Why I Hate International Women's Day

I don't hate it for its Soviet roots.

The Wikipedia caption for the poster at right:

The 1932 Soviet poster dedicated to the 8th of March holiday. The text reads: "8th of March is the day of rebellion of the working women against kitchen slavery" and "Down with the oppression and narrow-mindedness of household work!". Originally in the USSR the holiday had a clear political character, emphasizing the role of the Soviet state inthe liberation of women from their second-class-citizen status.

Indeed, I'm all in favor of liberating women from the status of second-class citizen. And I think that doing so means demanding equal treatment for women in education, employment, and politics. Those are difficult tasks, and they require work on a daily basis, and I have no problem with a day that calls attention to the politics of gender.

But what I do have a problem with is a patronizing day for celebrating femininity analogous to Valentine's Day or Grandparent's Day. In Italy, and in some other countries, men give women flowers or chocolates on March 8. And then they elect, and tolerate, Berlusconi.

This gets personal:

At my university there is Women's and Gender Studies program, and it has an event budget. But it has not brought in an academic speaker in years, and its only event this year will be to hand out tulips to women--for being women--in the student union tomorrow. No political involvement on campus, no programming. Just tulips--symbols of love, symbols of unblemished beauty.

We also have a Women's Center, part of the Student Life part of campus. To recognize International Women's Day, they're holding a henna workshop.

Great. Flowers and make-up. So much for being modern women.

Women in Politics: Not Even in Fantasyland

I just received a brochure from my county elections board about the newly required Sequoia "Imagecast" electronic voting machine. It will replace the mechanical devices that many counties in New York state have used for decades. Those old-fashioned lever machines have the drawback that they don't record individual votes for recounts, but they also have distinct advantages, such as their simplicity of use, not permitting overvoting, and having some of the lowest error rates of any voting method.

Oh, but that rant was off-topic!

On said brochure, there is an illustration of how to fill in a circle next to a candidate's name. The imaginary candidates are:

• Neil Diamond
• Carrie Underwood
• Kenny Rogers
• Luther Vandros [sic!]
• Pink Floyd
• Toby Keith

The hidden message? Women are as unlikely to succeed in politics as in the music industry.

Animal Rights and Teaching Ethics

In my Introduction to Ethics class last year I taught food ethics, including animal rights, for the first time. I've shied away from the topic in the past, thinking that the students--or, at least, the students at places where I've taught--would consider it too fringe to make a direct connection with the underlying thought patterns.

On the final exam I asked a question, "What is the most memorable, challenging, or thought-provoking idea that was raised in this class?" 

The most popular, though least illuminating, answer was along the lines of "ethical theories." The second most common answer had to do with a film we watched about farm animal rights, called Wegman's Cruelty. I was surprised by this large response, particularly since discussions after the film were short and shallow.

The film documents animal-rights activists, led by Adam Durand, breaking into the Wegman's egg farm to (illegally) investigate whether the farm violates animal cruelty guidelines. It did, and the footage is dramatic. The case occurred in 2004.

I learned yesterday that Adam Durand is one of my neighbors, and that he has a court date for resentencing tomorrow. His original sentence was illegal and was appealed to the state supreme court. Our court system is often described as biased in favor of defendants. While that's true, there is also a clear bias toward entities that have the money and the power to drag court cases out for years and years. How surprising that this case, a minor case of trespassing, has been in the system for 5 years!

Candidates Who Support Science

At the Your Candidates, Your Health website, you can see answers that the two major party presidential candidates and some Congressional candidates have given to a questionnaire about health and science policies.

The questions are along these lines:

Do you agree or disagree that it is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure all Americans have basic health care coverage?

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? "The U.S. is in danger of losing its global competitive edge in science, technology and innovation." If you agree, what approach would you take to change this trend?

Updates

A few times in the last year I've noted the projects of my Congressional representative, Louise Slaughter, who especially supports women and whose work is scientifically informed. She recently wrote an opinion column for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle laying out some reasons why opening up more places for domestic oil drilling will not solve our energy problems.

I last wrote about Slaughter in relation to her support for people who are sexually assaulted during their military service. In comments a reader rightly pointed out that victims of sexual assault are not limited to women and bravely writes about his experience here.

A friend guided me to the Angry Professor's blog, who has also responded to the Chronicle's article defending male privilege. Ahhh, would that I were so angrily eloquent.

Hooray for Rep. Louise Slaughter

Louise Slaughter is my representative, and yet again she is taking a strong stand on an important issue.

Last week she testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommitte on sexual assault in the military. She said that in 2003:

The sheer number of incidents was disturbing. More than that, however,the military's responses to victims who came forward were antiquated, often punishing the victim rather than the perpetrator. It was shameful.

She goes on to commend Congress and the DoD for recent attention to sexual assault. However, she says that changes in reporting procedures have obscured the gathering of statistics so that there is no accurate estimate of whether the problem is actually getting better.

Failure to uniformly gather and report information related to the investigation and disposition of sexual assault claims complicates Congressional policy-based efforts to address sexual assault in the military and frustrates the purpose of the Department of Defense’s existing programs.

This week, in a column for the Huffington Post, Slaughter shares her opinion of the sincerity of the Department of Defense's participation:

Kaye Whitley, director of the Department's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, had been subpoenaed to testify at Thursday's hearing, but apparently Department of Defense officials instructed her to stay away from the hearing. I am very disturbed by the DoD's resistance to Congressional oversight on sexual assault.

Kudos to Slaughter for making this an issue before Congress and for publicizing the inadequate procedures for reporting sexual assault in the military.

Quite simply, the current structure makes women who have suffered sexual assault choose between confidentiality and justice.

It is unconscionable that women who serve their country in the military should have to make that decision. For three Congresses, I have introduced the Military Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Act. This legislation will ensure greater protections for service members and their families if they become victims of sexual assault or domestic violence.

Title IX, Higher Education, and Science

How can the New York Times ("all the news that's FIT to print") run an off-the-wall biased article arguing that Title IX should not be used to correct gender bias in education (except in athletics, where it's too late to take it back)?

John Tierney's tirade against the possible use of Title IX as a tool for correcting the most flagrant cases of bias against women in science education rests on these points:

1. Forcing men to share resources with women would "hurt scientific research and do more harm than good for women" (presumably because of backlash).

2. Women aren't discriminated against in the sciences anyway. If they pursue some fields in smaller numbers than men, it's because they just don't like science (or maybe they aren't any good at it, or maybe they'd rather be stay-at-home moms so they can pursue their biological calling or maybe they just like low-paying jobs like secretary and grade school teacher that much more).

3. The reason they're not interested in the prestigious fields of physics and engineering is that, at a young age, they are "better rounded."

4. Giving women legal and institutional support in their bid for political, educational, and employment equality "infantilizes women."

Oh, and Tierney quotes Christina Hoff Sommers.

I bet Female Science Prof has something to say about this! Yep, she does.

Equal Pay for Equal Work

My Congressional Rep. again stands up for women and families. Louise Slaughter is a lead sponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act which responds to last year's awful Ledbetter v. Goodyear decision with legislation that would help protect women against workplace discrimination.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 paid lip service to discrimination against women. It was passed because at the time women earned just 59¢ for every dollar that men earned. Now, 45 years later--hooray--women earn 77¢ for every dollar earned by men for the same work. An improvement of 18 cents!

And this figure just compares equal work. It doesn't begin to reflect how women are systematically kept out of high-paying, high-status jobs.

This is what Louise Slaughter said in a recent interview:

The Ledbetter case really shook us up. It was startling. None of us really thought that that would happen in this day and age. But Lilly Ledbetter's not alone. The Wage Project, a nonprofit group, estimates that women lose between $200,000 and $2 million in their lifetimes because of the wage gap.

Read the whole interview here.

Skepticism about Climate Change

Yesterday I posted a quote from a book review by Freeman Dyson. Dyson thinks that climate change skeptics have been misunderstood and are too quickly dismissed:

Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice.

Now, I think Dyson is right to consider whether the hype about global warming distracts from other important environmental and social issues. In fact, environmental problems are not all of a piece: a solution to one problem can exacerbate others.

Still there's a problem here with Dyson's assessment. He says "Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists." But is this true?

I have yet to meet someone who is both skeptical of the climate science that supports anthropogenic global warming and is a passionate environmentalist. The position that Dyson describes--a person who thinks that the climate change hype is overblown--is not necessarily skeptical. This person just has their values ordered so that addressing climate change is not the primary value. The skeptics that I've met take one of these positions:

1.) They are ignorant of and threatened by science, sometimes as an extension of a general anti-intellectualism or anti-secularism.

2.) They think that there is a more subtle political motivation for the climate change hypothesis. For instance, that liberals are really anti-corporate, anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist, etc. and this scientific hypothesis is an excuse to get political support for their views or their candidates. Often the skeptics in this camp don't doubt the climate change evidence but do doubt that the cause is anthropogenic. The argument goes that if it's not anthropogenic then we need not change any of our practices.

Numeracy and Democracy

My dad is a statistician/methodologist in psychology, and sent me images of this amazing art installation in Seattle:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?icl=7. It aims to provide a sense of proportion over our waste, and I think it's profound.

Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.

© Chris Jordan

Detail at actual size:

© Chris Jordan

In several classes this week, I've been speaking with students about political awareness and apathy. I am especially moved by the significance of democracy and our privilege, given the events in Zimbabwe this week over the elections. Yet at the same time, a University Senate sponsored rally against racism drew a pathetic few demonstrators with no clear message, and no clear aim.

Art can be a great way to raise consciousness. Although it tends to preach to the converted, it provides motivation and vision in a way that grassroots politics and activisim no longer seems to.

Science and the Election

Will the presidential candidates debate each other on science and technology issues?

The invitation to join in a Science Debate for 2008 has been signed by MANY organizations and individuals, from the AAAS to my own university and its president. Has yours joined?

The idea is that in Philadelphia on April 18 the remaining presidential candidates will respond to questions that are central to federal policy--questions on topics such as policy responses to climate change, the health of the oceans, species loss, resource conservation, alternative energy, intellectual property, and scientific integrity.

The candidates have not yet responded to the invitation, though both the Clinton and Obama campaigns have said they are giving it "serious thought." Senator McCain, meanwhile, has strayed from the safety of the vague and upbeat messages of those campaigns with his opinion that vaccinations are a likely suspect for rising rates of autism. His is not an opinion shared by the medical community.

Bullshit in Media and Politics

I've started grading students' written responses to Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit."

Frankfurt writes that "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit." Later on, he declines to take a stand on the essentially empirical question of whether there is more now than ever:

"Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times. There is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased."

To my mind, this all but asserts that there is more now, and I would have thought that there is more right now than 20 years ago when Frankfurt originally wrote the essay. Isn't there more TV but less content? And don't media technologies allow us and tempt us to publicize our opinions whether we are experts or not? (Frankfurt says that "Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.")

But a student raised the insightful objection that there may very well be less bullshit now than 50 or 500 years ago, precisely because we can all be experts or can find an expert. There is more information--even more knowledge--easily available than anyone would have imagined a generation ago. And the standards of evidence are widely recognized. Superstition, myth, and ignorance allow bullshit to proliferate. The internet counters this, though, in holding varied sources of information (wikipedia alongside library databases), in encouraging multiple reports of experience (product reviews), and in helping people connect (MoveOn or consumer groups).

Students also quickly expressed the view that the current presidential administration relies on Bullshit. Frankfurt writes that

"telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertaions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person's normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost." And this is why "bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

As one student paper points out, one can be caught out in a lie. A liar can be confronted with evidence. But bullshit, being empty and made-up, is elusive and always leaves the bullshitter a way out. The Bushies have been careful enough to remain ignorant whenever possible, to filter evidence, to isolate themselves from expertise and knowledge, to make many leading but vague claims, and so to indulge in the refuge of Bullshit.

Jim Johnson has a label devoted to such political BS.

Addendum: Students suggest films to accompany Frankfurt's essay, in particular Wag the Dog and Thank Your For Smoking.

Art, Science, and Civil Liberties

Last week I had the chance to catch a screening of the film Strange Culture about artist and SUNY Buffalo professor Steve Kurtz.

The movie tells (part of) the story of Kurtz' treatment as a suspected bioterrorist:

The surreal nightmare of internationally-acclaimed artist and professor Steve Kurtz began when his wife Hope died in her sleep of heart failure. Police who responded to Kurtz’s 911 call deemed Kurtz’s art suspicious and called the FBI. Within hours the artist was detained as a suspected "bioterrorist" as dozens of federal agents in Hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, and even his wife’s body.

In contrast with this gripping teaser, there was no evidence against Kurtz--the bacteria he had been culturing were harmless and his wife died of natural causes. The Department of Justice is pursuing the case nonetheless (more info here).

Kurtz' artwork makes use of scientific images and scientific practices in order to invite his audience to reflect on the potential harmful effects of biotechnologies such as genetically modified foods. It blends art, science, teaching, and political commentary. The case truly threatens academic freedom.

Jim Johnson has more commentary on the political valence of the artwork of Kurtz and the Critical Art Ensemble. Jim quotes Dewey:

“The function of art has always been to break through the crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness."

Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (GINA)

My Congressional Rep., Louise Slaughter, sponsored a House Bill to protect Americans from workplace and insurance discrimination based on their genetic profile. Currently, there is no certain legal protection against such discrimination. One result is that people are discouraged from being genetically tested when knowing test results might help them to better prepare for or treat a genetic disease. In addition, if the hopes of some medical researchers for "personalized medicine" pan out, genetic testing would play an even more important role in preventive treatment. (I'm putting on hold other concerns we may have about personalized medicine.)

GINA is the result of over a decade of work and advocacy. The need for such a bill was raised already in the early 1990s. It passed the House in April with overwhelming support--the vote was 420 to 3.

There is also support for the bill in the Senate and from the President. However, Senator Coburn from Oklahoma has used Senate rules to place a "hold" on the bill, which prevents the Senate from voting on it.

There is more information here and here.
And Representative Slaughter has a petition to sign here.