You know the story… August 7, 2008

 A young person in graduate school hears a very inspiring lecture about saving the world.  And then drops out of school and goes off to help severely disadvantaged people.  Well, now that young person can keep a multi-media record and it’s pretty cool too.  There’s even a psychic dog who warns of floods.

If you look at the project photos on the right hand side of the opening page, you’ll see a picture  of our friend Kathy Ward.

Shawn, the young person, is a wonderful model, but any graduate students who decide to follow him will PLEASE not mention us as the origin of your information!  We’re considered subversive enough already.

Media Watch June 13, 2008

Further to Jender’s post (and from the comments), What about our daughters  are monitoring the media coverage of Michelle Obama here:
http://michelleobamawatch.com/

The site is dedicated to tracking the media coverage, serving as a ‘repository of the good, the bad, the ugly and the indifferent’ they say.

This seems like a good resource for keeping tabs on the media. As has been noted in previous posts, it’s all very well for people say there’s been  no sexist coverage, or no racist coverage (yeah, right, as our bloggers, amongst others, have pointed out). When the coverage is stuck together, it becomes clear just how atrocious the media has been. 

Note: they want volunteers to help them keep track, so if you want to sign up, go here.
 Once again, one hopes they’ll have only fair and measured coverage to track. One fears not.
(linked from fword)

Intersectionality = Lack of Focus June 10, 2008

Is apparently what Linda Hirschman thinks intersectionality brings to Feminism, as expressed in the Washington Post. Apparently women’s issues and race issues are separate things.

The limitations of this position should be obvious when the author apparently made no effort to garner the opinions of the women of colour that she uses as examples, brownfemipower and sudy. Women, who actually engage with intersectionality.

Hirschman’s feminism illustrates perfectly what bell hooks calls ‘reformatory feminism’ - feminism  that does not strive to bring social justice to women are, so to say, at the bottom of the heap, but to a small subsection of women, who already have a considerable amount of social privilege (based on class, race, etc). Intersectionlity, in contrast,  can address the worst circumstances women are in and allows women to articulate their concerns.

Responses to Hirschman here and here.

Mentoring and Diversity June 9, 2008

Sophia Wong has posted a short essay on “how to mentor someone who doesn’t look like you”, but as she notes the issues are much broader than those related to appearance– how, for example do you mentor a student with kids if you don’t have kids?  Or a trans person if you’re not trans?  A disabled person if you’re not disabled?  Since under-represented groups *are* under-represented, people from the better represented groups need to do some thinking about how to be good mentors to those unlike them.  And Wong lists some simple, useful tips.  Go check it out!

A feminist debate on the primary June 3, 2008

The LA Times has commissioned Amanda Marcotte and Katha Pollitt to do their ‘Dust-Up’ column for the next week, discussing the Democratic Primary. Two feminists debating for a whole week in a major newspaper– a good thing. But what’s not so good: They’re both Obama supporters, and they’re both white. Isn’t it a bit odd to get two supporters of the same candidate to debate the primary? And especially since one of key issues– right from the start of the discussion– is race, mightn’t it have been a thought to have at least one of the discussants be a feminist of colour? (Especially since one of the discussants has been rather widely criticised for not totally getting the race issues, to put it mildly?)

Recommended reading June 2, 2008

This report (summary and full version linked) from Fawcett on the under-representation of ethnic minority women in positions of power (in the UK), and possible strategies for change.

“esoteric ramblings about white-skin privilege” May 10, 2008

A Deeper Black By Ta-Nehisi Coates appears in the May 1 edition of The Nation.  It’s an unfavorable review of Shelby Steele’s book, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win.    In it Coates presents a picture of Obama’s supposedly ‘post-racial’ candidacy as not that at all; it shows instead ‘a deeper black,’ which is due to Obama’s acceptance of his ethnic identity and his construal of that as on a par with other ethnic identities.

I’ve been thinking about this for the last couple of days and have wondered whether there’s a comparable shift that women can make or that some women have already made.  And then this morning I received noticer of a new APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, which has a number of valuable, thoughtful articles on race and gender.  I suddenly realized that in effect the Coates review poses a question for feminist philosophy that we might do well to be aware of.  The question isn’t easy to formulate, and indeed there might be different versions of it, but its basis can be found in this comment:

This is the blackness of Barack Obama. It is an identity that asserts itself without conscious thought. It has no need of marches and placards. It rejects an opportunistic ignorance of racism but understands that esoteric ramblings about white-skin privilege do not move the discussion further. It does not need to bluster, to scream, to hyperbolize. Obama’s blackness is like any other secure marker of identity, subtle and irreducible to a list of demands.

And now I’m wondering whether my attitude toward the ubiquitous sexism of the academy is a good model or analogue for the experience of racism, as I realize I had assumed it was.  If the place of racism is  much more complicated in the lives of black students than we others might have thought, what implications does that have for our teaching?  Is Coates’ comment about irrelevant esoteric rambling something we should be taking to our methodology?  Or on a par with other students’ complaints about our wordy and out of date texts?  These questions are just that: questions.  What do you think?

Two more quotes may give you a fuller picture of what Coates is saying:

This is why all the fuss over how much or how little Obama addresses racism misses the point. Obama mentions white racism about as often as black people actually think about white racism–which is to say rarely.
… Survey the average voter in Harlem, Detroit or West Baltimore, ask her to rank her presidential concerns and see where “reparations” or “abolishing the Confederate flag” compares with, say, “healthcare” or “ending the war.” In the wake of Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia, the pundits swooned, marveling specifically at Obama’s willingness to say that those who fled inner-city America, who opposed affirmative action, were not racist.
… To see Obama’s point as a mark of courage or even a concession, you’d have to imagine a black America that woke up, every morning, thinking only about welfare and affirmative action. …

… there is nothing “postracial,” “postblack” or “transcendental” about it. … Indeed, it is a deeper black, the mark of a less defensive, more self-assured African-American leadership. Our forebears, God bless them, held blackness like an albatross, which they sought to affix around the neck of white America. But this generation, Obama’s generation, holds blackness like a garland, sure in the knowledge that the only neck it belongs around is our own.

 

Violence, silence, racism, rape and murder May 10, 2008

Via Feministe, What About Our Daughters, and The Village Voice, I’ve learned about the horrific story of Ramona Moore– which contains much for feminist philosophers to think about. She was a black woman, who was kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered. Her mother’s calls to the police were tossed aside, unlike those made by the relatives of a white woman who had recently gone missing. (Issues of what Fricker calls ‘epistemic injustice’ here, concerning who is assigned credibility. As well as issues of which sorts of people are considered worth searching for.) Various bystanders were introduced to the bloodied and tortured woman while she was still alive and could have been saved, and they were even told her story. But they failed to contact the police. (Locutionary silencing here, though the question is why. The bystanders say ‘fear’. The inaction of bystanders is a complicated and incredibly important issue. So is how to overcome it.) Anyway, horrific and very depressing story. The only good news is that Moore’s mother is suing NYC.

Another take on Germaine Greer May 5, 2008

As folks around here know, I work hard to be kind and civil to everyone even vaguely feminist or possibly sympathetic to feminism. But I’m going to make an exception for Germaine Greer. Stoat’s criticisms are spot-on, but, well, too polite for my taste.

The Feminist Blogosphere has been filled with discussions of whether Amanda Marcotte’s and SEAL Press’s apologies and promises to change are an adequate response to criticisms. Greer, as Stoat notes, belittled the injustices faced by Muslims and racial minorities while at the same time demonstrating her view that the only women (who count) are white and secular. AND SHE IS COMPLETELY UNREPENTANT. As far as I know, she has never in her life apologised for anything, or conceded that she has anything to learn from those who are not her. As Laura Miller from Salon said 9 years ago, Greer’s method is “inflating her own personal trials into theories about the condition of women”. Sounds almost precisely like what Elizabeth Spelman calls the method of White Solipsism. She is totally uninterested in women’s health, as shown by her opposition to PAP smears and the HPV vaccine, and her support for FGM; and she has a long history of transphobia.* Why the hell are we are all being so tolerant of her? Because she wrote an important book a long time ago? Well, a lot has happened since then and she should have made an effort to keep up.

For a much funnier, better-written take on Greer from roughly the same perspective, check out Natalia Antonova. And for another excellent post by someone just as annoyed as me by the FEM 08 talk, go here.

*In general, I think that feminism is enriched by a diversity of views, when these views are backed up by well-reasoned arguments. But Greer’s are not. Instead, they’re based on ignoring the perspectives of those who are unlike her. This does not enrich feminism.

FEM 08, IV: Germaine Greer May 5, 2008

Finally, the day was closed with a talk from Germaine Greer. It was wide-ranging, covering topics from the immunisation of young girls against sexually transmitted diseases and the message she believed this gave (that it’s ok to be having sex with 12 yr olds); the devaluing of motherhood and childcare; she highlighted the inadequacy of rape laws and argued for a single category of sexual assault; she talked of the double shift (work, housework) that many women do; and she wondered about the prospects (emancipating? Alienating?) of the medicalisation of childbirth. Laura at the fword has already written that the high point was her call for female solidarity.

As a philosopher, critical as ever, I’ll focus on the concerns instead (sorry again!):
Again, - and despite the call for solidarity - I was concerned about the exclusionary tendencies of much of what she said. I’ve already mentioned some points related to this, and I’ll replicate (sorry - timesaver!)the first from comments:

1. She at one point claimed that women, as a group, need to stand up and complain, protest, and (her words) ‘make them scared of us’; she worried that women, as a group, got - and allowed themselves to be - trampled on in (again her words) a way that no one dares to with the black and muslim communities, for instance.

There’s lots to worry about in her claim here (e.g. that making ‘them’ scared is a good way to proceed), but here’s a main concern: only last week I’d been reading bell hooks’ concern that setting up ‘women’ as a group in opposition to ‘black people’ as a group makes invisible the fact that *some black people are women*. That was over 20 years ago, yet Greer’s speech seemed to be doing just that.

2. She criticised the family structure; it’s not clear exactly what she was proposing, but she suggested at one point ‘blowing it out of the water’, which sounds pretty revisionary to me. Of course, the family *has* been the locus of abuse and oppression and exclusion for many women, and its important to address that. But as Amos and Parmar write (in Challenging Imperial Feminism, Feminist Review No. 17 Autumn 1984), many non-white women have in the past been denied a family - though forced sterilisation, forced abortion. We heard in the session on women refugees that some women are forced apart from their families (including young children) in detention centres, or in the process of fleeing. The prospect of ‘doing away’ with the family, then, does not sound like an agenda that would appeal to women who have had such experiences.

3. Greer also criticised women for asking for more work - suggesting that the art of work was to avoid doign it, that there was no value in work. Once again, this seems to be a claim that could only be made from a fairly privileged perspective. Such a claim ignores the fact that many women are forced to ask for more work in order to avoid poverty. It ignores the fact that for many women, education and employment is a route to empowerment. It ignores the fact that women who give up work to look after children may well feel they have *given something valuable up*.

Word of the Day: Kyriarchy May 1, 2008

As contrasted to ‘patriarchy’:

Kyriarchy - a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and derived from the Greek words for “lord” or “master” (kyrios) and “to rule or dominate” (archein) which seeks to redefine the analytic category of patriarchy in terms of multiplicative intersecting structures of domination…Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression.

Patriarchy - Literally means the rule of the father and is generally understood within feminist discourses in a dualistic sense as asserting the domination of all men over all women in equal terms. The theoretical adequacy of patriarchy has been challenged because, for instance, black men do not have control over white wo/men and some women (slave/mistresses) have power over subaltern women and men (slaves).

- Glossary, Wisdom Ways, Orbis Books New York 2001

Put like that, it seems pretty clear which term is the most useful for making sense of reality. Many thanks to Sudy at A Woman’s Ecdysis for introducing her readers to the term!

White Feminism April 28, 2008

Teaching about intersectionality, and the ways that women of colour have been excluded and marginalised within feminism? You couldn’t do much better for illustration than to have a look at what’s been happening round the blogosphere lately. Amanda Marcotte, a prominent white feminist blogger, recently published a book on surviving as a feminist in politically inhospitable environments. Unfortunately, her publishers selected some pretty racist images, and both she and they somehow failed to pick up on this. (I say “somehow”, but the fact is that we all live in racist cultures, and we are all affected by this whether or not we’d like to be. Marcotte and publishers are by no means unique in being well-meaning leftists who still screw up awfully badly.) Quite reasonably, there’s been a lot of outrage. There have also been apologies. Relatedly, things have become inhospitable enough that two prominent feminist bloggers of colour have closed down their blogs. This began with a charge of plagiarism (also against Marcotte). For a list of relevant posts, go here. For brownfemipower’s last post go here. For Blackamazon’s final post go here. Confession: I have not had the time to read all of this in any level of detail, but clearly something important and disturbing is going on that feminist philosophers should be interested in. And indeed that I am interested in. But if we wait for me to get time to read all of this properly before posting….

CFP: ‘Transformation and the Dynamics of (Radical) Change’ April 7, 2008

 

Dear colleagues,the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s
University Belfast is seeking paper proposals for a two-day conference
(28th-29th November 2008) on the subject of ‘Transformation and the
Dynamics of (Radical) Change Insights from Political Theory and
Philosophy’.

Transformation is a seemingly ubiquitous concept within the field of
political theory and philosophy. Whilst some idealize transformation as a
source for progress and the improvement of the human condition, others
frame it as a disruptive and unsettling process which can damage the
social, political and natural elements of our world.

Paper proposals should include a tentative title, an abstract (200-300
words) and details of the author’s institutional affiliation and contact
information.

Proposals should address any of the following issues/topics: Factors and
actors in transformation: Pluralism, nationalism, individualism,
collectivism, recognition, complexity.

Forces of transformation: Globalization, economic change, social change,
processes, transformation of conflict.

Objects and subjects of transformation: ideas; norms; values; ideology; the
concept of transformation itself; state and sovereignty; government;
governance; social structures and processes; environment and nature; human
beings, including the self.

Evaluations of transformation: theories, approaches, critiques and the
possibility of a broader discourse on transformation.

All papers should make an explicit contribution to the establishment of a
broader discourse on transformation and the dynamics of (radical) change.
The organizing committee welcomes papers from scholars in all fields and
also encourages submission from early-stage academics, as well as from
postgraduate students.

The deadline for submissions is JUNE 15th 2008. Please send your submission
to: transformations(at)qub.ac.uk

For further information, please visit:
www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofPoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/Events/Transformations/#d.en.94863

Fabian Schuppert
School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy
Queen’s University Belfast
transformations@qub.ac.uk

 

Nussbaum on Spitzer April 2, 2008

(With thanks to Calypso for pointing me to the story)

Martha Nussbaum’s comments on Spitzer’s legal problems contain two main claims:  Prostitution should not be illegal, and Spitzer didn’t commit any crimes that are really against the state.  The second is roundly debated, both in the comments on it and in the New Yorker.  After all, Spitzer was having people arrested for an involvement  he shared in, he was laundering money, and so on.

The first claim is worth discussion here.  Is prostitution just comparable to lots of other jobs that involve taking money for the use of one’s body? 

To give you an idea of her view:

Why are there laws against prostitution? All of us, with the exception of the independently wealthy and the unemployed, take money for the use of our body. Professors, factory workers, opera singers, sex workers, doctors, legislators – all do things with parts of their bodies for which others offer them a fee….However, the difference between the sex worker and the professor, who takes money for the use of a particularly intimate part of her body, namely her mind, is not the difference between a “good woman” and a “bad woman.” It is, usually, the difference between a prosperous well-educated woman and a poor woman with few employment options.

Many types of bodily wage labor used to be socially stigmatized. … Now they are respectable, but women who take money for sexual services are still thought to be doing something that is not only non-respectable but so bad that it should remain illegal.

What should really trouble us about sex work? That it is sex that these women do, with many customers, should not in and of itself trouble us, from the point of view of legality, even if we personally don’t share the woman’s values. Nonetheless, it is this one fact that still-Puritan America finds utterly intolerable.

What do you think?  Perhaps one way to approach the question is to ask whether we also think that other very intimate uses of one’s body, such as wet nursing and surrogate motherhood, should be viewed as goods and services that should have a fair market value, for instance.

Feminist theory and empirical predictions March 2, 2008

Interesting case, if alarming linkage, which is indicated by the stress:

Body dissatisfaction and disordered eating were compared across groups of college women from China ( n= 109), South Korea ( n= 137), and the United States ( n= 102). Based on cultural differences in the amount of exposure to Western appearance standards, particularly the thin-body ideal, sociocultural theory ( Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999 ) would predict that body dissatisfaction and disordered eating would be highest in the U.S. sample and lowest in the Chinese sample. In contrast, based on the speed and pervasiveness of changes in women’s roles, feminist theory ( Bordo, 1993 ; Jeffreys, 2005 ) would predict that body dissatisfaction and disordered eating would be highest in the Korean sample and lowest in the U.S. sample. Multidimensional measures indicated the highest levels of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating in the Korean sample and the lowest levels in the U.S. sample, indicating that predictions derived from feminist theory were a better fit to the data than predictions derived from sociocultural theory. Results indicated that theoretical understandings of body dissatisfaction must recognize not only differences between Western and non-Western cultures, but also differences among non-Western cultures.

Abstract from:

“BODY DISSATISFACTION AND DISORDERED EATING AMONG COLLEGE WOMEN IN CHINA, SOUTH KOREA, AND THE UNITED STATES: CONTRASTING PREDICTIONS FROM SOCIOCULTURAL AND FEMINIST THEORIES.”
Jaehee Jung
Forbes, Gordon B.
Psychology of Women Quarterly; Dec2007, Vol. 31 Issue 4, p381-393, 13p

Carnival Time!! March 1, 2008

The 54th Carnival is up.  It is takes in a number of countries on a trip around the world.

And we’re proud to see a piece  by our own Jender in it. 

Enjoy!

Women of Color and the Academy February 20, 2008

Campus Lockdown:

Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex

   The Campus Lockdown conference will center women of color in the academic industrial complex. 

We will consider its structural constraints, as well as the implications of our scholarship.

Saturday, March 15, 200810:30 - 5:00pmMichigan UnionUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Speakers include:

• Piya Chatterjee, University of California, Riverside
• Angela Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz (via teleconference)
• Rosa Linda Fregoso, University of Southern California
• Ruth Gilmore, University of Southern California
• Fred Moten, Duke University
• Clarissa Rojas, San Francisco State University
• Haunani-Kay Trask, University of Hawai’i

Schedule at a glance:

          10:30 - 12:00   Panel I:  Women of Color in the Academic Industrial Complex

          1:30 - 3:30      Panel II:  Why Women of Color Scholarship?  Social Justice, Ethnic Studies, and Women’s Studies

          3:45 - 5:00      Closing Event

The registration deadline is February 29, 2008.  For more information & to register online, please visit http://www.woclockdown.org/

Sex-reassignment surgery and US companies February 17, 2008

Many of us do not think of large US financial institutions as hotbeds of progressive social change.   We all know that the rush over the last decade to form “business ethics” courses was in response to a very visible need.  And many of us worry that the plight of the planet and its people is tied  to the practices of these large companies.

Still, we also think that progressive social practices just work better.  If that’s so, wouldn’t these companies get on board pretty quickly?  Indeed.

From the NY Times:

Goldman Sachs bankers and traders enjoy famously big bonuses and, this year, a little extra job security thanks to their firm’s ability to steer clear of the worst effects of the subprime mortgage debacle.

Now, they can add something else to the list of reasons why life is great at Goldman: free sex-change surgery.

… A recent survey of more than 1,000 employers conducted by the Human Rights Campaign found that many banks, law firms and other large companies have added at least partial coverage of transgender treatments to their medical plans.

Bank of America, Wachovia and Deutsche Bank are among the firms who now cover such treatments to some extent, Fortune.com said. Goldman and Bank of America will cover the cost of the actual operation. At Wachovia, sex reassignment surgery is considered elective, and so the operation is not covered but related prescriptions and post-operative counseling are.

But here comes the kicker; can you imagine many philosophy departments professing the goals in the first para below, or even considering the link made in the second?

Goldman’s enhanced medical coverage is part of the firm’s efforts to “recruit and retain a more diverse workforce,” a Goldman spokesperson told Fortune.

The expanded coverage may cost employers a bit more in the short term, but it’s a small price to pay to attract and keep top talent, Pauline Park, chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, told Fortune. “[A]ny employer that does not clearly include gender identity in their employment policies may send a signal that they’re not supportive,” she said.

Cool Cat Cab and a more serious note in Black History Month February 16, 2008

Cab Calloway, featured earlier, was an exciting performer who epitomized what “cool cat” means.  As I searched for videos of him and others who performed during the earlier stages of film history, I was also aware that February is Black History Month in the US, and that, because of Barak Obama’s campaign, the US is having some hopefully beneficial discussions of prejudice, both racism and sexism.

Because of this perhaps, I was especially worried about putting up clips of  Calloway and other Black performers because I was also aware that part of understanding what was going on in the scenes involves at least some awareness of what is borrowed from, and what is imposed by, White values.  And one wants to be able to consider how much the Blacks in some movie are presented as seen by the White gaze.  I’m not sure that my reading of women in 1930’s and 40’s films is all that accurate, but I became aware of the fact that I was pretty clueless about how to understand early films involving Black people.

 Not entirely clueless, however.  There are some very obvious features, such as the restrictions in social status that Black roles signify.  The Blacks are portrayed as a doorman or butler not just because the plot needs one, but because that’s the highest status to which Blacks more generally are confined, one suspects.**  One consequence is that magnificant performances are painful or sad to watch.  That shouldn’t mean, I hope, that we want to lose track of them.  So here are two of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who may have been the inspiration for the song “Mr Bojangles.”  He’s often said to have been the greatest tap dancer.  He did die penniless, and Ed Sullivan is rumored to have paid for his funeral, but New York turned out for a final tribute to him; he was given “a hero’s farewell“.

 

The last clip is of the very remarkable Ethel Waters.  A comment on YOUTUBE says

this was a racial protest song… Look at Waters’ expressions as she says “Darkies never cry, who would ever hear our sad lament, live to laugh, to die, that’s the way we’ve learned to be content…” Turns the whole “contented black folk” stereotype on its head, while ostensibly stating its case. Wonderful early film performance by Ethel Waters.

** Readers may notice that in the first clip, Robinson is portraying a performer portraying a doorman, and not himself portraying a doorman. But clearly in a culture that represses an under-group, having a member of the group perform the role of an actor performing an exalted would is as unacceptable as having them portray the exalted person directly. There are interesting questions here about the logic of the situation.

A Valentine’s gift February 14, 2008

Received today from the remarkable artist, Susan Plum.  Don’t miss the links below the image:

Susan Plum’s website has unforgettable images from an exhibition for the women of Juarez:

This exhibition honors the families, particularly the mothers of the 430 young women and children who have been murdered and the 600 who have disappeared in Juarez during the past 13 years. The practice continues. www.mujeresdejuarez.org

The families have found little justice in these tragedies.