Archive for the 'Naming Experience' category

The Parable of the Wise and the Foolish Engineers

Mar 08 2011 Published by under Feminist Foremothers, How to Grow a Zuska, Manifestoes, Naming Experience, Those Humorless Feminists, Why There Are No Women in Science

It came to pass that the engineers gathered at their most sacred place, near the river Charles, to seek learning from the wise ones.  And it happened that one of these said to another, “We are women in a man’s world, and we should stick together, and help each other out. We should build together, on the Rock of Amita.”  But the second said to the first, “No, for I am like unto the men myself, and will go in their guise, and learn their ways, and build my house upon their beachfront paradise, next to the all night Hooters and down the street from the Sports Emporium.  For it is more pleasing to be allowed to walk eight blocks to the beachfront between 4 and 6 a.m. and to work part-time at Hooters for minimum wage in the hopes that someday I will be invited to give a talk at Janelia Farm.  The winds blow shrill at the Rock of Amita; harpies take wing in the skies overhead; my legs are clean-shaven.”  And she cast the first away from her, and did take the guise of men, and strove to learn their ways, and built her house eight blocks back from the beachfront paradise.

Then the rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on the house; and the house of the first one did not fall, for it was founded on the Rock of Amita. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on the house of the second one; and it fell—and great was its fall.  For the men would not help her rebuild, and blamed her for building so poorly, and mocked her for her sadness at her loss, and told her that science doesn’t stop at 5 on Fridays, and she was cast out.

And she wandered, even as far as the Tobacco Road, and entered into the Duke’s house, and was given a seat at the far end of the table, and permitted the crumbs of the feasting.  But it came to pass that she found a wise teacher, and a holy book, and began anew to build, this time surely, upon the Rock of Amita, which can be found in many places.  And the wise teacher asked her one day, “How will it come to pass that the young build upon the rock rather than the sand?”  And she thought well to herself, and said, “Teach early, else it may be only by building upon the sand that one will ever come to build upon the rock. Many will be lost to the storms; some will repair and rebuild, even to the end of their days.  These I look upon with pity and understanding, for I once lived where they now dwell. Teach early, lest the young mistake the house 8 blocks back from the beachfront, next door to Hooters, as paradise, and clamor to build there, and are swept away in the storms.”

"Paradise," said the wise teacher, "is the opiate of the Engineers.

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Where We're All Heading in Scott Walker's Handbasket

Mar 08 2011 Published by under Burns My Shorts, Ludicrous Language, Manifestoes, Naming Experience, Tales From The Coal Patch, That's So Class-y, The Occasional Post on National Politics

Now indeed is the winter of our labor discontent.

Scott Walker, you'll recall, is the Rethuglican who has creatively called his union-busting scheme a "budget repair" bill.  Once we've finished stripping workers of all their rights - collective bargaining is just the first step! there's so much more that can be taken away once the collective bargaining is gone! - we can bring back many useful practices from the good ol' days.  The history of Blair Mountain is instructive in this regard.  Maybe you'll want to go visit Blair Mountain, and see the historical marker, but I'd do it now if I were you, before Mr. Peabody rips it off the face of the earth to get at the coal underneath.

Two years ago, Blair Mountain was entered into the National Register of Historic Places. And then, just a few months later, it was taken off by state officials.

Lawyers hired by West Virginia's largest coal companies came up with a list of landowners who, they said, objected to the designation.

"There's apparently a lot of money to be made by blowing this mountain up and taking all the coal out from it," labor historian Gordon Simmons says, referring to mountaintop removal.

Fuck you, coal companies. Isn't it enough that your predecessors had a hired army of goons and federal troops dispatched by the president to keep coal miners from forming a union?  Now you want to literally erase the history from the face of the earth? Fuck. You.

Well, Scott Walker's not calling in the troops yet on the citizens of Wisconsin. I'm sure that's just crazy to even imagine.  Why, people have the right to collective bargaining!  Oh wait, he's taking that away.  Well, they have the right to be in a union!  Oh wait, he's trying to make it really, really, really hard for there to be a union at all, what with the yearly votes for the union to exist, and the optional dues, and the fact that once your union can't bargain, and pay raises are strictly limited, you're going to wonder why you should pay dues or be in the union at all. You might as well join the Elks and spent your union dues on beer; at least you'll get drunk for your money.

So once the union is gone, and the plutocrats can pay us whatever they deem we are worth, and fire us whenever they feel like it, and take away our benefits on a whim - oh wait, you're saying, that's my life now?  Because you're not in a union.  Have you grumbled about unions in the past?  A union exists to protect you from all that.  But they talked you into thinking that the union was making your life hell, not the top 400 of them who hold more cash, stocks, and land than  the bottom 155 million of us combined.  Crabs in a barrel, they wanted to make us, and it mostly worked.

Anyway, as I was saying, once they've taken us back to the point where we have as many rights as those coal miners at Blair Mountain (maybe they'll start paying us in scrip again!), they can imprison us even faster than they do now.    Pennsylvania's prison population has grown 500% in the last 30 years - that's a promising industry!  A caller to Marty Moss-Coane's radio show this morning suggested that prisoners be placed 3 to a cell, but only two of them in the cell at any given time; one would always be out working an eight hour shift.  Put the prisoners to work!  Well, at least they'd have an eight hour day, if not a five-day work week.  But why be limited by the arbitrary eight-hour day? We could pack them four to a cell and take out two at a time for 12-hour shifts.  It's not like they have a union or anything.

Yeah, where did you think your eight-hour day and five-day work week came from?  Oh, you say, not me, I'm a professional, I'm a scientist, I'm a grad student/postdoc/professor, and I work long hours.  I'm k3rntastic!  Science demands no less, I work for the love of it, I work long hours because if I don't someone else will step right into my place and work just as hard and take my job. Oh crap, that last one sounds just exactly like what the coal miners used to say before they got themselves organized and formed a union.  You know what?  Coal miners are professionals too, and take pride in their work, and love what they do, too.  They like having a union that regulates working conditions, and says if you work overtime you get time and a half.  What do policies like that do?  They create more jobs, and make employers think twice about overworking the employees they do have, because it costs more.  Oh, unions won't work for science. Science is so different!  Believe me, baby, if you wanted a union bad enough, you'd find a way to make it work.

Listen up:  Philip Dray, author of There Is Power In A Union: The Epic Story Of Labor In America, will be on Fresh Air this afternoon, to put the Wisconsin union battle in a historical context. Listen live at 3 pm or audio available online after 5 pm.  Read the little blurb about the show - it's fascinating.  Here's the piece that was a real shocker even for me.

[quoting Dray]: Every city in America has these large brick armories in the city. I used to think they were there for soldiers to gather to go abroad but those were built in an era when authorities wanted a place where soldiers could gather to bring down local labor unrest.

Yeah, they didn't teach me any of this history in school.  Certainly not in the coal patch public schools. They did not tell me how the tax dollars of our forebears went to constructing buildings for the express purpose of gathering troops to suppress the formation of unions by those same forebears.  Well, not the tax dollars of the Blair Mountain coal miners, per se.  They were paid in scrip, which could only be spent at the company store.

If you have a few extra dollars in your pocket this month, consider donating to a union to help fund organizing struggles, general strike funds, etc.  You can become an associate member of the United Mine Workers of America for $5 a month.  Write to your congressperson and insist that Blair Mountain be placed on National Register of Historic Places, not ripped apart by coal companies.  Speak up when someone is union bashing and say you wish everyone had the kinds of benefits and job security that a union can negotiate for its members.  Don't be a crab in the barrel that the plutocrats and Rethuglicans are constructing for us all.

My grandparents lived through the union-organizing hell of the past.  Let's not go back there in Governor Walker's handbasket.

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But I Want To Earn Everything All On My Own Merits! #scio11

Jan 28 2011 Published by under Isn't It Ironic?, Ludicrous Language, Manifestoes, Naming Experience, SciO11, Stereotypes We Know And Love, Those Humorless Feminists, WWZD

At SciO11, Sheril Kirshenbaum, Anne Jefferson, Joanne Manaster, and Kathryn Clancy did a great session titled "Perils of blogging as a woman under a real name".  (See summary here.) The discussion ranged over a lot of topics, and near the end, someone in the audience said "I don't want to get a [job/fellowship/grant/whatever] because of affirmative action, I want to get it on my own merits." I said, why do you imagine that the dudes getting those jobs now all got them all on their own merits?

Not that they aren't qualified, but do you imagine they had no help along the way, that there was no one pulling levers for them, no one setting them up, no one greasing the wheels for them, no one opening doors and helping them glide along? Why do we imagine everyone else who gets stuff got there all by their lonesome with no assistance from anyone else? I don't even know what the fuck it means to get somewhere all on your own merits. You can't even learn to wipe your own ass all on your own merits.

UPDATE:  Hermitage's post on this same topic is tremendously awesome and full of much wisdom.  Please read.

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For My Friend With The Crazy Boss

Jan 26 2011 Published by under Daily Struggles, Magical Thinking File, Naming Experience, Science Follies

Or should I say, series of crazy bosses.  Why, you wonder.  Why you?  What is wrong with you? You work well with plenty of other colleagues.  They seem to like you.  But the crazy bosses keep on coming.  There must be something wrong with you, because otherwise you just don't get it.

I don't think there's anything to "get". I've had my share of crazy bosses, in academia and in industry. For a long time I thought "why do I keep getting these crazy bosses? what is wrong with me?" There are just lots of wackaloon people. Many of them end up in boss positions. What you hear about on the news is some working class stiff who went shitznutz and came back to work with a gun and shot a bunch of people and everyone nods their heads and says "yeah, those poor folk and their guns. they are whack." You do not hear about the white collar, middle to upper middle class people who go shitznutz and instead of bringing a gun to work and shooting up a bunch of folks, just psychologically abuse the hell out of everyone under their control. Structurally, I think the way we work is designed to produce more of the latter than the former, but the former get airplay, and the latter are completely hidden from view, so that each person's encounter with Crazy Boss is experienced as a unique and strange experience that is felt as somehow reflecting on their personal worth, as a personal failing, not as something the system was almost guaranteed to cough up for them sooner or later.

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But What If The Science Cheerleaders Save Just One Girl?

Nov 25 2010 Published by under Manifestoes, Naming Experience, Why There Are No Women in Science, WWZD

Alex Dunphy (frustrated):  (mumbles stuff about math equation) Oh, this stuff is so hard!
Cute dude math tutor: Don't worry, you'll get it!  There are lots of women scientists!
Alex Dunphy (alarmed): But aren't they all fat?
--Modern Family, 11/24/2010

Okay, let's play what if. What if the Science Cheerleaders are responsible for making just one girl stick with her science & math classes - isn't it all worthwhile then?

Let's say the Science Cheerleaders do keep one girl in advanced science or math classes, but make three other girls feel like they have to pornulate themselves in order to be 21st Century Fembot Compliant While Doing Science, and make five d00ds feel like it is perfectly okay to hang up soft porn pictures of sexay hawt babes in the lab and harass some colleague because hawt science women WANT to be appreciated for being sexay and smart! - is it still worth it?

At K-State we ran a science camp for middle school girls. One summer there was simultaneously a football camp and a cheerleader camp for kids who were just a little older than our science kids. Our camp was called GROW, for Girls Researching Our World. All these kids mingled in the cafeteria. At the end of lunch one day, one of the football camp boys approached a small group of our science camp girls and asked them if they were there for the cheerleader camp (because why else would they be there?) "NO!" shouted one of them, who was a bit ornery and feisty. "No way! We're here for GROW!"  "Grow? What's that?"  "GROW, as in grow up, get a good job, and make a lot of money!" I doubt that young girl would have been inspired to explore science by a group of science cheerleaders (which is not to say she might not have been excited, in another venue, to meet some professional cheerleaders.)

Girls who had been at our camps could also sign up, throughout the year, to go on excursions to various engineering/science-related facilities, where they would get to see how professional scientists and engineers put their training to use in the workplace right there in companies in their own home state. They met with women scientists and engineers in those companies, who hosted the tours, had lunch with them, and told them stories about their lives. The comments we got back on evaluation forms - we did evaluations for all these events, pre and post evaluations, and long term follow up to see what impact the program was having - showed something really interesting and consistent over the time. The girls LOVED meeting women in the place where they worked. They loved seeing the clothes that the women wore to work - in many cases they were astonished to see how NORMALLY the women scientists and engineers dressed, that they looked just like "normal people", that they got to wear jeans, that they looked so comfortable at work, they they got to use so many cool gadgets and play with computers at work. They LOVED hearing stories about how the women got interested in science. And they LOVED hearing stories about what the women did in their spare time - that they had pets, went to church, played sports, volunteered in their community, what hobbies they had, etc. In short, that they did things not unlike other people the girls knew, and not unlike things they themselves were interested in doing or aspired to doing. What kind of car do you drive? they wanted to know. How much money do you make? How many years did you have to go to school? Did you have to study a lot of math? What do you do for fun?

They got to ask all those questions of women they had come to know in the course of a day through talking with them and seeing them in their workplace - seeing them in charge, seeing them as active scientists and engineers explaining and demonstrating their work to them. The women were real people, and the girls could imagine themselves growing up to become just like them. This was the feedback we got, over and over - "I could be just like them. I could wear jeans and work for x company and have a dog and drive a nice car and have my own home and do science!" And some of these girls went on through the high school girls program and on to college.

Now that is a lot of hard work and it takes years. And you have to evaluate along the way and keep refining your programs and adding stuff and fixing stuff and you have to work with the local school districts and teachers - because you also have to work with the teachers and the guidance counselors on doing a better job for the girls, to keep them in the science and math classes, and to advise them properly in choosing colleges, and because you want to track course taking and compare with control groups who haven't been to your programs. And sometimes you think, hey, x is a great idea! And you do it, and your evaluation shows it was a total flop, the kids hated it, or it didn't even register on their consciousness, or it had the opposite impact of the one you wanted, or it sent a completely different message than what you thought you were sending.

One great activity we did was this: the Career/Life Game. The girls had to roll a dice at the start, and they got a certain amount of money based on the roll - because not everyone starts out the same. They had to make choices on how to spend their money, and time. Work in high school? use the money to buy a car, or go to college? Get married? Have kids? Got to grad school? There were a lot of complex choices they had to make, but it was all in the form of a game - they had to roam from station to station, and they could collect "diplomas" if they made it through various degrees. After it was over we discussed their choices and outcomes with them, and whether they were happy, and what they might have done differently, and how starting out with more or less money affects your life chances, and what you can do about it.

I guess we could have just brought in cheerleaders to jump around and yell "Gooooooo SCIENCE!" But those kids, mostly from low-income families, needed and deserved a helluva lot more than that. IMHO.

We did a program for the girls and their guardians. It was originally going to be girls and their mother but then we realized a lot of these girls might be raised by a grandmother or other family member and we didn't want to limit it or make them feel bad, so we just said guardian. We talked about what guardians could do to keep girls strong and interested in math and science, and gave them materials with resources in the community they could draw on. We talked to the girls about what THEY needed to do to keep themselves on track for careers in science, and why those careers were worthwhile for them. We said stick with math - almost anything you want to do will call on math skills. We would play a game where we'd invite any girl in the audience to name a career and then we'd say why math was important for it. We'd always get supermodel - then we'd explain how if you were a fabulous rich supermodel you didn't want someone else managing your money and cheating you - you needed to be smart and financially savvy and know what was going on, so you'd get rich and stay rich - and that meant math.

There is, indeed, no reason why a woman can't be both cute and smart. But that was hardly the issue facing the young girls I saw in Kansas. It was lack of knowledge, lack of access, teachers and guidance counselors who didn't know what was necessary for sci/eng careers and didn't think it was all that important anyway to steer young girls towards them, parents who were overwhelmed and didn't know about these careers or how to take the first step to get their kids on the college prep pathway let alone to a sci/eng career, young girls who were just dying for adults to invest some time and energy in caring for them and their bright minds and what they were capable of doing.

Science Cheerleaders is, at the very best, an outreach program for already-privileged girls who are already interested in science/engineering but who are afraid it will make them look like fat lesbians.

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What Are You Thankful For? Neurologists!

Nov 25 2010 Published by under Naming Experience, Some Good News For A Change

This is the second in my what are you thankful for series.  The first was a WHAT - Botox!

Today I turn to a WHO.  Actually, a couple of who's.  Neurologists!

1. Dr. A.

I made the acquaintance of Dr. A. while lying in a hospital bed in Kansas.  I couldn't make out his features very well, as I was almost completely blind at the time - a consequence of the stroke I mentioned in the last post.  Dr. A. was responsible for puzzling out why an apparently healthy young woman had had a stroke.  He carefully ruled out every possible cause; the test results and my symptoms left us with no conclusion other than that it was a rare migrainous stroke.  I was truly fortunate to draw Dr. A. in the hospital; he was experienced, wise, and compassionate.  Over several months, my vision began to recover, the migraines came back with a vengeance, and he did his best to treat them.  He suggested a break from work to allow recovery (that "break" has now gone on seven years).  He did a lot of good for me, but the very best thing he did for me may have been this:  One day he said to me, "Your case has become too complicated for me to adequately treat you the way you need.  You need to see a neurologist who specializes in stroke and migraine.  I have someone in mind for you. It will take you a while to get in to see her, but it is worth the wait.  She will be able to help you."  And that is how I went on to see...

2. Dr. D.

It took over a month to get in to see Dr. D. but it was indeed worth the wait.  She was a whirlwind, and she gave me hope that at least pain relief would be mine, if not a cure.  Together we began working our way through a variety of preventatives - always hopeful for each one, often disappointed when I experienced intolerable side effects.  I don't know how to tell you all that this doctor did for me, the thousand extra miles that she went for me (and, I suspect, for all her patients).  When we felt we had exhausted the pharmacy of preventatives and the migraines had still left me bedridden, it was she who offered me botox for the first time, and so gave me my life back.  On top of this - this was in 2004, mind you - she and her staff had somehow managed to get my insurance company in Kansas to pay for at least a portion of the cost of treatment.  I really would have done almost anything for this doctor.  In addition to being The Doctor Who Gave Me My Life Back, she was funny, witty, sassy, stylish, warm, compassionate, fierce, and a total force to be reckoned with.  When Mr. Z and I had to move from Kansas to our present home, I grieved many things that I had to leave behind, but having to leave and end my relationship with Dr. D was one of the most heartbreaking losses of all.  Dr. D didn't just say bye-bye, though.  She knew where I was going, and she knew what doctor she wanted me to see in the new place - Dr. Y.  On my own, it might have taken months and months to get in to Dr. Y's practice.  But Dr. D made it happen right along with the timetable of my move.  (In doctoring as in employment, I guess it is who you know.)

3. Dr. Y.

Dr. Y is my present neurologist.  Under his care I have continued the improvement that began with Dr. D.  Dr. Y is truly amazing and is a rock star of the neurology migraine world.  You'd never know it when you are in his office, though.  He is gentle, almost shy in his demeanor, putting patients at ease along with his quiet voice perfectly designed for those with throbbing skulls.  He works in a teaching hospital, which means that visiting doctors or interns and residents are frequently present at one's appointment, but he knows how to minimize the intrusiveness of this.  Maybe it's the teaching hospital environment, or maybe it's the teacher in him, but he helps you understand, in as much detail as you want, what is going on in your brain, how your treatment is expected to work, what the limits of medical understanding are.  And at the end of every visit he takes some time to ask: now what will you do to minimize stress and get some exercise in the next couple of months?  What can you commit to, to your doctor and to yourself?  He shares with you what he is doing to minimize stress and get some exercise.  He says, you can do it.  You know that he is A Very Important Doctor and A Very Busy Person but when you are in his office and he is focused on you and your medical needs, you have the impression that he really has nothing else to attend to the rest of the day, and that there's nothing much else he'd rather be doing anyway.  Getting a botox treatment from him is a collaborative effort.  He teaches you how to give him the feedback he needs to best target some of the injection sites.  He is awesome, I am grateful to be under his care, and I am grateful that people like him, Dr. D., and Dr. A. put in the hard work in medical school, internships, and residencies to take care of people like me.

I wish I could thank these neurologists on my blog by name, but since botox has recently been approved by the FDA, many neurologists are being swamped with calls from migraine sufferers begging for a miracle cure for their misery.  I don't want to add to the volume of calls they are already getting.  People with migraine interested in botox should be aware that: it has not yet been sorted out how insurances will pay for botox, if all insurances will pay at all, and how much they will pay if they do (likely will be a stiff copay).  The FDA approval is for chronic migraine, i.e. patients who experience migraine most days of the month (14 or more).

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What Are You Thankful For? BOTOX!!!!

Nov 23 2010 Published by under Naming Experience, Some Good News For A Change

As Scicurious has noted, American Thanksgiving is fast approaching this week.  So some of us Scientopians (and other bloggers who want to play) are contemplating

1) AN ITEM: what item in your scientific career are you most thankful for, which has made your life immeasurably easier? Pubmed? The rapid cycling PCR machine?

2) A PERSON: Who in your field (or out of it) has really influenced your career as it is today, made you what you are and your career what it is?

3) AN IDEA: what idea are you especially thankful for? Did a big idea change your field entirely? Did it call into question everything you thought you knew?

I'm not currently a working scientist, so I'm going to focus on things from the perspective of a patient.  And the item, so to speak, I am giving thanks for today, is Botox.  No, not Botox treatments for stars and star wannabes who desire an eternally youthful appearance.  Botox treatments for those of us with chronic migraine, for whom all other options have been exhausted.  Continue Reading »

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Cuisine, With Feminism: I'll Have The Large Plate, Please

Sep 20 2010 Published by under Blog I Am Reading Today, Making Disability Visible, Naming Experience, Sex Discrimination, Sexual Harassment

A Kitchen of One's Own is a brand new blog, but I am already madly in love with it.  Blogger Ginny W is bringing the kick-ass. We thought STEM fields were tough places for women to make a living - and they are - but this post makes, say, your average physics department or engineering construction site look like a care bears tea party.

Women are also expected to take part in active misogyny: to refer to men and other women, and even themselves, as bitches; to deal yo mama insults; to deplore weakness, weeping, and other “girl” faults; to make and laugh at rag jokes, rape jokes, and a host of other jokes relying on the revilement of women. Not just tolerate it from the men, but actively take part in it.

The post on Disability and Restaurant Life is also highly recommended.  It gives me a new perspective on this Philadelphia Inquirer story from last July about Jennifer Carroll, pastry chef at 10 Arts Bistro & Lounge.  Hell, the whole damn blog, new as it is, is a real eye-opener for me in thinking about any of Philly's women chefs (and how precious few there are, given the restaurant renaissance the city has seen over the past few decades).

Zuska loves good food and good restaurants, and, of course, is a feminazi.  This new blog is a delight to her hairy-legged heart.

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Your Engagement Announcement Is My Invitation To Gender Norm You

Sep 09 2010 Published by under Apologists for the Oppressors, Naming Experience, Stereotypes We Know And Love, Why There Are No Women in Science

You and your partner may have been together, perhaps cohabitating, for months, even years.  Now, for some particular and personal constellation of reasons in your lives, you’ve decided to make it “legal”.  Maybe a ring is involved, maybe not.

What to say to someone who has gotten engaged: WikiAnswers tells us:  When a couple gets engaged you congratulate them both if they are together or you can congratulate them individually. Simply say: 'Congratulations on your coming wedding. I'm very happy for you.'

What people actually say to someone a (heterosexual) man who has gotten engaged: Continue Reading »

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Mautner Project and Removing the Barriers

Aug 17 2010 Published by under Naming Experience, [Medicine&Pharma]

During the time this blog was hosted at ScienceBlogs, all your kind clicking and reading generated blog traffic, which the nice folks at ScienceBlogs tallied and turned into checks.  But the checks didn't come to me.  They went instead to the Mautner Project, the National Lesbian Health Organization.  You'll notice the organization logo/link on the lower right hand sidebar.  Mautner's mission and vision is:

Mission: Mautner Project is committed to improving the health of women who partner with women including lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals, through direct and support service, education and advocacy.

Vision: Mautner Project envisions a health care system that is respectful of and accessible to all without regard for their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. Our vision is a society in which all individuals are empowered with the knowledge to utilize these resources and to make appropriate choices for themselves.

MP provides direct services and programs.  One program I think is really cool is the Removing the Barriers training program to improve practitioners' skill.

Removing the Barriers is designed to assist medical providers in providing more culturally competent care by identifying potential barriers to care faced by sexual minorities, particularly women-who-partner-with-women. Developed by the Mautner Project, in cooperation with CDC, Removing the Barriers is an experiential training program encouraging participants to explore many aspects of culture including personal privilege, the cultural interplay of individuals and the medical system, and the impact of institutional heterosexism. Removing the Barriers provides specific focus on cultural distinctions of women who partner with women and how those impact their access to preventive health screenings as well as risk factors that may be significant for this specific population. RTB explores the use of culturally appropriate language, family recognition and legal issues, as well as clinical concerns specific to women who partner with women, in an effort to aid providers in reaching their goal of serving underserved women.

It is available as an online course for 2 CEU, CME, CNE credits.

My blog doesn't generate income anymore, but I am grateful that I had the opportunity to lend support to this important non-profit organization through my blogging.  Thank you ScienceBlogs!  And thank you, Mautner Project, for all that you do.

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What's So Great About Your STEMmy Lifestyle Anyway? Inquiring Minds Want To Know!

Jun 29 2010 Published by under Naming Experience, Race Matters, Recruit, Retain!, Science Follies, That's So Class-y, What They're Saying, Why There Are No Women in Science

Why should any woman get any degree in a STEM discipline? Especially if she has to wade through tons of bullshit courses to get there, and part of the learning, it appears, has to do with learning how to be someone you aren't? Some other gender, some other race - or some other social class?
skeptifem challenges the female STEM universe thus:

Continue Reading »

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Things Are Getting Better All The Time...

Jun 27 2010 Published by under Blog I Am Reading Today, Daily Struggles, Isn't It Ironic?, Naming Experience, Sex Discrimination, What They're Saying, Why There Are No Women in Science

Female Science Professor has posted a checklist - "Kind of like Sexism Bingo, but in list form." - and asked for additions.
I was going to offer a few additions, but I thought "all that crap happened a thousand years ago, when I was an undergrad/grad student. I'll just read this list of new stuff to see what teh wimminz are whining about these days." Because things are getting better all the time.
Alyssa at 6/17/2010 10:03:00 AM said:

Someone asks why you bothered getting a PhD if you're "just going to have children"

and DRo at 6/17/2010 10:36:00 AM said:

You are told that you won't be interested in a TT position once you have children.

Time machine, take us to.....1984! Hello, classmate! Hello, undergrad thesis advisor!
Anonymous at 6/17/2010 12:16:00 PM said:

Someone tells you not to talk about women or minority in science issues because it makes people think you are not committed to science.

Time machine, take us to...1988! Hello, thesis committee member! (And major thanks to all of you for that 4.5 hour prelim, in complete violation of university policy, while I'm back here visiting!)
Anonymous at 6/17/2010 12:40:00 PM said:

** When you are in YOUR OWN office, visitors assume you are an administrative assistant **
and then, when you point out that you are not the admin, are told "Oh, you must be the student worker, then!"

Time machine, take us to...1999! Hello, various random d00dches!
Anonymous at 6/17/2010 03:12:00 PM said:

One of my personal favorites from my graduate school was a comment by a faculty member meant as a compliment, at a reception, "Surely, you're not a physicist". "Surely, I am" I said.

Time machine, take us to...the entire decade of the 1980's! Hello, every pickup artist and sad sack conference fuckwit who thought "you're too pretty to be an engineer!" was a great come-on line.
Rachael Shadoan at 6/18/2010 06:58:00 AM said:

I feel that the more we focus on this kind of thing, the more discouraging it is for young women trying to join the field.

and at 6/18/2010 10:02:00 AM

Instead of long lists of how we're under-appreciated and gender-stereotyped and in general discriminated against, I would like to see lists of creative, professional, appropriate ways to handle some of these situations.
Then, it's less depressing because it provides the tools to handle this sort of thing. Over time (presumably), if we all use the tools to address these issues, they will decrease in number and severity.

Time machine, take us to...1989! Hello, contentious discussion at AWIS meeting where I was invited to speak about gender and science!
On second thought, time machine, never mind.

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Work-Life Balance 2: On Stepping Up To The Plate

Jun 18 2010 Published by under Daily Struggles, Manifestoes, Naming Experience, Stereotypes We Know And Love, What They're Saying, Why There Are No Women in Science, WWZD

First post in this series can be found here.
The third and final post in this series can be found here.
ScientistMother really wants DrugMonkey to step up to the plate already. She says that DM laid out his own responsibility to deal, on-blog, with work-life balance issues and to share the details of how it goes down at his own home. Find the full quote in the comments at her post or here in Doc Free-Ride's post.
As is generally the case, I have a few things to say about this.

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An Explanatory Note

Jun 04 2010 Published by under Manifestoes, Naming Experience

I have put in (literally) decades of work acting on the assumption that folks are reasonable and well-intentioned, and trying to be effective and get messages across. Part of that time I was even paid to do so.
IRL, for the most part, I try to interact with people like that.
However, I'm sick to puking of seeing so much shit go down for so long and seeing so little change and seeing progress for women in engineering shudder and stall and hearing over and over and over and over again "we just have to wait for the old guard to die off and for spots to open up and for women to work their way up through the ranks and the younger guys will not behave in these stupid ways the older d00ds do and things are getting better and you can't make women go into engineering if they don't want to and men and women just prefer different career choices and it's a fact of life that women have babies and there's nothing you can do about it and we'd love to have on campus daycare for everyone but in these tight fiscal times we have to make tough choices and I know that Professors X and Y are not so good with students from underrepresented groups but nobody else really wants to do the student counseling job or the recruiting job and besides if they went back to their departments they wouldn't really be able to teach or do research and we think this research on how to make departments more welcoming to women is very interesting but we don't feel that we want to make any changes to what we are doing in our department at this time because our two women professors haven't told us that anything is wrong and things will get better as time goes on and if there were great women scientists they would have been nominated for the National Academy but the fact that they weren't proves there aren't that many and I would be more interested in hearing what you have to say if you weren't so angry and I can't help it if I'm staring at your boobs because evolution makes me do it and if you are going to wear that sexy shirt to the lab you have to expect to be treated like a sex object and if you are going to dress in a sack it just proves that all engineering women are ugly dykes and you really cannot expect to gain any allies for your cause when you are so angry and you are hurting the feminist cause and anyway why are you all worked up about privileged women academics who really have it pretty good when women in Some Other Country are being tortured and raped and anyway racism is the real issue* and things are getting better with each generation and my best friend is a woman scientist and she's never experienced discrimination and this is all just a bunch of political correctness liberal blather and I believe things are getting better and why are you so angry..."
My blog is not primarily about assuming that people are reasonable and well-intentioned and trying to get messages across to them. I'm not exactly sure what it's all about, but one thing it is about is a place for me to give voice to the decades of accumulated frustration and anger, to not have to talk reasonably and peaceably and calmly to douchenozzles that are driving me fucking crazy. Very few people who work for a living can ever afford to give voice to those feelings and thoughts in public, to analyze the douchebaggery for what it is. I couldn't when I was working. Now I can.
What can I say? I am a hairy-legged feminazi.
*anyway, racism is indeed the real issue AS WELL, you disingenuous douchebag.

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Does "English-Only" Make Your Lab A Safer Place?

Jun 03 2010 Published by under Isn't It Ironic?, Naming Experience, What They're Saying

Prodigal Academic comments over at Isis's place:

Everyone speaking English is no guarantee of safety.
That is true, but since the lab was in the US, everyone in it is supposed to have a minimal proficiency in English. In practice, the net result was that the standard procedure was to use English first (allowing others to maintain a good awareness of what was going on around them in the lab), then confirm understanding in another language if necessary.
As a purely safety consideration, it makes a lot of sense to have a lab language. My group right now has 2 PhD students and 3 undergrads, all of whom speak decent to fluent English, and none of whom share another language in common. As it happens in my own lab, I don't actually care what language people use as long as everyone understands any hazardous conditions that may be present. If I see this not happening as the group grows, I may implement a similar English while setting up experiments rule.

When I began my PhD program, I had never set foot in a tissue culture lab before. I was an engineer, with a wee bit of chemistry experience from my M.S. But if you are intent on growing living cells, you are going to have to autoclave things. Or so I had come to understand.
I was a native English speaker, and so was everyone else in my lab. So, indeed, was everyone else that I interacted with regarding the use of the autoclave. Here's the extend of the instructions I got about using the autoclave:
"The autoclave is down the hall in room X. Put your stuff in this bin. For glassware you probably want to run it at such-and-so conditions. For liquids you probably want to run it at such-and-so conditions. Don't forget to put autoclave tape on your stuff so you know after what's been through the autoclave."
Everyone spoke English. Yay! But I am pretty sure I ruined some stuff for people, not to mention narrowly missed killing myself, before I finally haphazardly learned how to operate the autoclave.
Thoughts?

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