Here at Feminist Philosophers…

As we announced April 23, Feminist Philosophers is shutting down. This is one of a series of posts by FP bloggers looking back on the blog and bidding it farewell.

 

I began my first ever post for Feminist Philosophers on June 4, 2012 with the following words: “Here at Feminist Philosophers, we love…”

It doesn’t matter how that sentence ends. What’s striking to me about it now is that in my very first post for a blog that had by then already existed for five years and had already received about four million site views (not a spitball; I just looked it up!), I was cocky enough to make myself perfectly at home in this way.

Some of that was no doubt due to my own bravado, but I think that a larger reason why I acted at home in my first Feminist Philosophers post is that by then, for me, as for countless other women philosophers, the blog really did feel like home. This is no mean feat in a discipline that often feels anything but hospitable to women.

For many women philosophers who felt isolated not only in the discipline but in their home departments, Feminist Philosophers was a crucial lifeline. It helped us to feel part of a scholarly community, but it also helped to change the community in big and small ways.

The blog shared advice, data, and analysis, called out male-only conferences, and fostered much-needed conversations about such topics as implicit bias, stereotype threat, micro-inequities, and sexism in academe. You can get a sense of the scope of the topics, by taking a look at the first page of the blog’s drop-down menu of categories available for each post:

A glimpse of some of the categories available to Feminist Philosophers bloggers.

The blog also celebrated the work of feminist philosophers, and supported feminist philosophers when they were down. (A case in point: a couple of months before I joined the blog, a conservative pundit compared me unfavorably to Stalin. Feminist Philosophers poked gentle fun at the comparison, which helped me to feel like I was sharing a chuckle with savvy women colleagues rather than just being freaked out that somebody hated me enough to write about me as the pundit had.) As well, many readers wrote to the blog for various kinds of confidential advice and support during tough times — support that  they very often received behind the scenes thanks to the wisdom, discretion,  and generosity of some of FP’s senior bloggers.

I have been the beneficiary of the improvements in the discipline wrought by Feminist Philosophers to a much greater extent than I have been a contributor to those changes. I joined five years in, and having only authored 93 posts, I am one of the blog’s less frequent posters. (Ugh! If only I had counted my contributions before today, I could have contrived to go out on my hundredth post. Alas, 94 — this post — will be my last.)

Still, I have been enormously proud to play a tiny part in a blog that has served the discipline so well. While here, I learned a lot more about the contours of the discipline, I cut my teeth on public scholarship, and I wrote some posts that I’m proud of.

I think that the post I’m proudest of writing for Feminist Philosophers was one in which I as a Canadian woman worked through some of the legal issues that were exposed by the acquittal for sexual assault of notorious Canadian broadcaster, Jian Ghomeshi. Here’s a link. I don’t know whether the post was much better than others I wrote, but I do know that other women told me afterwards that they found it a helpful perspective at a difficult time. If we philosophers can occasionally offer a helpful perspective at a difficult time, then that is not a bad thing at all.

These days, most of my public philosophy contributions occur in the realm of academic freedom and campus free expression/speech issues. If you’d like to read some of that work, then check out my Dispatches on Academic Freedom column for University Affairs.

To the creators of Feminist Philosophers, thank you for all you have done to make philosophy a place where more of us feel at home, and thank you for letting me play a small part. I was honoured to join the team, and I am grateful to be able to participate in this final celebration of Feminist Philosophers as it winds down.

 

 

APSA Hackathon

Of possible interest to readers (either to participate in this event or as a model for their own professional associations), the APSA is holding a “hackathon” next month to help men support women’s equality in political science. The hackathon is being organized by Jessica Preece and Macartan Humphreys and being held as part of the APSA’s 2018 annual meeting, Democracy and its Discontents.

Here is a partial description of the hackathon from the conference website:

Hackathons are events where communities of scholars, activists, programmers, and others come together to exchange ideas about and work collaboratively to provide solutions to a common problem. Hackathons may produce multiple outcomes, including the analysis and visualization of new data, websites, apps, research designs, consensus documents, policy proposals, and plans for social interventions. […] Our main goal to build on past and present efforts by APSA and its component organizations to promote diversity and inclusion by creating a collaborative, diverse, and inclusive space for annual meeting participants to come together. At the hackathon, teams will develop strategies that address key challenges facing the profession, build partnerships, and plans to move forward.

In preparation for the hackathon, organizers conducted an open-ended survey of women in the profession, which resulted in this list of suggestions.

Read more about the hackathon here.

(Thanks to JW for the heads up.)

 

“All Translators Make Choices”

Earlier today, Channel 4 News tweeted out a wonderful little excerpt of an interview with Dr. Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English. In the interview, Dr. Wilson discusses her surprise in discovering the number of gendered words that weren’t pejorative in the original Greek, but which were translated into English by pejoratives. Watch the excerpt here.

Men in Comics

This weekend’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival includes among its many talks and events a panel on “Men in Comics.” Here’s the description:

Men have a long history in comics, both as readers and as characters. This panel is a chance to talk about the decisions that creators make when writing and drawing male-identified people, as well as how these creators’ experience with men in comics have shaped their work. Featuring Caitlin Major, Iasmin Omar Ata, Shieka Lugutu, and Sanya Anwar. Moderated by Eleri Harris.

This all-women panel about men is the latest in a series of such events, intended as playful reversals of all-male panels about women’s participation in various domains. (See, for instance, this all-male panel on women’s empowerment.)

Last year, PodCon featured an all LGBTQ panel on “How to Write Straight Characters,” and Dragoncon featured a last minute replacement of a “Women in Comics” panel by one similar to this weekend’s TCAF panel.

Here’s a fun Twitter discussion of these and other such panels kicked off by Canadian nerd and Dinosaur Comics creator Ryan North.

 

The Women Were Pushed Out of Computing

In a brief article in Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), Moshe Vardi maintains that the women in computing “did not just leave; they were pushed out.” Vardi sketches the history of computing, an area once dominated by women. He argues that “general ignorance” of computing history effaces the important contributions that women made to programming and code-breaking. The article offers a useful reading list of recent books tracing the history of women in computing, and the factors that led to the area coming to be dominated by men. Vardi concludes the piece by saying, “There is hard work ahead of us to start to undo the damage” and by sharing some resources about what the ACM is doing to get the women back into computing.

Read Vardi’s piece here.

Helpful advice for academics

A nameless YouTuber offers some timely, helpful advice for professors interested in dating their students. You can watch here.

(And, since it’s 2017 and everything is awful, it is worth flagging in advance that the video is satirical, and that it includes a sweary word.)

Diversity in Philosophy initiatives

Jessica Moss (NYU) and Edouard Machery (Pitt, HPS) sent us the following note, which will be of interest to many of our readers:

There are now several well-established initiatives aimed at addressing the lack of diversity of philosophy (http://www.apaonline.org/page/diversityinstitutes). To support these efforts, NYU and Pitt have recently decided to waive application fees related to their PhD programs in Philosophy (NYU and Pitt) and in History and Philosophy of Science (Pitt) for students who participated to these initiatives. We suspect other schools have similarly waved their application fees and we invite them to advertise their efforts in the comments thread.

On being reinvigorated by Mary Astell but worn out by the discipline

Regan Penaluna started by loving philosophy. Over time, though, the climate for women in the discipline ground her down. Her self-confidence flagged, and she became one of the quiet students rather than one of the vocal, passionate ones. And then she discovered 17th century rationalist and feminist philosopher, Mary Astell.

Penaluna, now a journalist, has just published a popular account of her ups and downs in philosophy, her love affair with Astell, and her eventual departure from the discipline.

Penaluna’s account of Astell is a great primer on an original thinker who deserves more attention than she gets. But just as illuminating is Penaluna’s account of the slow grind of being a woman in philosophy. Her article offers a glimpse into some of the reasons women leave the profession.

You can read Penaluna’s account here.

#thanksfortyping

Hop over to Twitter and check out the two-day-old hashtag, #thanksfortyping. The creation of UVA mediaevalist Bruce Holsinger, #thanksfortyping aggregates screen shots of book acknowledgement excerpts in which men thank their (typically) unnamed wives (and sometimes their daughters) for typing their scholarly works. Indeed, in many of the acknowledgements, the wifely duties extend beyond typing to transcribing, editing, and more.

There are two striking feminist lessons from this growing archive. First, it is stunning just how much scholarly work by women was historically unpaid and went uncredited. Not only the careers of individual male scholars, but the smooth functioning of departments and disciplines owed much to women’s uncompensated labour. Second, it is worth remarking that any scholar who did not have a wife to serve as their voluntary r.a./co-editor/co-author — so, for instance, women scholars — was competing on a very uneven playing field indeed.

Who should take the notes?

Yesterday, I posted the following note on my Facebook page. It has generated considerable enthusiasm, much more than I anticipated for a modest bit of administrative advice. Since folks seem to find the advice useful, I am posting it here too, for a broader readership.

Earlier this week, I told a bunch of female colleagues that, for many of the meetings I attend, I don’t bring paper/pencil because, too often, a woman with writing tools is seen as the best candidate to be recorder for the meeting. The colleagues — especially the more junior ones — were very excited about this tactic, and many resolved to start doing the same.

Today, I was at a consultation at which each table was provided with a note pad and pens and asked to assign a recorder for the table. I was the only woman (and the most junior person, from the puniest department) at the table. I told the table that, on principle, I do not take notes when I am the only woman in a group, and that one of them would therefore have to take notes. After some kerfufflement, the most senior person at the table (a quite senior admin) took the notes for the table. I feel good about this result.

Friends, let me recommend that when a note-taker is needed, you try to identify the person at the table whose perspective is least likely to be overlooked, and have them take notes. That way, those (women, racialized people, junior folks, etc.) whose perspective is most likely to be overlooked can put all of their energies into sharing their perspective rather than recording the alpha dogs’ perspectives. If you are the alpha dog, or think that you might be, consider volunteering to be the note-taker so that others’ voices can emerge. This saves the more junior/marginalized folks from the sometimes scary task of refusing to be recorder.

Postscript: A couple of further notes in response to comments folks made under my Facebook post.

1. Note-takers are important. We shouldn’t diminish the important work that careful recorders do, nor neglect the power that a recorder can have to influence what goes on record. For some folks, in some contexts, recording may well be a better, more powerful, way for them to contribute than talking.
2. Having said that, it is quite likely that for some folks — women in particular — regarding recording as more powerful than speaking is an adaptive preference. That is, if the context isn’t conducive to their full participation in a discussion, then recording — and valuing recording — may be a way to feel empowered rather than disempowered in an otherwise disempowering situation.
3. The aptness of the above advice varies by context and purpose. Junior folks can learn a lot from senior folks if the former record what the latter are saying, and in some contexts that’s desirable. After all, typically students take notes while profs explain stuff. In such a case, the work of recording helps the junior person to learn. However, in a meeting intended to survey a range of perspectives — as opposed to a context in which expert knowledge is being passed on — it makes sense for someone whose perspective is over-represented to record.
4. The distinction in #3 between contexts in which a range of views is sought and those in which expertise is transmitted is a fuzzy one. As standpoint theorists, such as Sandra Harding, have been telling us for decades, a crucial but oft-neglected question in inquiry is who gets to count as an expert and why.