With friends like these. . .

Prof. Tom Baldwin, the editor of Mind, was recently asked in a interview about the dearth of women publishing in top journals (including Mind). Prof. Baldwin replied that he didn’t think we should be worried, because:

I think there are plenty of younger women, who’ve entered the profession in the last ten years, who are just as punchy – if I can put it like that – as the young men… I think it’ll change.

That’s right ladies. The reason you haven’t been publishing in top journals is because of a virtue that you lack – “punchiness”! – not because of any entrenched power imbalances or gender-crap within the profession. But don’t worry, ladies! Older women may lack this virtue, the poor dears. But the younger ones have it. They have it just as much as the men do! So these gender issues should sort themselves right out.

Excellent. Glad we got that one figured out.

[facepalm]

*Update*: If you don’t want to bother listening to the interview, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa has provided a link to a transcript of the relevant portion of the interview in the comments. Thanks, Jonathan!

To Romney and the Rethugs: you don’t own me

thanks, PJ

Coates Responds to Mourdock’s Remarks

Ta-Nehisi Coates reposted a piece he wrote two years ago in light of the comments Senate candidate Richard Mourdock made about pregnancy.  I really recommend checking it out.  I don’t know what Coates would think of the following comparison, but he and W. E. B. Du Bois make up the entirety of a an obviously very short list of writers who are men and whose writings on women I’ve found to be down right enlightening.

 

In regards to Du Bois, what specifically comes to mind is his chapter “The Damnation of Women” in Darkwater.  (Chapter starts on page 110.)

Only at the sacrifice of intelligence and the chance to do their best work can the majority of modern women bear children. This is the damnation of women. All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.  The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have knowledge. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.

That was written in 1920.