Turkish FA to ban men from stadiums September 21, 2011

seriously!

The Turkish football association has come up with a radical solution for tackling hooliganism – by banning men from stadiums. Teams sanctioned for unruly behaviour by fans are instead only allowed to admit women and children aged under 12 to watch games.

…

On Tuesday, more than 41,000 women and children attended Fenerbahce’s match against Manisaspor in Istanbul.

Fenerbahce’s 1-1 draw with Manisapor kicked off after players from both teams hurled flowers at the fans, while the visitors were greeted with applause instead of the more customary loud jeers.

The home side’s captain, Alex de Sousa, said: “This memory will stay with me forever. It’s not always that you see so many women and children in one game.”

Maybe if they hurled flowers at the men, the men would be nice, too. Just a thought…

Read more here. (Thanks RW!)

A reading in honor of the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” September 21, 2011

How funny that the day “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would cease to have effect in the U.S. military, someone would write me asking me to reminder her of the source of an article I’d recommended a year ago, on the history of the terms ‘heterosexism’ and ‘homophobia.’

It seems a fitting day on which to reiterate my recommendation of Gregory Herek’s article, “Beyond Homophobia” (Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 2004).

In common speech, heterosexism has been used inconsistently. It has often served as a synonym for homophobia. Some authors, however, have distinguished between the two constructs by using heterosexism to describe a cultural ideology manifested in society’s institutions while reserving homophobia to describe individual attitudes and actions deriving from that ideology.

After carefully tracing the history of ‘homophobia,’ Herek advances his argument for distinctions beyond this important but limited term.

I offer some preliminary thoughts about three general arenas in which hostility based on sexual orientation should be studied. First, such hostility exists in the form of shared knowledge that is embodied in cultural ideologies that define sexuality, demarcate social groupings based on it, and assign value to those groups and their members. Second, these ideologies are expressed through society’s structure, institutions, and power relations. Third, individuals internalize these ideologies and, through their attitudes and actions, express, reinforce, and challenge them. I refer to these three aspects of antigay hostility as, respectively, sexual stigma, heterosexism, and sexual prejudice.

Philosophy JOBS, vs. JFP **UPDATED September 20, 2011

UPDATE: Sep. 23 — The Phylo site now has 40 job ads, and it’s going strong!  What a time to be alive.

Exciting, yes?   Yes.

 

Written to and posted on The Philosophy Smoker, where the nuances are discussed in more satisfying detail:

Chris Sula and I have revamped the Phylo site to create an actual jobs board to (ahem) supplement the JFP. The URL is the same as the old wiki: http://phylo.info/jobs. As of today, we’ll start accepting job postings in that space from departmental representatives only.

Gendered Book Series September 20, 2011

Our friends over at NewAPPS have put up an interesting and eye-opening post about the gender balance in many popular philosophy book series. Go join the discussion!

Troy Davis: execution set for tomorrow September 20, 2011

Many of you may be aware of the case of Troy Davis. He has been on death-row for twenty years, convicted of murdering a police officer. Davis has always maintained his innocence. There is no physical evidence linking him to the crime. Of nine witnesses for the prosecution, seven have changed or recanted their initial testimonies in sworn affidavits. Some claim they were coerced by the police ahead of Davis’ trial. Meanwhile, ten people have pointed to one of the remaining witnesses as the killer. In spite of this, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles have refused to grant Davis clemency. He is due to be executed tomorrow. If you would like to join the Amnesty campaign to try and reverse this decision, go here.

CSWIP in October September 20, 2011

Foo fighters serenade Westboro ‘Baptist Church’* with song about man-muffins September 20, 2011

Not only does God hate fags, he also hates the Foo Fighters – according to Fred Phelps and his extended family of haters, otherwise known as the Westboro Baptist Church.* Placards in hand, they recently turned up to picket a Foo Fighters’ gig in Kansas, on the grounds that the band were teaching ‘fornication, adultery, idolatry, and fags’. In response, the Foo fighters took to the back of a pick-up truck and serenaded the Phelps crew with a song extolling the virtues of gay sex and hot man-muffins (whatever those might be). You can read more here.

*Has no connections with the Baptist Church.

staring at Kant’s breasts…? September 20, 2011

Author Junji Hotta has blessed the world with “Tsundere, Heidegger, and Me”, a tour de force of European philosophy… in a world where all the philosophers are self-conscious anime girls. The books went on sale September 14.

The table of contents includes: “Chapter 1, Descartes: proving the existence of God”; “Chapter 2, Spinoza: man is the greatest for man”, “Chapter 3, Berkeley and Hume: to exist is to be aware”, “Chapter 4, Kant: the starry heaven above me and morality within me”, “Chapter 5, Hegel: the world is an infinite progression towards wisdom”, “Chapter 6, Nietzsche: God is dead, but nothing has changed”, “Chapter 7, Heidegger: without a world, we do not exist, without us, the world does not exist, we are not alone”.

Part of me, of course, is sceptical about the quality of the philosophy this publication might contain. Another part of me thinks it might be fab for children to see philosophical thoughts coming out of the mouths of “girlie girls”. (Assuming this is meant for children. I’m never quite clear on that point, wrt anime.) …but…and don’t get me wrong, I’m no puritan, and no prude; teens are sexual creatures. but does Kant really need the big pendulous breasts? And don’t get me started on Spinoza…

why spinoza? to what end (no pun intended)? the mind boggles...

Read more here.

Even Tories Are Objecting September 20, 2011

to planned cuts to legal aid, which they worry will hurt women.

Senior backbench Conservative MPs are concerned about the government’s changes to legal aid, Huffington Post UK can reveal.

As the government prepares to cut £350m from the legal aid budget, Conservative MP Anna Soubry has said she and some backbench colleagues are concerned about how this will affect women.

“We’re not happy about the changes in legal aid… we’re fearful they will affect women who are separating from husbands. We’ve identified that as a problem.”

The coalition’s cuts to legal aid mean that in civil law cases, those going through divorce will no longer be entitled to help from the state.

Wall Street Protest? September 19, 2011

There are claims that there was a media blackout on the Wall Street Protest on 9/17.     The NY Times did report it, in their section on regional events (aka, buried it).

 

 

Apparently there were similar protests organized for a number of cities in the US.   The NY Times says there were hundreds of protestors, which seems a very disappointing number.  If that’s right, it looks as though something went pretty wrong.

Did everyone else know about it?

Finally! September 19, 2011

Of course, I’m assuming this is for real; that is, that he will actually act on it:

Obama, “I will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans,” he said. “And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.

What do you think?

And I like this comment from a reader on the Republicans cry of “class warfare”:

When 400 people own more than the bottom 150,000,000 Americans COMBINED, we OUGHT to have class warfare!

Query from a prospective grad student September 19, 2011

A prospective grad student has sent the following query to Disabled Philosophers:

I have been diagnosed with two major learning disabilities: Dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder. Given the doubt and outright disbelief about both being serious diagnoses, I am reluctant to mention either on my grad school applications despite the fact that the mention would go a long way to explaining the apparent inconsistencies in my academic record. One of them is easily treatable via psychopharmaceuticals, the other is simply a fact of life that makes spelling and arithmetic take longer. What I would like to hear about from the community is this: is it worth the trouble to mention these as disabilities?

Since Disabled Philosophers isn’t a discussion forum, we thought we’d post this here instead. What do readers think?

In what possible worlds is this true? September 18, 2011

Surely not the actual world, or at least not the philosophical part of it!

Earlier this year, the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology published a report on the effects of news about women’s progress to equality; I cannot get electronic access to it, but the Daily Beast offered the following comments last March:

[A] new report suggests that men might be less likely to hire women, mentor them, or value them as colleagues.

Male anxiety may explain the new conventional wisdom embraced by the media that women are taking over the world and headed for the best jobs, while men are flailing. After all, research tells us that men control opinion journalism; only 10 to 15 percent of talking heads on opinion news shows are female and between 80 and 90 percent of a newspaper’s opinion essays are written by men, according to the Stanford Op Ed Project. This narrative, however, is seriously flawed.

Look closely at data about women’s progress, and you’ll see a troubling fact: in many arenas, women’s gains have stalled and are in grave danger of being rolled back. Yes, more women than ever before attend college and professional schools in medicine, law, and business—but there’s a real question as to whether they’ll ever attain leadership positions in the areas for which they’ve been trained. The women’s advocacy group Catalyst reports that women’s representation in senior leadership positions is stagnating. In computer science and engineering, earlier gains appear to have stalled or even shifted into reverse.

For Salon’s take on the legend of the persecuted white guy, see Jender’s piece here.

“LSE scholar admits race analysis was ‘flawed’.” September 18, 2011

Kanazawa’s disgraceful pseudo-scientific claims about the relative attrativeness of black women has brought LSE into disrepute, an official letter from the institution notes. LSE is restricting his teaching and publication abilities for one year. In his letter, Kanasawa says he deeply regrets the unintended consequences of his blog post.

Is this enough? Was the post merely bad science?

The BBC says:

Dr Mikhail Lyubansky, a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois, said the posting failed to consider possible “anti-black bias” in the perceptions of the respondents and interviewers.
“Without this kind of methodological analysis, Kanazawa’s entire premise – that there is such a thing as a single objective standard of attractiveness – is fatally (and tragically) flawed,” he wrote.

Not all bad science is morally corrupt, but this instance seems at least close to that.

The sunday cat notes it is such a relief when we are in charge September 18, 2011

Thanks, pj!

Reader Query: feminist critiques of evolutionary psychology? September 17, 2011

I’m a first-year grad student and today was my first day of discussion sections for the 101 course I’m TA-ing. Given that I’m not actually assigning the readings, there’s only so much I can do to encourage participation by members of under-represented groups, though I did what I could with my own syllabus and I intend to monitor power dynamics within discussions. Today one of my more active sections went from a discussion about why we care about piety to the subject of what drives us toward excellence, and one very vocal (female, interestingly) student was pushing a pretty hard evolutionary psychological line; so hard, in fact, that she was explicit about her belief that only men need to be excellent so that they can attract mates but women mostly need to worry about nurturing! I didn’t want to be heavy-handed and intervene so I mostly let the students discuss it amongst themselves, but at least one other student appeared visibly uncomfortable with the view we were discussing, though when I asked her after class if she had felt uncomfortable she said that she didn’t and she enjoyed arguing.

I haven’t read much philosophical literature on this topic (and I think Gender Trouble might be a little bit much), but if anyone can recommend something easy (easy for non-majors at a middling state university) and short that critiques EP from a feminist perspective, I would love to bring it up next week.

We’ve gone a fair few posts on the topic, here. But what else do you all know of? I like Natalie Angier’s _Woman_ but it’s dated. Cordelia Fine of course has some excellent stuff that’s very relevant, as does Rebecca Jordan-Young.

A useful rape analogy September 17, 2011

From here. (Thanks, R!)

We have had quite a lot of comments that could be horrendous for a rape victim to read. Since we don’t have time to moderate constantly, I’m closing comments.

A lot of people have done a very amazing thing September 16, 2011

This post was written by an anonymous reader:

My friend has been abused in her home for years now. She’s isolated by her abusers; threatened and bullied into keeping quiet; kept away from friends or officials who might help. She had the courage to start whispering. At the school gate, to other mums who seemed friendly. I say courage, because we were strangers to her, totally cut off from and ignorant of her horrible isolated world. But whispering was all she could do. So she did it. And we listened, but we were powerless to act: the woman herself needs to give the signal, she needs to be the one to ask for help. We got lots of great advice from the domestic abuse hotline, from a wonderful charity (and from wonderful feminist philosophers!), but no one could actually do anything until she asked. And she couldn’t. She had literally no way to speak without endangering herself.

Three days ago, she found her chance. She had a doctor’s appointment. And she whispered to the doctor. And, certainly betraying all my pessimistic expectations, the doctor listened and acted. Her doctor rang the police. The police immediately started working; the school got involved to help; the charity and the domestic abuse hotline chipped in. There was an amazing whirlwind of planning and information-gathering and coordinating over the course of 24 hours. And then it just happened: smoothly, calmly and quietly, as if it were nothing (when in fact it was a whole life to this woman) they whisked her away. She got out. She’s out!

I’m a bit afraid of her abusers, too. I don’t ever want them to know my role. So, I need to keep quiet. But I want desperately to say thank you to her GP, and the head teacher, and the police, and social services, and the domestic abuse hotline, the friends who gave advice and the mums who donated clothes. A lot of people—a lot of strangers—have done a very amazing thing this week.

Since I can’t say thank you, could you? If you know a police officer, or a teacher, or a doctor, or a charity worker or social worker, or indeed anyone who does amazing things for strangers, shake their hand for me today. Tell them I say thank you.

Essential to the discipline September 16, 2011

Over at Disabled Philosophers, we’ve been getting a lot of submissions from people expressing concern about whether their disabilities will prevent them from becoming successful philosophers. Reading these posts, I’ve inevitably started to think about to what extent the practice of philosophy as it’s currently conducted is discriminatory (particularly against the disabled – but the concerns generalize).

Let’s be clear: that the practice of philosophy excludes people with certain types of disabilities is not, by itself, enough to justify the charge that philosophy is practiced in ways which are unfair or unjust. That a discipline or practice excludes some disabled people doesn’t by itself entail any unfairness or discrimination. Because of my disability, I could not have been a neurosurgeon. Neurosurgery requires extraordinarily precise fine motor control, and most days I have the fine motor skills of a drunk toddler. The practice of neurosurgery isn’t thereby being unfair in excluding me. It’s simply that I lack skills which are essential to the practice of neurosurgery. I happen to lack those skills because of a disability, but that doesn’t mean neurosurgery is discriminatory for requiring those skills.

It’s not bad or unjust if philosophy excludes some people – even if some such exclusions are related to disability. But it is unjust if philosophy excludes people because they can’t participate in (or don’t do as well at) things which aren’t essential to the practice of philosophy. What I’ve noticed is that the concerns expressed aren’t of the form: I’m afraid that my disability will keep me from being a good philosopher. Rather, they are of the form: I’m afraid that my disability will keep me from doing the kinds of things philosophers are expected to do (things like attend conferences, give public talks, do well in high-pressure q&a sessions, hang out in bars and talk about philosophy for hours, etc).

I suspect – though I don’t have that much evidence for this – that in philosophy we haven’t given much thought to what’s essential to the practice of philosophy. And perhaps as a result, I likewise suspect that we often base judgements about philosophical quality at least in part on things that are separable from being a good philosopher (like performing well in talks, being quick on your feet, etc). If that’s the case, then the charge of discrimination is fair – and worrisome.

I’d love to hear others thoughts on this, particularly with regard to:

(i) What really is essential to the practice of philosophy? (Are the social aspects of philosophy – like giving a talk or performing well in a q&a part of what it is to be a good philosopher?)

(ii) Do we often judge philosophical quality based in part on things that aren’t essential to being a good philosopher? (Apart from the obvious, like implicit bias. I’m thinking here about things you could explicitly bring up as evidence in discussion of philosophical quality that are in fact orthogonal to philosophical quality.)

Nottinghamshire police pay £20,000 to student arrested over research material September 16, 2011

In 2008, Rizwaan Sabir – an MA student at the University of Nottingham – was reported to the police by the university for downloading a copy of the al-Quaeda training manual and emailing it to his friend, Hich Yezza, who worked as an administrator. Yezza was helping Sabir put together a PhD proposal on counter-terrorism. He downloaded the manual from a US government site. A longer version, containing more material, can be purchased from any bookshop. However, when another administrator found the manual on Yezza’s computer, the university immediately called the police, who arrested Sabir and Yezza. Sabir was held for seven days before being released without charge. However, despite his innocence, information was kept on record, and as a result, he endured various forms of harassment from the authorities. (Yezza’s treatment was even worse: he was imprisoned for several months in an immigration holding unit as the UK tried to deport him. It took two years, and thousands of pounds in legal proceedings to halt the deportation and win back his residency papers. Again, he was completely innocent of any connection with terrorism.)

The Nottinghamshire police have now paid Sabir £20,000 in an out of court settlement, over their handling of the affair. Let’s hope this changes the way that such cases are dealt with in the future. You can read more here.