Updates

1.  On punishing the victim:  Saudi King Abdullah has pardoned the woman who was gang raped 14 times, in a Wonderland case where it is one crime for a woman to be alone with a male non-family member and another one to protest a harsh sentencing.

2.  On consent of ten year old to sex with nine: Nine young men who confessed to having sex with a ten years old were allowed to walk free since the prosecutor decided that it was probably consensual.  That prosecutor has now been suspended.

More on both stories at Ms’s Feminist Daily Wire.

Speaker of the House Caught in Women’s Clothing!

WASHINGTON—After successfully gaining a majority in both the U.S. House and Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party was mired in controversy when the newly elected speaker of the house, Rep. Pelosi (D-CA), was caught on camera wearing what appeared to be a skirt, ladies top, necklace, and pair of high heels.

ENLARGE IMAGE

The speaker of the house openly addresses colleagues while wearing lipstick and pantyhose.

Photographs and video showing the speaker traipsing around the House floor in the garish attire were leaked to C-SPAN moments after the 110th Congress took office on Jan. 3. Since that time, Pelosi’s unconventional clothing choice has been universally decried by Washington insiders as “a tragic blot on the long and honorable history of U.S. speakers.”

“I was shocked,” said Wall Street Journal political analyst Kendra Graves. “This is not what I’ve come to expect from the House of Representatives—or the White House or Senate for that matter.” Although Rep. Pelosi has made no attempts to downplay the scandal, the embattled speaker continues to draw controversy as more and more Americans have begun to voice their concern over a national legislative body being headed by an individual who enjoys wearing pantyhose in public.

“What kind of a message does this send to our children?” Minneapolis mother of four Carol Hardwick asked. “That it’s ‘okay’ for our top leaders to have long hair and paint their fingernails and speak in a high falsetto voice? This is America, for heaven’s sake.”

While no formal plans have been issued to remove the speaker from office, key members of the Bush administration have publicly expressed disappointment with and disapproval of Pelosi’s behavior.

“It’s disgusting,” said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was wearing a three-piece suit and flats at the time.

 

From the Onion. But notably not so different from the “OMG: a Presidential candidate/Home Secretary with breasts!” coverage. Thanks, lp!

Gendercide and Women’s Advancement

We’ve all by now read a lot about China’s one child policy, its widespread biases favouring boys over girls, and resulting sex-selective abortion and infanticide. I was surprised to learn of an unexpected effect of all this, at least in some urban areas. One effect was that (at least some) families with a single daughter put far more resources into her education than they might otherwise have done, leading to a lot of highly educated and ambitious women. All this education and ambition has made them more independent of men than they might otherwise have been. And the fact that men outnumber women has apparently made women feel that they can “be picky”, demanding men who do not expect subservience of them. It’s worth noting that there are still plenty of horror stories about the way that women and girls are treated– I’ve particularly heard these about rural areas, though I don’t know if that’s representative. Nonetheless, it’s both interesting and nice to hear of a non-oppressive effect of an oppressive policy and oppressive attitudes. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)

Women and Minorities in Philosophy

There’s currently a huge amount of momentum around the issue of improving numbers of women and minorities in philosophy.  A major catalyst for this has been Sally Haslanger’s incredibly important paper on the topic.  I know that many women just starting out in philosophy found that paper a very depressing read.  But the extremely good news is that it’s serving as a real catalyst for discussion and action, and there’s actually a lot of optimism and energy. There’s a nice example in this post from Evelyn Brister:

In the last decade, at least half of U.S. college graduates have been women. But less than a third of philosophy majors have been women. Women have not reached workplace equity at the beginning of the 21st century, but there are only a few places and ways in which they are not reaching educational parity. Philosophy—the discipline that takes as its subjects ethics, justice, consistency, and self-reflection—is one of those places.What does this gender inequality indicate about our discipline? Some have taken it to indicate that the material itself is gender-biased, that the methods of argumentation reflect masculine psychology, or that philosophy is a bastion of cultural traditionalism that incubates sexist practices.That assessment is too negative, in my opinion. As an optimist, a meliorist, and a pragmatist, I think that it indicates first and foremost that philosophers, unlike other analytic disciplines, have not made gender parity a priority.       

Brister argues for greater attention to undergraduate recruitment and retention. If you have thoughts on this, head over to her post and share them! Sharon Crasnow suggests that those of us from under-represented groups who have persevered or even thrived in philosophy should reflect on what helped us to do this and to talk about this. If you have stories on this to share, go tell Sharon. There are also some very important data collection efforts getting underway– more on those in a later post.

One thing that’s struck me is that there actually are a lot of genuinely well-meaning people in philosophy who would like to improve recruitment and retention of women and minorities in philosophy, at all levels, but who need some guidance about how to do so. I’m going to be working on providing a document with such guidance, and would appreciate any suggestions you may have. One thing I’d particularly like to hear about is what sorts of techniques actually help one to correct against the very unconscious biases that Haslanger and Valian have drawn our attention to. But I’m really interested in hearing about any ideas you may have– or reports of efforts, even those that haven’t worked. Please put them in the comments!

Note: Categories have been updated as a result of comments.

Ladies, Make An Effort

Or you won’t catch a prize like me, writes Ted Safran , in the (UK) Times.

There are many, many differences between the British and the Americans, but none more glaring than UK women’s approach to their own upkeep. I am a massive fan of British women. UK girls, in my opinion, are the greatest natural beauties in the world . . . when they’re 17 or 18 years old. The girls I was surrounded by when I was a teenager were sublime roses with lustrous hair, flawless skin, bright eyes and lithe, athletic bodies. They dressed as if there would be a prize at the end of the night for the girl wearing the least. I then went away to Philadelphia for university. Four years later, I came back and wondered: “What the hell happened to all the beautiful girls I knew?” My first assumption was that one half of them had eaten the other half and washed them down with a crate of lager. These girls looked phenomenal when looking good took no effort. But when British women get to the age where they have to make an effort, they appear unable, or uninterested, in rising to the challenge.        

And what’s required to rise to the challenge?

An informal poll of my US female friends revealed that they spend roughly $700 (£350) a month on what they consider standard obligatory beauty maintenance. That covers haircut, highlights, manicure, pedicure, waxing, tanning, make-up, facials, teeth whitening etc. They will spend a further $1,000 (£500) a month on physical conditioning such as military fitness, spinning sessions, vikram yoga, Pilates, deep-tissue sports massage, personal training etc. On top of that, add the occasional spa day, a week-long “bikini boot camp” in Mexico at the start of every summer and seasonal splurges on personal shoppers and clothing. I’m not sure any of my British female friends spends £700 during an entire year on her appearance. American women see these costs as a simple and sensible investment in their future.        

The fools.  If only they spent a fortune on their appearance they could snag the likes of Ted.   (And where does he get his ideas about American women?  One suspects he has never actually conversed with any, but instead learned about them via “Sex and the City”.  Sort of like black-and-white Mary, for the philosophers amongst you.  Only without all the facts.)   (Thanks, Kitchen-Chick, for this astounding read.)A note: I wondered if this was parody, as I’ve been told that my American origins may prevent me from properly perceiving certain instances of British humour. But extensive consultation with native informants confirms that it’s not. Still, it’s quite enjoyable to read if you pretend that it’s in The Onion.

Gang Rape

You’d think we’d all agree that  it’s bad.  Surely it’s only in those backward Islamic states that victims of gang rape get punished and disbelieved.  At least, nobody from America, the Land of the Free, would imprison an employee who was gang-raped by co-workers and deny her food and water for 24 hours. And no Australian judge would claim that a 10-year- old “probably” agreed to have sex with nine men.  OK, maybe they would, but surely the *prosecution* wouldn’t have pushed this line.  Hmm. Guess I was wrong.  (I’ve clicked the categories ‘race’ and ‘class’ because they’re very important to the Australian case.  I don’t know whether they played a role in the other one.)

I bet you have seen this,

but if you haven’t, do enjoy.  Not exactly feminist, but definitely about philosophy.

(And thanks to my colleague who passed it on.)

Stanley Fish, wrong again.

 Stanley Fish, once again, gets it wrong.  He starts off alright by criticizing the urge to get potential candidates for the US presidency to let us know more about who they really are.  That seems good; there are large and important problems facing American citizens and it is far from clear that we should be paying much attention to candidates’ private lives.  But Fish goes much farther. Fish thinks that moral character is actually close to irrelevant to someone’s candidacy.  Moral goodness, he declares, is not going to solve the gigantic problems that a US president needs to address.  It is, of course, important that the  public respect the president and think their leader is a person of honour, but the way to achieve that is to fake it.  Thus Fish finds Machiavelli’s idea of the Prince very attractive.   Does anyone see a problem with this?   It sounds awful to me, but it is worth thinking about what is wrong. In fact it is hard to believe the article is serious.  One reason is that the current crew in the White House are very bright and they are presenting themselves as morally upright.  The problem is that they haven’t pulled it off, and they are widely reviled by huge segments of the US population, not to say of the world.  And this raises the question:  what more do you need to be a successful Machiavellian besides being very smart?  And that also raises the question:  Can a Machiavellian be successful?  Is “successful Machiavellian” psychologically realizable? For sure, you might be a Machiavellian and just be lucky, so you are never caught out.  Perhaps, for example, the lack of wit in those around you provides you protection.  But the cynicism in the United is very thick just because so many of these self-styled honorable people have been found out.  And there are many, many of them, from the Enron bright boys to the gay religious homophobes to the members of Congress who, like our Democratic leader, Pelosi, apparently knew about government torture and did nothing to stop it.  And a lot of them are very bright. One thing we might want to say is that the understanding one needs as a leader requires more than being very smart.  Perhaps, then, it just is not generally true that one can understand enough to be a good leader while being a bad person.    What might be of interest here is the fact that recent neuroscience delineates one important way in which the immoral person is set up for failure.  Let me simplify: Lying, deceiving and otherwise harming other people feels bad for most of us because we mirror others emotions.  If we imagine someone feeling very unhappy, we do not feel very happy, with some notable exceptions, including revenge.  That is because we mirror others emotions.  Have someone in front of you who is upset and angry and you’ll tend to pick up their feelings.  Those feeling are not fun to have. 

This effect is present in a number of species, and it is thought to be the reason why rodents typically get upset at signs of other rodents being upset.  In experiments, rats (not human rats) will not seek pleasure if it causes other rats pain.    This is one of the breaks most of us have on being really bad people.  Of course, not everyone is like this; at least many people with autism and people with alexithymia do not mirror emotions like this.  (This is not to say that they are in some sense morally lacking; there are other routes to a moral life.)  And perhaps one can block the feelings. But those without the feelings, we now see, will not be very good at attributing them to others.  And that means they move through a social world they fail to understand.  And that means they get found out. 

Alexithymics, who lack a conscious experience of much emotion, are the true Machiavellians, a recent article argues.  They find it hard to imagine anyone feeling hurt, themselves or others  Hence, while they can feel shame at a loss of power, they do not feel guilt at causing harm.  They may well be able to fake honour on a small scale, but we probably do not want one to be in charge of a large country during a time of crisis, to say the least.  (Wastell and Booth 2003)    

Wastell, Colin, and Alexandra Booth. 2003. Machiavellinism: An Alexithymic Perspective. Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology 22 (6):730-744.  

Carnival!

An excellent Carnival of Feminists is up at Days in a Wannabe Punk’s Life. The Wannabe Punk has done an especially good job of writing little blurbs that make you want to click on all the links, so be warned that you may have a hard time getting anything else done!

What Every Baby Needs: Disembodied Hands

Aside from the OH MY GOD IT’S SO CREEPY factor (not to be underestimated), and my view that we all need a laugh at this point in the semester, this is actually relevant to our blog. Because those are apparently the MOTHER’S hands being simulated (who else’s could do the job?) And yes, Mom does seem required to be beige.  But I’ve just got to leave you with the tagline: “It’s like leaving a part of you with the baby.” Really. That is actually the tagline. (Thanks, Mr Jender!)