blood cells start to break down. Elevated liver enzymes means that your liver has become affected. Low platelets means that the number of platelets in your blood is low and you are at risk of serious bleeding problems, as the platelets work to help your blood to clot.

Don’t mess with pre-eclamsia. Paid maternity remains VERY important, for this and other reasons.

Wealth inequality in America

Astonishing.

Using Optical Illusions to Combat Implicit Bias

“Giving White People The Illusion Of Darker Skin Makes Them Less Racist”

 

CFP: Society for Analytical Feminism at Central APA May 20, 2013

SAF Session at the Central Division APA

February 26-March 1, 2014

Palmer House Hilton, Chicago IL

The Society for Analytical Feminism invites submissions for a session at the 2014 Central Division APA meetings.

The Society seeks papers that examine feminist issues by methods broadly construed as analytic, or discuss the use of analytic philosophical methods as applied to feminist issues. Reading time should be about 20 minutes. Authors should submit either  (1) a paper, or (2) an extended abstract, as detailed as possible (up to 1000 words) accompanied by a bibliography. Please delete all self-identifying references from your submission to ensure anonymity.

 Send submissions as a word attachment to Robin Dillon:

rsd2 [at] lehigh [dot] edu

Deadline for submissions: August 1, 2013.

Graduate students or underfunded professionals whose papers are accepted will be eligible for the Society’s $250 Travel Stipend. Please indicate on a separate page (or in your covering letter) if you fall into one of these categories.

 *****

The Society for Analytical Feminism provides a forum where issues concerning analytical feminism may be openly discussed and examined. Its purpose is to promote the study of issues in feminism by methods broadly construed as analytic, to examine the use of analytic methods as applied to feminist issues, and to provide a means by which those interested in Analytical Feminism may meet and exchange ideas. The Society meets yearly at the Central Division meetings of the APA and frequently organizes sessions for the Eastern Division and Pacific Divisions.

Membership in the Society is open to all who are interested in and concerned with issues in Analytical Feminism. Annual dues are $25 for regularly employed members, $15 for students, unemployed, underemployed, and retired members.