The Grandmistresses are winning November 30, 2009

Vishal’s passed on this bit of chess news:

Chess legends Viktor Korchnoi, Jan Timman, Robert Hübner and Vlastimil Hort are competing with young “grandmistresses” [sic] Koneru Humpy, Anna Muzychuk, Katerina Lahno and Jana Jackova in a double-round Scheveningen match “Lasses and Old Timer” [sic] – Czech Coal Chess Match 2009, which is taking place in Marianske Lazne at the Cristal Palace Hotel from 28th November to 5th December 2009.

And, so far, the women are winning. The photos are fun to look through, and excellent for breaking down some stereotypes.

(Some of the commentary and terminology might annoy a little, but I really don’t know how much is due to translation issues. And I kind of like ‘grandmistress’. Though perhaps I shouldn’t.)

Holiday shopping for kids? November 29, 2009

I’ve just discovered the F-Word shop at Amazon. Check it out. (And The F-Word, the UK’s top feminist blog, gets a cut. Beautiful in every way.)

The Sunday Cats release some steam after the holidays November 29, 2009

These videos had a brief and accidental appearance on this blog about 10 days ago.  We hope you will still enjoy them.

We do feel compelled to relate that Tarragon, beloved jj-family cat, released steam today.  We are staying in an apartment/flat/condo on the Gulf Coast, on the 20th floor.  Tarry disappeared.  Great, horrible consternation.  Hours of searching, including going through the garbage at the bottom of the trash chute.

Finally, people from the 19th floor arrived to report they have a strange cat in their bathroom, which they think might be ours.  And it was Tarry!  There’s only one plausible story of how he got to their place, and it starts with his being on our balcony.

We are trying hard to avoid thinking about the trajectory of his trip.  We had carefully covered the railing around the balcony with mesh, and thought only a suicidal cat would project itself through the few small gaps.

Is the political this personal? November 28, 2009

Do you grimace when Sarah Palin’s name comes up in discussions?  Do you think that might  have to do with her evident disregard for facts?  With her encouraging a right-wing flight into fantasy? 

Or could it be this personal, as Lisa Belkin in the NY Times maintains:

If life is like high school, then today’s educated, ambitious women, on both sides of the aisle, are the student-council presidents and the members of the debate team — taught that if they work hard and sacrifice something along the way, their smarts will be rewarded.This makes Sarah Palin the head cheerleader. (Though, in reality, she was the captain of the basketball team.) Pretty and popular, with no apparent interest in studying, she’s the one who industrious girls were tacitly promised would not succeed in the real world. Whether we voted for Hillary or not, we weren’t about to let Palin breeze in, with her sexy librarian hair and her peekaboo-toed shoes, conforming to every winking, air-brained stereotype, and sashay to the front of the line.

This observation, I’m inclined to say, is utter bull.  It is wrong about our take on success in the world, and it is wrong on why we dislike her.  But can I speak for “we”?  What do you think about the explanation?

Let’s have a poll!  In fact let’s have two.  The explanation the NY Times article looks like it comes from a particular view about psychological explanations.  That view says that the most basic explanations of your beliefs, desires and actions will turn out to be very narrowly self-regarding and even pretty petty, if not fundamentally very erotic.  E.g., you may think that you oppose Palin because she further taints politics with vicious lies, but really you feel she just shows you aren’t pretty and sexy enough.

So let’s start with this poll:

And then go to this one:

Science, mothers and fathers November 27, 2009

This article is a rarity in journalistic writing on women’s under-representation. Although it points to maternal caregiving responsiblities as a key factor– which is not at all a rarity– it takes that extra step of remembering that it’s possible for men to have caregiving responsibilities as well.

Instead of obsessing over mother-scientists, universities should strive to create an atmosphere that encourages their male scientists to be active fathers. Only then will both genders be equally compelled to confront the family-work balance issue that right now rests too squarely on the shoulders of women.

Some suggestions: Pay female scientists as much as their male counterparts, so that when scientist couples plan for a family, the woman isn’t automatically compelled to ditch her career simply because she earns less and he earns more. Have paternity leave on par with maternity leave; if you’re going to stop the tenure clock for child rearing, extend that offer to new fathers as well as new mothers.

(Thanks, Jender-Parents!)

New York Review of Books: A shocking shame? November 26, 2009

So the New York Review of Books sent its e-subscribers a cheery note:

Below you will find links to the first forty-nine posts published on the NYRblog since its inception last month. If you haven’t been following the blog, we invite you to visit, participate in the comments, and send us your thoughts. You can also follow the Review online via Facebook and Twitter , or through our RSS feed.

Sounds jolly, until you scroll down and notice that among those 49 bloggers are two, and only two, women writers.  The percentage isn’t immediately obvious because two articles are co-authored, but I make the percentage of women authors 4%.

That is remarkable.  That’s what the percentage of full professors in physics used to look like before NSF and others got going on correcting the situation.  Now women show up in all sorts of fields.  For goodness sakes, what is going on with the NYRB? 

Is there a kind of male intellectual approach that shows up across many disciplines and that the NYR particularly values?  It would be interesting to figure out if that is so and why.  For example, why would they ask John Searle to write on Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge, rather than some feminist philosopher who might have been more balanced?  Did they think of the topic as sort of a guys’  thing?  Or perhaps they don’t know any women working in the field, much like our colleagues?

There’s a lot of regret that there aren’t more public intellectuals that gets expressed when we profess woe at the state of public discourse.  Perhaps if women have more venues, the dearth would seem less.

In all fairness:  I haven’t counted up the occurrences of women authors in the published journal.  In addition, the NYRB responded to an earlier complaint of ours, so I assume such issues matter to them at least a bit.

Be thankful for singing philosophers November 26, 2009

I’ve never been a big Thanksgiving traditionalist, so this year I suggest being thankful that the world contains awesome singing philosophers like Carrie Jenkins, who write gloriously nerdy songs about Quine. For more from the 21st Century Monads, go here.

The Christian Side-Hug November 25, 2009

It prevents sin, apparently. And you can rap about it.

CFP: Kant’s Anthropology November 24, 2009

The Kant Yearbook

is now accepting submissions for its third issue in 2011. The Kant Yearbook is an international journal that publishes articles on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. It is the Kant Yearbook’s goal to intensify innovative research on Kant on the international scale. For that reason the Kant Yearbook prefers to publish articles in English, however articles in German will also be considered. Each issue will be dedicated to a specific topic. The third issue’s topic is

anthropology

All papers, historical or systematic, related to Kant’s anthropology and its theoretical or practical aspects are welcome. We also encourage papers on the contemporary significance of Kantian anthropology.

The Kant Yearbook practices double-blind review, i.e. the reviewers are not aware of the identity of a manuscript’s author, and the author is not aware of the reviewer’s identity. Submitted manuscripts must be anonymous; that is the authors’ names and references to their work capable of identifying them are not to appear in the manuscript. Detailed instructions and author guidelines are available at http://kantyearbook.uni.lu (http://philosophie.uni.lu). For further information contact the editor or the publisher Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/New York (www.degruyter.com). Paper submissions should go to dietmar.heidemann@uni.lu

Deadline for submission is

June 15, 2010

Just imagine if… November 23, 2009

A glossy folder for jj-spouse just came through my mailbox with the following note on it:

Because of your active membership with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Subaru marketing affiliate, you may be eligible to participate in the VIP Partners Program.

And get a Subaru for less. 

Being an active researcher myself, I googled for some information about this surprising role for the AAAS, having first ascertained from jj-spouse that it was indeed surprising.  I found that Subaru is now the Premier Automotive Sponsor of the AAAS.  And, in addition to giving members of AAAS up to 3k off of new cars, Subaru now sponsors all sorts of prizes for students, school teachers, books and films.  All for K-12, but still a really good thing.

So just imagine if the American Philosophical Association got some corporate sponsor.  Who would it be and what could we get?  I don’t know that my imagination is up to it, but I can try to start it off:

Fox News is now the Premier News  Network of the American Philosophical Association.  It will sponsor research on favorite philosophical topics such as the merits of upholding traditional values over attempts to introduce diversity.  Special funds will be available for conferences featuring all white male keynote speakers.  Free advertisement for all male departments will be carried on the network.

Let us know what you think!

“Now I just walk away. That’s all I can do.” addition: Judith Butler November 23, 2009

The words are from Caster Semenya, who is the topic of an article by Ariel Levy, in the New Yorker, Nov. 30, 2009.  The article places the questioning of  Caster Semenya’s sex in a complex context.  The article opens with the poverty of the region CS grew up in:

The land is webbed with brambles, and the thorns are a serious problem for the athletes, who train barefoot. “They run on loose stones, scraping them, making a wound, making a scar,” Sako, a tall, bald man with rheumy eyes and a big gap between his two front teeth, said. “We can’t stop and say we don’t have running shoes, because we don’t have money. The parents don’t have money. So what must we do? We just go on.”

Another factor in the picture is the enforced categorizations from the colonizers:

South Africans have been appalled by the idea of a person who thinks she is one thing suddenly being told that she is something else. The classification and reclassification of human beings has a haunted history in this country … Taxonomy is an acutely sensitive subject, and its history is probably one of the reasons that South Africans—particularly black South Africans—have rallied behind their runner with such fervor. The government has decreed that Semenya can continue running with women in her own country, regardless of what the I.A.A.F. decides.

Does she look like "a drag queen," as some have said?

Another comes from the dehumanizing curiosity of the European look:

South Africans have compared the worldwide fascination with Semenya’s gender to the dubious fame of another South African woman whose body captivated Europeans: Saartjie Baartman, the Hottentot Venus. Baartman, an orphan born on the rural Eastern Cape, was the servant of Dutch farmers near Cape Town. In 1810, they sent her to Europe to be exhibited in front of painters, naturalists, and oglers, who were fascinated by her unusually large buttocks and had heard rumors of her long labia … Many South Africans feel that white foreigners are yet again scrutinizing a black female body as though it did not contain a human being.

 

In addition, the article picks up on the  immense complexity of the biology of sex and secondary sexual characteristics.  The facts make it clear that it is hardly likely for there to be some simple texts for sex; Ann Fausto-Sterling’s words on natural kinds are made especially relevant.  That is in contrast to the  role of gender duality:

There is much more at stake in organizing sports by gender than just making things fair. If we were to admit that at some level we don’t know the difference between men and women, we might start to wonder about the way we’ve organized our entire world. Who gets to use what bathroom? Who is allowed to get married? (Currently, the United States government recognizes the marriage of a woman to a female-to-male transsexual who has had a double mastectomy and takes testosterone tablets but still has a vagina, but not to a woman who hasn’t done those things.) We depend on gender to make sense of sexuality, society, and ourselves. We do not wish to see it dissolve.

And there are still other issues:  the politics of sports organizations, the way CS,  a child, was poked and prodded without  any parental consent, and more.  And, finally, the  impact of it all on the child, who has decided she can only walk away.

Addition: Here’s a link to a piece on Caster Semenya by Judith Butler.  Do note that Butler’s piece is more an opinion piece; she  is not trying to get the details of the biology right, and that’s one of several respects in which the much longer NYorker article has more information.  In particular, levels of testosterone do not necessarily tell us whether the hormone can be used; some intersexed people may have higher than average (for females) levels of  the hormone without being able to use them.  (Thanks to Rob.)

CFP: Reasons and Rationality November 23, 2009

The first St. Louis Annual Conference on Reasons and Rationality (SLACRR, pronounced (slăk΄ r)) will take place May 23-25, 2010 at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.  The conference is designed to provide a forum for new work on practical and theoretical reason, broadly construed.  Please submit an abstract of 500-1000 words by December 31, 2009 to SLACRR@gmail.com. (In writing your abstract, please bear in mind that full papers should be suitable for a 30 minute presentation.) We are also interested in finding commentators for papers, so please let us know if you would have an interest in commenting.   

 

The Conference will include papers in ethics, epistemology, and other areas of philosophy that deal with reasons, reasoning, or rationality.  For instance, we would be interested in papers exploring such questions as:

• What is the relation between reasons for actions and reasons for beliefs?

• What are the sources of our reasons for belief?

• How are features of one’s psychology (desires, intentions, etc.) relevant to reasons?  

• What is the relation between reasons and what we ought to do (or believe)?

• What is the relation between reasons and value?

• Are the requirements of practical and theoretical rationality normative?  

• What is the relation between individual rationality and collective rationality?

Of course, this is just a small sample of questions; we hope to include a wide variety of papers on the Conference Program that deal in some way with reasons, reasoning or rationality.   Further questions can also be directed to either John Brunero (bruneroj@umsl.edu) or Eric Wiland (wiland@umsl.edu).

Not-so-new directions in metaphysics November 23, 2009

The New Directions in Metaphysics conference coming up at Nottingham takes things in a rather old direction in at least one respect: gender. For contrast, one might check out the forthcoming New Waves in Metaphysics volume. (Thanks, R!)

Female breadwinners are self-deceived whingers November 22, 2009

…according to this story. The evidence? Oh, you picky, picky people. Nothing relevant that I can see, from this Guardian story. The study doesn’t seem to even concern whether or not women’s views of their husbands are accurate, despite the way it’s being reported. (Thanks, Andrew!)

The sunday cat can be very loving November 21, 2009

There are a lot of versions of this video on the web, some of which show the officer “shoo-ing” the cat off. It does not appear, however, that the cat was at all hurt, or even deterred, by such action.

Many thanks to JT!

Stay-at-Home Fathers November 20, 2009

Perhaps an anthem is needed…

Insurance coverage for abortion November 20, 2009

The Stupak Amendment to the US Health Care bill would dictate that no insurance policy which covers abortion (except in cases of rape, incest or danger to mother’s life) could be part of the pool of insurance plans for which people are entitled to government subsidies. As a long-time UK resident I confess that I was a little unsure at first how much of an impact this would have. My suspicion was that almost no US insurance policies covered abortion anyway. (The NHS, of course, does. And birth control pills are free.) It turns out this was wrong. And, given the way that insurance tends to work, ruling out abortion coverage for the policies in the pool would be very likely to end up denying it to all women. This would be a horrendous result, as these stories from doctors make very clear to anyone in doubt.

This led to a now-familiar US political situation in which feminists were being asked to sacrifice a vital interest of women to the greater good (in this case, of health care reform). And in which those who objected to this were accused of selfishly holding the interests of everyone else hostage to the supposedly niche issue of the health and rights of half the population.

Now, however, the senate has offered a compromise, which– in the way of all compromises– has serious drawbacks. But it is nonetheless a vast improvement.

The key details of the Senate bill are as follows: Both public and private plans are allowed to offer abortion coverage. It empowers consumers to use government subsidies to purchase insurance that covers abortion, but requires that their premiums (and not federal funds) pay for the actual procedures. The Health and Human Services Secretary is charged with evaluating plans to ensure that taxpayers do not pay for abortions. And, while the bill requires at least one plan in each state to cover abortion, it also includes a conscience clause stating that healthcare providers cannot “be discriminated against because of a willingness or an unwillingness … to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.”

For more on the compromise bill, see here. (Thanks, Vishal, for repeatedly but kindly nudging me to write something more on this.)

Good news from the APA… November 20, 2009

…regarding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Leiter reports:

Alastair Norcross (Colorado) reports that the National Board of the American Philosophical Association has now taken action on an initiative that began with a letter from Charles Hermes (UT Arlington) (posted here last February) and then a petition he crafted (signed by over 1400 philosophers) followed by a motion put before the APA by Professor Norcross and with support from many others.

For more, go here.

RIP Jeanne-Claude, brilliant artist November 19, 2009

As many will remember, The Gates in NYC’s Central Park was done by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  For some time their collaborative projects were labeled as if by him alone.  For some information about the change, see below.   

We  note that it is a familiar idea that women’s brilliance can be hidden  behind a man’s name.  And that in the past it may have made great sense to her.

Jeanne-Claude, who collaborated with her husband, Christo, on dozens of environmental arts projects, notably the wrapping of the Pont Neuf in Paris and the Reichstag in Berlin and the installation of 7,503 vinyl gates with saffron-colored nylon panels in Central Park, died Thursday in Manhattan, where she lived. She was 74

Jeanne-Claude met her husband, Christo Javacheff, in Paris in 1958. …  To avoid confusing dealers and the public, and to establish an artistic brand, they used only Christo’s name. In 1994 they retroactively applied the joint name “Christo and Jeanne-Claude” to all outdoor works and large-scale temporary indoor installations. Other indoor work was credited to Christo alone.

Texas law bans anything “identical to” marriage. (Oops.) November 19, 2009

I’m in lefty pedantic philosopher heaven:

Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.

The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that “marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.” But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

“This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”

For more, see here. (Thank you, Jender-Mom!!)