Cordelia Fine, a researcher at University of Melbourne, as quoted in the Guardian, writes in her new book, “Many of the studies that claim to highlight differences between the brains of males and females are spurious. They are based on tests carried out on only a small number of individuals and their results are often not repeated by other scientists. However, their results are published and are accepted by teachers and others as proof of basic differences between boys and girls.”
Penn’s Language Log further discusses problems in the experimental set-up and conclusion of a study that claims to demonstrate that baby boys are more drawn to looking at a mobile while baby girls are more drawn to looking at a face. Mark Liberman notes that the mobile used in the experiment almost looks like a monster’s face, and suggests that the results are unlikely to “predict later interest in mechanical devices.”
An interview in USA Today with Fine addresses the bad rep given to feminism:
2. A lot of our anonymous online readers will take one look at this book and comment to us that a shrewish feminist author is blinded by her ideology and can’t see the evidence as plain as her nose that boys and girls are inherently different. Is there anything you can say to them?
A: It’s definitely long overdue for feminists to get a PR makeover; it’s sad if that old shrew/pc image is putting off people who might otherwise find themselves genuinely interested in the science (or lack of science) behind widely held beliefs about sex differences. It turns out you don’t have to have a desire for political correctness to object to popular claims about ‘hardwired’ sex differences – just a desire for scientific correctness. Unfortunately, objection to the careless treatment of the science of sex differences is often confused with disapproval of the very idea of intrinsic sex differences.
More Language Log posts about mis-application of data about neurological differences in gender.
Today is the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment! Yay voting.
Martha Nussbaum has written very logically about why it should not be acceptable for liberal democracies to ban the burqa. I particularly liked this comment from a reader.
Basically, isn’t the case against the burqa making others uncomfortable, similar to the case, in some Islamic countries, against incompletely covered women making others uncomfortable? In both cases, the problem is with the person who feels discomfortable, who instead tries to make the (female) target of his discomfort responsible for removing the source of this discomfort.
In today’s New York Times (I am lovin’ that NYT today), Adriana Gardella writes about Gail Warrior, who, aside from having a totally bad-ass last name, is founding chief executive and president of the modular construction company Warrior Group. The company has 58 employees and $124 million dollars in revenue–no small feat considering construction is still a male-dominated industry.
Gardella’s interview brings more than a few interesting points to bear. First, there’s the careful balance between benefitting from being a woman in the workplace, and hurting from it. Warrior tells Gardella that when seeking contracts, being a woman and a minority “may give you a couple extra points during consideration, but ultimately, a contract is awarded on merit, experience and expertise.” At the same time, Warrior has faced challenges as a female: “People take me seriously now. But early on, depending on the audience, I’d take one of my guys along with me to meetings.”
Second, Gardella and her now-ex-husband worked together (the divorce doesn’t appear to be business-related), but with a division of labor that is not just modern but forward-thinking. She states: “My ex-husband and I always worked well together because we had different strengths and clearly defined roles. He handled business development — he could sell a pair of glasses to a blind man. I’m better at long-term strategy and keeping costs down. I’m all over that.” Division of tasks isn’t determined by what your gender is good at, but your personal strengths. Cheers to that, Ms. Warrior.
In the 6/25 New York Times, Camille Paglia penned, “No Sex Please, We’re Middle Class,” arguing that the current search for female Viagra is a boon: the lack of female sexual desire in the United States is no medical condition to be salved with a wonder pill, she argues; rather it’s the result of a white middle class that sanitizes gender in the workplace and makes sex so exposed in the media that the mystery of the other gender, and thus the desire to have sex with them, is gone.
An Fword-er, Lara, sent this story to us all, and it ignited an interesting discussion with a wealth of viewpoints from our board.
Emily acknowledges that she disagrees with some of Paglia’s points, but writes that, perhaps more importantly, this story in fact highlights an unfortunately American characteristic:
“[We’re] always looking for the quick fixes, and never taking a step back and looking at the landscape we have created that is causing the problems we [try] to eliminate with pills.”
But Leah is less ready to accept Paglia’s argument that the Judith Butler school of thought that gender is a social concept rather than a biological fact has allowed for the amelioration of gender in the workplace:
“I disagree with the implication that gender as a social construct is something only someone in an ‘elite school’ could think and the implication that this ‘ideology’ is somehow more ideological than other ideologies…. She claims that a more neutral workplace (i.e., treating men and women the same) is somehow detrimental to the sexual health of our society, which seems like a huge stretch.”
Chloe, on the other hand, believes that the gender-as-social-construct ideology is perhaps an ‘elite’ one, though this is not necessarily a negative as Paglia seems to suggest. In fact, Chloe argues, Paglia’s view of gender overall is troublingly backwards. She writes:
“If anything I think the view of gender as a social construct is the ‘radical vision of modern sexual revolution,’ one that allows people to step out of the confines of their gendered, and thus sexual, roles and be truly free in their individually unique sexual practice…. Overall this opinion piece is promoting a dichotomous gendered divide [with] stereotypical roles of the weak…subordinate female and the strong, dominate male.”
I agree with Chloe’s argument that the social construct argument is a liberator of individuals, but I think Paglia’s argument has much less to do with the individual and far more to do with broader sexual trends and behaviors.
The bigger issue I had with the argument is that Paglia ignores a very important element of this discussion: men’s Viagra. Her failure to mention the former implies that it’s OK for men to take Viagra, but not women—and for me, the existence of a sexual stimulant for males only encourages a view that women should just be ready to have sex whenever men (or their pills) decide they want to. So I say: even if female Viagra is nothing but a sugar pill, hand it over, sistah.
Crotch-Less Panties
We assume certain things about old people, one of these suppositions being that they collectively live a sexless existence. Think about it; imagining your parents doing the nasty is bad enough, but the sugar plum vision of your grandma with both legs in the air downright horrific. Like most young people, I was willing to cling to this delusion like oil clings to the wings of pelican in the Gulf of Mexico. However, like most of the beliefs that I held prior to becoming a cog in the libido-driven machine that is Victoria’s Secret, this theory was soon to be blown out of the water. One morning, sweet, innocent Velika was organizing the “kissable” massage oil by flavor[1] when in walks the picture of an adorable old person. He looked to be anywhere from the age of seventy seven to eighty five, wearing a blue checkered shirt, khaki pants and brown leather shoes. His face was non-descript but he had a full head of silky white hair. Bottom line, he was your typical grandfather, the kind that would give you ten dollars for the arcade when you were a kid. He comes in, and my first thought was that he wanted to know where the nearest bathroom is. But NO! He comes up to me and starts to mumble something. The only thing that I can decipher is, “Miss, I am looking for…” His actual request being unintelligible, I asked him politely to speak up. He, once again, states that he is looking for “…” After going back and forth for far too long, he finally whispered to me, “Do you have any crotch-less panties?”[2] At that moment, I started to show symptoms similar to those of a trauma patient; uncontrollable images started flashing before my eyes of all the possible things that this man could do with (and in) that lingerie. But, of course, I soldiered through it. With a smile[3] on my face, I showed him the many colors, styles and scents[4] of our underwear that VS so conveniently cut a big hole through. After much deliberation,[5] our darling gentleman finally decided on the ones of the blue, leopard print variety. Like the consummate salesperson that I was (am) I asked him if he wanted the nipple-less bras to match. Of course, the answer was an emphatic YES. After watching him walk out of the store with seventy dollars worth of barely-there material, I only had one question: which chick at the nursing home was rocking that little number tonight?
[2] If you ever need anyone to confide your dirtiest secrets to, I’m your girl, because after this day, I lost any ability to be shocked.
[3] grimace
[4] Yes, crotch-less dental floss can indeed smell like strawberries.
[5] The old dude spent more time considering which panty to buy than Congress spent reviewing the Healthcare Bill
Yesterday one of the Fword members sent around an article in the New York Times Magazine about young girls’ sexuality today. The article comments on a, what I think is extremely disturbing, video of prepubescent girls suggestively dressed and dancing to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.”
One Fword-er commented that the video is disturbing because it demonstrates the ready availability of inappropriate sexuality on the Internet to young girls:
My little sisters are 9 and 6, so this is terrifying. It’s scary the accessibility of inappropriate sexuality these days, particularly through the internet. Think about everything you can watch on youtube… kids have access to everything we do, and most parents don’t seem to understand what you can find (or stumble across) on youtube.
The discussion then shifted into an argument over the restrictiveness of defining sexual appropriateness. Chloe, another Fword-er, countered that the girls depicted were exploring their sexuality; and that the materials’ accessibility allows other girls watching to explore their sexuality on their own terms, instead of being subjected to a double standard in which sexuality and porn are okay for young boys but not young girls:
Obviously there is a heavily patriarchal, “male gaze” oriented sexuality presented in the media, but who is really to say what is inappropriate sexuality? I think Internet porn, in all of it’s diversity, is a great way for young girls to explore their sexuality and have access like never before. I mean it’s okay for boys to be sexual and watch porn at a young age, yet when girls do the paternalistic attitude always arises. Maybe, due to the ’sacred’ and ‘unspoiled’ notion of the young female body, were still scared of ‘ruining’ our young girls with the ‘dirtiness’ of sex…
Just a thought….
However, the former commenter responded that neither the performance in nor the consumption of these videos are healthy forms of sexual exploration for girls too young to discern the difference between exploitation and exploration:
Internet porn IS a problem because since it is targeted toward men the vast majority of it is humiliating and demeaning to women. If a person is mature enough to recognize this then there is no problem, but it is so easy for young girls to get the wrong idea. When they see inappropriate things on the internet or on TV they think that they should act that way. Lets face it – the girls in the video are not embracing their sexuality in a healthy way (it’s difficult for girls whose bodies are not physically ready to have sex to have any grasp on their own sexuality), they are merely doing what they think will please the crowd. There is a huge difference between sexiness and sexuality – these girls are too young to know the difference and shouldn’t have to learn by objectifying themselves in this way.
In my response to their responses, I wrote:
I wouldn’t concur that society necessarily makes it okay for young boys to be sexual. The comments to this article in a New York Times blog included parents who were concerned about the early sexualization of both their sons and daughters. Also, in the autobiographical essay “Such, Such Were the Joys,” George Orwell’s schoolteachers had the fear of masturbation planted firmly in the minds of him and his peers through punitive measures – “There were summonses, interrogations, confessions, floggings, repentances, solemn lectures of which one understood nothing except that some irredeemable sin known as ‘swinishness’ or ‘beastliness’ had been committed.”
I would also not interpret the young girls in the video as the ones exploring their own sexuality – it wouldn’t seem to me that they have any agency over this, as I would think that they were not the ones who put in the order for the costumes or choreographed the dance, but rather the teacher/choreographer. From my own ballet/tap/jazz lessons in childhood, I would say it’s not unusual for a dance teacher to order similarly stomach-baring/skimpy (though perhaps with less suggestive color schemes than the example in the video) costumes for prepubescent girls, and while at the time I didn’t think much of it, I distinctly remember my sister and me looking back on one of my class’s old group photos a couple years ago and wondering what the hell the teacher had been thinking when she bought them.
As the article points out, Beyonce herself wears more modest attire, and I would add, has more modest dance moves in her video.
Chloe adds:
Though much mainstream pornography focuses on the mainstream heterosexist audiences it reaches, the pornography available on the internet today diversifies a market which before the internet almost SOLELY consisted of that representation of sexuality. Today virtually every form of sexuality, with all forms of ‘gender,’ is represented on the internet. Moreover, the prejudice and taboo against ‘women,’ and young ‘girls,’ exploring their sexuality via pornography, masturbation etc… is in many ways made irrelevant by the internet because young people of any sex have the option of anonymously exploring their various sexual desires. It is a sociological fact that young ‘girls’ masturbating or exploring sexuality at any young age is a social taboo, mostly not talked about, and considered ’strange’ or ‘gross,’ at least publicly, by the young people themselves, whereas young ‘male’ sexuality, whether exploring Playboy magazines, masturbating, or attempting to woo ‘girls’ is a timeless and very social cliché.
Sexual exploration at a young age is necessary for a healthy adult sexuality, and if it weren’t for internet pornography, many ‘women’ would be kept completely in the dark. Pornography is a great way to see and learn about various sexualities, and even young children have some sexual instincts and can benefit from some exposure. As various alternate societies and time periods have shown, children’s sexuality and sexual development is very much regulated by the moral norms of the society in which they live, and a puritanical, censoring approach to sexuality and its representations can only serve to reinforce patriarchy by upholding the exclusively ‘male,’ ‘public sphere’ access to sexuality that has always existed, while socially denying ‘women’ and ‘girls’ the chance to see for themselves, so to speak.
As for pornography being humiliating to ‘women,’ that all depends upon the nature of the specific sexuality. Some people enjoy being humiliated and objectified as part of their sexual fantasy, so even a sexuality that would be considered demeaning by some can be considered liberating and pleasurable by others. The desperate and alarmist attempt to censor sexuality itself in its representation on the internet is a misguided and paternalistic approach to try and protect the ‘innocent’ and ‘pure’ young ‘girls’ who couldn’t possibly have sexual instincts at say the age of 10. Rather we should push for more diverse representations of sexuality, and gender, a more bold, head-on, unashamed look at sexuality which educates and enhances all of our sexual lives. A censoring, fearful approach can only teach the message that there is something ‘unpure’ or ‘dirty’ about sex itself. At bottom, there is no such thing as inappropriate sexuality as long as the parties involved are willing and able, so the more exposure our young, especially ‘girls,’ get, to all kinds of sexuality the better.
However, Aviva, another Fword-er, adds that it is necessary for both parties not only to be willing and able, but also protected. As important as it is to have a healthy attitude towards sex, the content from one of her Health and Societies classes showed that, on a practical, public health level, earlier onsets of sexual intercourse for young girls lead to a greater statistical likelihood of teen pregnancy and greater number of total sexual partners per lifetime, which is a risk factor for contracting more STDs and certain cancers. Careless exposure to erotic materials outside of context would not promote responsible sexual practices among young audiences.
Moreover, I note that the above-mentioned examples of male sexuality have not in fact had timeless social acceptance. Frank Wedekind’s 19th-century German play, Spring Awakening, portrays a culture that is sexually repressive towards adolescent boys as well as girls. The very censorship of the play, due to a scene of explicit male sexuality, demonstrates society’s discomfort both with aspects of male sexuality, and with the artistic representation of those acts.
In reflecting back at some of the opposition towards the Vagina Monologues earlier in the semester, I’m inclined to feel that the real point of contention ought not to be the degree of extremity but rather the direction of it. Depending on the specific range of one’s experiences, or lack thereof, some audience members may feel alienated from the already pervasive discussions of sexual topics. Moreover, I wonder if the emphasis on sexual violence in women’s-issues-related campus events privileges the centrality of these problems above other women’s issues, and draws attention away from discussing non-sexual abuse or domestic violence.
Interesting article about stress levels in 2-parent-working homes, may reveal what is responsible for some aggressive behavior.
