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Is it time to go Lysistrata?

Feb 16 2012 Published by Janet D. Stemwedel under Current events, Personal, Politics, Social issues

In the ancient (written circa 411 BCE) Greek comedy Lysistrata, the character of the title attempts to end the Peloponnesian War by getting the women of Greece to leverage what power they have to influence the men in charge of that society. These women agree that until the war is over, there will be no sex.*

It strikes me that in the year 2012 we are seeing in the U.S. a political war waged against women's personhood and bodily autonomy.** As part of this war, lawmakers have required women to endure waiting periods (in the span of days) to obtain a legal medical procedure which becomes progressively less safe the longer it is delayed. As part of this war, lawmakers will require that women who seek a legal medical procedure be subjected to a medically unnecessary procedure that, when conducted without consent, amounts to rape. As part of this war, other lawmakers are seeking to remove the legal right to this medical procedure altogether (and to treat doctors who perform it as criminals). The warriors rolling back bodily autonomy elide termination of pregnancy with prevention of pregnancy, and frame as a matter of religious freedom the desire of members of certain religions to restrict the bodily autonomy of people who do not even adhere to those religions.

This is a war in which, in the year 2012, the very availability of contraceptives (which, by the way, have reasonable medical uses besides preventing pregnancy) is now up for grabs.

I don't know about you, but my plans for 2012 ran more to jet-packs than The Handmaid's Tale. And I'm starting to wonder if it might not be time to go Lysistrata to end this damn war.

You see, the fact that in the U.S. women make up more than half of the voting age population doesn't mean that women make up a proportional share of elected lawmakers (or judges, or presidents of the United States). And members of the U.S. House of Representatives apparently think it's just fine to convene hearings on contraception coverage featuring 10 expert witnesses, eight of whom are male, and none of whom testify in support of contraceptive coverage. And politicians from the party that's supposedly carrying the progressive banner think it's politically smart to use our bodily autonomy as a bargaining chip -- to get stuff that's more important, apparently.

What's more important to you than autonomy over your own body? If you can make a list here, I'm guessing it's not very long.

What if we declared a sex-strike until the people who purport to represent us came around to the view that our personhood and bodily autonomy is non-negotiable?

Sure, such an action is unlikely to reach the forced-birth theocratic extremists, since they are pretty open in their view that women are lesser creatures, not to be trusted with decisions about their own health or lives.*** My guess is that these people do not care terribly about the wishes of women with whom they are partnered**** (or, if they do, that they regard these women as exceptional compared to the women against whom they seek to use governmental power). Persuading these extremists of my personhood would be about as rewarding trying to have a dialogue with a hexagon, and significantly less likely to succeed.

But maybe a sex-strike would grab the attention of our fair-weather feminist allies, the ones who pay all kinds of lip service to our personhood and bodily autonomy when there's an election to win, then turn on their heels and start bargaining it away for their own political advantage.

These folks might change their ways if they had skin in the game -- or, as they case might be, if they got no skin and no game.

Far be it from me to suggest that men are more vulnerable to their desire for funsexytime than are women. They are not. However, I reckon it's easier to be in the mood for funsexytime when your very personhood is not up for debate.

I find legislative threats to my bodily autonomy a real mood-killer. And, I'd much rather share funsexytime with a partner who takes my well-being seriously enough to view the war on woman as a war that needs to be stopped in its tracks, now. Someone who wouldn't see it as politically expedient, let alone clever.

Because guess what? I would never presume I was entitled to funsexytime with someone whose personhood and bodily autonomy I didn't step up to fight for when it was under threat. Heck, I would step up to fight for the personhood and bodily autonomy even of people with whom I have no desire to have funsexytime because that's what decent human beings do.

And my choice is to refrain from funsexytime with anyone to whom my interests do not matter at least that much. People who cannot manage to see me and others like me as fully human do not deserve to get any action that might not also result in a repetitive stress injury.

Not being all-in in the fight to protect the bodily autonomy and personhood of women and others with uteri is a deal-breaker for me. Is it a deal-breaker for you?

_____
*Including no "Lioness on The Cheese Grater," a sex position upon which we can only hope SciCurious will one day blog.

**This is also a war against the bodily autonomy of other persons with uteri.

***And yet, to be entrusted with babies that they may not want. If ever there was a non-standard logic ...

****This does raise the question for me of how men of this sort can have sex with women who they view as not-fully-human by virtue of the very fact that they are women. Wouldn't such sexual congress amount to bestiality, the next step on the slippery slope after gay marriage, which they are generally against?

11 responses so far

When the mainstream is extreme: research on sexism in lads' mags.

Dec 14 2011 Published by Janet D. Stemwedel under Research with human subjects, Social issues

You may have seen the discussion various places (like here) about the recent research that indicates the descriptions of women given by convicted sex offenders and lads' mags are well nigh indistinguishable. The research paper went up today on the British Journal of Psychology website. But, thanks to one of the authors of the paper (Dr. Peter Hegarty, with whom I shared a class in grad school), I got my hands on a pre-print, which I discuss in this post.

Horvath, M.A.H., Hegarty, P., Tyler, S. & Mansfield, S., " 'Lights on at the end of the party': Are lads' mags mainstreaming dangerous sexism?" British Journal of Psychology. DOI:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02086.x

The general question prompting the study is what kind of influence is exerted by magazine contents on how young people perceive their social reality. In particular, how might magazines influence how young people approach sex?

The authors cite previous studies about the influences of exposure to pornography and other sexualized media on the attitudes young men have about women, but note that the effects of "lads' mags" (i.e., magazines aimed at young male readers like FHM, Maxim, and Stuff) had not been studied.

And, while "if taken at face value, lads' mags appear likely to teach young men sexist attitudes and practices," the authors note that editors' of these magazines argue against taking them at face value.

For example, Martin Daubney, the former editor of popular UK lads' mag Loaded dismissed the possibility that magazines do or should educate young people about sex. Sexist content in lads' mags is often characterized as merely 'ironic' (Benwell, 2003; McKay, Mikosza, & Hutchins, 2005) allowing editors to negate the possibility that their magazines influence readers, and to counter-argue that their critics have simply missed the intended joke (Jackson, Stevenson, & Brooks, 2001).

A reasonable question here is whether the readers on the lads' mags are taking their contents as ironic -- whether they are in on the joke that the critics are missing. However, even if they understand the articles and advice as humorous rather than serious, Horvath et al. mention that there may still be effects on the reader that are worth exploring:

Sexist humour may be interpreted as harmless irony by some men and not by others. For example, men who are more sexist find sexist jokes funnier (Eyssel & Bohner, 2007) and disparaging humour about women creates a context in which the expression of sexism becomes the social norm (Ford & Ferguson, 2004; Romero-S´anchez, Dur´an, Carretero-Dios, Megias, & Moya, 2010). For these reasons, editors’ claims about the social consequences of the content of lads’ mags ought not themselves to be taken at face value.

The overarching question posed by this research, then, was "whether lads’ mags may affect readers’ norms, making extreme forms of sexism appear more acceptable to them."

The press coverage in advance of the publication of the paper focused on one piece of the study methodology -- the comparison of statements about women taken from lads' mags with statements about women taken from interviews with convicted rapists. Potentially, this detail might suggest that the researchers were studying whether lads' mags cause readers to become rapists, or whether the lads' magazines are the primary source of attitudes young men have about women or sex. Neither of these is an accurate description of the hypothesis the Horvath et al. research was testing.

Why the research drew on the statements from the rapists is that these might be taken as a plausible extreme as far as views men articulate about women. If they really do represent an extreme, then they should exist in a separate category from views lads' mags articulate about women -- or, perhaps, in instances where lads' mags present views that on their face resemble statements made by rapists, the lads' mags might present them in a way that clearly signals that they are intended ironically rather than literally.

Of course, Horvath et al. mention, there is research that suggests rapists have learned to make their own views seem less extreme:

For example, rapists learn a culturally derived vocabulary of motive that diminishes their responsibility, and normalizes their behaviour. Rapists blame women for their own victimization by describing women as seductresses, by claiming that ‘no’ means ‘yes’, by arguing that most women eventually ‘relax and enjoy it’ and by insisting that nice girls do not get raped (Scully & Marolla, 1984). As men who have mastered this vocabulary of diminished responsibility, convicted rapists have much to tell us about how sexual violence becomes possible and how it gets normalized (Scully, 1990). In other words, it appears that lads’ mags and rapists might share the commonality of using techniques to neutralize derogatory sexism.

A key difference, though, is that it's less socially acceptable to look to a convicted rapist for advice about women and sexuality than to look to a lads' mag for such advice. So, if lads' mags actually were to have the effect of normalizing the kinds of views of women that rapists express -- of making them seem like part of reasonable dating advice to young men -- that might be useful to know. And, indeed, that's what Horvath et al. set out to discover.

What exactly is at stake in normalizing a particular set of views is itself a contentious issue, so in our discussion of this research it's worth acknowledging some logical possibilities: Possibly having a particular set of attitudes towards women -- even sexist attitudes towards women -- is completely independent from acting on those attitudes, for example by committing rape. Possibly having a particular set of sexist attitudes towards women might not create any harms for the women with whom one shares a society. Possibly expressing a particular set of sexist attitudes towards women might not create any harms for the women with whom one shares a society.

I am not a psychologist, but I reckon there is a body of research that explores the connections between attitudes, actions, and downstream harms of various sorts. Moreover, I reckon that Horvath et al. are fairly well versed in what that body of research has shown. However, it is important to be clear that they are not making claims here that men in their study who identify strongly with the sexist attitudes voiced by convicted rapists (or by lads' mags) will themselves commit rapes, nor even act on that identification in any particular way. What exactly we can expect downstream from the normalization of a particular set of attitudes about women, in other words, is a question not directly addressed by this research.

Let's look at the two connected studies in the reported research to see what questions this paper does address.

Study 1: Does attributing derogatory sexist comments to lads' mags make it easier for young men to identify with them?

The researchers hypothesized that the men who were the subjects of this study would identify more strongly with quotes that were labeled as coming from lads' mags than with quotes that were labeled as coming from interviews with convicted rapists. They also hypothesized that more sexist men would identify more strongly with the quotes from both sources than would less sexist men.

The researchers administered questionnaires to a sample of 92 men (between 18 and 46 years of age, with average age just under 23 years old) recruited at a university in the UK. The study participants got to complete the questionnaire in private and submit it to a locked box before debriefing. The researcher with whom they met before filling out the questionnaire was female; one wonders what kind of effect, if any, this had on how subjects completed the questionnaires.

All the questionnaires had some shared sections: the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI, Glick & Fiske, 1996), which is a measure of both "hostile" and "benevolent" sexist beliefs about women, and the Acceptance of Modern Myths about Sexual Aggression Scale (AMMSA, Gerger, Kley, Bohner, & Siebler, 2007). For both of these, subjects indicated agreement or disagreement with items on a Likert scale. Horvath et al. also included a four-item measure of the Perceived Legitimacy of Lads’ Mags (designed specifically for this study), which had participants indicate agreement (on a scale of 0 to 5) with the following items:

Lads' mags are a positive way of learning about sexual relationships.
Reading lads' mags is something every young male should do.
Lads' mags have provided me with accurate and informative information about the opposite sex.
Lads' mags educate young men accurately on society’s gender roles.

However, the first section of the questionnaire came in one of three different versions. Each of these versions included eight short quotes from editorials and articles from four lads' mags with high circulations in the UK and eight short quotes from verbatim transcripts of interviews with convicted rapists. For these sixteen quotes, subjects were asked to indicate (on a scale of 1 to 7) how much they identified with the quote (from do not identify at all to identify strongly). In one version of the questionnaire, the sources of each of the quotes were correctly attributed (i.e., quotes from lads' mags were labeled as being from lads' mags, quotes from convicted rapists were labeled as being from convicted rapists). In the second version of the questionnaire, the attributions were switched (i.e., quotes from lads' mags were labeled as being from convicted rapists, quotes from convicted rapists were labeled as being from lads' mags). In the third version of the questionnaire, the quotes were presented on their own with no attribution of their sources.

In case you're curious, here's the table from the paper with the quotes:

Table 1. Quotes sourced from lads’ mags and from convicted rapists used as stimuli in Studies 1 and 2

Quotes sourced from convicted rapists
1 There’s a certain way you can tell that a girl wants to have sex . . . The way they dress, they flaunt themselves.
2 Some girls walk around in short-shorts . . . showing their body off . . . It just starts a man thinking that if he gets something like that, what can he do with it? . . .
3 What burns me up sometimes about girls is dick-teasers. They lead a man on and then shut him off right there.
4 You know girls in general are all right. But some of them are bitches . . . The bitches are the type that . . . need to have it stuffed to them hard and heavy.
5 You’ll find most girls will be reluctant about going to bed with somebody or crawling in the back seat of a car . . . But you can usually seduce them, and they’ll do it willingly.
6 Girls ask for it by wearing these mini-skirts and hotpants . . . they’re just displaying their body . . . Whether they realise it or not they’re saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got a beautiful body, and it’s yours if you want it.
7 Some women are domineering, but I think it’s more or less the man who should put his foot down. The man is supposed to be the man. If he acts the man, the woman won’t be domineering
8 I think if a law is passed, there should be a dress code . . . When girls dress in those short skirts and things like that, they’re just asking for it.

Quotes sourced from lads’ mags.
1 A girl may like anal sex because it makes her feel incredibly naughty and she likes feeling like a dirty slut. If this is the case, you can try all sorts of humiliating acts to help live out her filthy fantasy.
2 Mascara running down the cheeks means they’ve just been crying, and it was probably your fault . . . but you can cheer up the miserable beauty with a bit of the old in and out.
3 Filthy talk can be such a turn on for a girl . . . no one wants to be shagged by a mouse . . . A few compliments won’t do any harm either . . . ‘I bet you want it from behind you dirty whore’ . . .
4 Escorts . . . they know exactly how to turn a man on. I’ve given up on girlfriends. They don’t know how to satisfy me, but escorts do.
5 There’s nothing quite like a woman standing in the dock accused of murder in a sex game gone wrong . . . The possibility of murder does bring a certain frisson to the bedroom.
6 You do not want to be caught red-handed . . . go and smash her on a park bench. That used to be my trick.
7 Girls love being tied up . . . it gives them the chance to be the helpless victim.
8 I think girls are like plasticine, if you warm them up you can do anything you want with them.

The researchers found that there was a high correlation between identifying with the quotes (from both kinds of sources) and scoring high on the ASI (a measure of sexism), AMMSA (a measure of acceptance of sexual aggression myths), and the Perceived Legitimacy of Lads’ Mags. The overall level of identification was not especially high (averaging just under 3 on a scale of 1 to 7), and how strongly the subjects identified with the quotes overall was not significantly different in the three versions of the questionnaire (with correct attribution, false attribution, or no attribution of the sources of the quotes).

As predicted, no matter what the actual source of quotes, the men in the study identified with them more strongly when they were labeled as coming from lads' mags and less strongly when they were labeled as coming from convicted rapists.

Surprisingly, though, the subjects identified significantly more strongly with the quotes taken from interviews with convicted rapists than they did with the quotes from lads' mags -- and this was the case across all three attribution conditions. In other words, the subjects identified more strongly with quotes from rapists than quotes from lads' mags even when they had correct information about which were which.

So, Study 1 found a correlation between a subject's measured sexism and that subject's identification with both kinds of quotes. It also found that labeling quotes from lads' mags as being from lads' mags increased the level of reported identification with them, while labeling them as being from convicted rapists decreased the level of reported identification. Mislabeling the quotes from rapists as being from lads' mags significantly increased subjects' level of reported identification with them, but the subjects identified more strongly with the quotes from rapists when their source was misattributed, unattributed, or correctly attributed. The researchers find these results

consistent with the possibility that lads’ mags might normalize hostile sexism, because sexism appears more acceptable to young men when lads’ mags appear to be its source. Unexpectedly, the participants also identified more with the rapists’ quotes than the lads’ mags quotes. Jointly these findings suggest the possibility that the legitimation strategies that rapists deploy when they talk about women are more familiar to these young men than we had anticipated.

Horvath et al. point out one possibility for the unexpectedly higher identification with the rapists' quotes, namely that the sample of quotes from the lads' mags were more extreme than those taken from the interviews with the convicted rapists. This might make a certain sort of sense: magazines are competing for eyeballs and being extreme might help with that, while rapists may have an investment in justifying their actions and not coming across as monsters. Still, at the very least this finding undermines the assumption that the view of women presented by lads' mags is less extreme than that voiced by rapists.

Study 2: Can young men and women reliably distinguish the source of descriptions of women from lads' mags and from convicted rapists?

The second study used the same 16 short quotes that appeared on the questionnaires in Study 1, eight from lads' mags and eight from interviews with convicted rapists. Here, each of the quotes appeared on its own laminated card with no information about its source.

The subjects (20 men and 20 women between the ages of 19 and 30, with an average age just above 23) were presented with three sorting tasks using the 16 cards. In the first, they were asked to arrange the 16 quotes in order from most degrading towards women to least degrading towards women. In the second, the task was to sort the cards into two stacks, one containing quotes the subject considered degrading towards women and the other the subjects considered not degrading towards women. For the third sorting task, the subjects were told that some of the quotes came from lads' mags and that some came from interviews with convicted rapists, and they were asked to guess which quotes came from which sources. For this third task, the researchers asked the subjects to explain what it was about the quotes that made them think they came from the source they guessed.

In addition to these sorting tasks, each of the subjects in Study 2 completed the Perceived Legitimacy of Lads' Mags items.

The results of the first sorting task (ranking the quotes in a continuum of how degrading subjects found them to women) were that on average, the quotes from the lads' mags were ranked as more degrading than those from the convicted rapists.

In the second sorting task, the subjects ranked an average of 11.65 of the 16 quotes as derogatory (and an average of 4.35 of them as not derogatory).

And, in the task which asked the subjects to guess whether each quote came from a lads' mag or from an interview with a convicted rapist, on average the subjects identified slightly more of the quotes to rapist than to lads' mags, and the subjects had a hard time correctly identifying the sources of the quotes. About 56% of the time they correctly guessed a quote's source as a lads' mag (which meant they incorrectly guessed it was from a rapist about 44% of the time), and they correctly guessed the source of the quotes from rapists only about 55% of the time. In other words, they distinguished the sources of the quotes at a rate only slightly better than chance.

These results, by the way, showed no correlation with attitudes measured by the Perceived Legitimacy of Lads' Mags items.

The paper includes an interesting discussion of how subjects explained their sorting of the quotes into the ones they thought were from rapists and the ones they thought were from lads' mags:

Many participants drew upon the idea that lads’ mags printed views that fell within the range of what men might ‘normally’ say while those attributed to rapists were too offensive, or too violent to fall within this category. Participants also drew on the ideas that lads’ mags give advice to young men, and are humorous. Others drew upon the ideas that rapists use ‘techniques of neutralization’ to excuse their actions (Gilbert & Webster, 1982), and that rapists lack understanding of how to interpret sexual refusal (Frith, 2009). ... Finally, we aimed to see if participants expressed evaluations of the quotes themselves. While most participants described the quotes negatively or neutrally, explicit agreement with victim-blaming ideas was evident in a few instances (N = 5, e.g., ‘ . . . some girls do lead men on. . . the way they dress all the time, in really short skirts . . . and really really low tops, so what do they expect? They want men to look at them though don’t they?’ Female Participant).

Horvath et al. note that the nature of the sorting tasks the subjects were asked to complete in Study 2 may well have affected how sensitive those subjects were to instances of sexism in the quotes.

The upshot of Study 2 seems to be that despite the subjects' descriptions of lads' mags as "normal, funny, and advice giving, but not too violent or offensive", they could not reliably distinguish quotes from lads' mags from those from convicted rapists, and moreover the subjects ranked the quotes that were actually from lads' mags as more derogatory. Their evaluation of the quotes, in other words, seemed to undermine their theory of lads' mags as closer to the cultural mainstream and of the views of rapists as an extreme fringe.

Overall, what can we conclude from the results of these two studies? The researchers note that the views of women's sexuality articulated by both convicted rapists and lads' mags are similar enough that subjects couldn't reliably discern their source, and that these views were ranked as more derogatory than not. They also note that when a quote was identified as from a lads' mag (no matter what its actual source), subjects were more likely to say that they identified with the view it expressed than if the same quote was identified as coming from a rapist. This in itself is not especially surprising; who wants to sound like a rapist? However, it is a finding that seems at odds with the subjects' own view that "a boundary can be detected between the overlapping discourse of lads’ mags and convicted rapists, such that the former is ‘normal’ and the latter is ‘extreme’."

Here, the researchers double back to the disavowals made by editors of lads' mags, that their contents are ironic and that their readers are in on the joke. They write:

While magazine editors deny their publications are a source of social influence, our studies suggest that the ‘mainstream’ status of such magazines allows them to legitimize views about women that young men might otherwise consider unacceptable. In other words, the status of lads’ mags as legitimate mainstream publications may lend their contents performative force (Butler, 1997) to bring about change in the range of sexist opinions with which young men will identify. People are sometimes threatened when their views overlap with those of groups they dislike (Pool, Wood, & Leck, 1998). Here, young people struggled to correctly attribute the sources of the quotes (Study 2) and young men identified more with the quotes when they were attributed to lads’ mags (Study 1). Jointly, these two findings suggest that sexist talk about women in lads’ mags may be something more than ineffectual harmless ironic fun; these magazines’ very status as ‘mainstream’ publications may afford them the power to normalize very egregious sexist beliefs about women.

The research here suggests that views with which a young man might not identify just on the basis of their content could secure strengthened identification by virtue of appearing in a lads' mag. These magazines, in other words, confer a certain amount of cultural credibility on the views they present. This effect seems even more likely among young people looking to such magazines to educate them about sex, relationships, and appropriate gender roles. And, it seems possible that the presentation of views that are extreme en face in a context that is presumed by its consumers to be mainstream could shift perceptions of what kinds of attitudes are normal.

Who exactly is the audience for the lads' mags? Is it the young men who already have strongly sexist views (as did the subjects in Study 1 who identified most strongly with the quotes extracted from the lads' mags)? If so, this seems to argue against the editors' claims that their articles and editorials are intended to be ironic. The people identifying with the views expressed in the quotes are taking them literally.

If the intended audience is instead young men who are not identifying literally with the quotes -- and if these young men are looking to lads' mags for guidance about how to interact with women -- then how exactly do the pieces from which these quotes were extracted work? Do the articles and editorials actually shift the readers to a stronger identification with the claims? Since such identification is correlated with higher levels of sexism, achieving this kind of shift would undercut the claim that these magazines are offering harmless fun. Or, are there unmistakeable signals in the lads' mags that the views they present of women, as literally expressed, are to be rejected?

At the very least, there is nothing in the quotes taken from the lads' mags in this research that marked them as "ironic" for study participants. This suggests that regardless of authorial intent, it's possibilite that some significant portion of these magazines' readerships don't see them as ironic, either.

7 responses so far

College students face a crummy future: Occupy Wall Street inspires campus activism.

Oct 06 2011 Published by Janet D. Stemwedel under Academia, Current events, Politics, Social issues, Teaching and learning

Inside Higher Ed reports that college students across the U.S. have been staging protests in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations:

In true Occupy Wall Street fashion, the campus protesters didn’t have any specific demands. Instead, they spoke out against the general issues that have long plagued students: high debt, rising tuition, the privatization of public education and uneven distribution of wealth.

At the State University of New York at Albany walkout, about half of the 300 or so protesters managed to secure an hour to express their concerns to President George Philip in an open forum in the administration building. He reportedly agreed with some of their qualms, but upset many when he told them, “I’m not giving you back my pension.” The president of the New School, David E. Van Zandt, meanwhile, issued a supportive statement that encouraged students “to devise peaceful, practical solutions to longstanding problems of inequality.”

The article considers how many students at various campuses did (or did not) walk out of classes or turn up for demonstrations, and why that might be (e.g., it's easier to indicate on Facebook that you'll attend an event than it might be actually to attend it -- especially with midterm exams looming). Still, in an age where we old farts tend to shake our heads at student apathy, there seems to be growing a palpable sense of discontent that may bubble into action. From the article:

Lettie Stratton, a St. Lawrence senior, said that regardless of who turned out to protest, many could relate.

“Our overall goal was really just to create a dialogue and get people talking about what matters to them,” Stratton said. “As students, we’re part of the 99 percent," she said, referring to the Occupy Wall Street slogan describing the vast majority of the American population who aren’t super-rich. "Crippled with student loans, we’re already behind before we even have a chance to set foot in the real world.

“I think a big part of this is speaking out against ignorance and realizing that 99 percent can make a change. We also want to make sure that it doesn’t stop today – we want people to keep talking about it. It’s not just like, ‘Oh, the protest is over, so let’s go back to doing nothing.' ”

For those of you who aren't dealing with college students on a daily basis, it is important to recognize the context in which students are raising these objections. These are not the perennial student gripes about not having a plan for what to do after graduation, or not being able to find a job immediately after graduation that feels like a career, if not a calling.

As much as the economy has not been improving for those of us who are not CEOs, it has been even worse for college students.

It's not just that the so-called "job creators" have created precious few jobs, but that employers are now explicitly seeking to hire job applicants who already have jobs. (The logic of this strikes me as of a piece with banks that only want to lend money to people who already have money.) The young people who went to college to prepare themselves to enter the work force are, of course, less likely to already have jobs (since they went to college to acquire the skills and credentials and such to get jobs). In most cases, the jobs they're working while they are students are not the jobs they hope to be working for the rest of their adult lives.

Basically, we have a generation that has been urged to go to college because it was purportedly a reliable route to a middle-class standard of living. No one warned them that the middle class might be squeezed nearly out of existence.

Depending on your views about the point of a college education (here's how I described mine five years ago, in the shadow of the dot-com bust), you might extend special sympathy to the students who opted for the "prudent" route of selecting some practical major that helped them acquired a focused set of skills and credentials that could plug them right in to some existing career path. They might have wanted to major in something less practical, like philosophy or history or English (or even a more theoretical science), but they wanted to know that they'd be employable immediately after graduation.

The lack of even such well-defined jobs must make recent graduates feel pretty cheated.

Well, we older people might reply, at least they (or their liberal arts major compatriots) got the enrichment of a college education, which is something a lot of working stiffs (and unemployed folks) never get. Indeed, you might expect me to say something like this, given my earlier defense of "impractical" majors:

A job is nice. So is political power, a fancy chariot, hangers-on. But you can have all these things and still not be happy or fulfilled. And, if your happiness depends on having such things, you're pretty vulnerable to sudden reversals.

So how can a human find fulfillment that isn't all about having lots of stuff, or a high-paying job, or a top-rated sit-com?

Well, what do you have that's really yours? What is the piece of your life that no one can take away?

You have your mind. You have the ability to think about things, to experience the world, to decide what matters to you and how you want to pursue it. You have your sense of curiousity and wonder when you encounter something new and unexpected, and your sense of satisfaction when you figure something out. You have the power to imagine ways the world could be different. You even have the ability (the responsibility?) to try to make the world different.

This is what I think a college education should give you: lots of hands-on experience using your mind so you know different ways you can think about things and you start to figure out what you care about.

I still think a college education should give you experience using your mind in lots of different ways, and that this does impart skills (although broad ones, not just narrow ones) that can be of use in the workplace as well as in life.

However, I also wrote:

There is always the danger of going overboard with the idea that the life of the mind is the only life that matters, which could be used as an excuse to get people to pipe down about truly horrible material conditions. And, a mind is not invulnerable to certain kinds of threats, whether natural or man-made. Still, I'd rather have a supple mind than a whole bucketful of skills so specialized they might only be useful for another six months.

Now, we have a situation where even the most practical majors cannot count on employment at graduation. We've created an economy where people who have taken all the prudent steps to enter the world of work -- often while assuming significant debt to earn their degrees -- cannot find jobs!

(Even at public universities, student debt is a big deal. When state budgets get tight, student fees go up. Cutting instructional staff means fewer sections of courses students need to graduate -- which means more years in school and more term bills to pay. Plus, more and more of those courses needed to graduate are being shifted outside of the regular academic calendar to summer sessions and winter sessions. These special sessions don't receive the same level of support from the state, so students have to pay a lot more to take the same classes in them -- essentially, privatizing some of the instruction at public universities.)

It strikes me that we, as a society, owe college students and recent college graduates more.

We should want our government, and our society more broadly, to take care of its members (including its youth) at least as well as its banks.

It is reasonable for the youth to want people in government, in the private sector, in the media (hello corporate ownership) to hear their voices, their grievances, and their hopes for the future even if they can't spare thousands of dollars to make campaign donations, or to incorporate.

If Mitt Romney is right that corporations are people, what he didn't mention is that many of them are legal persons that suck -- sucking all the attention of our policy makers, all the best tax benefits, all the reflexive good will of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, what have these legal persons done for young people lately besides jacking up the interest on their student loans and the fees on their debit cards?

Young people are entitled to their anger and frustration, and they are reasonable in recognizing the need to go outside normal channels to get the attention of those with the power to change things. I'm hopeful that this leads them to pursue some concerted action when election time comes around -- to hack our system and start dismantling the structures that currently ensure that no matter which of the two major parties wins, the corporations can keep on keeping on.

So ... where do the faculty stand in all of this? Where should we stand?

I think we need to be committed to delivering the highest quality education we can to our students given the resources we have. (We do have to recognize, though, that with the resources we have right now, we may not be able to deliver the education we think our students deserve without hurting ourselves.)

We need also to be honest with our students about how crummy the economy is, and how dismal their job prospects may be.

Further, we need to do what we can to change the conditions that make the economic future our students face so very dismal. That responsibility doesn't belong solely to the people teaching college students, though -- it belongs to the generations who came before them, especially those who were able to parlay a college education into a middle-class existence.

(We also owe it to people in our society who don't go to college to provide conditions for them to live decent lives ... but at least they're not laboring under the expectation that their education is a ticket to economic stability.)

Some of us have seen already that the folks at the top of the power pyramid will try to play students and faculty off against each other -- to make it look like a forced choice between delivering promised pensions to faculty and raising student fees, for example. We owe it to ourselves and each other to resist this zero-sum-game framing that exempts administrators and corporations from sharing sacrifice in meaningful ways.

Philosophers may have a well-earned reputation for corrupting the youth, but we have no interest in eating our young. We must find a way to go forward and build a society that has room for us all.

* * * * *

If you want to support the younger generations of our society in a tangible way, please consider donating to a project on my DonorsChoose giving page. Even a few dollars can bring a public school classroom closer to providing the kind of engaging math and science education that our kids deserve.

8 responses so far

Equal Pay Day 2011: there is power in a union.

Apr 12 2011 Published by Janet D. Stemwedel under Current events, Politics, Social issues, Women and science

You may have noticed from recent posts on the Scientopia frontpage that today is Equal Pay Day, the day that marks the number of excess days (past December 31, 2010) that an average woman needs to work to catch up to the average man's yearly earnings.

The evidence suggests that women in the U.S. are paid less than men for the same work. For example, this recent story from Inside Higher Education:

The gender gap in faculty pay cannot be explained completely by the long careers of male faculty members, the relative productivity of faculty members, or where male and female faculty members tend to work -- even if those and other factors are part of the picture, according to research being released this week at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association.

When all such factors are accounted for, women earn on average 6.9 percent less than do men in similar situations in higher education, says the paper, by Laura Meyers, a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington. The finding could be significant because many colleges have explained gender gaps by pointing out that the senior ranks of the professoriate are still dominated by people who were rising through the ranks in periods of overt sexism and so are lopsidedly male, or that men are more likely than women to teach in certain fields that pay especially well.

(Bold emphasis added.)

I submit to you that paying someone less (or more) for the same job when the only difference is the gender of the person doing the job is unfair. (Those who take issue with this claim are invited to offer a positive argument for paying women less than men for the same work.)

Of course, it strikes me that the public enthusiasm in the U.S. for paying someone a fair wage in the first place is on the decline. It's true that we have the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, but we also have a case before the Supreme Court in which Walmart seems to be arguing that, owing to its size, its women employees ought not to be certified as a class in a class action gender discrimination lawsuit against the retailer. (Maybe the slogan here is "too big for you to make us be fair"?) Indeed, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was prompted by a Supreme Court decision that held that:

employers cannot be sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act over race or gender pay discrimination if the claims are based on decisions made by the employer 180 days ago or more.

In her dissent, read from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg set out the precarious position in which this left women who were subject to pay discrimination.

Joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer, she argued against applying the 180-day limit to pay discrimination, because discrimination often occurs in small increments over large periods of time. Furthermore, the pay information of fellow workers is typically confidential and unavailable for comparison. Ginsburg argued that pay discrimination is inherently different from adverse actions, such as termination. Adverse actions are obvious, but small pay discrepancy is often difficult to recognize until more than 180 days of the pay change.

Meanwhile, across the U.S. governors and state legislatures seem to be doing what they can to dismantle labor unions, especially public employee labor unions. I would argue that if you care about fair pair for women, you ought to be concerned about efforts to weaken or eliminate unions.

Let's look at some numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2010 11.9% of the total workforce consisted of union members, with 13.1% of the workforce represented by unions (i.e., they were either union members or working in jobs covered by a union or an employee association contract). Looking at a gender breakdown for 2010 (when the numbers show men making up 51.2% of the workforce and women 48.8%), 12.6% of employed men were union members (with 13.8% of employed men represented by unions) and 11.1% of employed women were union members (with 12.4% of employed women represented by unions).

How much of a difference does this make to salaries? The median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers for 2010 stack up like this: The mean for the whole workforce was $747 overall, but it was $917 for union members, $911 for workers represented by unions, and $717 for non-union workers. The average man in the workforce was earning $824 a week -- $967 if he was a union member, $964 if he was represented by a union, and $789 if he was a non-union worker. Meanwhile, the average woman in the workforce was earning $669 a week -- $856 if she was a union member, $847 if she was represented by a union, and $639 if she was a non-union worker.

First, you'll notice that, in the aggregate, salaries are higher for union members (by 23%) and employees represented by a union (22%), and lower for non-union workers (by 4.0%). But let's take a look at what kind of difference unions make to pay by gender.

In the aggregate, the men's mean weekly earnings were 10% above the mean, the women's 10% below the mean. For non-union workers, the men's mean weekly earnings were 10% above the mean, the women's 11% below the mean. However, among employees represented by unions, men's mean weekly salaries were 5.8% above the mean, women's 7.0% below it, and for union members, men's mean weekly salaries were 5.5% above the mean, women's 6.7% below it.

That's still not pay equality. But workers who are union members or represented by unions have less of a pay gap between men and women.

From the point of view of working our way towards equal pay, unions seem to be doing something to close that gap. This is something to keep in mind when considering the future of unions in the U.S. workforce.

Other Equal Pay Day posts around Scientopia:

WTF?! "Equal" Pay Day
Equal Pay Day
$16,819 for a Penis
Penis Parity Day
Good Hair Day, Fair Pay Day
Equal Pay Day Epic FAIL

6 responses so far

The #scimom project: We are here!

Apr 09 2011 Published by Janet D. Stemwedel under Blogospheric science, Politics, Scientist/layperson relations, Social issues, Women and science

This post is a contribution to the #scimom blog project, which its originator David Wescott describes as follows:

Online moms have extraordinary power – far more than most people realize. Companies listen to them. Policy makers listen to them. Moms make the overwhelming majority of decisions in life – what to buy, who to vote for, when to get health care, and so on. They do most of the work. They do most of the child-rearing. They're the boss. The problem is a lot of online moms feel labeled, disrespected, and misunderstood.

Science bloggers push the boundaries of ideas. They give us facts, and theories, and great stories about discovery. They celebrate the pursuit of knowledge and help us understand all kinds of important things. The problem is a lot of science bloggers also feel labeled, disrespected, and misunderstood.

I think if moms are making decisions based on the right information and with the right context – the kind of context you can get from science bloggers – the world will be a much better place. And I think if science bloggers understand the perspectives of the REAL influential people in our society, they can help make sure their work has an even bigger impact than it already does.

Of course I know there are plenty of people who are scientists AND moms. But even those mom/science bloggers tend to stick to one community or the other. In my observations over a few years now, these two online communities remain fairly isolated from each other. So I've been working on an idea to get the two communities talking. Here it is, plain and simple.

1) if you're a mom blogger, write a post this month that has something to do about science or science blogging. It could be anything -your love (or hatred) of science or a particular scientist, a hope you have for your child, an appropriate role model, whatever you like. Just make it personal and relevant to your life.

2) if you're a science blogger, write a post this month that has something to do with parenting or parent blogging. Maybe it's something your parent did to get you interested in science. Maybe it's on the science of parenting. Maybe it's your love (or skepticism) of something in the mom-o-sphere. Just make it personal and relevant to your life.

3) if you're a mom AND a scientist, then just write a post this month about how awesome it is to be a mom and a scientist or something like that. Maybe suggest a role model, or a story about why both roles are important to you. Just make it personal and relevant to your life. As far as I'm concerned you make an awesome role model and people should know about you.

4) ask another blogger in your online community to participate. You can call them out in your post like it's a blog meme or you can ask them any way you like.

5) tag your post #scimom and I will keep track of the posts and link to them at Science for Citizens and here as well. If you want to tweet a link to your post, just add the hashtag #sci-mom and we'll keep a tally so people can find relevant posts to read.

6) read a post from a blogger in the OTHER community (i.e. if you're a mom blogger read a participating science blogger's post and vice versa) and leave a comment.

I can remember the moment that I realized there was a presumptive rift between science bloggers and mommy bloggers. It was at ScienceOnline 2010, during an Ignite talk in which some dude was carrying on about how powerful (yet how sadly ill-informed about science) mommy bloggers were as a group.

I believe it was Dr. Isis, who was also in attendance for this jaw-dropping proclamation, who let fly the first profanity (sotto voce, of course -- do not doubt that Dr. Isis has manners). But I had a profanity of my own at the ready, for verily, eye contact with the domestic and laboratory goddess confirmed that I had heard what I thought I had heard -- the dude at the podium had essentially just asserted that we didn't exist.

Because, see, we had thought that we were science bloggers, what with blogging about cool scientific findings and strategies for teaching science, learning science, navigating a scientific career, and living as a scientist in a society populated by lots of non-scientists, and that we were mommy bloggers, what with blogging about the joys and challenges of juggling the young humans we were raising with our careers. But apparently, we either didn't count as mommy bloggers (because of all that science content) or as science bloggers (because of the encroachment of all that kid stuff). No true science blogger or mommy blogger would do it like we were doing it.

Actually, the problem as I see it was that the guy on the podium, trying to make the world a better place by encouraging the science bloggers to reach out and educate the mommy bloggers, was operating from an overly narrow picture of each of these groups. Sadly, experience suggests that he is not the only one.

I have had my status as a "real" science blogger questioned because I don't just blog about scientific research (particularly as reported in the peer reviewed scientific literature). In particular, my "Friday Sprog Blogging" posts have been singled out as "fluff" that doesn't belong on a proper science blog. It is true that these anecdotes and transcripts of conversations of my offspring do not undergo rigorous peer review before I post them, but I suspect that the real worry is that having conversations with kids about science is viewed as less important than making new scientific knowledge, or than reporting on such new knowledge in a blog post. Talking to children, after all, is still mostly seen as women's work. How important could it be?

This is a good question to ask oneself when bemoaning the public's lack of interest in or engagement with science. Those members of the public used to be somebody's kids.

At the same time, I will confess that there have been moments when I have not felt entirely welcome in the mommy precincts of blogtopia. Perhaps part of this comes from having a blog with a mostly professional focus on days that are not Friday. But part of it may be connected to the "mommy wars" that the mainstream media gin up on a regular basis. There is a presumption that factions of mommies are engaged in heated battle over The Right Way To Do It. This imagines that each choice a mommy makes is simultaneously a criticism of those who chose otherwise -- whether those choices have to do with taking on primary responsibility for child rearing and housework in the home or going out to a job, choosing public school or private school or homeschooling or unschooling, feeling torn about daycare or deliriously happy when we drop off our little darlings.

I would like to inform the mainstream media and my fellow mothers that my choices are my choices, not judgments of anyone else's choices. Heck, I'm as likely to judge my own choices harshly as anyone else's. But what can you do when you're operating with less than perfect information (as we all are, all the time)? The best that you can.

This is not to say that there aren't moments when I share a strong point of view. In particular, a post I wrote about the ethics of not vaccinating one's kids provoked a vigorous response -- from science bloggers and mommy bloggers alike. (The science bloggers seemed to agree that I was being too nice, while at least some mommy bloggers seemed to think I was either in the bag for big pharma or thoroughly brainwashed by the medical establishment.)

But here's the thing: I've found that my own parenting has required thinking hard, finding reliable sources of information, being willing to step away from sources of information that haven't stood up to scrutiny, figuring out how to balance long-term and short-term considerations, ... really, what we're talking about here is critical thinking. I reckon that women are no worse at critical thinking than your average member of the general public, and I reckon that women with kids have serious incentive to be better than average at critical thinking, since someone else's welfare may depend on it. (I'm not the only one who thinks critical thinking ought to be part of parenting.)

Mommy bloggers have to wade through the gender smog of our culture that tells them that women in general and mommies in particular are presumed to be silly, frivolous creatures, lacking in intelligence and objectivity (not to mention a sense of humor), a special interest that normal human beings can marginalize as necessary to get stuff done.

Women blogging about science often face similar presumptions.

None of this is to say that there are no mommy bloggers, or woman science bloggers, who aren't always on top of their critical thinking game, or who are mistaken about the facts, or who are mean, or what have you. But I submit to you that these failings are not gender based -- that there are plenty of male bloggers who fail at critical thinking, fact-checking, and human kindness.

Having kids and caring about science are not mutually incompatiblestates of being. And either (or both) of these states can be combined with being a woman, and with blogging.

We are far too diverse for any stereotype of science bloggers or of mommy bloggers to describe us all with any fidelity.

And, despite suggestions that mommy bloggers and science bloggers are two distinct groups, many of us are both. We are here. If science bloggers want to reach mommy bloggers, the first step may be to see us as we really are, rather than trying to communicate with who you imagine mommy bloggers to be.

* * * * *
As with all meme-like things, if you want to be tagged, you are. In the meantime, let me point out a few other mommy/science bloggers whose blogs I enjoy reading:

Federal funding and Planned Parenthood.

Apr 08 2011 Published by Janet D. Stemwedel under Current events, Politics, Social issues

Federal funding for Planned Parenthood is apparently a serious bone of contention in the budget slug-fest that threatens a government shutdown at midnight tonight. So it's worth having a look at just what that federal funding does (and does not) do.

From Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check:

All (let me repeat this: ALL) of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding goes toward basic health care. Public funds account for roughly a third of Planned Parenthood’s $1 billion annual budget. These funds come from local, state and federal sources, but 90 percent come from Medicaid and other federal sources. Federal funds pay only for cancer screenings, birth control, family planning visits, annual exams, testing for HIV and other STIs, and other basic care.

Moreover, Planned Parenthood centers provide access to those who otherwise have NO other options. Seventy-three percent of Planned Parenthood health centers are in rural or medically underserved areas.
Planned Parenthood provides primary and preventive health care to many who otherwise would have nowhere to turn. According to the Guttmacher Institute, six in ten patients who receive care at a family planning health center like Planned Parenthood consider it their main source of health care. And for every dollar spent on this preventive care, we save four dollars in health costs averted by not preventing adverse outcomes. ...

What will happen if Planned Parenthood is defunded? It is very simple. More women will die of otherwise preventable or treatable breast and cervical cancers and potentially of complications of infections such as HIV; more women will have unintended pregnancies leading to more women seeking abortions; fewer women raped or experiencing gender-based violence in their homes at the hands of intimate partners will get health care or referrals to shelters (of which of course there will be few anyway because funds for those also are being cut). More women who rely on Planned Parenthood to identify conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes will not get necessary referrals for treatment. More families will suffer.

You may recall that since 1976 the Hyde Amendment has barred the use of federal funds to pay for abortions.

Just so we're clear about what's at issue.

4 responses so far

How can you have a university without a philosophy department?

Apr 06 2011 Published by Janet D. Stemwedel under Academia, Current events, Philosophy, Politics, Social issues

It's no secret to readers of this blog (or residents of these United States who have been paying attention to the world that exists more than six inches from their faces) that the last few years have been rough for state budgets, and that the budget woes are especially noticeable for state university systems.

A recent case in point: owing to budget shortfalls in Nevada, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is poised to eliminate its Philosophy Department entirely. The current chair of that department, Todd Edwin Jones, has an eloquent piece in the Boston Review that explains some of the reasons that this budgetary strategy is likely to impoverish the UNLV educational experience. He writes:

Philosophy has prompted confusion and anger ever since Socrates, one of the first practitioners of the discipline, was sentenced to death in 399 B.C.E. for “corrupting the youth.” Puzzlement over why people study philosophy has only grown since Socrates’ era. It is not surprising that in hard economic times, when young people are figuring out how best to prepare themselves for the world, many state college administrators and the taxpayers they serve believe that offering classes in philosophy is a luxury they can’t afford.

Yet people think of philosophy as a luxury only if they don’t really understand what philosophy departments do. I teach one of the core areas of philosophy, epistemology: what knowledge is and how we obtain it. People from all walks of life—physicists, physicians, detectives, politicians—can only come to good conclusions on the basis of thoroughly examining the appropriate evidence. And the whole idea of what constitutes good evidence and how certain kinds of evidence can and can’t justify certain conclusions is a central part of what philosophers study. Philosophers look at what can and can’t be inferred from prior claims. They examine what makes analogies strong or weak, the conditions under which we should and shouldn’t defer to experts, and what kinds of things (e.g., inflammatory rhetoric, wishful thinking, inadequate sample size) lead us to reason poorly.

This is not to say that doctors, district attorneys, or drain manufactures cannot make decent assessments without ever taking a philosophy class. It’s also possible for someone to diagnose a case of measles without having gone to medical school. The point is that people will tend to do better if, as part of their education, they’ve studied some philosophy. (This is one of the reasons why undergraduate philosophy majors have the highest average scores on the standard tests used for admission to post-graduate study.) No matter what goals someone has, she can better achieve them through assessing evidence more effectively, which philosophy can teach her. Questions about whether this or that goal is one that is good to have or whether certain goals are consistent with other goals, in turn, concern ethics and values—other subjects that philosophers have long pursued.

Philosophy is sometimes described as revolving around "the big questions" -- what can we know, how sure can we be, what do we value, how can we get along in a world where others have very different values than our own. etc. They aren't big because they are insurmountable (although some of them are wicked-hard). Rather, they are big because they keep coming up in all sorts of contexts, and because getting them right (or more right than not) is important.

Philosophy classes make students grapple with these questions. In the process, they help students develop strategies for dealing with other questions in other context. In the process, philosophy students learn to think carefully, to argue clearly, to evaluate evidence, and to think through sensible objections to their own views. Philosophy students have to become proficient with language, both oral and written. They have to think analytically -- and often, abstractly. Philosophy is a discipline that pushes book nerds to be more math-y (what with the formal logic most philosophy degrees require) and math geeks to be more verbal (with all those essays and class discussions).

Philosophy classes leave students with skills more broadly applicable than dissecting individual axons out of a fruit fly embryo.

Not, of course, that I want to argue that the value of a college education or its component parts lies solely in the delivery of practical jobs skills. (Indeed, I've argued against this view.) But if we want to rank the value of academic departments in terms of the valuable and/or widely transferable job skills they impart to their students, I reckon philosophy will hold its own against the more "practical" disciplines one might name.

These are skills we try just as hard to impart in "service" courses (i.e., those taken largely by students in other majors to fulfill general education or distribution requirements) as in courses aimed at our majors. Moreover, they are skills that our peers in other departments and college recognize that we have some skill in imparting, given that they call upon our expertise to do things like develop ethics curricula for their majors. (It is true that these ethics curricula are often spurred into existence by an outside accreditation agency for a discipline, or by funding agency strings attached to a training grant. This strikes me as more evidence that organizations beyond the ivory tower -- including science and engineering organizations -- identify a central strand of philosophy as important in the training of people entering these non-philosophy disciplines.)

Arguably, philosophy could also provide people with skills that are important to participating effectively -- heck, to participating rationally in the governance of our nation, our states, our communities. As Jones writes:

It’s long been recognized that some tasks are best coordinated by governments, and that to succeed in these efforts, governments have to raise revenue from citizens. Since colonial times, Americans have recognized that education is one of the things that taxpayers need to support (and those were some lean times!). Sadly, over the last several decades, Americans seem to have grown accustomed to thinking that they can have roads, schools, fire departments, and Medicare without fully paying for them. Now that such thinking has proven a fantasy, taxpayers should have responded with a sensible, “We should have been paying for these things, and perhaps we should start.” Instead they have clamored to cut spending—usually on things that don’t directly concern them or whose immediate benefits aren’t apparent. Such thinking leads new Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval to propose a budget with enormous cuts to education (including elementary school). And it leads college administrators to insist that these cuts require eliminating the Philosophy Department.

(Bold emphasis added.)

An attentive philosophy student has a toolbox with which to analyze this magical taxpayer thinking, whether in terms of ethics or political theory, in terms of our ability to think down the links of a causal chain or our difficulties with empathy.

Surely, more facility with critical thinking, not less, is what it will take to bring us through a difficult economic climate.

Of course, when there's not enough money in the budget (and when the populace and/or their elected representative have ruled out tax increases as a way to get enough money), stuff gets cut. Maybe some of that stuff really is of little value, but a lot of the things left to cut are going to hurt someone when they're gone.

Eliminating a philosophy department may not cause the same degree of immediate harm as would, say, cutting off medical aid to the indigent or eliminating free school lunches for poor elementary school kids. But it will cause harm. Maybe that harm will take longer to smack the people of Nevada in the face, but this doesn't mean that the impact won't be devastating.

24 responses so far

Autism Awareness Month: some links.

Apr 06 2011 Published by Janet D. Stemwedel under Current events, Minds and/or brains, Politics, Scientist/layperson relations, Social issues, Uncategorized

Since April is Autism Awareness Month, here are some links to relevant posts worth reading:

At Shakesville, a guest post from LydiaEncyclopedia: Autism Acceptance For Autism Awareness Month:

Autism Awareness Month has been a thorn in my side for as long as I've been an adult. I am at heart an attention-seeker, so you would think having an entire month devoted to people like me would be a joy to behold. But that's the problem behind Autism Awareness Month. It isn't about me. It's not about me—the autistic person. The entire conception of Autism Awareness Month doesn't even revolve around autism, not the kind I have or the kind that anyone I know lives with. The ‘autism' of Autism Awareness Month is a mysterious, esoteric, silent force, which magically swoops into the homes of unsuspecting families, and replaces regular, darling children with empty husks, ala the Changelings of ancient myths.

It's not even entirely about the children who are these so-called "empty shells." The entire focus of Autism Awareness Month seems to be divided between what sad, pathetic existences they must lead, and the potential for a real, neurotypical, normal child that lies just around the corner in the next type of chelation, cure, or therapy. Rather than shedding light on what autism is, Autism Awareness Month has served to cloud autism further in lies, half-truths, pity, and the tyranny of low expectations.

Also, a couple of the links dropped by the excellent Shakesville commenters on that post:

At Square 8, The ever-expanding list of neurotypical privilege.
(H/T codeman38)

At ballastexistenz, Hey, watch it, that’s attached!:

I am going to take cure to refer to removal of all things that have been defined by the medical profession, about my body, as disabilities, in the individual, medical sense that medical people make it. Some of the things I am about to describe may not sound like they are out of the ordinary. They aren’t. But at some point along the line, they have, in my life, become medicalized. For instance, certain particular genes generate things considered (in the medical/individual model of disability) disabling, but also a number of other things that taken alone would be ordinary. Since all those traits stem from the same genes, I have to conclude that they’d have to go as well, even the harmless or relatively ordinary bits. Cure, after all, does not pick and choose, it’s about removing all traces of the thing regarded as “a disability” medically. ...

Cure means rearranging me on everything from the obvious physical level to the genetic level. Rearranging at the genetic level always entails surprises. Pull on one thing and you find it’s attached to ten other things you didn’t even notice and would never have predicted, because you didn’t know that gene dealt with all of those things at once instead of one tidy little thing at a time. Similarly, rearranging the brain and other parts of the body will always have effects you didn’t count on. This is what happens when you mess with systems that are complex and interconnected.

(H/T: KA101)

Finally, some interesting discussions of research:

At Cracking the enigma, How do siblings influence theory of mind development in children with autism?:

Research conducted in the past 15 years or so has consistently shown that children with siblings of a similar age tend to pass tests of "theory of mind" at a younger age than those without siblings. The implication is that the experience of interacting with siblings helps children to develop the concept that other people have minds and that their thoughts and beliefs are sometimes different from their own.

Children with autism typically struggle on tests of theory of mind. An interesting question, then, is what effect siblings have on theory of mind development in autism. Based on the literature on typically developing kids, we might expect siblings of autistic children to have a beneficial effect. We could even make a case that, because autistic kids may have fewer interactions with non-family members, siblings may be even more important than normal. Counterintuitively, however, a new study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry suggests that having older siblings can have a detrimental effect on autistic children's theory of mind development. ...

The authors speculate that well-meaning older siblings may over-compensate for the autistic child's difficulties. By treating them with kid gloves, they may somehow limit their development. Younger siblings might be less likely to do this and so have a more benign influence. However, it's not clear why having older siblings would be worse than having none at all.

At The Autism Crisis, Are autistic people lost in space?:

In one short paper, Elizabeth Pellicano and colleagues claim to demolish Simon Baron Cohen's systemizing account of autism. They also conclude that autistics' strong visual search and probabilistic learning abilities fail in large-scale space, ergo in the real world. ...

Well first, it's an interesting task, even if it's not a visual search task.

But even if autistics totally failed (they didn't, and search all you want again, but you will find no rationale in this paper for the drop-off-a-cliff thresholds pushed by the authors), this task doesn't map easily onto the authors' sensational claims. These include that autistics can't find "shoes in the bedroom, apples in a supermarket, or a favourite animal at the zoo" ergo can't achieve independence.

Of course I want a whole lot more data, or an excellent rationale (none is provided) for not reporting most of it. And numerous possibilities were overlooked. ...

No one knows how autistics would have performed if given accurate task instructions (to take the shortest path, as measured by the authors, to the target). Maybe someone else can bring up motor differences, which plausibly are relevant to this "true-to-life" task. And I wonder how clear, for autistics, the task instructions were with respect to revisits.

Autistics should be notorious by now for noticing aspects of tasks that nonautistics don't (fantastic example at IMFAR last year), and for exploring more possibilities than nonautistics (examples here and here). Writing this off as a bad thing, as autistics being lost in space or some dire equivalent, is shortsighted to say the least.

3 responses so far

Social Studies: The Pressure to Procreate.

Oct 22 2010 Published by Janet D. Stemwedel under Diversity in science, Guest post, Reader participation, Social issues, Women and science

The following guest post was submitted by a reader who is struggling with balancing social and familial expectations as she tries to pursue a career and delays having children. She submitted this post seeking reader feedback from others who may have experienced this situation. She has requested to remain anonymous to maintain family peace, which is at a fragile state at the moment.

I adore children. I have a very sweet goddaughter who will be a year old next month, and I love her dearly. I also have an older goddaughter about to enter those dreaded teen years, and it's exciting to watch her navigate this portion of her life. My husband's best friend, whom we both consider a sister, just had a bouncing baby boy and I'm looking forward to hearing him call me "Aunty." And there are two beautifully pregnant women in the family currently—both cousins, one with her first child, the other with her second. So I am surrounded by babies. That said, I personally do not have any children of my own. This has largely been the result of careful planning on the part of myself and my husband. We have our own time line, but for many of our relatives the delay represents a huge social breach, and they are starting to bear down somewhat harshly.

I am a 28-year-old West Indian woman who married her childhood sweetheart, voluntarily, at the age of 18. He is Bengali. As a West Indian marrying into a Bengali family, you would think the transition would be easy to manage—we are from similar backgrounds after all. But it's been surprisingly difficult. I'm not sure how much of it is a cultural difference though and how much is a generational difference. It seems to be a fair mix though there are a fair number of young women who seem to be going the traditional route (i.e., getting married, having teh babiez, staying home, etc.) Now, you may also think to yourself, well, if you were childhood sweethearts, don't you know what you were getting into? Well, no. When I say childhood sweethearts, I mean real childhood sweethearts. He had a crush on me in the sixth grade! He brought me apple juice. We went to different high schools and reconnected in college, when we decided we wanted to get married. And we eloped, partly because we didn't want a a huge fuss made, and partly because we knew neither set of parents would agree to letting a pair of 18-year-olds get married.

Flash forward ten years later to a recent baby shower, where the aunts were clucking as per normal when they spotted me. "When are you having babies?" I was asked. "Why don't you want children?" "Don't you like children?" "Your mother-in-law wants a grandbaby!" I managed to deflect all of this with good cheer as I normally do (e.g., "[The MIL] has [the family dog] to spoil!") and for the most part my responses were met with jovial laughter. I'm a pro at this discussion, I thought. And I should be—I'm used to it.

And then one of them dropped a bomb on me: "What? Can't you have children? You're going to need a test tube baby!" she taunted. This declaration/announcement was made at the top of her lungs in front of a room of family and strangers, and I admit it stopped me in my tracks. It stopped most of the room too as a moment of somewhat uneasy silence unfolded. I wasn't sure how to respond. I know I was embarrassed and angry all at once. For the record, I have nothing against IVF. I think that if it can help a couple have a baby when they're having trouble conceiving, then they should go for it. Kate Clancy, who went through this process was actually featured on CNN a few weeks ago. Her story is amazing. However, from this aunt's tone, you could tell that you would be less of a woman if you needed a "test tube" baby. But that's not the point. What I was reacting to was the assumption that there was something wrong with me because I hadn't produced a brood of children yet at the ancient age of 28.

This is just the latest jab in the mounting pressure from all sides that feel I should have borne a child by now. My waistline is closely scrutinized, and the slightest bump is reason to be questioned. And since I'm not pregnant, I have no reason to carry any extra weight, so any extra bulges are evidence that I am just fat, and just don't care. It's become exhausting. This shouldn't bother me, and it hasn't for a long time, but what is starting to bother me is the derision that accompanies their statements. "We know you're focused on your studies," they say as a lead in to the conversation. Studies?? What studies? I've been out of school for two years. I've been working—trying to establish a career. Do any of you actually know me? Actually know what I do?

I'm a successful blogger and published writer. I have an advanced degree. I've won numerous awards for academic accomplishments, been in countless science competitions, and I'm a successful professional. I help build leading websites and web tools. But none of that matters. Children to this group are a sort of cultural currency. I've been measured in public based on the bag I carry and the clothes I wear, and I am measured in private by the family by my apparent (lack of) fertility. And until I produce a child, I know I won't measure up to their expectations—hell, even when I produce the child I won't measure up. Partly because I am an outsider to their cultural background (and what will I know about raising children properly?) and partly because I plan to continue working instead of staying home and raising him or her, which is also somewhat unacceptable. (The hubby was once told that marrying a smart woman is fine, but it means the house will never be clean, that there will never be food on the table, and the children will run wild.) I feel these are personal decisions. Am I crazy?

The constant questioning adds another layer of annoyance. Will it detract from the joy when we do announce we're expecting? Will there be a sense that we got pregnant because we were told to do so? Instead of "That's wonderful!" will we get "It's about time!"? Will they take credit for the fact that we've conceived? Again, I'm trying to see this from their perspective. This is a culture where women traditionally maintain the hearth of the home by remaining in it. I realize that I am somewhat of a puzzle to them and this may be their way of fitting me into their norms and expectations. But in trying to fit me in—if that's what they're doing—they've managed to minimize everything else that I've done. And I just don't think that's cool, man.

The hubby does not buy into the traditional view. He's proud of me and my accomplishments and he deflects the baby question as often as I do. He does not think this should bother me, because at this point we both know that the family will not rest until we "prove" ourselves with a child. But I am exhausted from fielding comments and questions about my fertility. It's not anyone's business, but since it seems to be everyone's business, I'm doing an impromptu cultural/gender study: ladies are you experiencing the same thing? Is this a cultural issue? Or a gender issue? Have you been through the same? How did you survive and when did it stop?

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Janet D. Stemwedel (whose nom de blog is Dr. Free-Ride) is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University with a misspent scientific youth in physical chemistry.
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