Barefoot and pregnant? July 31, 2008

Well, in prehistoric times we weren’t wearing shoes and we – women at least – were getting pregnant a lot, one suspects.  So…

So what?  Well, a new version of the argument that we should be bearfoot and pregnant is in the forthcoming Scientific American Mind.  You can see a free preview, but here are, as they say, the key concepts:

Rates of depression have risen in recent decades, at the same time that people are enjoying time-saving conveniences such as microwave ovens, e-mail, prepared meals, and machines for washing clothes and mowing lawns.

People of earlier generations, whose lives were characterized by greater efforts just to survive, para­dox­ically, were mentally healthier. Human ancestors also evolved in conditions where hard physical work was nece­ssary to thrive.

By denying our brains the rewards that come from ­anticipating and executing complex tasks with our hands, the author argues, we undercut our mental well-being.

The  examples make it clear that the article is best read as about affluent Western countries, and the US particularly. 

We nuke prepared dishes rather than growing our own food and machine-wash ready-made clothes rather than sewing and scrubbing.

Machines for cutting the lawn also among the culprits.  So the idea is that we evolved to wash clothes by hand and hand-mow our lawns?  Hmmmmmm.  That doesn’t sound right.  The species closest to us evolutionarily wash their clothes in streams and hand-mow their lawns?  That’s not quite right either.  Chimps are out there slaving away?  Well, maybe but not in the pictures I’ve seen.

The authors offer as evidence that you can get really zippy rats by making them forage for treats. 

And they look at brain circuits which seem to link physical exertion with feelings of pleasure  and well beings.  OK, I’m actually quite a fan of that stuff, fMRI and all that, you know.  But they seem to have to recognize that for us at least the exertion should be significant and meaningful, as presumably for rats also, at least in their terms.  And that makes all the difference.  And that may be why quite early on the things that machines now do were not generally done by those in a society with the power to avoid them. 

I think the bottom line is that meaningful exercise can add to your sense of well being.  And if you find mowing your lawn meaningful, go for it!  Why I remember how my father used to come in on Saturdays feeling  so happy from mowing…O, wait, that didn’t happen.  

Well, I’m going to get my bowling partner organized.  We now have brain science on our side, in addition to just about every health guru on TV.  Or maybe find a good old-fashioned washing machine, so I can spend a day a week storing up good feelings.  I can remember how my mother felt so happy after using hers… O wait.  That didn’t happen either.

No to Kaine July 31, 2008

Apparently Obama is seriously considering Tim Kaine as VP. He is the Democratic Governor of Virginia, a key swing state. His views on abortion were said in 2005 to “roughly in line” with those of George W. Bush. He’s really into anti-gay dogwhistles. He has expressed rather Bushie views on the Iraq war.

We really shouldn’t have to point out to Obama why Kaine is a seriously bad idea. But if the rumours are right, we do have to do it. Here’s where to go.

UN recognises rape as weapon of war July 31, 2008

The UN has finally acknowledged that rape is used as a weapon of war by voting unanimously in favour of a resolution to classify it as such. Rape has long been used as a means of terrorising and humiliating one’s enemies. It affects not just the people who are raped (most often women and girls), but also the communities to which they belong. Hurting someone is always a means of hurting their family and the wider community of which they are a member. But rape is particularly effective due at least partly to the way in which women and their sexuality are viewed. The norms governing women’s sexual behaviour are typically more stringent or more strictly enforced than those governing the sexual behaviour of heterosexual men. More significantly, deviance from these norms is often held to bring dishonour upon the entire community of which the woman is a part. This Amnesty article has more information about the use of rape as a war tactic. Here also is an article analysing the Rape of Berlin in 1945 and its connection with constructed gender identities. And here is the BBC news report on the UN resolution.

It’s also worth remembering that women in war zones are not just at risk of rape from the warring factions, but also the peacekeepers sent to protect them. Here is an old Guardian report on the issue.

Stalking is neither fashion nor style July 31, 2008

A perfectly decent story about an important memoir of being stalked (understandably, not many of these have been written). But, NY Times, it’s IN THE WRONG PLACE.

“China’s Female Artists Quietly Emerge” July 30, 2008

 

If you find the title above (from the NY Times) ominous, you’re right.  First of all, though, it is puzzling.   Why?  Because this is their first anecdote:

On a February day in 1989, a young woman walked into a show at the National Gallery of Art here, whipped out a pellet gun and fired two shots into a mirrored sculpture in an exhibition called “China/Avant-Garde.” Police officers swarmed into the museum. The show, the country’s first government-sponsored exhibition of experimental art, was shut down for days.

The woman, Xiao Lu, is an artist. The sculpture she fired on was her own, or rather a collaborative piece she had made with another artist, Tang Song, her boyfriend at the time.
The international press saw a rebellion story. China’s political and cultural vanguard claimed a hero. The government reacted as if attacked. The renowned art critic Li Xianting has described the incident as a precursor to the Tiananmen Square crackdown four months later. Whatever the truth, Ms. Xiao made the history books. She was a star.

That’s not exactly quiet, is it?
In fact, the women artists are “emerging quietly” in so far as they are just not heard or seen:

She is the first and last Chinese female artist so far to achieve that status. Contemporary art in China is a man’s world. While the art market, all but nonexistent in 1989, has become a powerhouse industry and produced a pantheon of multimillionaire artist-celebrities, there are no women in that pantheon.

The new museums created to display contemporary art rarely give women solo shows. Among the hundreds of commercial galleries competing for attention in Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere, art by women is hard to find.

Yet the art is there, and it is some of the most innovative work around, even as visibility remains a problem.

Rather like a long advertisement for the Olympics, the NY Times is discovering China these days.  Or perhaps it has become a primer for all those parties.  Still, many of its pieces are usefully interesting, and the one about artists is too, even if too much about their exclusion is dismally familiar.  The women are also all, it seems, ambivalent about feminism and what they see as a very Western slant to it.

And the print above, in a private collection in China, will cost you between $25,000-$35,000.

Trans toilets July 30, 2008

There have been high profile cases on the matter of which toilets trans people should be able to use – see here, for instance.

A solution from Thailand: the ‘third sex’ toilets. This link is to a short video, explaining why a school in Thailand introduced a toilet for those pupils who considered themselves transsexual. The pupil interviewed seems quite content with the set up.

A model to be replicated? Or a risk of further marginalisation?

Sexual harassment: without which the species would die out July 30, 2008

Wow. H/T Hilde Lindemann on the FEAST mailing list.

“He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word,” she earlier told the court. “I didn’t realise at first that he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.”
The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.
“If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” the judge ruled.
Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.
According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.
Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.

To hold the judge’s view, you’d have to think (among other things) that no woman would willingly have sex with a man. One can only surmise that, rather unsurprisingly, this has been his experience.

LaVena Johnson July 30, 2008

It’s been shamefully long time since I mentioned LaVena Johnson, the soldier whose apparent rape and murder seems to have been the subject of quite a cover-up. I’m mentioning it again now because there’s a petition to sign. But it’s also worth noting, as Cara does, just how slow both civil rights and women’s organisations have been to join this fight.

Obama, McCain and Ageism July 29, 2008

Despite being an Obama supporter, I criticised him for the sexist dogwhistles he used against Clinton, as he talked about her “periodically… feeling down”. Now he’s talking about McCain being “confused” and “angry”, which arguably are ageist dogwhistles. What do you think about these? I find myself wanting to say that when McCain gets facts wrong there’s nothing problematic in calling him “confused”, or that when he acts angry it’s fine to call him “angry”. But I worry that partisan loyalties may be muddying my thinking on this.

UK Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Health July 29, 2008

Stonewall’s report on this important topic is out. Here are their key recommendations to the NHS:

1. Understand lesbian health needs:
Only one in ten lesbian and bisexual women said that healthcare workers have given them information relevant to their health care needs.
2. Train staff:
Only three in ten lesbian and bisexual women said healthcare workers did not make inappropriate comments about their sexual orientation.
3. Don’t make assumptions:
Two in five lesbian and bisexual women said that in the last year healthcare workers had assumed they were heterosexual.
4. Explicit policies:
Only one in eleven say that their GP surgery displayed non-discriminatory policy.
5. Tell lesbians what they need to know:
Three quarters of lesbian and bisexual women think they are not at risk from sexually transmitted infections.
6. Improve monitoring:
One in ten lesbian and bisexual women stated that when they did come out to a healthcare worker they were either ignored, or the healthcare worker continued to assume they were heterosexual.
7. Increase visibility:
Half of young lesbian and bisexual women have self-harmed in the last year. Increased visibility of lesbian and bisexual women will help improve self-esteem and morale.
8. Make confidentiality policies clear:
One in eight lesbian and bisexual women are not sure what their GP’s policy is on confidentiality.
9. Make complaints procedures clear:
Half of lesbian and bisexual women have had a negative experience in the health sector in the last year.
10. Develop tailored services:
Only two per cent of lesbian and bisexual women have attended a service tailored towards their needs.

Lots here that seems to me of interest to those interested in issues at the intersection of politics and epistemology: the importance of not making false assumptions based on prevailing norms, the importance of actively working to facilitate communication on sensitive matters, the importance of actively combatting dangerous false beliefs, the importance of knowing what information is relevant. And yes, put in these terms this stuff is not just about lesbians and bisexuals. These are good general practices, but the particular case of lesbians and bisexuals helps to make clear their importance. (Thanks, Heg!)

More on women and the US economy: UPDATED July 28, 2008

Today’s NYT letters to the editor have a number of authoritative voices discussing women and the economy.  Here are some of the facts we should know about:

… low-income women and women of color … face multiple barriers to economic security: race, gender and class.

Today, despite decades of struggle for job access and pay equity, women are paid 77 cents for each dollar a man makes; the disparity is worse for African-American women, who earn 62 cents, and Latinas, who earn 53 cents.

Nearly 10.5 million women are single parents (as compared with 2.5 million single fathers). For them, opting out for any reason — like motherhood or education — is not viable.

.Sara K. Gould/President and Chief Executive/Ms. Foundation for Women

…

To the Editor:

…

These women (single women who are heads of household) have about one-half the income and less than one-third the wealth of other households. They make up 62 percent of the 5.8 million American families with children in poverty and are more likely to hold subprime mortgages. Many women from this category would like to leave the work force in order to take care of children or other family members but simply cannot afford to do so.

…

Linda Basch/President, National Council for Research on Women

 

To the Editor:

There is another compelling reason that women are leaving the work force: in addition to an unfriendly economy, many face a hostile work environment that fails to accommodate care-giving responsibilities.

Many women have jobs that do not offer paid sick days that we can use for ourselves or our children, no flextime, and only unpaid family and medical leave.

In addition, the Supreme Court took us backward last year in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, which made it more difficult for victims of wage discrimination to win justice by limiting when lawsuits can be filed.

…

 Debra L. Ness/President, National Partnership for Women and Families

 

UPDATE:

NOW invites you to take action now to get legislation through to help women and families.

Women’s Work Choices: Post-feminism or Brutal Economics? July 27, 2008

In her post on girls’ abilities in mathematics, Jender said:

Prediction: if this comes to widely accepted, expect lots more stories about how girls are innately predisposed not to like doing stuff that involves maths– gotta explain the dearth of women in science and maths in such a way that nobody has to worry about it.

Turns out, no surprise, that that pattern of explanation is showing up elsewhere.  Judith Warner in the NY Times remarks:

It has happened like clockwork. In the past two economic downturns, as job losses have forced women out of the workplace, a sort of angel has appeared to guide their way and re-label their unfortunate circumstances as virtuous “choice.”

Economists, sociologists and other academics who rigorously track workplace trends and work-life issues have been saying for years that this self-realized creature with her new, post-feminist home and hearth priorities, is a chimera.

So why or in what ways are being forced out?  Warner’s explanations:  Child-care costs equal one’s take home salary, the workplace is hostile, and/or one is let go.  And recently the latter has become a particularly serious factor:

While prior recessions tended to spare women’s jobs relative to men’s, that trend has been reversed in the current downturn, thanks in part to women’s progress in entering formerly male industries and occupations, and in part to the fact that job sectors like service and retail, which still employ disproportionate numbers of women, have suffered disproportionate losses. And this — not a calling to motherhood — accounts for the fall, starting in 2000, of women’s labor force participation rates.

I can’t wait for the hiring figures for 2009 in philosophy to come out.   Ours isn’t even a formerly male occupation.

There are two particularly nice features of Warner’s report.  First, she stresses that the picture of women’s choices is being construction by in part ignoring the research of “economists, sociologists and other academics.”  You know how that goes; let’s ignore the elites and say what we feel is true.  Secondly, she links to a very recent congressional report that puts paid to the myth of choice and calls for some sensible remedial measures.

 

25th Carnival of Socialism July 27, 2008

is up.  And congratulations to Jender for the reference to her post on abortion vetoes.

Let me (Jender) add that it’s up at the excellent Cruella blog, written by a feminist stand-up comedian.

Sunday Spanish Cats July 26, 2008

Some cats in Spain have it good. This cat door was built over 100 years ago, and is still being used, even though it is now attached to an abandoned building. Yes, those are balconies– though not ones that would actually hold cats. It’s dedicated to two cats who apparently were louder than any other cats. (The rectangular bit in the lower right is a plaque with dedication.)

So who is taking care of your children? July 26, 2008

Female Science Professor has posted some useful answers to those awful questions and comments an academic woman easily gets.  My favorite response is to the question, “So they had to hire a woman…?”  Of the answers offered, this one gets my vote:

Answer 3: Yes, they finally realized they had hired enough mediocre men. 

Some of the questions assume you are in a heterosexual relationship.  No  one will be surprised, I expect, that we/I’ve used these:

Question (said to male person): Who takes care of your kids when your wife travels?
Answer: The cats.

Question (said to married/partnered female person): Who takes care of your kids when you travel?
Answer: The cats.

Question (said to academic couple): Which of you is the trailing spouse?
Answer: Our cat.

Enjoy!

Philosophy facts, thanks to the Spintered Mind July 26, 2008

Our friend, Eric Switzgebel, has posted some revealing  figures about women in philosophy.  In studying philosophers’ voting patters, he and his collaborator gathered a lot of data about philosophers.  Though the sample was just 5 states, they covered them very thoroughly.  In addition, there were age data for philosophers in 4 states. 

They’ve reused the figures to look at men’s and women’s comparative progress in the profession.  Switzgebel concludes that the record shows women move through the profession more slowly than men. 

Another dismal fact emerges; the comparative perceptage of non-TT positions women occupy.  For those young women with birth dates ranging from 1970-1979, 36% are in non-TT positions!  That’s compared with 13% of the guys.

Switzgebel mentions an obvious factor which may slow women’s progress:  marriage and/or  children.  In addition, women are more often “the trailing spouse” in the sciences, and this might well apply in philosophy also.  Of course, we need to be careful not to conclude that sexism isn’t operating.  Not only may it still be at work at a number of junctures, including what makes a male partner a hotter property on the market, but also there’s the institutional sexism of the university and college structures that are still geared to male biological lives more than female.

So thanks, Eric!  For the study!

Male Veto For Abortion in Ohio? July 26, 2008

In teaching about abortion, one position the students *here* find so appalling as to be barely worth discussing is the idea of a male veto for abortion decisions. But in Ohio, a bill mandating this is being considered. Planned Parenthood of Ohio writes:

One year ago, State Rep. John Adams (R-Sidney) introduced one of the most outrageous pieces of legislation we have ever seen. House Bill 287 would require a woman to have the written informed consent of the prospective father of her fetus before being allowed to have an abortion.

That’s right… If the man says “No,” there will be no abortion.Period!

This bill may actually be scheduled for hearings in the coming weeks. To raise awareness about this offensive bill, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Ohio is partnering with ProgressOhio, an outreach organization that builds awareness of legislative issues.

You’re not going to believe this… HB 287 also requires that, if the identity of the prospective
father is unknown, a paternity test must be performed to determine his identity so that his consent could be obtained prior to performing the abortion.

What is left unsaid is that prenatal paternity testing: cannot be performed until at least the 10th week of pregnancy, near the end of the first trimester; is an invasive procedure using a long needle through the abdomen to collect fetal cells; is expensive – up to $2,000 per test;
and poses a potential medical risk. The practical effect of the paternity test requirement would
prevent some women from obtaining an abortion during the first trimester.

Once paternity is established, if the man says “No,” there will be no abortion.

Even worse if… If the pregnancy resulted from rape, the woman would be required
to provide a police report proving it. If the pregnancy resulted from incest, the woman would be
required to provide a paternity test or a police report. If the woman chooses not to identify the prospective father (perhaps out of fear for her own physical well-being), her only recourse would be to continue the pregnancy against her wishes or have an illegal abortion, a first degree misdemeanor.

To sign a petition against it, go here. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)

Guess what? July 25, 2008

Girls don’t suck at maths. See also here. (How many times does this need to be shown?) Prediction: if this comes to widely accepted, expect lots more stories about how girls are innately predisposed not to like doing stuff that involves maths– gotta explain the dearth of women in science and maths in such a way that nobody has to worry about it. (Thanks BTPS and Jender-Parents!)

Socialist Feminism Conference July 25, 2008

I’ve just been sent an announcement for this interesting conference:

On October 3-6, 2008 Radical Women is hosting The Persistent Power of Socialist Feminism conference at The Women’s Building in San Francisco.

The conference features activists and scholars from Central America, Australia, China, and the U.S. The agenda includes panel discussions, keynote speakers such as civil liberties attorney Lynne Stewart, organizer-training workshops and strategy sessions. Topics include: multiracial organizing in a society divided by racism, the dynamic leadership of youth and queers, a labor revival ignited by immigrants and women of color, and the need for an independent grassroots feminist movement.

In today’s tumultuous political climate, we hope this event will produce concrete plans to energize and focus the women’s movement on the many issues that affect us all. The event is open to all genders.

Which is worse? July 24, 2008

Being addressed as ‘Dear Sir’ by someone who has sent a letter to my department which came to me due to my particular role in the department? Or being addressed as ‘Dear Miss Jender’ in an email from the university bookshop about what books I need ordered for the Autumn semester? Both in 48 hours. What next? I eagerly await. Do feel free to share similar linguistic annoyances here!