Britain’s jobless young people are being sent to work for supermarkets and budget stores for up to two months for no pay and no guarantee of a job, the Guardian can reveal.
These people are doing 30 hrs/week for their £53/week benefit.
For full details, go here.
Seriously, would any other world leader have to endure this? I know this coverage of President Barack Obama’s visit to Australia and time with Prime Minister Julia Gillard is supposed to be funny, to be tongue in cheek, but it’s just not. It’s an insult to women in politics.
“THE AUDACITY OF GROPE: Julia and Barack’s special relationship, Touchy-feely PM and President met with a kiss “It’s like she’s won a date with George Clooney”
Thanks RB.
A bit of a side interest in the wide variety of rituals surrounding death led me to a documentary I think I have to watch. In “Dancing for the Dead: Funeral strippers in Taiwan” Marc L. Moskowitz, an anthropology professor at the University of South Carolina, documents the phenomena known as “funeral stripping.” The idea of hiring strippers to help send off the dead was new to me. I can’t quite imagine it except at something like a wake on the TV show The Sopranos. Funeral stripping is pretty much what it sounds like. Scantily clad dancers gyrate around poles, flashing lights and blaring pop music — often on the back of what they call “electric flower cars,” which are part of the funeral procession.
From a description of the documentary: “Funeral strippers work on Electric Flower Cars (EFC) which are trucks that have been converted to moving stages so that women can perform as the vehicles follow along with funerals or religious processions. EFC came to Taiwan’s public attention in 1980 when newspapers began covering the phenomenon of stripping at funerals. There is a great deal of debate about whether this should be allowed to continue. In Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, one often hears middle and upper class men complain about the harmful effects of this rural practice on public morality. In contrast, people in the industry see themselves as talented performers and fans of the practice say that it makes events more exciting. Dancing for the Dead follows this story, interviewing Taiwan’s academics, government officials, and people working in the EFC industry to try to make sense of this phenomenon. The film includes footage from nine different cities across Taiwan, including EFC performances, a funeral, and several religious events.”
A trailer for the documentary follows this post. I guess I shouldn’t have to stay that a documentary about strippers may not be safe for workplace viewing but I will. NSFW, though of course that depends on your workplace. I always find that expression a bit odd. I mean strippers have jobs and this documentary trailer would be pretty tame by those workplace standards.
Other blog posts on funeral strippers:
The Closure Blog, http://www.nancyberns.com/funeral-strippers.html
Life Detox with a Pack of Cigarettes and Swear Words, “Funerals are Fun!!”
http://toughlovetin.blogspot.com/2010/04/funerals-are-fun.html
Funeral strippers in Taiwan: There is evidence that the practice dates back to the 1800s, so why do people suddenly have a problem with it? Emily Lodish
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/the-rice-bowl/funeral-strippers-taiwan-religion-gangsters
“Two new studies led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers spotlight the human health effects of exposure to smoke from open fires and dirty cookstoves, the primary source of cooking and heating for 43 percent, or some 3 billion members, of the world’s population. Women and young children in poverty are particularly vulnerable.“
The researchers go to say that the studies provide compelling evidence that reducing household woodsmoke exposure is a public health intervention that is likely on a par with vaccinations and nutrition supplements for reducing severe pneumonia, and is worth investing in.
Read more here.
Thanks CO.
A new open source, peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Feminist Scholarship, hosted at UMASS Dartmouth goes live today.
You can read more about it here, http://www1.umassd.edu/jfs/editors.html
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Suppose a woman gets promoted to a fairly powerful and interesting position. As you hear her home group discuss it, you see the following ideas playing a significant role
Powerful women are very threatening.
Women are tricky and deceitful.
Women are less good than men in intellectual endeavors.
Women cannot be good at science.
Accomplishments of men that might be explained by intelligence or skills are explained for women by personal features such as charm, charisma or even sex.
Women do use sex to gain advantages.
Women are motivated by base interests (self-promotion) in comparson to men.
And, in any case, she isn’t really doing any work in the new position.
Thus you might hear it said that she’s always trying to take over, but she’ll be a disaster, that she is only after promoting herself, and that she got it by using her sexual charisma on the men who decided the position.
I take it that we’d mostly agree that these are pretty awful sexist cliches. And I could look back on many posts on this site to see a number of them discussed. But suppose you are writing about such situations and you want to cite some literature. In fact, it would be particularly important to get literature that people not entirely on top of the topic can read fairly quickly and easily. But let’s add in a few volumes that are by impression and perhaps not wildly controversial people.
Suggests for the bibliography would be greatly appreciated. Self-references are absolutely fine.
Last year–too late to do much good–we ran a post about some research done on the harms caused by Christmas trees in public places. I was especially concerned about universities. The university is an environment that’s stressful for many people to start with and it seems the tree has become an acceptable display of secular Christmas. Don’t most university campuses have Christmas trees? The one I’m at does.
Here’s last year’s post reprinted in time to do things differently:
“Reminders of Christmas can make religious minorities feel ill at ease — even if they don’t realize it. When people who did not celebrate Christmas or who did not identify as Christian filled out surveys about their moods while in the same room as a small Christmas tree, they reported less self-assurance and fewer positive feelings than if they hadn’t been reminded of the holiday, according to a new study.” The full news story is here.
The researcher Michael Schmitt, a social psychologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada said, the presence of the tree caused non-celebrators and non-Christians to feel subtly excluded.
“Simply having this 12-inch Christmas tree in the room with them made them feel less included in the university as a whole, which to me is a pretty powerful effect from one 12-inch Christmas tree in one psychology lab,” said Schmitt. Study participants did not know the study was about the effects of Christmas trees.
“Identity moderates the effects of Christmas displays on mood, self-esteem, and inclusion
Identity moderates the effects of Christmas displays on mood, self-esteem, and inclusion,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (November 2010), 46 (6), pg. 1017-1022.
Abstract: In two experiments we examined the differential psychological consequences of being in the presence of a Christmas display on participants who did or did not celebrate Christmas (Study 1), or who identified as Christian, Buddhist, or Sikh (Study 2). Participants completed measures of psychological well-being in a cubicle that either did or did not contain a small Christmas display. Across several indicators of well-being, the display harmed non-celebrators and non-Christians, but enhanced well-being for celebrators and Christians. In Study 2, we found that the negative effect of the display on non-Christians was mediated by reduced feelings of inclusion. The results raise concerns about the ubiquitous presence of dominant cultural symbols (such as Christmas displays) in culturally diverse societies.
That’s what the Gymboree onesies say. Yeesh. You can sign the petition asking them to stop with the gender stereotyping here.
And when the “Pretty Like Daddy” ad “Smart Like Mommy” onesies make it to Cafe Press, do send us a link! (I feel very confident that one of our talented readers will create them.)
(Thanks, L!)
Note to speakers of UK English: “Smart” means clever in American English, which is the language of these onesies.
The title of this post is lifted directly from this Salon.com article, in which we learn that Katie Roiphe has reaffirmed her position on the list of otherwise intelligent, accomplished people who just don’t get the notion of sexual harassment. Her NYT article which prompted the Salon post is here. The real problem with sexual harassment, according to her, is “the creativity and resourcefulness of the definitions” dreamed up by “feminists and liberals”, under which all sorts of innocent behaviour count as harassment. Sigh.
A thoroughly good thing to do. I vividly remember the terror I felt when my partner had to leave the ward at 9 PM, leaving me alone post-caesarean with a screaming hungry baby for whom my milk had not yet come in. (No babymoon for us! And I confess I desperately longed for the US-style baby nurseries I’d seen on TV. In the UK, they rightly work hard to promote bonding and breastfeeding, even after caesareans. But, to my mind, they wrongly prioritise this above the mother’s recovery and sanity.) I also remember all the NHS brochures on parenting that seemed designed exclusively for single mums– not a word about any other adult presence, but lots of homilies on the importance of constant skin to skin contact with mum. So yes, great move!
But do you have to suggest scheduling ante-natal visits around football matches, and getting men’s mags in waiting rooms? Why not go instead with “scheduling around the needs of both parents”, and “catering for a broader variety of interests in the waiting room?” (I’d certainly have liked something other than women’s mags.)
Thanks, L!
Today’s post on What is it Like asks a good question.
All the literature on interviewing suggests that it is best done in a structured setting where each candidate gets an equal chance to speak and the effects of bias are kept to a minimum, so what do we think is going to happen when we conduct a second round of “informal” interviews, now late at night, over drinks, and in a dimly lit room?
do note: the incidents described below happened 6-7 years ago. As the original post notes, there has been a lot of change at the Penn State philosophy department since then.
…………
You’d think that if the department chair decides to take action, you would see the chair supported by the administration. But that’s not necessarily what happens in a university.
From Leiter’s blog:
A former Penn State department head filed a federal lawsuit against the university and two university officials, alleging that he was removed as philosophy department head for reporting discrimination and harassment within his department.
Mitchell Aboulafia, who was the philosophy department head from July 2003 to March 2004, filed a lawsuit against the university, College of the Liberal Arts Dean Susan Welch and former Associate Dean Ron Filippelli for a breach of contract, violation of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act and violation of First and 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
As of now, the link to the source of the above quote, along with a few other links, is not working, but there are more details in the post.
Circle, a private, profit-making healthcare company, run by a former banker, and backed by hedge funds run by Crispin Odey and Paul Ruddock, who have donated £790, 000 to the Conservative Party, is set to take over Hinchingbrooke Hospital from February. The company recently published a Stock Market Admissions report, which details the potential risks faced by the company. Amongst the risk factors was the following:
Circle’s growth has placed, and its anticipated growth will continue to place, a strain on its managerial, administrative, operational, financial, information technology and other resources and could affect its ability to provide a consistent level of service to its patients.
A spokesperson for Circle pointed out that this was just one of many risk factors outlined in the document. It stands to reason that a young company, which is currently expanding, needs to ensure its growth is managed in such a way that the risks associated with that growth are mitigated. But it’s hard not to feel uncomfortable about the tension that exists between making profit and caring for patients. And it’s hard to dispel the impression that the government are in cahoots with some shadowy financial elite, intent on privatising and profiteering from every aspect of our lives.
You can read more here.
Cat cafes are to be found especially in a large Japanese city where a landlord is likely to forbid pets. If you long for a furry creature, you can go to a cat cafe, where a cat might just come along and sit in your lap. Decorous japanese do not suddenly grab at a furry body. At approximately $9 an hour, the idea is to become engaged in a cat’s natural serenity.
Now, looking at some of the clips, one might worry that the cats were chemically induced to tolerate the stimuli they get. I am not at all sure that it true. One thing that may be going on is that the control a culture exerts on its human inhabitants might also extent to others, such as cats.
I don’t mean to dismiss a serious worry about drugged cats, but there is also a lot written about what the cats do when not rigorously watched. The beloved, familiar duplicitous cat comes back into view.
Wondered what it’s like to take one’s clothes off for money? Different people have different experiences. A new book by former dancer, Jennifer Hayashi Danns, and campaigner, Sandrine Leveque, collects together some stories from lap dancers and other sex workers, describing their working lives. Danns explains that in the clubs where she has worked, the women must pay a fee for working there, so they take on the financial risk – if there are no customers, the club still makes money, but the women could lose cash. Unsurprisingly, there is fierce competition for customers between the dancers, who will sometimes masturbate, or ignore no-touching rules so they can make enough cash to pay the club fee and make a profit. The male customers frequently make remarks – often insulting – about the bodies of the dancers, telling them that their breasts are too small, pointing out their cellulite, calling them names, or commenting on their genitalia. Danns reports that most of her customers were groups of rowdy young men, who wanted to show off to their friends:
There’s something psychologically unhealthy about it… All you have done is picked the woman you think is most attractive and paid her – but now you want a round of applause. Isn’t that strange?
Danns doesn’t want to see the industry banned, as she thinks such legislation wouldn’t remedy the sexist culture that she sees as underlying it. But she hopes her book will help people see that some parts of the sex industry harm both women and men. You can read more here.
Edited in response to comments that rightly pointed out the previous version made it sound as if Danns’ experiences are universal, but other accounts show they are not.
Buddy and Pedro are two male penguins who are extremely close. The Toronto Zoo decided to break up the relationship during breeding season so that each would make with a female.
There was a huge outcry and the Zoo has decided otherwise.
Most of the video reports on this situation are either snickering or seeming fake: I’d have a hard time believing this one if it weren’t verifiable. And remember, the separation is now off.
I continue to find stories like this one shocking, Census Bureau: More mothers back at work a month after giving birth.
“More employed mothers are returning to work within a month of having their first child, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday. Eight out of 10, or 82%, of working women whose first child was born from 2006 to 2008 were back on the job within a month. From 1991 through 1995, only 73% of first-time mothers went back to work in the first month, the bureau said.”
According to wikipedia: “Only four countries have no national law mandating paid time off for new parents: Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and the United States.”
In contrast, also from wikipedia, in Sweden all working parents are entitled to 16 months paid leave per child. In Estonia mothers are entitled to 18 months of paid leave. In the UK, all female employees are entitled to 52 weeks of maternity (or adoption) leave. In Canada parental leave is 35 weeks divided as desired between two parents. This is in addition to 15 weeks maternity leave.
More here: Paid-leave benefits lag for working moms in U.S..
“Kids at risk if dad too fat for genes” says headline in the Daily Telegraph.
“A University of Newcastle study of more than 3000 families found four-year-olds whose fathers were overweight or obese were at least four times more likely than other children to have weight problems themselves by eight years of age.
On the other hand, an overweight or obese mother made little difference to the chances of her child developing their own weight problems.“
You can read the full story here.
A great article in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week calls on people teaching in universities to recognise the need for radical inclusion:
A genuine effort to include—not simply to accommodate—people with disabilities could have a radical effect on our teaching and our professional practices. What if the instructor who silenced the stutterer had instead taken his disability as an opportunity to examine the goals and purpose of class participation? What if a professor who was asked to give a disabled student extra time on an exam paused to think about whether 50 minutes was the ideal time for any student to complete the exam?
When our campuses tolerate, but do not welcome, people with disabilities, they undermine the values of democracy, justice, and intellectual freedom that are the core values of higher education. And when we regard students and colleagues with disabilities as nuisances or disruptions, we lose the opportunities they provide to think critically, with fresh eyes, about the assumptions on which our pedagogy and our intellectual projects are based.
I couldn’t agree more. In fact, disability offers us a lens for looking at learning and teaching – it sharpens and makes vivid some of the difficulties which many students face. Mick Healey found that
[a]s with many academic endeavours, the more I learn about supporting the learning of disabled students, the more I realise I have to learn about supporting the learning of all students.
He sees disability legislation, which requires us to remove the barriers which disable people, as a Trojan horse smuggling in good teaching practice to everyone’s benefit. And the author of the Chronicle article, Rachel Adams, has a practical suggestion – learn from the Universal Design movement.
So what a great opportunity to link to some resources for doing just as she suggests:
- at the University of Connecticut’s Center on Postsecondary Education and Disability, they call it Universal Design for Instruction, and at the University of Washington, where the DO-IT project promotes the use of technology for access, it’s Universal Design of Instruction
- the University of Guelph has all kinds of resources on Universal Instructional Design
- there’s even a US National Center on Universal Design for Learning (though unlike the other links, this one’s not specifically aimed at postsecondary education)
- the Australian site CATS has tips for inclusive teaching in higher education, and they emphasise that it’s important for meeting the needs of students from different cultural backgrounds, too
- The UK’s Open University has a site on making your teaching inclusive which incorporates video clips of disabled students talking about their experiences
Let’s bring down the barriers and let the Trojan horse in!
Ecuador has a number of ‘correction clinics’, which aim to ‘treat’ gay people, turning them straight. Their techniques are torture. Most of the people subjected to it are lesbians, although some gay men and transsexuals have also been imprisoned and tortured. Paola Ziritti was recently interred in one, and she is the first lesbian to file a complaint about the treatment she suffered. She was imprisoned for eighteen months – her family took her there, believing it would ‘cure’ her of her homosexuality. Whilst detained, she was sexually abused, battered, suffered deprivation of all kinds, constantly insulted, and chained up. Once her mother realised what was happening, she tried to take her daughter away from the ‘clinic’ but was prohibited from doing so. She had to fight to have her daughter freed.
The lesbian organization, Taller de Comunicación Mujer, says there are 207 clinics of this type in Ecuador. Ziritti’s testinomy led to 27 being closed by the authorities this year. But many are still open, including the centre where Ziritti was imprisoned and tortured.
Ziritti says that since she filed the complaint, she has been stopped by young lesbians and gay men in the street, thanking her for her bravery. Their parents planned to send them to clinics to be cured, but will no longer do so, since the supposed ‘treatment’ methods have been revealed.
You can read more here.
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