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.
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.
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.
Interesting article about stress levels in 2-parent-working homes, may reveal what is responsible for some aggressive behavior.
I’ve never posted on our lovely blog before (I’m not much of a writer and non-academic pieces are kind of painful for me). However, I’m forcing myself to write something because I was so moved by last week’s Take Back the Night. I’m fully converted. I want to do everything I can to make sure there’s an even bigger show of solidarity next year.
Last week was my first TBTN and, honestly, feminism is something I only really started to think about a year or so ago. I was a total “tomboy” when I was little—I think because I was always aware that there was something limiting about being labeled a girl. I didn’t want to be bracketed into anything (gender, in this case), and I still don’t. Now I’m the co-editor of Fword, I study feminist/queer theory in class, and I’m quick to pounce on gender/sex discrimination.
But I think last week is the first time I’ve ever felt anything, like it was something that directly involved me, not just “a women’s issue,” as the poster says. And I think the poster refers to “women,” like, this is everybody’s problem, but I want to point out: it’s not just an issue, either. It’s not just another cause, another word, phrase, or statistic. This is something real and present and sweeping me and everybody else up in its path. I don’t want to say that I can even understand what victims of sexual abuse have gone through—that completely underestimates both their pain and their strength. But I think by sharing their stories, the men and women of TBTN shared their pain in a way that affected me more powerfully than any other experience I’ve had. There’s a difference between knowing and feeling, and of the two I think feeling is really what incites change. A lot of people know the statistics (my pre-TBTN self included), but it doesn’t mean anything until you see your friends, your peers, people you respect and love getting up from the crowd to tell their story and you’re thinking, No, no, not her, not another one, and it just seems to go on forever, one person after another getting up until after a while you stop crying because you just feel empty.
I know the numbers. But it took seeing them, hearing them, and knowing them to make me feel, and feeling them to make me want to do anything. Too many (even one is too many) of these men and women spoke of being blamed, being held responsible, being ignored. As Professor Tillet, the keynote speaker, asked: can we imagine a world without rape? It’s becoming just a fact (literally: check out the fact ad campaign on Locust Walk) of life, and that’s what perpetuates it. And it’s a double edged sword: sexual abuse is accepted to the point that people don’t acknowledge the need for change—something that can’t be helped turns into something that’s okay (see the Rape Lay post). At the same time, it’s accepted to the point that women are expected to anticipate it and protect themselves, and when they fall victim they’re held responsible—you should have seen it coming.
The first step to imagining a world without a rape is to be shocked by it: to feel the pain like our own, to recognize and reject it as an unacceptable part of our community. That’s why I support TBTN, and that’s why I encourage everybody to attend next year. This is my pain, my problem, and I need to do something about it. This is your pain, your problem, and you need to do something about it.
Is a blow job inherently degrading for the blower?
For me, the recent outcry against SPEC’s choice of performers for Fling this year has brought the question to a head. Ha ha.
But in all seriousness, the petition to revise the selection criteria for Fling performers (seen here http://www.petitiononline.com/Fling10/petition.html) may be well intentioned, but what we have here is a case of sloppy activism that for me raises the wider question posed above.
The sloppy activism is the following. On the petition, and also formally the facebook event that has apparently been canceled, the following lyrics are attributed to Kid Cudi.
“I put ‘em in your mouth till you choke and gag, and I Poke Her Face off and now she faceless, I poke her so much I deserve a bracelet.”
These lyrics are arguably offensive. However, these lyrics have never been sung by Kid Cudi. They are in fact the lyrics to a song by Lil’ Wayne in his album No Ceilings, featuring Jae Millz, called “Poke Her Face.”
Kid Cudi’s song is actually called “Make Her Say,” featuring Kanye West, and the only thing arguably offensive about it is that he raps about an apparently amazing blow job, and also the possibility of a threesome, which I see no problem with.
What’s more, the chorus of the song is about how by poking her face, he makes her say (sung seductively by Gaga), “Oh ah oh oh oh ah oh oh.” The assumption here can only be that the owner of the face he is poking is getting mutual pleasure from the pokes.
Which is my main point. I think some people would argue that Cudi’s actual lyrics are also offensive and degrading. But as someone who has been on both the giving and receiving end of blow jobs, I would have to disagree.
Of course there can be pleasure found in giving pleasure to another. But I think there can even be pleasure in the simple act of having the right guy’s dick in your mouth. And I don’t think admitting that is defending degradation.
The only thing degrading about a blowjob is when the blowjob is given because, for some reason, the blower feels obliged to do so. And when it comes to sexual pleasure, obligation makes for problems for at least one of the involved parties, which inevitably makes problems for both.
So here’s my idea. Don’t give head just to get it back. Don’t tick off the seconds you’re down there to make sure he or she pays you back tit for tat. Give oral because you want to. Do it because either you’ll get pleasure from giving pleasure to your partner(s), or because you actually find giving head inherently arousing.
Otherwise, stay away from it. There are plenty of other things to do in the bedroom (or under the button, or in the stacks, or in the bathroom on the third floor of that house party you were at). Stick to only what you want to do, that way you’ll never feel degraded, and you won’t cry out to others that a blow job is a degrading thing.
And also, before you start a petition accusing an artist of being sexist, make sure the accusations are for a song that’s actually his.
Almost everyone would agree that today, in the year 2010, the United States is, for the most part, forward-thinking, modernized, and civil liberties-minded. However, in the case of feminism, for this generation, my generation, there is the pervading sense that we no longer need feminism, that it is outdated and we have already achieved gender equality. There is even a frequent connotation of disdain – “You’re a feminist?” boys will sneer at me.
Last month’s Newsweek magazine highlighted feminism and the workplace, but what really struck me were some of the comments left by readers:
Posted By: rramjet @ 03/24/2010 3:41:49 PM
The only thing feminism did was to help destroy the American family. Stay at home moms were and are the object of ridicule and slander. Women once held the very fabric of this country together. Look at any public school and you’ll see what feminism did for America.”
It infuriates me that in a time when women outperform men in SAT scores, GPA, and outnumber men in college enrollment, they still systematically earn only 80% of what their male counterparts earn. This (the comment above) kind of attitude only reinforces decades of workplace sexism. Why should it only be women that are expected to stay at home? Although I applaud the hard work and merits of stay-at-home mothers (my own mother was a stay-at-home mom for most of my childhood – something that I will always be extremely grateful for), if we were truly gender equal, the choice of staying at home to be with children is something wouldn’t fall solely on women.
