No Means No, Obviously

That's how language based communication works, words have meanings, and when you say them you evoke that meaning. I read a very interesting article about "playing hard to get," but I disagree with a significant proportion of it. I have to admit I appreciate her extolling people, specifically women but I think it applies to men, not to play hard to get. Although I have yet to meet someone who even remotely seemed to be playing hard to get, that may be because when I am rebuffed romantically I almost always just let the issue lie, and in the couple of cases where I haven't I have more revisited the subject at a later date in hopes that her opinion has changed; in short, when it comes to romance, I try to convince people to change their minds by being awesome, because I am awesome, rather than trying to persuade them to change their minds verbally.

Anyway, while I have yet to meet someone who displays evidence of playing "hard to get," I have to agree that the trope widely exists through our cultural stories. Men are told that to "get the girl" one must put forth some romantic effort. While I disagree with the author that this is inherently undesirable, I do heartily concur with her that it seems to play into rape culture.

However, where I categorically disagree with the author is where she asserts that maybe means no. Of course, I am similarly opposed to the assumption that maybe means yes, for similar reasons, yes, no, and maybe are all separate words with wildly different meanings! Maybe means maybe! And here lies the refuge of people who want to play hard to get, maybe should clearly indicate that one is not acquiescing to the proposed activity, whether it be dancing, dating, or sex, but one is willing to consider it. If one does not wish to consider it further, there is a proper word for that, "no," and it is then the moral obligation of the rebuffed to accept that.

I am not often asked out, and people straight up ask me for sex even less frequently, but people often ask me if I will to go to dance activities. If I want to and am able to go I answer, "yes," because yes I will go. If I have a conflicting obligation or just don't want to go (the latter is rather uncommon) I answer, "no," because no I will not go. If I kind of want to go, but am feeling overwhelmed and kind of don't want to go, then I might answer, "maybe," or, "I don't know... [insert lame excuse here]." At these times I completely welcome people trying to convince me to go, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but it helps me make up my mind. I don't think that I am "playing hard to get," per se, but if someone wants to play hard to get, let them use maybe! It is the correct word to use, "maybe" can mean, "maybe, if you work hard enough," which is what someone playing hard to get seems to implicitly mean.

Maybe shouldn't contribute to rape culture. Maybe leaves the door open to be convinced, but the door can still be closed. Maybe doesn't mean you cannot eventually say no (on a side note, that male friend she mentions complaining about people not being willing to agree with him eventually, creepy!!!). But that should be obvious, because you know what, yes doesn't even mean you cannot eventually say no! Let me expound on that, because it is of some importance, even if someone says yes to sex, if they change their mind, or you start hurting them, or they just get creeped out for some reason and change their mind to no, then that is a no! If you have sex with someone expressing a desire not to have sex with you, even if they explicitly expressed a desire to have sex with you at some earlier point, that is rape! If you decide not to have sex with someone who really did want to have sex with you, but felt they had to say "no" due to cultural considerations you missed having sex with someone who can't honestly express themselves and he/she missed out on having sex with an awesome person who is respectful of her/his desires. Guess which way I think you should err... Hint, which I don't think you should need, no means no!

While I don't think it is harmful to err on the side of no if you get a maybe, whereas it is definitely harmful to err on the side of yes, I don't think it is morally required to pretend that maybe doesn't have it's own, unique, and communicatively valuable, meaning. If you want to play hard to get, I invite you to use 'maybe's, or other such non-committal responses. And, most importantly, for this to work we have to realize that non-committal quite literally means without commitment, one way or the other, so if it becomes a no, then it is a no, end of discussion.

Party Balance Requires Diversity

Well, it looks like we hit 200 posts without any fanfare, which is probably a good sign, because it means I am less surprised to make it that far than I was at 100, but may be a bad thing, if it indicates this blog is an elaborate method for me to have long conversations with myself. Anyway, on to the 201st post!

I hope it comes as no surprise to you that the topic of women in nerd culture is one of some interest to me. One of the benefits of having this fact well known is that people sometimes send me relevant articles when they come across them. One such article about women "pretending" to be geeks in order to get male attention can be found here. The article, like most things, has some good points, and some flaws. Some of the flaws were pointed out in a counter-article, which can be found here, but I have enough of my own thoughts on the subject that I wanted to write my own post.

First off, let me complement some of the things I really did like from the article. The author calls out the misogyny that women who game experience and clearly chastises them. Furthermore, he reaffirms the idea that women can be nerds, are nerds, and should be welcome in nerd culture.

However, he does commit a few things that I would consider faux pas. I don't want to go to deeply into these, so I'll just list them. He makes the, "I cannot be a misogynist, I have a female friend," argument, he equivocates booth babes, who are explicitly at conventions to get paid as models, with women actually trying to participate in nerd culture, finally, and this is the point I want to expand upon, he judges that some women are just "not nerdy enough," for nerd culture.

While the linked rebuttal notes that there are problems with guys deciding which girls are nerdy enough to join, "the boys club," and there certainly are, I think that it is insufficient, but not unimportant, to focus on the gendered implications of this statement. First, let us take a moment to realize how much more mainstream "nerdity" has become. I am extremely fortunate that I can be fairly open about my enjoyment of playing Dungeons & Dragons without being ostracized by my friends, condemned by most churches, or suspected of going psychotic. Twenty or thirty years ago I would not have had that freedom. Also, is it just me or does this sound like a metaphor for being gay?

Anyway, things like gadget mania, the widespread use of computers, an invasion of blockbuster movies based on comic book culture, and the incredible popularity of Nerdfighters among young adults signal that nerd is becoming mainstream. Unfortunately that is a somewhat jarring experience for people who found their nerdity an alienating, rather than accepted, trait. It makes sense for their to be a certain, Hipster-eqsue, tendency for some nerds to think, "I am a true nerd, I was a nerd before it was cool," or to view newcomers as disingenuous in some manner. This will, of course, do nothing to dispel the image of nerds as anti-social misanthropists.

Stereotypes within nerd culture that, "gamers aren't nerds," or that, "serious gamers are nerds, but not those belligerent frat-boy Halo-playing jerks," ultimately harm both people within nerd culture, by keeping it exclusive and preventing it from receiving the acceptance that it deserves and flourishing in the way that it can and should, and those attempting to join it, preventing them from receiving the acceptance that they deserve and joining the, often, fulfilling comradery of some of the weirdest hobbies that could ever be so much fun. I mean seriously, I write numbers down on paper and pretend I'm a wizard, that's weird, and awesome! Hopefully we can accept and validate, if not necessarily hang out with all the time, engineers, video gamers, english lit enthusiasts, ren fair participants and the SCA, board/pencil and paper gamers, people who love Joss Whedon (who doesn't love Joss Whedon), and yes, even people who became enthusiastic about A Game of Thrones because of the HBO series *sigh*.

You Go Gamer Girl!

I just read a very interesting article about male privilege within the nerd community. In fact, if you only have time to read one article, go read that one, it is much more interesting than this one. I agree with the post wholeheartedly for the most part, so, as is my practice, I'm not going to talk about what I agree with, because I believe the original author presents them well enough without my meddling. This is, of course, yet another reason to read that article.

The first place I started to truly disagree with the author was in the section entitled, "How Male Privilege Affects Geek Girls in Real Life," in the seventh paragraph, which is the first paragraph that is decently long. The author says, "A man, for example, who gets a job isn't going to... be shrugged off as a quota hire'." I think what we have here is an interesting intersection of male privilege with white privilege. While I agree that a man who gets a job is unlikely to be considered a "quota hire" qua his manliness, but there are other reasons, such as race, that a man could be considered a quota hire. So, I think this could be worded a bit better to avoid the implication that racism is no longer a problem. However, the author did, toward the beginning, note that, "men – most often straight, white men – as a whole, get certain privileges and status because of their gender," so the issues of racism and sexual orientationism are at least acknowledged.

Then, in the next paragraph, the author states that, "Men will also not be told that they're being 'too sensitive' or that 'they need to toughen up' when they complain about said sexual threats," referring to the content of trash talk in some video games. I would argue that men are "told" not to be sensitive or to toughen up, explicitly or implicitly, fairly often, and assuming that one wouldn't in this situation seems insupportable. This is not to say that men have it tough to so maybe we shouldn't worry about women so much, or to distract from the very valid main point of the article, I just want to reemphasize a point I have made before, that gender essentialism ends up hurting people of both genders and is probably responsible for much homophobia.

I think it is also worth considering the eleventh paragraph in its entirety:

Men are also not going to be automatically assigned into a particular niche just based on their gender. A girl in a comic store or a video game store is far more likely to be dismissed as another customer's girlfriend/sister/cousin rather than being someone who might actually be interested in making a purchase herself. And when they are seen as customers, they're often automatically assumed to be buying one of the designated "girl" properties… regardless of whether they were just reading Ultimate Spider-Man or looking for a copy of Saint's Row 3.

There are a couple of interesting things going on here. The first is some more gender essentialism, girls are expected to buy "'girl' properties," which maybe should be products, and, by logical extension, guys are expected to buy guy products. However the author does not note that guys are buying designated guy products, and this, I believe, is because male is the "default gender," similarly to how white is the "default race" in my first complaint. Things marketed to girls need an explanatory adjective, "'girl' properties" and are a "niche," whereas things marketed to guys are just treated as the normal fare for the shop.

That is everything critical that I can think of to say about the article. I thought that most of it was right on, and I thought all of it was an interesting read. Compare to this news post from Penny Arcade, about how the female version of the main character from the Mass Effect series was going to be portrayed be default. I link to the news post, but mainly because it serves as a repository for interesting links to other articles an the topic.

I am unsure that the Kotaku and Penny Arcade posts are at odds, because the latter seems to be saying that just because FemShep is given a specific appearance should not imply that we write her off as a "bimbo." However, insofar as it can be read as a defense for portraying women in video games as idealized objects of attraction, the Penny Arcade post may be part of the problem, rather than the solution.

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage

I feel that it is a good rule of thumb for me to take a couple of days to think about my post when I am going to write about gay marriage. Not so much because the subject warrants deep consideration, although it does, I have been known to dash off posts on other topics that also warrant deep consideration. In this case the enforced days of mulling give me not only time to collect my thoughts, but also time to mellow out.

I need such time, because I am angry about the nature of the discussion of gay marriage in our nation! While appeals to emotion, also called pathos, may be an effective argumentative strategy, I don't believe that they are the most ethical method of discourse (an interesting post from a friend I met through dancing on this subject, if you are interested). Furthermore, when discussing something as polarizing as gay marriage, I feel the vitriol that passion can bring out only impedes parties from coming to such common understandings as can be found. In fact, I have already begged off of posting about gay marriage once, on the grounds that I didn't wish to embitter my readers. I actually did post about Proposition 8 elsewhere, and my initial thoughts on the subject and what I actually wrote a day later were quite different in tone. That said, on to the post about gay marriage.

What I wish to address specifically is the religious objections to legalizing gay marriage. Or, even more specifically, how I can think of absolutely no reasonable grounds for a religious objection to legalizing same sex marriages... yes, I am staying calm. This is mostly directed at Christians, both because I hear the most objections from them and because I am most familiar with the content of their objections. If you have objections from a different religious tradition that do not conform to these generalizations I would be most interested in hearing them.

I really do not care what your religious stance on the righteousness of gay marriage happens to be, that is between you, your conscience, your deity, and your religious leaders, or some subset thereof. I don't want to try to argue whether homosexuality is a sin with you, I do not need to! Unless your religion is different than the vast majority of religions, it probably teaches that following another religion is less righteous, in some sense. I think this can even be said to be true of the Quakers and Baha'is, despite both being paragons of tolerance. As such, I think it is likely that you support immoral things being legal, because most Americans appreciate the freedom of religion, even though it allows those immoral "others" to indulge in their less righteous beliefs.

One might argue that it is a harmful lifestyle, both to those who practice it, although as freedom loving Americans this argument does not hold much weight, and to their children, a more compelling argument. While there have been many emotional counterarguments to this point, again, I do not need to refute you. Presumably you believe that being raised without a personal relationship with a loving Savior is also harmful, or a firm indoctrination into the Church's dogmas if one happens to be Catholic, or whatever the analogous benefit is to whatever religious tradition you prefer. Yet we do not try to legislate that Hindi couples, or Jewish couples, or Muslim couples, and so on, not marry and raise children.

You might object that marriage is a sacred religious rite and it cannot be performed on homosexual couples due to its very nature, whatever the laws in place may be. Here I will have to both agree and disagree with you. Yes, marriage is a sacred religious rite, and yes it is reasonable for you to believe that it cannot be performed for same sex couples, although I disagree with that. But no, that is not all that it is. Marriage is also a purely legal and entirely separate secular condition, which must be kept entirely separate if we are to maintain the separation of church and state that is one of the great institutions of our nation. And it is this second, secular form of marriage that I, and most advocates for same sex marriage, am calling for same sex couples to have equal access to.

Ah, and here you think you might find some traction for your slipping arguments against some sex marriage, but won't advocates for same sex marriage take permission to engage in secular marriage and use it to try to legally force churches to marry them in religious ceremonies? Sadly, I think that some will, and I do not think that to do so is right, by the same freedom of religion that I supported above. However, just because someone might take a warranted right and attempt to do something unwarranted with it does not justify withholding the warranted right. And, let me be perfectly clear here, I believe that churches should not be forced to marry gay couples, but I also believe that they should not be forced to accommodate inter-racial marriages, despite the fact that I feel their refusal to do so is morally disgusting, and I feel the same way about a refusal to acknowledge same sex marriages.

Furthermore, the right to refuse service for religious reasons should be restricted to religious institutions, in my opinion. A business has no more right to refuse a gay couple service for their identity than it would to deny a person service for their racial, or political, or gender etc. identity. And, since I cannot think of any more common objections to same sex marriages, I shall end the discussion there for now.

However, on a related note, apparently Lowe's is pulling an ad from a show because objections have been raised to the show focusing on Muslims in the United States. This is yet another example of the market not being guided inherently by a conscience, or anything else with moral relevance, but rather by what people want, or, more accurately, what will affect the bottom line. In response to this villainy some feel the need to legislate morality, forcing Lowe's to put run the ad using some form of anti-discrimination legislation. Again, while I agree with anti-discrimination laws, I do not believe their proper use is to force businesses to run ads on specific shows. However, despite the fact that some people will use said laws in a manner with which I do not agree, I am not advocating that we get rid of said laws altogether. But, if you happen to do business with Lowe's, I would advocate that you consider shopping elsewhere until they repudiate their cowardly and, ultimately, bigoted action and reinstate the ad!

For The Ladiez

I am unsure what spelling should be used to denote the somewhat sleazy tone of voice wherein the 's' is ladies is replaced by a more 'z' sound. Should it be "ladiez," "ladyz," or perhaps "ladiezzz"? Anyway, there is some statistical evidence that Wednesday evening belongs to you ladies out there, so I hope you have a good one. This blog post is also dedicated to the wonderful women with whom I am priviledged to interact, especially those of you who read my blog!

One of my favorite things about Facebook is how often links to interesting, thought provoking articles appear in my newsfeed. A while back I found one to an article encouraging women to view the emancipation resulting from the Women's Movement as more than simply a license to engage in sexual liaisons as freely as society has traditionally let men. As I often advocate that, although I believe that men and women should be held to equivalent standards, I do not believe we should automatically assume that where they differ we should get rid of the existing standard for women and replace it by the existing standard for men, this article is somewhat in line with my own beliefs. For evidence of this, click on the "gender roles" tag this post has then read almost any of the other articles that I felt also deserved this tag.

That said, I am enough of a liberal to believe that if people want to participate in some sort of all-around consensual sexual behavior then they should be able to, baring preexisting commitments to the contrary. Of course, I am enough of a conservative to also believe that our society places an undue amount of pressure on people to participate in such behaviors and ends up artificially normalizing them and stigmatizing perfectly valid sexual choices such as abstinence before marriage and monogamy. Anyway, here is the article to which the rest of my post refers, I suggest you read it if you wish to understand what follows, which is almost exactly the text of an overly-large Facebook comment I made on the link.

While I agree with what seems to be the overall premise, that liberating women should not be equivocated with making them sexually available, there are some points I'd like to see addressed.

1) Comparing sex trafficking to one-night stands seems analogous to comparing slavery with working the register at McDonalds, and is a little disturbing.

2) The article sets up women as historical, "moral gatekeepers of society," then continues, "[n]ow, many of us are raped, sexually abused, or endlessly harassed by the time we reach our early 20's." Setting women up as moral gatekeepers seems patently ridiculous, and hearkens back to a tradition of blaming mistresses and prostitutes for wrecking marriages by being available to tempt the appetites of men, who are apparently unable to control their desires, for some reason. In short, it ignores the ability of men to make their own moral decisions, which is both insulting to men, and unrealistically harsh to women. After all, the prostitute is not the one to have taken vows of marriage. Furthermore, the second part of the sentence implies that since women have been freed to make their own decisions regarding their sexuality, the world has become more dangerous for them. This simply seems disingenuous, I would venture to say that if crimes against women are more prevalent nowadays mostly because it is a recent development that they have been recognized as crimes against women. Historically things like domestic violence and even rape have been viewed as perfectly ok in certain contexts. Ironically, the increased awareness of these forms of brutalization may actually be BECAUSE women now have the ability to act as moral gatekeepers, not of some ideological societal conscience, but they are finally moral gatekeepers of their own well being. That said, I recognize that this article is addressing a primary audience of women, so extoling moral accountability in men may not be the highest on its agenda. However, it seems reasonable that it should encourage women to value moral accountability in the men with whom they interact. For example, instead of emphasizing the importance of women saying "no" to the many sexual advances that they receive, might not the article encourage women to associate with men who respect the initial "no" and do not repeatedly make sexual advances?

3) Finally, the article seems to imply that birth control leads to abortions. Let me make clear that this is statistically unsupported. Societies where contraception and abortions both show increases are societies where the average family size is experiencing a decrease. Or, to put it another way, if people are trying to get smaller families some of them use contraception and others use abortions. If fertility (average family size) is constant, then increases in contraception use lead to decreases in abortion rates. Birth control is not perfect, but if people are going to have sex, and there is strong statistical evidence that lots of people do make that choice, then it is far far better that they choose to use birth control. When people decry the "ineffectiveness" of birth control it seems to be an invitation for people who might have otherwise had relatively safe sex to forgo using contraceptives and this is a very bad decision to be encouraging.

What's in a Name?

I have been thinking about marriage a lot recently. Specifically, in the academic context. More specifically, the politics of last name decisions upon marriage. Marriage for the purpose of this post is between a man and a woman, not only is this the most common form of marriage in this country, but if I am going to be considering the effect of gender on the different people in a marriage, it would be useful to have people of different genders in the marriage.

One of the little things that I absolutely hate, I guess they are called pet peeves but that seems too mild, is when a married woman is addressed as Mrs. John Smith, assuming her husband's first name is John, not hers. The total erasure of the woman's identity is a barbaric throwback to a time when this was a legal reality, the woman was legally an appendage to her husband. This is John Smith's arm, this is John Smith's leg, and this is John Smith's Missus.

Fortunately we have made a little progress since then, and women are usually allowed to own property, be independent adults, and often keep their first name in a marriage. I have less of an issue with last name swaps, because while a full name denotes a specific person, a last name denotes a family. Mrs. John Smith, to me, speaks of a women becoming an appendage to a man, but Mrs. Jane Smith sounds more like she is becoming an appendage to the Smith family, which seems much less desultory to women.

On the other hand, our full name is of some importance to us. It is something we grow up with, a link to our own family, and how our oldest friends know to find us. That the cultural assumption is, predominantly, that women will give up this piece of themselves when they marry that a man does not have to relinquish still seems like and unconscionable disparity.

One solution implemented is the hyphenated last name. This allows both woman and man to retain their link to their childhood identity and family, and for old friends to have a reasonable chance to recognize their names. However, one quickly runs into the pragmatic problem of name growth. If two hyphenated named people marry, they end up with effectively four last names. Any computer science minded people reading this know that within relatively few generations the number of names in the hyphen will reach hundreds and even thousands.

Another common reaction is for the woman to simply retain her name. This is much simpler than changing it, you just don't change it, leave it alone, one fewer thing to worry about after the wedding. This is quite common in academia, where one wishes to retain the name recognition built up under one's "maiden" name, so one simply retains that name upon marriage, keeping all ones old friends and academic credentials without any confusion. However, I do think there is something to be said for the symbolism inherent in a shared name for a family. It is a common identifier, an immediate, important, proclamation of the relatedness of all the members within the familial unit. Maybe it is just the romantic in me, but for me the shared name evokes the ideal of a shared life, and I am loathe to give that up.

Thus, the solution that I tend to favor is for newlyweds to determine their own name. If there are good reasons, both partners could end up taking the husband's, or wife's, family name, but I fear that decision would be unduly swayed by the current, sexist, practices regarding loss of family identity. More in line with what I'd like to see are hyphenated names, names formed by combining family names (a Smith marries a Jones and the result is Smiones, altered to Simones perhaps), or even creating new names out of whole clothe.

This captures the notion of newlyweds separating from their childhood families to create a family of their own, which is both Biblical, helpful to convince social conservatives to accept this changed convention, and romantic. It provides a shared familial identity to the new wife and husband, one which they can share with their children, should they have children, until they two marry and create their own family names, literally and metaphorically. Finally, while it does not obviate the problems inherent in women changing their name upon marriage, it does share the burden more equally between men and women, which seems a worthy goal.

Of course, whether I put my title where my theory is depends on a) if someone ends up wanting to marry me, and b) on their thoughts on the issue. Like most aspects of a relationship, I recognize that decisions regarding married names need to be made by the people actually in the relationship. However, if we can alter the culture in which these decisions are made, in order to inform more equitable decisions that more fully recognize the great contributions women make to these relationships, I think we ought endeavor to do so.

I have not been doing the best at putting things up on my blog lately. Motivation has been hard to wrest from the clutch of ennui, but I shall try to do better.

Let's Get Objectified

While dancing a couple of nights ago an interesting interaction occurred. The follows decided that they wanted a break, while the leads still apparently had energy and were dancing around, this provoked a comment from one of the follows that they wished that had more singles. For those less culturally savvy than even me, this is a reference to the practice of inserting one dollar bills into the clothing of dancers at "exotic dance" establishments. Reasoning that if someone has enough breath to crack witticisms they have enough breath to dance, I asked one of the follows, and noted that, "I'm a guy, we aren't SUPPOSED to be objectified," in my common form of sardonic social commentary.

Unfortunately we didn't launch into an interesting discussion on objectification, but it got me thinking about the subject. Then yesterday it occurred to me that one of our greatest struggles as we try to relate to other people is our need to objectify ourself. What I mean is that, paradoxically, although we have so much more information about our own experiences than anyone else's for this very reason we often cannot understand ourself. We lack the context to understand ourself as a human being precisely because we have such a skewed perspective on ourself, and we struggle to fit ourself into the role of human as we cannot compare ourself to anyone else since we lack comparable data on any one else's experiences. Thusly we struggle to objectify ourself, or to consider our experiences from an objective, rather than subjective, point of view, because that is the only way that we can relate to other people, whom we must all view, to some extent, from an objective perspective.

I think this is related to an idea which I borrow from Hegel. Hegel posits that the individual left all alone is not a Self, that we must come into relation with some Other in order to differentiate ourself as a Self. Once we encounter the Other, another person, we may begin to realize that we are not just a bunch of immediate sensations and experiences, but we are also something that this alien Other might interact with much in the same manner that we interact with this alien Other. No longer can we simply encounter life as a series of stimuli, now we must encounter life with the notion that we are a unified entity, a Self, an objectification of the subjective.

So then, if objectification is one our social goals, what is wrong with follows wanting to stick singles into my suspenders, shouldn't I want to be objectified as a slab of hott man-flesh? Well, the answer may be yes, but there is still something wrong with it. When someone wedges Washingtons into a waistband, they are not objectifying them self, quite the opposite actually. In viewing the dancer as a source of entertainment, stimulation, they are celebrating their own subjectivity at the expense of the dancer's objectivity. If the purpose of objectification is to enable us to relate through our shared humanity with the Other, this self-gratification instead alienates us from a relation with the Other, because we attempt to deny the full subjectivity of the Other's experience of self and instead replace it with our own fantasy of the objectivity of their self.

This is not to say that I whole-heartedly disapprove of people sticking singles in my suspenders, I gain perspective, money, and it was mentioned in jest. However, I do believe the social practice that is being mocked is one deserving of criticism.

Dancing Around Gender Roles

Those of you who happen to know me in the 3 dimensional space we call the real world probably are aware that I pretty much love social dancing. For those of you don't know this, or even what social dancing is, a social dance is a dance where a lead dances with a follow. It is the leads duty to, safely, determine what moves shall be done and indicate that to the follow through body motion. Then both people make the move happen, then much fun is had. While it is by no means a rule, for the most part males lead and females follow, so it would seem that some analysis of gender roles could be obtained by considering social dancing.

A while back I found myself taking regular car trips with a bunch of follows to various dances, and one topic of conversation turned to dance safety (not the safety dance) and dance etiquette (again, those who know me might not be surprised to find out I couldn't get "etiquette" close enough for spell checker to fix, I had to use a thesaurus and look up "manners"). One serious complaint was surprise aerials, an aerial is a move where one partner, usually the follow, spends a noticeable amount of time without any feet on the floor, and a surprise aerial is an aerial led by a lead whom the follow didn't know led aerials. Personally, I can only imagine that the experience of being suddenly thrown into the air is moderately disconcerting, to say the least.

In addition to the unpleasant surprise factor, there is also an issue of respect and safety to consider. Safety because the lead is doing what amounts to throwing of the follow into the air when they are unprepared, and dance floors tend to be quite hard. Respect because the fact that a lead feels competent to make this decision without consulting the follow seems to show some amount of disrespect.

Of course, because I am a philosopher in addition to a dancer, I see this as a metaphor for gender relations off of the dance floor. It is quite common in our culture for males to take the lead, so to speak, in inter-gender relations. While there are some things both parties can do to protect themselves, once males are leading a disproportionate amount of injury occurs to females. So, as a Feminist, I have to question the morality of the worldview implicitly contained in social dancing.

Because I love dancing so much, it is of some importance that I find some way to rehabilitate it from this portrayal of a barbaric institution normalizing male dominance. The most obvious tool with which to do so is to claim that, unlike the imperfect world off the dance floor, dancers are actually able to choose which role they choose to embody independently of their gender. Thus women are not forced into the submissive, and somewhat more dangerous, role of follow.

Of course, this assertion is not entirely unproblematic. At first glance one can easily see that dance role and gender are not independent, as one's gender strongly influences, if not determines, the dance role one adopts. Furthermore, the question of how free one actually is to choose exists.

When women outnumber men it is not uncommon for those who are both experienced dancers and quite brave to try to learn the lead moves, in order to get closer to a balanced number of leads and follows. However, it is quite uncommon for women to lead in situations where men and women are in balanced numbers or when more men are present. This suggests the rather disturbing notion that, if there are excess women there is a choice, but primarily women are there to dance with men as follows. On the other hand, when teaching a lesson which was sparsely attended by males, I pretty much told them they had better be leads due to the gender imbalance, so perhaps there is symmetry in the assumption that each gender should conform to their traditional role in times of scarcity, leaving only the problematic issue of inequality inherent in the roles.

Before moving off this topic, I would like to note an interesting asymmetry that I believe exists. As I noted, in lessons when women greatly outnumber men it is not uncommon for women to lead. Additionally, it is also not unheard of for women to choose the lead role and ask another women to dance. However, it seems much less common for a man to explore the follow role. I have followed a few times, both because I wanted to balance the lead/follow ratio of a lesson and also because I believe that familiarity with the follow role translates into increased ability in the lead role. While following when dancing with a friend is quite comfortable, aside from the difficulty I have with the actual following, swapping to follow in a lesson often feels uncomfortable as other men seem reluctant to dance with another man, and occasionally I have received an outright refusal, albeit a polite one. It seems like this reflects a reluctance on the part of men to closely collaborate with each other which is much less common in women.

Anyway, if the defense that each dancer chooses their role is in fact only an illusion of choice for the most part, one must once again attempt to reconcile one's self with the inequity in dance roles. To be sure, there are decided advantages to studying the follow role. Because leads need to initiate the moves, it seems much easier for follows to "learn" new moves, as, ideally, they can simply follow the lead's direction through most moves assuming a degree of experience for both the lead and the follow. On the other hand, since the lead bears responsibility for guiding the follow through the move, an increased amount of technical knowledge of a move is required for the lead to be able to dance it. Furthermore this extends to learning entirely new dance styles. A highly skilled follow can succeed in dancing an unfamiliar style of dance with a quick introduction to the basic idea and a moderately competent lead, this is much less true for a lead.

While there seem to be both advantages and disadvantages to the expectation that follows cede responsibility for move choice to the lead, the disparity between lead and follow roles remains troubling. Perhaps the last recourse is to assert that at least it is the follow's decision to dance with me, although once again it is usually the lead that initiates the interaction by asking a follow to dance. Of course, even the assumption that this decision on the part of the follow is being freely made could be assaulted by dance etiquette that encourages acceptance of dance requests in order to keep leads comfortable making said requests.

Slut Walk

Random thought: A young person is someone with the luxury of believing they know enough to form what is essentially an indisputably correct opinion. An old person is someone with the luxury of believing they know enough to form what is essentially an indisputably correct opinion and the young people have no idea how arrogant they are to believe the same.

Enough with the heavy topics and the mopey introspection, let's talk about Sluts! After a Toronto police officer advised students to, "avoid dressing like sluts," in order to avoid being sexually assaulted, the social protest phenomena known as Slut Walk was born. Simply put, Slut Walks are organized in order to provide people who believe that what a woman is wearing has no bearing on her being sexually assaulted a public platform to share their opinion. Here's an article on the subject, if you are interested in further reading, it is simply the article I read most recently, not my choice of an exhaustive resource.

The Slut Walk immediately brings up two important and interesting topics, victim blaming, gendered double standards for sexuality, and activism. I'll address them in that order.

While some might argue that what you are wearing has no causal relationship to your likelihood of being raped, and I know that there is good anecdotal evidence for this claim, it seems even easier to argue that there is no reason wardrobe ought have any bearing on sexual assault. As long as one's garb is within the legal limits on decency, I see no reason for it to be mentioned in a court of law. What someone is wearing CERTAINLY does not justify sexually assaulting them. Furthermore, if we consider institutionalizing the message that dressing in a certain manner is likely to incur sexual assault, it seems as though we are perpetuating the domination of women through sexual violence, namely dictating to them the clothing that are safe to wear.

As someone possessed of a rather conservative personal, as opposed to political, morality, I cannot say that I unreservedly celebrate the label slut. However, I certainly do believe it should have the same normative value as the word "stud." If we glorify male sexuality and simultaneously vilify female sexuality, we set an unjust double standard. To be sure, I would prefer that both "stud" and "slut" referred to behavior not socially celebrated, but I definitely think they ought have the same normative content, and I don't particularly like vilifying anyone. Those loyal, long time readers (to whom I am very grateful) may recognize this thought structure from my post last October (ok, November) on Halloween costumes. Surprise, we have not achieved gender equity in the past six months!

Like I noted, I am not entirely copacetic with the message of a Slut Walk. Consequentially I might not choose to show up for such an event should one end up organized near my area. Let's be honest though, show up alone to voluntarily immerse myself in a crowd, doesn't sound like something I'd do even to get more Firefly episodes. However, the Slut Walks have an important core message with which I deeply believe, and furthermore provide people with an option for activism. It is good for there to be multiple venues for activism, from proud Sluts and Slut allies walking the streets, to nerdy bloggers hiding in their basements. Speaking of activism opportunities, Jamie Keiles over at Teenagerie is co-coordinating Chicago's Slut Walk (is it just me, or does "slattern look like it is spelled with a pi?), and her blog is a great resource for discussion on things of gender/activist interest.

Finally, I have a new follower, and since that made me very happy I thought I should mention it, so hello! Their profile picture is Dr Who, so it is even more fantastic!

Women are Worth It

I already have a post about Women in the Workplace, so I needed another title for this post. This is my second post inspired by TED talks, however, this time it is very much a direct response to the video in question. As such, I ask that you watch Sheryl Sandberg talk on "Why we have too few women leaders," at least if you want to understand this post. It is a nearly 15 minutes long talk, and I am sorry to ask for this much of a time commitment, but I think it is well worth watching. If it makes you feel better, I have watched it three times now, once two weeks ago which gave me the idea for this post, once this afternoon to remind what it was I wanted to address, then again right afterward as it became clear that I needed to make notes on specific points throughout the video. So, go watch it please, the next paragraph will still be here when you get back.

First off, while I disagree with this talk in some fundamental ways, I want to emphasize that, given Ms Sandberg's premises, I think this is a wonderful talk. She explicitly notes that the goal is limited to helping women stay in the workplace (2:47) through personal strategies rather than structural changes (3:04). Because her talk is aimed at helping women in our current power system, of course it will not address problems with that system, that is not her purpose. She wishes to help women within the current power system, a classic liberal goal, but I think the entire power system should be examined, and ultimately altered, a more progressive stance.

One problem with helping women succeed within our current system, is that women are penalized for succeeding within our system. Have you ever heard the saying, "can't win for losing." It refers to a Pyhrric victory, a success that ends up costing the winner a horrible price. As Ms. Sandberg notes, people tend not to like successful women (7:15). However, it is worse than that, as the story of Heidi Roizen demonstrates (7:46). It isn't that women have to act differently than men do in order to succeed because the system is somehow biased against women, apparently the means a women uses to succeed which make people dislike her are traits that people find admirable when performed by a man.

This is a problem that cannot be solved by the individual women seeking professional betterment, to whom Ms. Sandberg addresses her talk, because it is a problem that exists on a cultural level. We expect women to be nurturing and men to be successful, so a man who does what is necessary to attain high power will be viewed as normative, while a woman who implements the same strategies is much more likely to be criticized as being "out for herself," because of the context that women are not SUPPOSED to be out for themselves.

Because she is only trying to help women rise to the top in our current power system, Ms. Sandberg can only advise women to be out for themselves and ignore the backlash it creates. However, since I am criticizing the entire system I would like to both point out the fundamental injustice of expecting women to adhere to "traditional" but ineffective strategies, and to point out the utter dysfunction of a system in which self-aggrandization turns out to be a more successful strategy than communal nurturing.

Lest I be accused of being a gender essentialist, and in order to fully disclose my own stake in this, let me directly say that I do not by any means believe that "communal personalities" are restricted to women, and I tend to empathize with them. For example, the story about hand raising (9:07) hit home because the same thing has happened to me. If someone says that they are done taking questions, and you decide to keep your hand raised anyway, doesn't it seem like you are, in some sense, saying that your desire for recognition should take precedence over the speaker's stated desire to end questioning? Furthermore, I have almost always found that I can go and ask the question after the talk if it continues to irk me. So, while valuing communal personalities may have the happy result of increasing the number of women high up in our system of power, I think the valuing of communal personalities in itself would have beneficial effects on our system of power.

This is, probably, the biggest problem I have with Ms. Sandberg's talk. She is encouraging women to succeed by adopting a "masculine personality" strategy rather than questioning a system that is rigged to promote the "masculine personality." Since I have rather little use for the traditional "masculine personality," this seems like a particularly dysfunctional "solution." Made all the more so by the fact that the system is further rigged to favor "masculine personalities" in male bodies. Ms. Sandberg may, "think a world... where half of our countries and half of our companies were run by women, would be a better world," (14:17) but if they get there by acting like traditional alpha males, I fail to see how the world would be likely to change.

However, Ms. Sandberg does make some points that I consider very important. As I have noted, one of the reasons that feminism is most important to me is that it tends to reject gender essentialism. One of the ways that expresses itself is in the politics of housework, something Ms. Sandberg addresses. However, in order to share domestic labor more equally between sexes, not only do women need husbands willing to do their share, which already hints that structural reform is necessary, but also, "we have to make it as important a job... to work inside the home for people of both genders." (11:13) Here Ms. Sandberg is finally forced to abandon her call for women to reform themselves and blatantly call for true structural reform.

My final note on this topic is that, the idea that, "men are reaching for opportunities more than women," fundamentally undermines the notion that our society is a meritocracy, which weakens many of the justifications for our current power system. The last thing I wanted to address was the tendency for women to underestimate their competency. In the anecdote she provided (4:43), I wonder if the Dunning-Kruger effect might be explanatory. Furthermore, should it really be bad for people to acknowledge the help they had acquiring their skills and expertise (6:38)? While more women in places of power may eventually lead to a restructuring of our power system, I do not think it is inevitable if women are forced to "buy into" the power system in order to succeed. Consequentially, I think it is necessary that we remain vigilantly critical of the flaws in our overall system of power, and move to address them as we are able.

You're Beautiful

There is a thing on Facebook called, "Tell Her She's Beautiful" day. Despite the gendered pronoun, it is intended to address the image issues that men and women face in our society, and hopefully help build positive body image for all of us. You know, women get called men and lumped into mankind all the time, get over it dudes!

Anyway, since telling any casual acquaintance of mine that they are beautiful in person seems uncharacteristically forward of me, I decided to do the next best thing and write a blog post about it. So, you are beautiful!

How do I know? Well, for starters I am of the opinion that most other people are good looking, yes, that includes you guys, I wouldn't call you attractive, but rather aesthetically pleasing. Secondly, I find that my appreciation of a person's appearance is correlated with how interesting I consider them as a person. Since you are still reading this post, I am inclined to think you find abstract thought and identity issues interesting, therefore you probably are an interesting person. Ergo, you are beautiful!

Body image is a tricky thing. Last summer I made some modest lifestyle changes for health reasons that, as an incidental side effect, caused me to lose some weight. When this happened I began to hope that, should I lose enough weight, I might gain some self confidence. However, the rational part of my mind soon pointed out that I have always considered myself the "fat kid," and no matter what I look like, as long as I am the "fat kid" in my mind, my personality is unlikely to be altered significantly.

We, especially women, are exposed to unrealistic and unhealthy standards of appearance in our culture. I think it is important that we support each other in attempting to achieve health, not some unimportant number like weight or waistline. As a professional mathematician, I will let you know that there are a lot of very important numbers, your weight is not among them.

Philosophy for You and Me

As I have said before, although maybe not here, I think that I would be most satisfied if I left the world believing that I had made people think a bit harder about things. And by things, I mean the important things, like "what should we do," "what makes us happy," even "what does it all mean," although that isn't a favorite of mine. In short, I want people to think about what we call philosophy.

Why do I consider this to be important? Firstly, if you go through life not paying attention to it, then you have missed a great deal of your own life. I also think that in the consideration of such things, we become better people. Finally, when we look deep into ourselves, we are also learning things about all the people around us, on whom we depend daily, which further enriches our lived experience and our moral code.

However, as important as philosophy is to every person, so is every person important to philosophy. To me, philosophy isn't like math, where one needs reach some academic pinnacle in order to have some genuinely new and worthwhile insight. Philosophy is more personal, and since each of us is uniquely privileged with knowledge and insight about ourselves and our experiences, each of us has something of genuine value to contribute to the questions of humanity. Granted, I would like to believe that a formal study of philosophy provides both useful tools for our examinations, as well as valuable exercise, or practice, flexing our analytical muscles, but these are mere means, rather than the goal of philosophy.

Let me provide a quick example. I have long wondered at the unfair nature of birth in our world. So much of who we are is determined by the person or persons who raise us, including many of our socioeconomic advantages or disadvantages. To me, it seems heartbreaking that we can be so attuned to our parochial needs that we could remorselessly let the public education system to topple as long as OUR child received a good education, we could harden our hearts to the children of our workers and accumulate and accumulate until OUR child could never want for any material good. Let me also mention, on the other side of the coin, the children who are not pushed to achieve, either because their parents are apathetic or absent, and end up falling through the cracks. Granted, personal contribution does play a part in the course of a child's life, but SO much is dependent on the nature of their caregiver(s).

Since the concept of a meritocracy, or success of the competent, is so critical to our society, and seems like a rather good idea, I set out to imagine how such a thing might unfold. Since so much of our fortune, for good or for ill, is determined by our upbringing, it seemed almost laughably obvious that the most fair system would involve raising children in some communal manner, with no biological parents knowing who their progeny were so that they could not play favorites. Furthermore, since we usually desire the very best for our offspring, an ignorance to the actual identity of our child seems likely to encourage biological parents to make decisions with the general welfare in mind. For example, wealthy leaders of industry might be more inclined to see the value of social minimum standards of living if they didn't know whether their child was homeless or unemployed.

Fortunately, I shared this idea with some good friends of mine, well educated and intelligent thinkers, but not philosophers by trade. While I still feel a general goodwill towards our fellow humans should inform our actions and encourage us to seek the best for those we encounter, rather than just ourselves, I now acknowledge that this may very likely not be the right way to go about it. What one of my friends pointed out is, quite simply, mothers probably wouldn't like this. In fact, they theorized that mothers might react to this system violently, quite literally.

By contributing this viewpoint, which I had overlooked, probably due to my own general antipathy towards children, my own thought became deeper, more in line with reality. This illustrates two important points. First, we should never become so enamored of our model representing a system that we forget the original system we set out to consider. And second, we all have blind spots, and we all have contributions that can help each other out when something gets stuck in our blind spots. So come, let us do philosophy together!

A Pre-Halloween Thought

But, but, but Halloween was yesterday (or the day before yesterday if you happen not to be an insomniac or live somewhere other than the Americas), why talk about Halloween today? Well, I'm talking about Halloween today because I have been double-plus ungood about updating here in a timely fashion. If it helps, you can consider my title to mean that I had this thought before Halloween, which I did, or that today is before next Halloween, which it is.

So, the thought. In the lead up to Halloween I saw posts across multiple blogs that I follow condemning women for choosing to "slut it up" for Halloween. While I am no Third Wave Feminist advocating for miniskirt empowerment, in fact I am somewhat of a conservative prude, I believe that there should be a rebuttal to these posts, so I shall make one.

I have to admit that I am unfavorably inclined towards criticisms of "slutting it up" from the get go. Primarily because I find the term "slut" offensive. As mentioned, I am somewhat of a prude, and I feel that men and women often carry on in an unseemly manner, however, the gender bias inherrent in the term "slut" does more to antagonize me than its implied agenda of sexual moderation. Put simply, a guy who acts exactly like a "slut" (negative connotation) is called a "stud" (positive connotation).

While I would prefer that all were held to the standards of sexual restraint to which women are typically held, I think I should set aside this opinion for the moment in order to support gender equality, a cause that I consider more urgent. This is similar to my support for legal abortions due to the unjust gendered distribution of blame, responsibility, and labor with regards to pregnancies and subsequent babies, despite my deep personal reservations regarding the practice. So, since "slutting it up" has such sexist connotations, I find the term distasteful.

Furthermore, I find the practice of condemning the women who wear such sexualized costumes to be slightly unfair. After all, we live in a society where that manner of dress is often normalized. Not only in regards to Halloween costumes, I would imagine that if you paid attention, outfits of similar decorum, or lack thereof, could be found in many of the advertisements displayed year round, after all, "sex sells," as the saying goes. Much is said about the problems caused by models informing American women on how they should look, a subject worthy of great consideration in its own right, but less is said about their effect on how American women feel they should dress, I imagine this effect is not trivial.

So, this upcoming Halloween, and here I definitely am talking about the one a little over 360 days from now, I urge you, men and women, to wear costumes that you feel comfortable with, be they revealing or not. I urge you to not base your self worth on the reactions of others to your costume, whatever they may be. And finally, I urge you to think kindly of your fellow humans, rather than dismissing them with a criticism, and this last one is worth thinking about every day before next Halloween too ;)

Mawidge

So, I was going to reformulate my post on atheist ethics today, but now I am not. Since two of my good friends get married tomorrow, and one severely disagreed with my last post, and probably will disagree with me still, though hopefully less vehemently, why pick a fight tonight. Let us instead celebrate marriage.

I was going to post a while back with thoughts on Prop 8, but again, my desire not to pick fights dissuaded me. While we are celebrating marriage, it seems worthwhile to bring this up. Whatever your position on who should have sex with whom, I assume we can all agree that love is good, and the more love, the better the world is.

This brings up an interesting point, in our culture today we tend to equivocate sex and marriage. This is in spite of the fact that it is widely acknowledged that many, many, unmarried people are having sex with each other. I would assume that there are also some married couples who are not regularly having sex with each other.

I think that modern mainstream Christianity is partially to blame for this. By attempting to make sex all about a marital relationship, the idea of sex and marriage have been linked, and it becomes easy to make the logical mistake of thinking that marriage is only for sex. However, this is certainly not the case.

Since I am lacking in deep thoughts today, I invite you to come up with your own. What is marriage? What does marriage mean to you? Is marriage a legal state or a spiritual state? If both, are these two different types of marriage? Can one have both, can one have only one of them?

"Mawidge is what bwings us togewer today." The priest was not addressing only the bride and groom, but everyone.

What Now?

Since my posts this month have not generated much dissent, I shall assume that most people agree that women face some societally created hurdles which men, for the most part, do not have to leap. Making yet another assumption, that you would like to see this changed, the question of how to progress toward a more equitable future seems quite relevant.

So, I ask you, how can each of us, as an individual, contribute to a more equitable future for women?

"What," you may be wondering, "is he doing asking us a question, this isn't Tuesday?" But rest assured, I am asking because I think the answer is important, and important to get from many people to obtain a variety of viewpoints. I also ask because I do not consider my own answer to be sufficient.

My personal answer is to contribute to a more equitable future by doing my best not to be inequitable personally. There are two components to this, one is to seek information about women's perspectives and priorities. Note that this is not a monolithic subject, one does not have a simple, cardboard-cutout worldview and opinion solely because one is a woman, nor should one, which is a main point of my post about women in politics. Once you are aware of the practices that many women view as dis-empowering, do your best no avoid them, the practices not the women.

Some common examples that come up repeatedly include, not assuming that because you know someone is a woman, that you know their opinion on abortion or whether they voted for Hillary Clinton in 2008. As noted above, women are capable of coming to their own conclusions, which may not parrot popular perception of women's priorities. Of course, men suffer, perhaps less frequently or pronouncedly, a similar fate. As I noted when discussing the importance of feminism, both genders benefit when we take the time to consider others as complex individuals rather than copies of a prototype. That said, we should not assume it is a panacea to treat women like men. Women are acculturated much differently than men (please assume when I make sweeping statements like these I mean, "in general" or "on average") so treating women exactly like men would lead to inequitable results. For example, men tend to be more assertive in their communication style, which can lead to women being left out of intergender conversations, unless the woman has overcome her acculturation to be supportive and agreeable, or the men make an effort to provide an environment where the women feel comfortable sharing their views. In short, try to respect people equally, treat people equally, but don't assume that means treating them the same.

Now, I think that if everyone held this point of view, simply doing this would be sufficient. However, since there are institutions that resist the shift toward equitability, it seems desirable that we should, in addition to trying to live in an equitable manner, make attempts to reform these institutions. How we might do this is where my ability to answer runs out, so I must ask you for your opinion on how one might go about reforming these institutions.

Thank you for a good Feminist July, as always, comments make my heart smile.

Attributions

I couldn't come up with a better topic, and no one rescued me with an idea whilst I was away, so I am going to share some of the sources that contributed to my thoughts this month. I tend not to cite sources because the sources I used have been rattling around in my brain for so long I have forgotten from whence they came and which belongs to what. So, here are some inspirations.

My formal education in gender studies can mostly be boiled down to three courses. The first a philosophy course, Feminist Philosophies, taught by the estimable Dr. Lani Roberts, my philosophy mentor. The second, Global Women, a woman's studies course. The third was Women in US History, a history course, which covered the late 1800's to the present. All three courses I would recommend.

An unknown number of years ago I read an article about the Supergirl Dilemma, which I could not find for my post about the subject. I include this because it exemplifies a problem that I have quite often.

Feminist Philosophers is a site I read quite regularly my last year as an undergraduate. It is a quite wonderful mix of original thought, links to important topics, and pictures of kitty-cats.

I also read I Blame The Patriarchy around the same time, until the author took a hiatus, which has since ended. It is a bit more radical, but an interesting point of view nonetheless.

There are many other options for sites containing thoughts from one, or more, of the many feminist points of view. Feministing is one I hear about often, though since I have never read it regularly, I have no personal information to convert.

Recently I have been reading The Seventeen Magazine Project which has an interesting feminist/teenager perspective. The offshoot blog, Teenagerie is also something I read, though currently on hiatus for a very good reason. These influenced my Supergirl post to some extent.

Those, and conversations with some of the wonderful people who are or were in my life, are greatly responsible for the course of my own thoughts. Although my recollection is not sufficient for a citation, they should be mentioned, indeed doing so is worthy of a Feminist July post. If I were to take their thoughts, synthesize them in my mind, then act as though the result were purely my own, it would be a disservice to the many great thinkers from whom I was borrowing. In fact, "borrowing" from women without giving them proper credit is a problem in academia, Rosalind Franklin anyone? So, a big thanks to anyone who feels they were in part responsible for these thoughts, because you probably were.

As mentioned, I already know how Feminist July will conclude next Friday, and I really do hope I get it up on Friday this time. I need one more idea for August and then I won't have to come up with any topics while I am on vacation, which would be nice.

Women in the Workplace

My thoughts are not organizing well today, so this may be a little disjointed. I hope you will understand, since there are many angles from which one might approach the topic.

First, let us consider the wage gap. I am also feeling a bit unmotivated today, so I shall just direct you here to read a thorough yet concise, fact driven, examination of the issue. Having grown up around the supergirls of my generation, I have no doubt that there is no inherent reason women, on average, should be less qualified for any but some of the most physically taxing jobs than men are on average. Thus the fact that there is a gender wage gap seems like a grave injustice.

Although the above article mentions it, I believe it is worth addressing the issue of "women's work." Society normalizes men holding jobs in the public sector while women do domestic work. While this can be disheartening to women desiring traditional jobs, or emasculating to men feeling more comfortable in a domestic role, I think the greatest problem with this state of affairs is the difference in value that these roles receive. An obvious way to recognize this difference is to examine the wages of those in the different roles. Professional domestic workers are not the best compensated laborers, and the difference is even more marked when a women does the domestic work for her own family, usually earning no pay at all.

I think that good goals for a just society are, elimination of statistically significant pay gaps between genders in most professions, elimination of gender based association with the public/private workforce, a more equal valuation of work done in the two sectors (public and private). Due to our cultural conditioning it may seem odd to consider private work valuable, but consider which creates more human pleasure overall, two hours of a stockbroker trading and advising clients, or two hours spent preparing a warm meal for a family. I submit that, were both two be neglected, we would miss the meal more than the stock advice.

As mentioned, I am feeling unmotivated, and now very tired, so I am going to skip my customary editing read through. Please excuse the lack of polish on this, I'll delete this paragraph if I get around to revisions later.

Education in Culture

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to make fun of or rob the previous post.

I have decided to make July into Feminist Month here in the Middle. I'm sure there is a national month for women or something, but who cares when it really is. Since women comprise (slightly more than) half the world's population, we should probably keep an eye on them year round, just in case. Here I am using Feminist in the sense of one who examines the interactions between one's gender and their lives, a more academic sense perhaps, rather than one who simply believes that women are also people.

But, do not fear, we will be discussing the cultural perception of education in the United States as promised. I believe this is an important pursuit, because there seems to be an undertone of dissatisfaction with those elitist, "Ivory Tower," intellectuals running through our country, which is prevalent enough to make itself felt in our most recent presidential campaign. One might wonder, how does a country so blessed academically, reaping massive benefits in fields such as medicine and technology, develop a widespread anti-intellectual backlash?

To be perfectly fair, some of it may be because the accusations have some truth to them. Our health care system is a perfect example, many of the advances only benefit a select portion of our population. One also notes that services such as the Internet require computer access and a significant chunk of change to pipe directly into one's home. A Kindle (something whose main function is to display E-books) costs close to $200. Even public school systems in advantaged neighborhoods fair better than those that have fewer communal resources upon which to draw.

However, I would argue the main people working to mitigate these and similar imbalance are intellectuals themselves. Ethicist who create panels to govern organ transplants, in an earnest, and somewhat successful, attempt to prevent organ transplanting advances from turning lower classes into organ inventories for those who are more wealthy, libraries which often provide public internet access, and tech giant Google encourages communities to upgrade and open up their net infrastructure. So, while technological advances still operate under a trickle down effect, unlike tax breaks, we ought not condemn the entire educational system for this alone.

What I want this post to focus on, and what I think to be a main source of the issue, is the opinion of public school students about their education and how it is reinforced by the portrayal of intelligent children in the media. Here I believe society has a tremendous fail in framing opinions on the subject. If intellectuals get harsh treatment in news media, they are practically crucified in shows for children. It seems the best they can hope for is the amusement accorded a trained monkey, exemplified by TJ in Smart Guy, and the worst is a treatment comparable to the vilification of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. The nerd is often portrayed as arrogant and standoffish, but deeply insecure due to their inability to relate to others on anything other than an intellectual level, a la Minkus of Boy Meets World.

I, as somewhat of a standoffish child who had trouble relating to my peers, was not terribly deterred by these characterizations, after all, how much worse could it get? Additionally, like much of popular, or "pop," culture, I was not exposed to them in any serious quantity until a relatively late point in my development. However, I cannot help but suspect that they have some influence on the tendency for students see school as a hindrance to more important pursuits, an unpleasant nuisance, rather than an amazing privilege and the gateway to lifetimes of worthwhile considerations and important life skills.

One interesting twist of this inculcation of our children is that it often takes a very different form for young women. Unlike males, where intelligence is often negatively valued, programming for a school aged audience often portrays women excelling academically. Of course, these characters are also among the social elite of the show, epitomes of our cultural standard of beauty, and usually star athletes, or at least cheerleaders. But, mixed in with all these messages is one of approbation for being smart. So, as long as they can meet the other standards of acceptance, it is less objectionable, and even somewhat expected, for a young woman to be academically gifted. Lo and behold, at lower levels women outperform men in school, although this leads to its own problem, where women in public school, especially at the high school level, are expected to excel in all facets of their school experiences. This phenomenon has been labeled the Supergirl dilemma if you wish to read about it further.

One might conjecture that this explains why, while girls perform on average better than boys, at least until they reach the point where society tells them they ought cease to be successful, at the very upper end of the academic spectrum girls are outnumbered by boys. Although they are permitted, and even encouraged, to excel academically, which explains them outperforming young boys as a whole, they are also told to split their attention across a wide spectrum of activities and be high-achievers in all of them, which, studies conclude, takes a toll on their mental health. On the other hand, boys who perform well academically are often barred from other typical pursuits typical of the high school experience, which also may not be terribly healthy from a developmental standpoint, but does tend to have a remarkable salutary effect upon one's ability to focus on one's studies.

What I would hope to see in the future is programming for children that positively reinforces academic achievement, without unduly pressuring students to outperform each other, or base their entire self-worth upon their academic prowess. What I expect to see is something that more closely resembles the plot of Idiocracy, but one can hope.

Feminism and You

I was going to post this over my apology from last night, so as to obliterate the evidence, but then I read it and realized I spelled 'write' as 'right' thus backing up my claim to incoherence. This is amusing enough to grant it a stay of execution, so my "Friday" update is here, on Saturday, in a new post.

Feminism is a dauntingly broad subject to address, so let me begin in a manageable piece. I consider myself a feminist. Of course what I just said can be interpreted in a plethora of ways, I am not a separatist, nor an eco-feminist, and Third Wave feminism seems a little too debauched for me at times. One of my philosophy professors would quote the definition paraphrased here, "A feminist is one who holds the radical belief that women are people."

This seems too easy, but I believe this may be a product of the era in which I grew up. I too have been influenced by the Girl Power culture of the nineties, and find it almost unbelievable to consider women as anything other than people. Watching the TV show "Mad Men" recently hit home the fact, which I knew intellectually, that as recently as half a century ago women were considered to be of similar competency as the children they raised. So, if I am perceiving our society correctly when I say that women, for the most part, are people too nowadays, this is something to be celebrated.

However, I do not believe that the progress is sufficient for us to grow complacent and lapse into a post-feminist society. There are inherent differences between males and females that necessitate treating women as people in their own right, rather than simply adding them to the "guys." In other words, although women and men are both people, women should not be forced to conform to the male-presuming standards for being a person.

For example, a woman may give birth, a man cannot give birth, thus denying a woman the right to take a break during an examination to lactate is not treating her equally to a man. While it is true that men are also not permitted to pause for lactation during the exam, it is a non-issue for a man. To hold a woman to the same standard despite the inherent differences in situations would be to declare that women may take a place alongside men in society, but only if they take the route of conforming to the traditional male role (the Margret Thatcher route you might cal it). I guess I'm not a liberal feminist either (one who believes women will achieve de facto [real] equality with men simply through de jure [legal] equality with men).

This leads me to why feminism is so important for everyone, because we are all individuals. While permitting women to assume male-roles in society may be a step forward, it is my dream that one step of the future will be to let go of the dichotomous nature of male/female roles in society and instead consider each individual as just that, an individual. This will be a boon to anyone who fails to fit either role perfectly. So, if you aspire to be something other than the perfect 60's mother or father, it is in your interest to be a feminist too.