JCPenney removes ‘Too Pretty To Do Homework’ tee August 31, 2011

JCPenney has already pulled the product, so I’m just posting this for its comic value.  Apparently, seven-year-olds were supposed to be hip to how ironic it was!

(Hap tip: Jesse, who was annoyed that a different shirt ad is still available.)

Is 17 gendered? August 31, 2011

Scientific American has an article (poorly titled) on the role of gender in thought. Much of it I knew before, but I hadn’t known that there is a widespread tendency to consider odd numbers masculine and even ones feminine. (And it shocked me, partly because I realised to my astonishment that I was absolutely certain odd numbers were female! Especially 17! And despite claims that it is Julius Caesar.)

Thanks, Mr Jender!

“Independent” Pre-Abortion Counselling to be required in UK August 31, 2011

The head of the Royal College of General Practitioners has warned that government moves to shake up pre-abortion counselling for women could create new barriers and set the system back 25 years.

Clare Gerada defended abortion charities, disputing accusations that they are biased in their counselling and encourage women to have abortions because they are subsequently paid to carry out the terminations.

The government has announced a change in the rules to ensure that women are also offered counselling provided independently of the charity-run services, such as the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and Marie Stopes.

MPs who are backed by anti-abortion groups claim the move justifies the argument that there is a conflict of interest in the way services are run.

So the proposal is that we need independent counsellors because charities that provide abortion can’t be trusted. And the fact that this proposal is being made is the evidence that is being used to support the claim that the charities can’t be trusted. Nice one.

For more, go here.

(Thanks, Mr Jender.)

Accessible conferences – where to start? August 29, 2011

Trying to design an accessible conference can be a confusing, even intimidating, process. The experiences of disabled people are so varied that there’s no way you can predict the appropriate accommodations for everyone, and sometimes an accommodation for one disability can be actually be hindrance for another. It can be hard to know where to start. But while we probably won’t get things exactly right, I suspect that in philosophy we could be doing much better.

Here are a few basic recommendations from my own (extremely limited) conference-organizing experience, plus a bit of a priori extrapolation (I have more experience with that).

- Ask ahead: I’m a longtime vegetarian. It used to be very uncommon for conference invitations to include a proviso that said something to the effect of “If you have any dietary restrictions, please let us know so that we can accommodate them”. I would always feel awkward about requesting that my vegetarianism be accommodated if the invitation hadn’t included such a proviso. So I’d often end up not attending conference dinners, going hungry, etc. These days, almost every conference I go to asks about dietary requirements. Whether you’re vegetarian, vegan, lactose or gluten-intolerant, eat kosher, etc, they’ll try to work something out for you, and they make that clear. It’s amazing the difference that a simple proviso (“Dietary restrictions? Just let us know!”) makes to the conference-going comfort of us non-standard eaters. But I have never – ever – gotten a conference invitation that contained a similar proviso about disability accommodation. It would make such a difference – even if the difference is just to signal a helpful, understanding attitude – if conference organizers proactively asked about disability accommodation.

- Invite disabled speakers first – Have a speaker that you want to invite to your conference, and you know that they’re disabled? Invite them first – before you’ve set the schedule, the venue, whatever. Say to this person: “We really want to have you at this conference. How can we make this conference as accessible to you as possible?” Then build your conference around what’s best for your speaker, rather than designing your conference and expecting your disabled speaker to conform themselves to what you’ve set up (or, perhaps more likely, being a bit sad that the disabled speaker turned you down).

- Allow flexibility – If at all possible, don’t force all conference-goers to do everything the same way. Is your conference in an urban area where most people walk, and you’re assuming that everyone will walk from the conference venue to dinner? That’s fine, but have info about cabs or public transportation available. And have other people ready and willing to use these options with a conference-goer that needs them. You don’t want to put your disabled conference-goer on a bus by herself and say “we’ll see you at dinner!” Can you have the conference sessions near the conference accommodation, so that conference goers who need breaks can easily and non-obviously take them? (They’ll appreciate this, trust me.) And is that beautiful old stone building that has narrow hallways, twisty staircases, and no elevators really the only place you can hold your conference? Really?

- Take advantage of university services – Once you find about about the accessibility requirements of the people attending your conference, talk to the people at your university (if you’re holding the conference at a university) in charge of accessibility. You probably associate these people primarily with those endless, often highly impractical emails you get about making your classes more accessible to dyslexic students (I remember in particular a very long one I got about the importance of minizing the use of symbols and technical jargon the semester I was teaching intro logic. . .), but they really do have a lot to offer. You’ll be surprised at the range of software, presentation aids, even furniture and equipment that many universities can provide for you.

These are just some starting thoughts. More suggestions?

International Social Philosophy Conference in Boston, 2012 August 28, 2011

Personal note: I’ve always found lots of feminist work on the program of the social philosophy conferences, lots of women attending and giving papers, and a very friendly, supportive atmosphere.

Twenty-Ninth International Social Philosophy Conference

Sponsored by

The North American Society for Social Philosophy

July 26 – July 28, 2012
Northeastern University
Boston, Massachusetts

Special attention will be devoted to the theme:

Civic Virtues, Divided Societies, and Democratic Dilemmas

but proposals in all areas of social philosophy are welcome.

The Program Committee members are Professor John Koolage of Eastern Michigan, Professor Gaile Pohlhaus of Miami University, and Professor Theresa Tobin of Marquette University.

A 300-500 word abstract should be emailed to all of the program committee members. We welcome submissions from both members and non-members, but we do expect that all presenters will join the North American Society for Social Philosophy if their papers are accepted.

Submission Deadlines:

For those living in Canada or the U.S.: March 15, 2012.

For those living outside the United States and Canada: Jan. 15, 2012.

Submit proposals to all of the following members of the program committee:

John Koolage
wjkoolage@gmail.com

Gaile Pohlhaus
pohlhag@muohio.edu

Theresa Tobin
theresa.tobin@marquette.edu

NASSP Travel Grants for International Presenters

The NASSP has limited funds for travel to Boston for presenters living outside the U.S. and Canada. If you are interested, please indicate this at the time that you receive the acceptance e-mail.

NASSP Conference Awards for Graduate Students

To promote new scholarship focusing on social philosophy and to encourage student participation, the North American Society for Social Philosophy has established the NASSP Awards for Best Graduate Student Papers. These awards give special recognition to papers to be read by a graduate student at the NASSP annual conference. The winners of the annual prizes will each receive $300 upon attendance at the annual International Social Philosophy Conference, and will be honored at the conference. The prizes are awarded only to conference attendees, though there is no obligation to use the money for conference-related costs. Any graduate student enrolled in a program towards a degree beyond the B.A. or first university diploma is eligible. The paper should be consistent with the framework of those presented at the International Social Philosophy Conference, addressing any topic in social philosophy. The papers will be evaluated by a three-member committee. The evaluation criteria include originality and quality of philosophical writing. Papers may be drawn from thesis work or intended for eventual publication, should be no more than 3,000 words (include word count with submission), and conform to the requirements set out by the APA for colloquium submissions to annual Divisional meetings.

Deadline: March 15, 2012.
Both abstracts and completed papers should be submitted to the program committee as directed above for anonymous review. Please indicate that you wish to be considered for the Graduate Student Award in your email. Please also include a word count for your submission.

Toilets: Shopping VS Football August 28, 2011

Toilet/restroom signs at a Vietnamese restaurant in Berlin:

Massive props to Mr Jender for not only using the “wrong” one, but mentally practising the German phrase “but I just really love shopping!” for when he got caught. Which he did.

[updated to avoid pbk's confusion]

CFP: Disabled Mothers August 28, 2011

Co-editors: Gloria Filax and Dena Taylor

Publication Date: 2014

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: DECEMBER 31, 2011!

While there are several books on raising children with disabilities, the literature is scant on experiences of disabled women who are raising children OR the experiences of those parented by a woman with disabilities. Bringing together disability with mothering has the potential to challenge dominant narratives of both mothering AND disability. Noticing dominant ideas, meanings, and/or stories/narratives (normative discourses) regarding both ‘mothering’ and ‘disability’ expose the limits beyond which disabled mothers live their daily lives.

The goal of this edited collection is to add to literatures on mothering and disability through providing stories by disabled mothers or their children as well as chapters of scholarly research and theorizing. We intend that both stories and research in this collection will raise critical questions about the social and cultural meanings of disability and mothering. Whether a birth mother, an adoptive mother,a foster mother, a co-mother, someone mothered by a disabled woman, or someone whose research explores disabled mothering, we invite you to submit to this collection.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

How are disabled women discouraged from having children? How does the medical model of disability shape the meanings assigned to disabled mothers? How do chronic illnesses affect mothering? Are disabled mothers healthy mothers? How do the social and cultural models of disability shape how we understand disabled mothers and mothering? Are disabled mothers oppressed? How doissues of race,class, and sexuality affect disabled mothers and their families? Should disabled mothers ‘pass’ as normal? How are pregnancy and birth experiences shaped by disability? How do children experience and understand a disabled mother? What support is needed and received by disabled mothers? How does the built environment, both public and private, shape the experiences of disabled mothers? What kinds of issues are there with children’s schools, health professionals and/or children’s attitudes? What form, if any, does social and political activism take? Do legal remedies work to assist disabled mothers (for example, disability as a protected category in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the Americans with Disabilities Act)? How does a mother’s disability expose the expectations of mothering? How does a mother’s disability expose the assumptions about disability? How is society disabling of mothering? How can we ‘do’ disabled mothering differently?

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts should be 250 words. Please also include a brief biography (50 words) with citizenship.
Please send to gfilax@shaw.ca and detaylor@cabrillo.edu
Deadline for Abstracts is December 31, 2011
Accepted papers of 4000-5000 words (15-20 pages) will be due October 15, 2012

Inspirational Women August 28, 2011

Check it out.

Parvin Ardalan
Ardalan is a feminist activist writer based in Tehran, Iran. In 2007 she was awarded the Olof Palme Prize for her struggle for gender equality. Along with other feminist writters, ignoring the threats of the Tehran religious-police, she has helped set up the Women’s Cultural Centre in Tehran. This is with the aim to promote women`s issues in Iran. She has been imprisoned for her work. Ardalan is one of the founding members of the One Million Signatures campaign, attempting to collect a million signatures for women’s equal rights.

(Thanks, C!)

The Sunday Cat Disputes the Association of Doves with Peace. August 27, 2011

Here’s why: this goes on every day, and clearly it is the dove who does not care about peace.

 

For you who face Irene August 26, 2011

Be as safe and careful as you can.  Many of us will be watching as much as we can and hoping for good outcomes.  I suppose a few of us may pray, but you know what philosophers are like.

I  saw my second home town, Galveston, on CNN today as an example of what a hurricane can do.  Ike was so very destructive, and it sounds as though you may have something similar or even worse.  It is frightening, and the devastation you see afterwards can be very depressing.  Houston was without electricity for about 8 or 9 days.  We weren’t even allowed on Galveston; I went there on the second day we could get on the island.  Driving down the main street was like being in a funeral procession.  You may be in for something not easy to imagine.  I was in tears; it was hard not to be.

I hope you have read all the standard advice, and followed what you could.  The only advice I hadn’t seen, and wished I had, was to charge up fully everything that you can.  There are few things more vexing than to finally turn on one’s computer and see that you have little power left and no source of power anywhere near.

Colleges and universities may get power early; ours did.  In addition, of course, you may be able to charge things while you drive about.    It turns out that ipads are not entirely easy to charge, and yours may well require more power than a car can offer.   Well, there have to be some drawbacks, in addition to the name.

If you are in an area that is not used to hurricanes and floods, do be prepared to discover that a lot of retrospectively stupid decisions were made, such as not providing for sealing off the elevator mechanisms.  Or putting the generators in the basement.  Builders who skimped may be revealed, as sides and roofs of new houses come off.  You or other people in your area may be visited with equal stupidity such as, for example, being refused aid for homelessness because their second floor or higher apartment is in tact.  This despite the fact that the elevators do not work and they have to use a wheelchair.

So we will watch and hope.

o

Breast cancer: some psychological questions August 26, 2011

I hope for this series to be helpful to others.   Some of the stuff I am encountering, though, has got to be less than common.  

I mentioned last time that there is far more in the way of options than you are likely to hear about from your surgeon(s). And while you might well think a female breast surgeon is the best choice, there is at least one possible downside. You may have very different values. I have, for example, come to think that the cosmetic aspects of her breasts are an extremely big deal to my surgeon.  I value non-intrusive surgery much more than she does (duh!).

So one problematic situation I am in is that I have two really world class surgeons – one the breast surgeon (BS) and the other the plastic surgeon (PS) who think I’m making a huge cosmetic mistake in insisting on a lumpectomy over a mastectomy (plus reconstruction), AND for them, a huge cosmetic mistake is a huge mistake.  Everyone is clear that the medical benefits are too close to choose between them. 

I’ve spoken to another doctor, totally separate from this, and he’s said there’s all this stress on cosmetics because they just haven’t had the time to explain why it is really medically important. But they’ve had plenty of time to tell me and I am pretty sure that with the whole crew cosmetics is a very big deal.  They record the amount of time we discuss things as I think we’re at about 3 hours now.

It may be that they would benefit in some way I can’t see yet, but it may also be the culture.  According to Wiki, for comparable cancers, the percentage of mastectomies over lumpectomies is 76% in Eastern Europe, 54% in the US, 42-44% in No. and So. Europe and 36% in New Zealand and Australia.  (I’m relying on memory so I might be a point or two off.)

Further, to say that I have had to go to some effort to get the surgery I want is an understatement, if one counts enduring highly stressful situations as work.  When I had my consultations with the PS, he simply went beserk.  It really was awful.  My spouse compared him to a famously nasty academic.  I’ve seen people turned red and say angry things when I’ve said “I understand that that is your position, but I disagree for the following reasons.”  But this quickly became uncivil, and I couldn’t even finish a sentence before he rushed in to say it was a stupid question or to jeer at me.  

So I am putting in a lot of effort to do avoid a highly invasive surgery, and I may well fail.  The surgeon needs to get “clean margins,” which is a cm at least of tissue without any malignancy; if she can’t, it is bad news for the breast.   But I think putting in the huge effort will make me feel better if I do fail.  And I’m wondering about whether this sense is fairly idiosyncratic or whether it might even be a general human psychological characteristic.  That is, other things being equal, would putting in a lot of effort even though you eventually fail make the failure easier to endure?

Suppose there’s a job possibility or a grant available and you put in a great deal of effort to get it.  Will the effort  make you feel better about not getting the job or not getting the grant?  Or perhaps the actual effort has secondary effects that make it worth it?  Or is it that some of us don’t want to be the sort of people who approach important things carelessly?  And why?

The second question is about the stigma of not being a good patient.  Are there things, such as people’s efforts to help you, that really you cannot complain about without a big social cost?  I was brought up short by someone’s saying to me last night, “Remember these people are all trying to help you.” 

At the risk of showing myself to be very ungrateful, I will mention the the physician’s assistant, who stood between me and the BS. She is a very sweet and nice young woman who obviously takes it as her mission to explain why the BS is right. She’s also the first line of defense, so she’s supposed to answer one’s questions. One day I said that I wanted to find out the grade of my cancer.   Grade is important in finding out how aggressive it is.  She looked at the chart, saw it wasn’t there and appears to have inferred that the pathology people couldn’t determine it.  So she explained to me that they couldn’t grade the cancer since there weren’t enought cells to test.

Even I could see that couldn’t be right.  And in fact the initial grading showed up in the system a few days later.

And then there was the psych consult, which I should have refused. Having happily, but with faulty statistics, explained which behavior of mine caused the cancer, the social worker decided to show me how to change my behavior. We started with a big circle to cover all aknowledge. I knew this was not going to go well, but to my credit, I think, I remained very polite though it all.  The kind of cancer I have is very rare and no one knows what causes it, btw.

My hair guy would disagree that they are all trying to help me.  He thinks they are part of a conspiracy to make money.  He holds that cancer is a fungus and is best treated with baking soda.  And there are people on cancer discussion boards who say they believe this theory.  And that’s how they will act.  This is American, after all, when people apparently learn so little in school that they actually believe a lot of stuff that seems really clearly  loony.

August 26: Women’s Equality Day August 26, 2011

What is Women’s Equality Day?

At the behest of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), in 1971 the U.S. Congress designated August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day.”

The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. This was the culmination of a massive, peaceful civil rights movement by women that had its formal beginnings in 1848 at the world’s first women’s rights convention, in Seneca Falls, New York.

The observance of Women’s Equality Day not only commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment, but also calls attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality. Workplaces, libraries, organizations, and public facilities now participate with Women’s Equality Day programs, displays, video showings, or other activities.

And, as we have noted before, it is also Dogs’ Day!

 

Racism in US Academia? August 26, 2011

Grant applications at NIH and NSF are peer-reviewed; there is a serious worry, substantiated by research recently reported in Science,  that the peer-reviewing at NIH either is racially tainted or reflects a disadvantageous racism in African-American scientists’ careers:

It takes no more than a visit to a few labs or a glance at the crowd at a scientific meeting to know that African-American scientists are rare in biomedical research. But an in-depth analysis of grant data from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) on page 1015 in this issue of Science finds that the problem goes much deeper than impressions. Black Ph.D. scientists—and not other minorities—were far less likely to receive NIH funding for a research idea than a white scientist from a similar institution with the same research record. The gap was large: A black scientist’s chance of winning NIH funding was 10 percentage points lower than that of a white scientist.

The NIH-commissioned analysis, which lifts the lid on confidential grant data, may reflect a series of slight advantages white scientists accumulate over the course of a career, the authors suggest. But the gap could also result from “insidious” bias favoring whites in a peer-review system that supposedly ranks applications only on scientific merit, NIH officials say.

As far as I know, there isn’t any comparable data for NSF.

 

Do note that the concern that the grant applications from African Americans were less good is recognized, but no one doing the study thinks they have good grounds for saying that.  Nonetheless, the “series of slight advantages” covers factors that could well affect the quality of grant applications, such as strong mentoring.  Further research is being divised to isolate some of the causes of the award gap.

 

The original article, linked to in the post, has a lot of information and some useful references.

APA Rockefeller Prize for best paper by Philosophy PhD August 25, 2011

Many of us received emails announcing this prize for “non-academics,” but NOTE:  “to qualify, one may in fact be teaching at a university in a part-time or a full-time temporary position as long as one also meets …requirements” including not having a permanent full-time position in a philosophy department.  So this is an award for authors without academic affiliations and/or without a permanent academic affiliation in philosophy.  I’ve met readers of this blog with part-time positions in Women/Gender Studies.  You may qualify!  So may sessional/contingent employees of philosophy departments! (Thanks to Jean for emphasizing this.)

The winner’s work will be published in The Journal of Value Inquiry, by mutual agreement of the author and the editors of the journal.

Award Amount: $1,000

Submissions procedures

The APA invites members who have no permanent academic affiliation to participate in this competition for the best unpublished paper-length work in philosophy. To qualify, one may in fact be teaching at a university in a part-time or a full-time temporary position as long as one also meets the following requirements: Authors must not hold a full-time position at an institution of higher education in philosophy that continues beyond the end of the current academic year, nor may they have held such a position within the last three years. The author must hold a Ph.D. in philosophy or its equivalent at the time of submission, and must be a current member of the APA in good standing. Professors emeriti are not eligible. Previous winners of this prize are not eligible.

Submissions must be unpublished at the time of submission* and must be prepared neatly and legibly, and with all references which would identify the author removed. Submissions must be no more than 40 double-spaced pages in length. Please submit (electronically) the work to be considered, together with your current CV to: Linda Nuoffer (lnuoffer@udel.edu). The deadline for the 2012 award is November 1, 2011.

Reviewing will be [doubly anonymous]. The prize amount is $1,000. Co-authors of a winning submission, or authors of winning submissions judged to be equal in merit, will share equally in the prize. The prize will be announced in the Proceedings and Addresses, and it is expected (but not required) the winning submission will be published in The Journal of Value Inquiry.

See here for more information.

H-Disability Discussion Network August 25, 2011

H-Disability is a scholarly discussion group that explores the multitude of historical issues surrounding the experience and phenomenon of ‘disability.’ H-Disability was established in response to the growing academic interest and expanding scholarly literature on issues of disability throughout the world.

Go here.

Men Write About Wittgenstein August 24, 2011

Mind Someone has put together a collection of the “Top Wittgenstein Articles” (from a variety of journals). They are currently available for free access here.

They are all by men.

(Thanks, N!)

Update: Mind‘s Editor in Chief, Prof. Tom Baldwin has helpfully joined in the discussion (see his comment below). Apparently, though it was linked from the Mind website, this list comes as a surprise to the editors of Mind and isn’t something they had anything to do with! Prof. Baldwin has asked OUP to remove the link to the list from Mind‘s website.

Margaret Whitford – obituary August 23, 2011

The Guardian has published the following obituary, written by her friend and fellow academic Anne Seller:

My friend Margaret Whitford, who has died aged 64, lived the life of the mind to its fullest extent. She grew up in Cornwall and described her childhood as claustrophobic and isolated, saying that it was no surprise to later find herself living alone in a room full of books in a teeming metropolis.

Margaret was professor of French at Queen Mary, University of London; a founder member of the UK Society for Women in Philosophy; an author and translator; and a practising psychotherapist. Her vision and energy were pivotal in developing the new field of feminist philosophy. The radical nature of her life’s work was devoted to the development of ideas that would express and illuminate the experience of being a woman in a male-dominated world. Typically this included encouraging and respecting other women’s contributions.

After moving to London in 1977, Margaret lived in a council flat in Wapping. In 1987 she moved to a house in Stratford, east London, of Dickensian dinginess and dilapidation. When she finally admitted a TV licence officer indoors to prove there was no set, his report suggested she was telling the truth because the house “was too full of books”. But she was fully engaged with the world.

In the 1990s, Margaret moved to a light, airy flat, published prolifically, and developed a passion for contemporary art. In 2000, at a stage when most academics would be happy to recycle familiar ideas, she began training as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist, qualifying in 2005 when the effects of her ovarian cancer were particularly severe. Finding the right moment to move her clients on became a preoccupation as her cancer advanced.

One of the last memories I have of Margaret is her indicating a book on Pakistan, saying that she wanted to read it before she died. She did, and had a lively argument about it with an attending doctor. My final memory is of sitting with her waiting for the call to go into the hospice. She passed the time with a vigorous critique of the film Of Men and Gods. She never stopped thinking and never stopped caring. Her friends were like her family, and we will miss her laughter, generosity and conversation with its never-ending gift of fresh insights.

Her brother, Chris, survives her.

Feminist philosophers right again… August 23, 2011

Okay, that’s possibly overstating it slightly.  But we posted in July about the worrying decision of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission to intervene in four cases being taken to the European Court of Human Rights. These cases involved

1. Being forbidden to wear a cross at work (Eweida, Chaplin);
2. Being required to perform a public service without discriminating against gay people (McFarlane, Ladele).

In all four cases, UK courts had found that there was no discrimination on grounds of religion, and the EHRC’s press release suggested it was equally critical of the UK courts’ positions in all four cases. But now – vindication! – it has apparently changed its position.  The full consultation document is on the EHRC website, and says,

We propose to intervene in:

• Eweida and Chaplin on the basis that the Courts may not have given sufficient weight to Article 9(2) of the Convention.
• Ladele and Mcfarlane on the basis that the domestic courts came to the correct conclusions.

If you feel strongly about this, do respond to the consultation *by 5 September* to support the EHRC’s new position. I shall certainly be doing so.

Sex Ed with Qantas August 23, 2011

Flying with Qantas? Confused about the female orgasm? Why not watch in-flight film ‘The Female Orgasm Explained?’

Disclaimer: I have not yet watched it, and cannot attest to the accuracy or otherwise of the information contained therein.

Don’t mess with farmers August 23, 2011

Reuters reports that a 90 year-old German farmer saw off three burglars she found breaking into her farmhouse. She was going about her business with the aid of a walking-frame, which she used to beat the burglars. They fled.