Thanks, Mister Jender!
Surgical Tools and Hand Size August 22, 2008
It seems many surgical tools are still being made with male hands (generally larger than female ones) in mind. A new study argues that tools for smaller hands are needed (which would of course also help males with smaller hands). Strikes me as a nice example of the way that non-obvious barriers to women’s advancement may remain in place even once obvious ones have been removed. Also makes me really appreciate the additional barriers that a surgeon friend of mine undoubtedly had to face even once she got past the people (surgeons, in the UK) telling her that she shouldn’t be a surgeon because she’s a woman, and even after she’d convinced them (a lengthy battle) to allow her to work part-time in order to get some time with her daughter. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)
Angie Zapata August 11, 2008
We are a bit late in responding to this trajedy. Angie Zapata was an 18 year old Latina transgender women. She was beaten to death by a man to whom she”d given oral sex.
I strongly recommend you not go to youtube to see the comments on this clip. Too many people seem to think murderous rage is a justifiable response.
From Brownfemipower:
An arrest was made in the murder of teenager Angie Zapata. Allen Ray Andrade admitted that he beat Angie with a fire hydrant after he discovered she was transgender. Allegedly, he admitted to police that after he beat Zapata, he thought he “killed it.”
One expects it was a fire extinguisher - jj.
“I’ve Never Been To Me” August 11, 2008
Wow. I’d never actually listened to the lyrics of this song. Certainly didn’t know it was about how we chicks all need babies to make us complete, and how bad sexual freedom is. And now it’s gonna be stuck in my head all day. Damn.
Misogyny: Still Not OK August 8, 2008
Even if it’s directed at Cindy McCain. Even if it’s written by a woman at a progressive website. And, by the way, Cindy McCain actually would seem to be far more impressive than you’d ever know from most news reports.
Quick Guessing Game August 5, 2008
Three Presidential debates, one Vice Presidential. Moderators: Three white men, one black woman. Who gets the Vice Presidential debate?
Big Heads: The New Feminine August 3, 2008
As many of you may know, it’s been very well-confirmed that people react to newborns very differently based on their perceived sex. Stick ‘em in pink and they’re all tiny and delicate. Stick ‘em in blue and they’re strong and alert. Yesterday, Mr Jender took a phone call from a baby group friend, letting us know that his wife had just had a baby girl. She is, apparently, very large: over 9 pounds. And she has a huge head, far above the average. This was immediately followed by “She’s so delicate, so feminine!” Just more proof that anything at all counts as feminine, if you really want to think so. (New father went on to explain that he was feeling utterly baffled at how to deal with this new baby, because he knows how boys think, but not how girls think. Mr J politely tried to reassure him that it probably wouldn’t be all that different for quite a long time.)
Have you had similar experiences? Please do tell us about them in comments– these sorts of stories are always very useful for teaching!
(Typo edited– thanks Sally!)
So who is taking care of your children? July 26, 2008
Female Science Professor has posted some useful answers to those awful questions and comments an academic woman easily gets. My favorite response is to the question, “So they had to hire a woman…?” Of the answers offered, this one gets my vote:
Answer 3: Yes, they finally realized they had hired enough mediocre men.
Some of the questions assume you are in a heterosexual relationship. No one will be surprised, I expect, that we/I’ve used these:
Question (said to male person): Who takes care of your kids when your wife travels?
Answer: The cats.
Question (said to married/partnered female person): Who takes care of your kids when you travel?
Answer: The cats.Question (said to academic couple): Which of you is the trailing spouse?
Answer: Our cat.
Enjoy!
Guess what? July 25, 2008
Girls don’t suck at maths. See also here. (How many times does this need to be shown?) Prediction: if this comes to widely accepted, expect lots more stories about how girls are innately predisposed not to like doing stuff that involves maths– gotta explain the dearth of women in science and maths in such a way that nobody has to worry about it. (Thanks BTPS and Jender-Parents!)
Aging and “Sexiness” July 22, 2008
This article by India Knight celebrates the fact that women are no longer considered wholly asexual upon reaching the age of 40, or upon becoming mothers. Hurray! Right? Uh… maybe not so much, as we learn that we can still be sexual in our sixties *if* we have a body like Helen Mirren, and that we should be very grateful that surgery is now available to help us in that pursuit– a feminist victory, according to Knight. She tries to spin her idolisation of Mirren as really about her natural appearance, but it doesn’t last long:
There are no comedy plastic bosoms, or an eerily smooth face, or grotesquely inflated absurdi-lips, no weirdly sinewy body that suggests she lives in the gym. She just looks great.
She has perhaps had a reasonable bit of “work”, but nothing that is outside most people’s league, now that so-called minor surgical procedures are deregulated and your chiropodist can technically give you Botox: we are hardly talking three facelifts and intensive body work.
Knight devotes quite a lot of effort to spin all of this as feminism. Silly me, getting the feminism all wrong, thinking that one could be a sexual being without getting work done so as to have a body like Helen Mirren’s. Ah well, live and learn. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)
Gardasil and Women’s Experience July 9, 2008
It seems that the vaccination against HPV, Gardasil may have contributed to paralysis in one 13-year-old girl and has had a number of complaints filed against it (from here and here).
Gardasil has faced a great deal of resistance (most vocally from religious groups - it turns the teenage girls promiscuous!), but despite has been approved by the FDA.
The reaction from here is that this is primarily an attack on women’s sexual health and freedom. It’s an attempt to spread fear.
However, in the context medicine regulating and shaping women’s reproduction it’s hardly unusual for procedures to be done for ‘women’s good’ without adequate testing and fully informed choice (examples include forced sterilisation, early IUDs, Depo-Provera and Norplant amongst others).
Futhermore, it is usually disadvantaged women such as disabled, poor or minority women that are targeted ‘for their own good’ and in clinical trials. (h/t blackamazon). The price of sexual freedom for a few women came at the cost to these groups.
On the necessity of ingesting semen July 4, 2008
Marie Stopes was a leading British campaigner for family planning, and Marie Stopes clinics are a major provider of family planning services in the UK. Like many early advocates of family planning, Stopes held some appalling eugenicist views, even disowning her son for marrying a near-sighted woman and breeding inferior stock. That’s well-known. What’s less well-known is her view on the ingestion of semen. Crucial for a woman’s sexual health apparently. A woman who doesn’t get enough semen into her body from her male partner is at risk– her sex drive will run wild, and she may even turn to the vices of lesbianism or masturbation.
Can anything be done? Of course, self-stimulus, or masturbation, is extremely common… Masturbation is always unsatisfactory… Another practical solution which some deprived women find is in Lesbian love with their own sex…
But these will never satisfy:
…homosexual excitement does not really meet their need for the physiological fact (I have never yet seen it clearly stated anywhere, but it is of the greatest importance in a consideration of this problem) is that… a woman’s need and hunger for nourishment in sex union is a true physiological hunger to be satisfied by the supplying of the actual molecular substances lacked by her system… the chemical molecules produced by the glandular systems of the male.
Fortunately:
It has been found possible to prepare some at least of the very molecular compounds really nourishing to the woman’s system, and which she lacks and requires.
That’s right ladies– artificial semen for you, in capsule form! And she even gives a recipe (though sadly it’s not made from ordinary household ingredients).
(Many thanks Stella, for passing on this wisdom! Quotes are from Enduring Passion, 29-32.)
“Homosexual-led persecution of church” June 21, 2008
A joke, right? We all know the attitude of many Christian churches is too close to persecution of homosexuals; see here and here, for example. How could such malign actions possibly be going in the other direction?
And plenty of religious groups opposed even secular “gay acceptance” activities, thus trying to prevent efforts to diminish the cruel and sometimes lethal persecution gays do suffer.
But, no, some people apparently actually maintain that homosexuals are persecuting churches. And the nature of the persecution is quite ironic. Most persecution is at least ostensibly to get rid of something. But homosexuals are persecuting churches in order to join them and to get them to stop their discriminatory behavior. As NPR, quoted by the blog linked to immediately above, put it:
In recent years, some states have passed laws giving residents the right to same-sex unions in various forms. Gay couples may marry in Massachusetts and California. There are civil unions and domestic partnerships in Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Oregon. Other states give more limited rights.
Armed with those legal protections, same-sex couples are beginning to challenge policies of religious organizations that exclude them, claiming that a religious group’s view that homosexual marriage is a sin cannot be used to violate their right to equal treatment. Now parochial schools, “parachurch” organizations such as Catholic Charities and businesses that refuse to serve gay couples are being sued — and so far, the religious groups are losing.
When suing for your civil rights is presented as persecuting, watch out! You may well be in the Orwellian land of the far right.
What do you think? (About academic sex and anything else) June 17, 2008
It might seem a bit early to do a “What do you think?” when the last one got no comments whatsoever. But, as always, we are wondering what you are doing, reading, happy about, worried about, etc. Conferences? Papers?
AND ALSO Calypso has drawn my attention to some problematic developments in comments over at our good friends’ Philosophy Job Market Blog. Someone has asked advice about their desire to sleep with a committee member.
One problem that can arise when A WOMAN does that is that the guys think that she’s getting extra academic benefits in return for sex and they’re mad. And I gather at least one comment goes toward this. I’m going to reserve my opinions here, because the point of this post is:
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
By the way, from what one can from the comments so far, gay sex is invisible in philosophy departments.
NOW call for action June 11, 2008
Here’s the call for action:
Support International Women’s Health Services
Restore funds for the United Nations Population FundMillions of girls and women around the world are suffering and many are dying due to deplorable reproductive-related health services and they need our help.
Contact your senators and tell them to join Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in sponsoring and supporting the United Nations Population Fund Restoration Act of 2008 (S. 2682). This legislation will provide funding to the United Nations Population Fund in order to distribute medical equipment, establish maternal health services, distribute contraceptives, and promote the abandonment of female genital mutilation and child marriage worldwide.
Women around the world should be able to have children and raise their families without the fear of disability, suffering, and death. A woman’s right to safe and sufficient health services is a human right. All women should be able to live healthy lives and enjoy their sexuality and child bearing years free from forced pregnancies and the dread of disease and death.
At the bottom of the page, NOW have an electronic form for e-writing your senators (linked to here and in the message). It looks as though the appropriate senators are determined by your address, so expats might need to work that issue.
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!
Rebecca Traister’s Not Sad June 9, 2008
And she made me smile, too. Though I’m not sure I agree with everything she says, it was a good– and different– read. (Now back to the marking!)
And, yes, it’s terrific that generations of little girls will grow up knowing that women can run for president. But count me as gratified that those who do so will also know they are not responsible for bearing the highest expectations for their gender’s morality and politesse, because one hell of a difficult dame has been there before them and knocked everybody around pretty hard.
But the fact that she did it her way, and still managed to break voting records, recalls another lesson of this campaign: that change is, after all, not so hard to come by. It can happen quickly, almost silently. Remember that stage when Clinton was the presumptive candidate for president? It’s a stage she’s paid for ever since, but what I intend never to forget is the brief moment when her inevitability wasn’t questioned, when I could feel free to prefer other candidates because she — a woman — was the status quo choice, and no one was batting an eye about her gender. Sure, it’s now clear that, all along, people were seething at her presumption, her gall. But we saw in those months what it might feel like to have a woman lead us. We didn’t make it real, but we imagined it — positively or negatively — with less kicking and screaming than I ever would have thought possible, and that, by itself, is a step. It’s change…
As each primary approached — from New Hampshire to Super Tuesday to Ohio to Pennsylvania — I was sure that Clinton was toast. But Tuesday after Tuesday, there came the vertiginous thrill of watching the pundits collapse into paroxysms of frustration at this goddamn woman who would not quit and, even worse, kept winning in unexpected places and by unexpected margins, even when they said it was impossible, even when they were hollering for her to get out of the race. I think memories of Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann going apoplectic will make me smile for years to come. Male pundits from Jonathan Alter to Howard Fineman to Carl Bernstein to Matthews and Olbermann were licking their lips, salivating for the moment at which she would lay prostrate and beg their forgiveness for her sins of ambition — and she never gave it to them! I wasn’t alone in my giddiness. After one particularly wild election night, perhaps it was Ohio, I got an e-mail from a cousin, a Clinton skeptic who had come to appreciate the senator’s dazzling ability to piss off jerks. “I hope she never stops running,” the e-mail read. “Even after he’s elected.” I knew what she meant. It had nothing to do with Obama. It was about the sheer fun of watching a woman refuse to concede to anyone’s expectations.
Clinton was such a hard-ass that she turned her butchest male critics into the hysterical harpies they accused her of being. What fun, during that final debate, to hear Obama grouse (justifiably) about the ludicrous questions he was facing, while next to him, the broad who had, in an earlier debate, been asked about the fact that nobody liked her cheerily removed the shiv from her thigh and used it as a toothpick.
Hillary and Sexism, continued June 8, 2008
Gotta balance that Maureen Dowd out with someone more thoughtful, articulate, and generally worthy of our time, Melissa McEwan:
I’m not sad because Obama’s the nominee.
I’m sad because there are women at this blog, in my personal life, across this nation, and—if my inbox is any indication—across the globe, women of all races and sexualities and socio-economic classes, many of whom weren’t even Hillary Clinton supporters, many of whom voted for Obama in the primary, who have watched with horror the seething hatred directed at Hillary Clinton just because she is a woman.
I’m an Obama supporter, and I’m sad too.
Some have called for Obama to give “The Gender Speech”, along the lines of “The Race Speech” given before. It would be great to see his eloquence put in the service of feminism, but I doubt that he’d have the same sort of insight on the topic. Still many are saying that he will need to really reach out to women. I sure as hell hope it’s not just the usual “Hey, gals, ya gotta vote for me because of THE SUPREME COURT.”
What we’re up against June 4, 2008
The CFP: An International Conference on Human Rights and Biomedicine.
The invited speakers: 10 men and 1 woman.
So, Robin Fiore wrote in expressing her disappointment at the sex/gender imbalance, and calling attention to the fact that women might have particularly important insights on topics in biomedicine (especially since, though she didn’t call attention to it, one of the suggested topics was “the protection of foetuses”.)
The reply:
Dear Robin (if I may),
Thank you for the interesting opinion. The conference organizers have extensively discussed the conference themes and speakers in advance. We agreed to select academics with an outstanding scientific reputation in their field of expertise. Secondly, for dialectic reasons we invited speakers with rather controversial ideas. Although the organizers recognize the scientific relevance of e.g., organ donation and clinical trials from a feminist perspective, our aim is - with all respect - to discuss the themes from a broader perspective. To comfort you, I can say that we have also had some suggestions to include shamanism and health care rights as a conference theme, but I
fear that the response would not be that overwhelming as it is now. Secondly, two other invited speakers were women but to capable/willing to write a contribution for the conference book, a precondition for invited speakers. Nonetheless, I feel confident that our colleague and friend Deirdre Madden will intrigue the audience, which exists for 61 percent of women! Finally, the organizers are open for your suggestions to organize a parallel session on femenist ethics.
Now, obviously part of the problem is linguistic. But linguistic error does not explain the apparent equation of feminism and shamanism. Or the thought that feminism is not a sufficiently broad perspective to be represented when discussing such things as “protection of foetuses”. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the CFP and the way that the Fiore’s email was handled, write to m.ghari@erasmusmc.nl and let him know. Fiore tells me, by the way that in the past conferences like this have been responsive to complaints of this sort. And she advises that it’s important not to provide cover for their lack of high-profile women speakers by organising a panel presentation with women and/or feminists. (And definitely not shamanists.)
The organisers are being invited to respond to this post in comments.
Update: As you can see in the comments, the organisers have now responded very positively. Hurrah! Well done everyone.
