Job Talks: Through a glass darkly February 29, 2008

 [Acknowledgements]

Dear Professor Manners: 

I’m a pretty hot property on the philosophy job market this year.  I’ve had  three fly-outs and they all went very well.  I had a lot of great discussions with the faculty in each department.  Of course, I understood that the women faculty wouldn’t really be up to a discussion with someone like me, so I pretty much left them to discuss their feminism or whatever among themselves.  One or two tried to break into the guys’ discussion, but I took my cue from the faculty there and didn’t provide them with the opportunity to embarrass themselves.

Since I fit in so well with each department, I am expecting more than one offer.  What I am wondering is what is the right way to turn down an offer I know lots of people would die for?

You may have solved the problem already.  Your profession is noted for being full of people  with  few  or no social graces, and you can no longer assume that the behavior you recount means everyone agrees that women cannot do philosophy.  I understand you may be surprised and even shocked by this news, but the fact of the matter is that you may have thoroughly and visibly insulted people who have the power of deciding whether you deserve a long term job in their department. 

Even if the female professors are generous enough not to let their feelings of personal animosity toward you decide their vote on your candidacy, they may well be worried about your teaching.  It is well recognized, at least among feminist philosophers, that women undergraduates find philosophy classes less appealing than do men, and the sort of exclusionary behavior you indulged in is one of the causes of that.   

Perhaps you should get out that list of VAP’s and think of another round of applications.

not a moral issue? February 29, 2008

There’s been much in the media, in the UK, recently about prostitution and proposed changes in the law (mostly prompted by the high profile case in which Steve Wright was convicted of the murder of five women working as prostitutes).

(Proposed revisions to the law, however, have been jettisoned for the moment, in an attempt to get the Criminal Justice Bill through Parliament as smoothly as possible. More here)

Radio 4 had a discussion about whether selling sex simpliciter is morally problematic – you can listen to the programme here (though programme may only be online until next wed. scroll down to ‘the moral maze and click listen.)

Its actually a pretty frustrating listen: many of the discussants don’t focus on the matter that is supposedly under discussion, namely of whether or not selling sex itself is morally problematic. So often they seem to be talking at cross purposes. Rather, there is discussion of the often horrific conditions that surround those working in prostitution.

Whilst this meant there was little clarity over the moral issue …

(only Michael Portillo seemed focused on this question; his claim being that when it somes to selling sex simpliciter, if both buyer and seller were informed and consenting, there was no moral issue, nor should there be a law against this (he seemed to suggest this was a thought that could generalise. But there are cases where this does not, in current law, hold: he would surely want to say (I think?) that selling and buying drugs (non-addictive ones, to remove complications about autonomy on the part of the buyer), for example, should not be legal))

… what the discussion DID seem to show, was that the moral issues surrounding selling sex should be of little relevance when considering what the legal position should be  - not least because even if it is morally wrong, this does not mean it should be illegal.

More relevant are the realities of the conditions in which many women work in prostitution, and what leads them into it. This  interesting article in today’s guardian (G2) which discusses prostitution without raising the moral issue at all.

The epistemology (and metaphysics, and ethics) of bias February 28, 2008

Edward McClelland has an article on Salon about Obama-McCain voters– generally guys (or “dudes”, as the article puts it), who will vote for Obama if he’s the Democratic candidate but McCain if Clinton gets the Democratic nomination.  McClelland started out feeling just this inclination, and then became convinced that all his rationalisations for it were wrong, that it was sexism, and that he should vote for Clinton if she gets the nomination. What interests me is the question of how we should go about deciding in any case, including our own, whether we are motivated by an inappropriate bias or by something more respectable. It might seem obvious that every Obama-McCain voter is motivated by sexism. After all, their politics are extremely far apart (at least as far as the US political spectrum goes), and Clinton’s views are very close to Obama’s. But loads of voters don’t base their votes on detailed knowledge of candidates’ positions, and instead go by some nebulous sense of “character”. “Character” evaluations certainly make it easy for bias to come in, but surely they don’t guarantee it. Mightn’t somebody just *dislike* Clinton for non-sexist reasons, and therefore prefer Obama/McCain? Surely this is possible, and probably there’s at least one person like this. So, even if we grant that many Obama/McCain dudes are motivated by sexism, mightn’t you, or your cousin, be one who isn’t? How would you know? It’s very, very tough. You can’t point to a record of support for other women who have come close to the Presidency, as there haven’t been any.  Self-knowledge of this sort is very hard.  It’s wrong to expect that if you are influenced by sexist biases you’ll discover the belief “women suck” lurking somewhere in your subconscious.  (I think a lot of people do mistakenly assume this picture of sexism, by the way.)  If what researchers on unconscious associations and gender schemas tell is correct, *most* of us– even some of those who devote their lives to fighting sexism– are affected by sexist biases.  This may be take the form of some inferences being easier than others, or of very slight positive or negative emotions being tied to sex/gender. What McClellan realised about himself was the extent to which he associated masculinity with leadership.  

I never said to myself, “I want a man for president.” I said to myself, “I want a leader who can unite the country.” Like a lot of guys who are about to furtively nod their heads, I think of leadership as a masculine quality, so Obama and McCain seemed like the strongest candidates. I was also leery of Clinton’s association with the culture wars — I don’t want to go through that again — but she was a polarizing first lady because she was given power over healthcare before the nation was ready to see a woman in that role. (In 1994, I walked into a religious bookstore and saw an anti-Clinton biography titled “Big Sister Is Watching You.”) Ultimately, it was impossible to separate my reservations about Clinton from the fact that she’s a woman.

But realisations of this sort about oneself are hard to come by (partly because they involve admitting things we don’t want to admit, but partly just because self-knowledge is hard).  I think there’s a real epistemic problem here.  There are also some interesting issues about how to define a bias, and about how blameworthy people are for biases and actions based on biases. And, of course, these questions and phenomena are by no means confined to sexist biases.

CFP: Shulamith Firestone February 27, 2008

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FIRST COLLECTION OF ESSAYS ON SHULAMITHFIRESTONE’S THE DIALECTIC OF SEX

2010 will mark the fortieth anniversary of the most radical manifesto of contemporary feminism. Firestone’s ‘The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution’ became a bestseller, yet unlike the other celebrated feminist polemics of that year (Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch and Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics), Firestone’s work is scarcely remembered today.  Firestone called not only for the abolition of the nuclear family and the economic and social independence of children, but for the end of pregnancy itself.  The cybernetic revolution was hailed as the technological solution to the curse of Eve and the subordination of mothers just as automation was claimed to offer an end to brutal physical labour. Today, as researchers attempt to devise a prosthetic womb, Firestone’s call seems prescient. More importantly, her philosophical challenge to the cultural significance of genital difference returns us to the unresolved question of genderdichotomy, whether this is understood as discursive, social, psychologicalor physical, and its relation to the continuing subordination of women and homosexuals.We are requesting papers of  7,000 to 9,000 words addressing The Dialectic of Sex  its argument, its reception, its salience today.  Please send 300 word synopses, together with a brief biography, to Mandy Merck and Stella Sandford at m.merck AT rhul.ac.uk by April 1, 2008. 

Is female wrestling worse than stripping? February 27, 2008

Florida, and Miami especially, has some of the laxest legislation regarding strip clubs in the States. Here, you’re allowed to touch the dancers, they can touch you, the venues can sell whatever booze as they want, and they can do so till 5 or 6am. There’s not many rules about advertising either, and one quickly becomes inured to flicking past the pages promoting establishments that offer ‘full liquor, full nudity, full friction’ in the local free sheets and listings magazines. Occasionally, though, there’s something egregious enough to startle still. This was the Miami New Times’ recommendation for how to spend Monday evening this week:

Witness the glorious return of female wrestling.

Sick of spilling cheese at the strip club? We have something better for you. Allow us to paint you a visual picture of the sights, sounds, and smells you are certain to behold when Nastie’s Female Wrestling returns tonight to Studio A. Scantily clad women will be rolling around in baby oil, pulling each other’s hair, and eventually ripping off each other’s bikinis. The oil will glisten off of their smooth skin, as testosterone-fueled onlookers chant things like “Fuck her up!” Good stuff.

The two contestants will be naked and kicking as the drooling crowd moves closer to the custom-designed wrestling ring. How do the brawls usually end during Nastie’s events? Video footage from a previous match featured a brunette putting a blonde in a head lock. Then the blonde broke free, rolled over, and sat bare-bottomed on top of her opponent. She fondled her pierced nipples as the referee counted to three. All of this awaits you.

I was first flabbergasted, then disgusted, then curious at my own reactions. Why is this enough to shake me whilst I’m complacent about the strip clubs?  (Studio A isn’t a strip club, it’s a mid-size nightclub that more normally puts on bands and DJs).  Is it just the article – the violent overtones, the horrible pack-animal imagery (drooling, chanting), the fact that a respected publication is helping to promote it? Or is there a significant ethical difference between this kind of thing and strip clubs? I’m no ethicist; my intuition is that yes, there is a difference, this stuff is worse. But I’m finding it hard to articulate why, beyond the fact that this adds stupid violence to stupid objectification. Help, anyone?

Is a clone an abomination in the eyes of God? February 25, 2008

If we think that what occurs in nature is compatible with a divine view, then it appears She may be a bit more flexible than religious leaders sometimes think.  Not only do we have gay penguins, but now it turns out that virgin births, in which a female gives birth to genetically identical offspring, can be found in Komodo dragons and other species:

Virgin birth, known to biologists as parthenogenesis (from the Greek, “parthen” meaning virgin or maiden and “genesis,” beginning), has been seen in other species over the years. Some lizards occasionally produce offspring in this way. So do several species of fish, including a female hammerhead shark at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha that produced offspring without a male last year.
…
Cloning is one of many mechanisms species use to survive in a dangerous world. Indeed, the diversity of reproductive strategies seen in animals staggers the imagination. Some reptiles do not determine sexes genetically, but rely on different incubation temperatures to determine the development of males and females. Other creatures can actually switch sexes during their lifetimes, being born male and developing as females. Still others can switch sexes based on behavioral cues in the social group. There is no one way that creatures start development, grow and form sexes — there are many varied ways.

Unfortunately, humans seem to forget this fact when we find ourselves turning to nature to guide us through difficult choices, such as arguments about whether life begins at conception, or over the proper structure of the family. Or, more recently, regarding the morality of cloning. Whether we’re talking about raising bigger cattle or growing life-saving organs or trying to “live forever,” both sides like to stress their abilities to judge what is “natural.” Judging from Komodo dragons, lizards and sharks, the answer seems to be that for reproduction, almost anything goes.

Thanks to Neil Shubin for the lesson that we should not assume nature meets our sense of what is natural.  The article seems to me a good example for teachers of various philosophy courses, and I’ve stressed the parts that  describe a problematic kind of reasoning philosophy profs will find familiar and the passages with Shubin’s general challenge to it.

“Bitch is the New Black” (‘transcript’ added) February 24, 2008

The next time you hear some assertive women described in derogatory terms, consider  saying, “Yea!  Bitches get stuff done.”

From last night’s Saturday Night Live:

Nothing is endorsed or recommended here, except the sheer pleasure of appropriating the terms of abuse.

NBC has claimed copyright violation and pulled the youtube version.  We found another version, but it may be pulled soon.  If so, you can still find it on NBC’s site here.

And the following sounds like the sound track:

From MyDD comes something close to a transcript:

FEY: And finally, the most important Women’s News item there is, we have our first serious female presidential candidate in Hillary Clinton.
And yet, women have come so far as feminists, that they don’t feel obligated to vote for a candidate just because she’s a woman.

Women today feel perfectly free to make whatever choice Oprah tells them to.

Which raises the question, why are people abandoning Hillary for Obama?

Some say that they’re put off by the fact that Hillary can’t control her husband, and that we would end up with co-presidents.

‘Cause that would be terrible, having two intelligent, qualified people working together to solve problems. Ugh.

Why would you let Starsky talk to Hutch? I wanna watch that show, Starsky.

You know, what is it, America? What is it, are you weirded out that they’re married?

‘Cause I can promise you that they are having exactly as much sex with each other as George Bush and Jeb Bush are.

Then there is the physical scrutiny of her physical appearance.

Rush Limbaugh, the Jeff Conaway of right wing radio, said that he doesn’t think America is ready to watch their president quote “turn into an old lady in front of them.” Really?

They didn’t seem to mind when Ronald Reagan did that.

Maybe what bothers me the most is that people say that Hillary is a bitch.

Let me say something about that: Yeah, she is.

And so am I and so is this one. (pointing to Amy Poehler)

POEHLER: Yeah, deal with it.

FEY: Know what? Bitches get stuff done.

(Amy says yeah and starts nodding her head, together they get in a rhythm, with Amy saying in response, more yeahs, uh huhs, with a ‘you go girl’ style)

Like back in grammar school,

they could have had priests teaching you but, no,

they had those tough old nuns who slept on cots

and who could hit ya and you HATED those bitches

But at the end of the school year

you sure KNEW the capital of Vermont!

So COME ON Texas and Ohio

Get on board, it’s not too late!…

BITCH IS THE NEW BLACK!

Beyond dogwhistles: Bill O’Reilly February 24, 2008

Bill O’Reilly’s latest fails to be a dogwhistle, it seems to me, because the racism is so blatant and undeniable: 

And I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that’s legit. We’ll track it down.

And check out his fabulous attempt at an apology:

While talking to a radio caller, I said there should be no lynching in the case — that comment off Clarence Thomas saying he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. He said that on 60 Minutes, you may remember. I’m sorry if my statement offended anybody. That, of course, was not the intention. Context is everything.

Iterating cats: On Sunday February 24, 2008

The infinite cat project, now at more than 1550 cats:

The historical record is preserved. It started with a picture of a cat and a rose…See it here:

Sexual orientation February 22, 2008

Is sexual orientation stable and fixed?  Though some religious groups support the idea that gay men can change their orientation, both common understanding and more psychological-scientific views seem to regard it as unlikely to change.

But what if the research supporting this official view was done principally on men while women are difference?  That’s what Lisa M. Diamond argues in Sexual Fluidity:  Understanding Women’s Love and Desire, just published by Harvard University Press.

The initial hypothesis, that women are different and it’s been entirely missed since the objects of subject have been principally men, is depressingly familiar and has been shown true in some very important contexts.   For me the author’s support of the hypothesis lends enough credibility to her view that I want to read the book.  Aside from that, and its quite impressive academic press,  I can’t say more about the book, except that, as Publishers Weekly apparently says, it is sure to be controversial. 

Students and sex work February 21, 2008

Research conducted by Kingston University, London shows that more students are turning to sex work to pay their fees and meet the costs of student living. The study claims that the figure has risen by 50% in the past seven years, coinciding with the introduction of tuition fees. The article (and the reader comments that follow it) assume that it is only female students who are working in the sex industry. I’m not sure if the study also looked at male students. If it didn’t, it should have done. (For what it’s worth, I reckon uncovering that kind of data would be harder, since working as a male prostitute is surely even more taboo than being a female sex worker.) Read more here.

Women of Color and the Academy February 20, 2008

Campus Lockdown:

Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex

   The Campus Lockdown conference will center women of color in the academic industrial complex. 

We will consider its structural constraints, as well as the implications of our scholarship.

Saturday, March 15, 200810:30 – 5:00pmMichigan UnionUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Speakers include:

• Piya Chatterjee, University of California, Riverside
• Angela Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz (via teleconference)
• Rosa Linda Fregoso, University of Southern California
• Ruth Gilmore, University of Southern California
• Fred Moten, Duke University
• Clarissa Rojas, San Francisco State University
• Haunani-Kay Trask, University of Hawai’i

Schedule at a glance:

          10:30 – 12:00   Panel I:  Women of Color in the Academic Industrial Complex

          1:30 – 3:30      Panel II:  Why Women of Color Scholarship?  Social Justice, Ethnic Studies, and Women’s Studies

          3:45 – 5:00      Closing Event

The registration deadline is February 29, 2008.  For more information & to register online, please visit http://www.woclockdown.org/

On Dogwhistles February 20, 2008

Zuzu at Feministe has a fascinating discussion of Dogwhistles, a very important concept to those interested in the role and effects of biases.  Her focus is on some really troubling remarks by Obama about Clinton. I think the Dogwhistle concept is ripe for some philosophical discussion.

The whole point of dogwhistles in politics is to send a message to a target audience that goes over the heads of most people, because those people might be offended or turned off if you came out and said it. One way the going-over-the-heads-of-most-people bit is accomplished is to speak in code, such as when George Bush suddenly blurted out something about the Dred Scott decision during a debate with John Kerry, in response to a question about abortion. A whole lot of people were scratching their heads about that one, but he had a target audience, and they understood *If elected to another term, I promise that I will nominate Supreme Court Justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.*Bush couldn’t say that in plain language, because it would freak out every moderate swing voter in the country, but he can say it in code, to make sure that his base will turn out for him. Anti-choice advocates have been comparing Roe v. Wade with Dred Scott v. Sandford for some time now. There is a constant drumbeat on the religious right to compare the contemporary culture war over abortion with the 19th century fight over slavery, with the anti-choicers cast in the role of the abolitionists.Another way to send your message to your target audience while maintaining deniability is to go the wink-wink-nudge-nudge route, where you know that many people not in your target audience will pick up your meaning, but because you’ve crafted your statement to be facially innocuous, anyone who objects will be accused of being hysterical, hypersensitive, or overreacting. The second option is the one that Barack Obama went with when he said while campaigning in Wisconsin: 

This is, I understand Senator Clinton periodically when she is feeling down launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal.  

And that’s exactly what’s happened — all over the place, when anyone has objected to this statement as a sexist dogwhistle, they’ve been accused of overreacting. Of trivializing *real* sexism. Of seeing things that aren’t really there. Of stretching. Of ignoring context… Melissa McEwan has made the point many times that Obama has been praised for his rhetorical skills, for his ability to craft a message using just the right words. On the surface, this statement appears to be saying merely that Clinton goes negative when she’s behind. But then you look at the words he chose to make that statement: Periodically. Feeling down. And you have to ask yourself: Why did he choose those words to make this point? And the answer, unfortunately, is to send the message that Clinton is a big girly girl ruled by her hormones. This isn’t the first time he or one of his surrogates has used this kind of coded language to remind voters that Clinton is a woman. Among other things, he’s dismissed Clinton’s experience in the White House as having tea; he’s said that Clinton’s “claws come out”…

I think this whole Dogwhistle concept is very important, and that there might be several forms of it, which might well lead to different assessments of culpability in different cases. Here are some that occur to me, with respect to sexist Dogwhistles:

The Dogwhistle is a deliberately crafted effort to appeal to audience’s sexism.

The Dogwhistle is an unconscious product of the the speaker’s sexism.

The Dogwhistle is not a product of sexism (perhaps the speaker is from a subculture in which the phrase carries different connotations), but it nonetheless appeals to the audience’s sexism.

Not sure about this one: The Dogwhistle is the product of the speaker’s cultural associations, but it is not a product of sexism. (This would depend heavily on formulating a definition of sexism that is restrictive enough to make this possible.)

What do you think?

Vibrators VS Guns February 19, 2008

In a follow-up to our previous post on Texas’s new acceptance of vibrators, check out this astounding photo and caption regarding the story, from the Washington Post (H/T Feministing).

Should buying sex toys be as easy as buying guns?

My questions range from the nerdily linguistic to the cultural (I’m sure you can tell which is which):

(1) I’m sure this is my new favourite example of *something*.  It feels a lot like presupposition, given the way that a bare ‘yes’ and ‘no’ both seem like the wrong answer. This is just like the classic example, ”Have you stopped robbing banks?”  (OK, that’s not precisely the classic example…)  But note the way that it differs. One can perfectly well answer it by saying either “No, because it should be much easier to buy sex toys than guns;” or “Yes; and in fact it should be even easier to buy sex toys than guns.” But while “Have you stopped robbing banks?” can be answered with “No, because I never started”, it can’t be answered with “Yes; in fact I never started.”  Is this difference a significant one? Another thought I’ve had is that *it should be easy to have guns* might be merely an implicature of the question.  (Implicatures carried by questions is an under-explored topic, but David Braun has a nice recent paper about it.) This would explain the feeling I have that *it should be easy to buy guns* is more weakly suggested than *I have robbed banks*.  I’m very rusty on presupposition, so thoughts from those more up on it are much appreciated!  

(2) As readers may know, I’m a US expat living in the UK. I’ve gradually learned that newspapers here make jokes– that is, just slip them into regular stories. This is something that didn’t happen in US newspapers last time I checked. Has it started happening now? Or is the question being asked in earnest? I’d be grateful for guidance from My Fellow Americans. If it is being asked in earnest, ‘culture shock’ doesn’t begin to capture what I’m feeling.

Is Your Department Women-Friendly? February 18, 2008

There’s been a lot of discussion on this blog and others about ways in which philosophy departments are unfriendly to women.  But some lucky people are in departments that *are* friendly to women (at least in some ways), and this is well worth knowing about, recognising, and celebrating.  SWIP-UK has an initiative to do just that– primarily by recognising specific intiatives, but also by recognising whole departments, if there seems an outstanding case. Does your department do something women-friendly?  If so, let SWIP-UK know, so that they can recognise it.  Aside from being well-deserved recognition, it may help to inspire others.  The call for nominations can be found here. Note that this is open to non-UK departments as well as UK ones.

Stanley Fish says Identity Politics can be rational (+ addition) February 18, 2008

and his supporting point is important enough that I’m not going to argue about details (unlike here and here and here), though we’ll see that his conclusion leaves us with some questions. 

Fish distinguishes between a thin and a thick invocation of race or gender to support one’s vote.  The thin reason says you will vote for someone because they are like you.  But a thick reason appeals to interests, ones that – to judge from his examples – have a place in the political sphere.  His example of an African-American’s thick reason for voting for an African-American:

Yet every African American – conservative or liberal, rich or poor, barely educated or highly educated – meets with obstacles to his or success and mobility that are all the more frustrating because they are structural (built into the culture’s ways of perceiving) rather than official. To the non- African American these obstacles will be more or less invisible, especially in a country where access to opportunity is guaranteed by law. It makes sense, therefore, that an African American voter could come to the conclusion that an African American candidate would be likely to fight for changes that could remove barriers a white candidate might not even see. A vote given for that reason would be a vote based on identity, but it would be more than a mere affirmation of fellowship (he’s one of mine and I have to support him); it would be a considered political judgment as to which candidate will move the country in a preferred direction.

In addition to the relief to see someone in such a visible arena actually describe one of the problems keeping racism in place – that the inequities are not even always visible to others – he provides a contrast that has seemed to me to be lacking in the discussion. And that is the contrast between voting for someone just because they are of one’s group, race or gender, and voting because they will represent one’s interests in a way the others seem less likely to.

But should we vote on interests that are the product of one’s ‘identity’? Women are now over 50% of the US population, but still you might feel that if you are voting in a US primary, you should have more impersonal interests at heart. (And of course I hope that elections in other countries will simlarly reflect their population’s diversity, as some definitely have led the way in doing.) Fish’s response is that there is no alternative to voting on interests:

What this means is that the ritual deprecation of “special interests” makes no sense. All interests are special interests – proceed from some contestable point of view – and none is “generally human.” And that is why identity interests, as long as they are ideological [thick]and not merely tribal [thin], constitute a perfectly respectable reason for awarding your vote.

Fish’s claim is not obviously true. The 18th century philosophy Hume argued that we need to have a more general point of view toward humanity in order to act morally, and it seems true that we might want a candidate who will take action to stop the murders in Darfur even though that is perhaps not in our special interests in any intuitive sense. At the same time, his point that all interests proceed from some contestable point of view appears plausible, despite the efforts of some philosophers to find a point of view that isn’t contestable.

So Fish leaves us with some questions. My own view of Fish’s arguments is that voting on identity might be imperfect, but it might well be the best one can do. Certainly, feminist thought has made me (and surely many others) wary of assuming one has found an impersonal point of view. At least in many people’s hands, the impersonal point of view is what leaves the inequities invisible.

Addition:  Since writing this, I’ve wished I had paid more attention to the word “interests.”  I’m very inclined to the Humean (and others’) view that we are interested in others’ welfare and that it is a basic interest, not to be explained in terms of other interests.  The interest might be limited; we may need to work on expanding it to all human beings, but it is not a self-regarding interest.  Fish’s idea of interest might be quite different; he might really think that all reasons are really self-regarding.  That puts a quite different take on his arguments.

There’s recent research that suggests even young infants care about others’ welfare; have a look at: “Social evaluation by pre-verbal infants” by Kiley Hamlin et al in Nature, 2007, p. 557.

How It Works February 18, 2008

From xkcdThanks, Mr Jender!

Sex-reassignment surgery and US companies February 17, 2008

Many of us do not think of large US financial institutions as hotbeds of progressive social change.   We all know that the rush over the last decade to form “business ethics” courses was in response to a very visible need.  And many of us worry that the plight of the planet and its people is tied  to the practices of these large companies.

Still, we also think that progressive social practices just work better.  If that’s so, wouldn’t these companies get on board pretty quickly?  Indeed.

From the NY Times:

Goldman Sachs bankers and traders enjoy famously big bonuses and, this year, a little extra job security thanks to their firm’s ability to steer clear of the worst effects of the subprime mortgage debacle.

Now, they can add something else to the list of reasons why life is great at Goldman: free sex-change surgery.

… A recent survey of more than 1,000 employers conducted by the Human Rights Campaign found that many banks, law firms and other large companies have added at least partial coverage of transgender treatments to their medical plans.

Bank of America, Wachovia and Deutsche Bank are among the firms who now cover such treatments to some extent, Fortune.com said. Goldman and Bank of America will cover the cost of the actual operation. At Wachovia, sex reassignment surgery is considered elective, and so the operation is not covered but related prescriptions and post-operative counseling are.

But here comes the kicker; can you imagine many philosophy departments professing the goals in the first para below, or even considering the link made in the second?

Goldman’s enhanced medical coverage is part of the firm’s efforts to “recruit and retain a more diverse workforce,” a Goldman spokesperson told Fortune.

The expanded coverage may cost employers a bit more in the short term, but it’s a small price to pay to attract and keep top talent, Pauline Park, chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, told Fortune. “[A]ny employer that does not clearly include gender identity in their employment policies may send a signal that they’re not supportive,” she said.

Cool Cat Cab and a more serious note in Black History Month February 16, 2008

Cab Calloway, featured earlier, was an exciting performer who epitomized what “cool cat” means.  As I searched for videos of him and others who performed during the earlier stages of film history, I was also aware that February is Black History Month in the US, and that, because of Barak Obama’s campaign, the US is having some hopefully beneficial discussions of prejudice, both racism and sexism.

Because of this perhaps, I was especially worried about putting up clips of  Calloway and other Black performers because I was also aware that part of understanding what was going on in the scenes involves at least some awareness of what is borrowed from, and what is imposed by, White values.  And one wants to be able to consider how much the Blacks in some movie are presented as seen by the White gaze.  I’m not sure that my reading of women in 1930’s and 40’s films is all that accurate, but I became aware of the fact that I was pretty clueless about how to understand early films involving Black people.

 Not entirely clueless, however.  There are some very obvious features, such as the restrictions in social status that Black roles signify.  The Blacks are portrayed as a doorman or butler not just because the plot needs one, but because that’s the highest status to which Blacks more generally are confined, one suspects.**  One consequence is that magnificant performances are painful or sad to watch.  That shouldn’t mean, I hope, that we want to lose track of them.  So here are two of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who may have been the inspiration for the song “Mr Bojangles.”  He’s often said to have been the greatest tap dancer.  He did die penniless, and Ed Sullivan is rumored to have paid for his funeral, but New York turned out for a final tribute to him; he was given “a hero’s farewell“.

 

The last clip is of the very remarkable Ethel Waters.  A comment on YOUTUBE says

this was a racial protest song… Look at Waters’ expressions as she says “Darkies never cry, who would ever hear our sad lament, live to laugh, to die, that’s the way we’ve learned to be content…” Turns the whole “contented black folk” stereotype on its head, while ostensibly stating its case. Wonderful early film performance by Ethel Waters.

** Readers may notice that in the first clip, Robinson is portraying a performer portraying a doorman, and not himself portraying a doorman. But clearly in a culture that represses an under-group, having a member of the group perform the role of an actor performing an exalted would is as unacceptable as having them portray the exalted person directly. There are interesting questions here about the logic of the situation.

It’s Sunday time and the cat is really cool** February 16, 2008

It’s Cab Calloway, one of jazz’s greats, in a 1935 talkie.  The video is long; don’t miss the scat singing at 2:30 min.

**This post is another entry in our Sunday cat break series.