January 2005 – Page 3

Thankfully This is Satire

In an effort to “level the academic playing field,” Harvard University President Lawrence Summers announced today that the university would introduce a home economics major designed specifically for its female students.

“Starting in the fall, Harvard will offer home economics for women who find economics too tricky,” said Summers, who called the move “long overdue.”

Summers said that the new courses would help women at Harvard improve their grade point averages, adding, “When it comes to getting busy in the kitchen, women are second to none.”

The home ec major, which will consist of courses in cooking, sewing and what Summers called “the allied domestic arts and sciences,” is believed to be the first of its kind ever to be offered by an Ivy League university.

For a second, I almost believed it.

Via What She Said, I see that Alternet is taking a survey on blogs and how they should use and report on them. I filled mine out and added a slew of (in my opinion) fantastic bloggers who have little association with the Egosystem’s usual suspects.

Don’t forget to mention your favorite feminist bloggers. As a liberal pro-feminist news outlet, I predict that Alternet will pay attention to us.

Indiana Legislature Proposes Three Anti-Homosexual Bills

I was aware of only one of these bills, but Scott, a fellow Hoosier, alerted me to them.

The fact that I’m living in a conservative state isn’t news, and I knew that a marriage-protection amendment was bound to be coming. But I’m a little bit surprised that not one, but three anti-gay amendments have been introduced by my state legislators.

Yes, there’s the protection of marriage amendment, but there’s also a proposed amendment prohibiting a homosexual from being a foster parent or adopting; and an amendment to eliminate domestic partner benefits for all state university employees.

While I’ve always been less than thrilled about being an Indiana resident, I’ve also always contended that a good job and nice home were enough to keep me here and reasonably happy. But today, I wish this fucking state and 3/4 of its residents would sink into a swamp.

And on the national front, the New York Times is reporting that “a coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush’s plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.”

Today, I’m with Scott; I wouldn’t mind if the whole damn state sank into a bog. Of all the state’s worries, of all the ways political time and taxpayer money could be spent.

I’m so angry there aren’t any words.

These proposals come shortly after the booting of the state’s Democratic governor in favor of Mitch Daniels. Yes, the Mitch Daniels who used to be the White House budget director who wants to clean up Indiana’s deficit by cutting funding to our public schools. The first one in the White House who resigned under accusations of insider trading. Yeah, him. I’m hoping those who are bringing these bills, primarily Brian Bosma, the house bigot, do not have a friend in Daniels.

But it doesn’t look hopeful.

Fiscal Responsibility Loses Popularity At White House

The White House estimated on Tuesday that the U.S. budget deficit for 2005, including an extra $80 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan operations, will total $427 billion. Senior officials asserted that fretting over the deficit is “definitely not punk rock.”

“In the 2006 budget that we release on Feb. 7, OMB will estimate that the 2005 deficit, including the outlay effects from the supplemental we are discussing today, will be 3.5 percent of GDP or in nominal terms $427 billion,” said a senior administration official in a news briefing.

He referred to supplemental spending of more than $80 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, making the White House estimate for the deficit higher than the $368 billion forecast by the Congressional Budget Office.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted on Tuesday that fiscal responsibility and economic accountability “are so, like, 1999.”

Oxford American

Several years ago my sister bought a magazine subscription for my dad on his birthday. It was a little literary magazine from Arkansas, the state of my parents’ childhoods, backed by none other than bookslinger John Grisham. I ignored it for several issues, then picked one up when I had read everything else with words in the house.

As it turns out, my parents didn’t like the magazine. They dislike it for the reasons I love it. Where my parents entertained notions of a polite 1950s South, the magazine highlighted a gothic underbelly of class and race issues that are usually glossed over with images of genteel ladies and gentlemen; O’Connor, Faulkner, and Atticus Finch rolled into a well-designed and -written glossy publication. The Oxford American ran for about twelve years, struggling the whole way, while still featuring quality Southern authors, short stories, music, and photographers, including a fantastic summer music issue that came every year with a quirky, wonderful CD.

I had renewed my subscription about two years ago when I found out they no longer had the money or backing to keep the magazine going. It was so disappointing. Finally I had found something of my parents’ background that appealed to my literary interests and it was gone.

Last week, my mom told me I had a surprise coming in the mail. Today, I opened the mailbox and found a new Oxford American! The design is more slick and compelling than before, though in keeping with the original feel to the magazine, and the photography at first glance is a series of striking black-and-whites. I’m curling up on the couch with it for the rest of the afternoon.

If you see a copy of the Oxford American, I suggest you pick one up. In the meantime, visit their website and read some of their articles, including the issue lost when they went under in 2002.

Context to the Gender Intelligence Quotient

Via Brutal Women, this NYTimes article gives some context to the arguments surrounding biological differences in men’s and women’s intelligence voiced by Harvard president Summers:

The modest size and regional variability of the sex differences in math scores, as well as an attitudinal handicap that girls apparently pack into their No. 2 pencil case, convince many researchers that neither sex has a monopoly on basic math ability, and that culture rather than chromosomes explains findings like the gap in math SAT scores.

Yet Dr. Summers, who said he intended his remarks to be provocative, and other scientists have observed that while average math skillfulness may be remarkably analogous between the sexes, men tend to display comparatively greater range in aptitude. Males are much likelier than females to be found on the tail ends of the bell curve, among the superhigh scorers and the very bottom performers.

Among college-bound seniors who took the math SAT’s in 2001, for example, nearly twice as many boys as girls scored over 700, and the ratio skews ever more male the closer one gets to the top tally of 800. Boys are also likelier than girls to get nearly all the answers wrong.

For Dr. Summers and others, the overwhelmingly male tails of the bell curve may be telling. Such results, taken together with assorted other neuro-curiosities like the comparatively greater number of boys with learning disorders, autism and attention deficit disorder, suggest to them that the male brain is a delicate object, inherently prone to extremes, both of incompetence and of genius.

But few researchers who have analyzed the data believe that men’s greater representation among the high-tail scores can explain more than a small fraction of the sex disparities in career success among scientists.

Read the rest.

In the meantime, German scientists think women are bad drivers and poor map readers because of low testosterone and short index fingers. You know, it’s awfully hard to parallel park with hooves.

Knitting, Beans, Ed Blog and Summers

I made a lengthy post on my ed blog in response to a dissenting commenter on the Summers controversy.

In other news, I have a substitute job this Wednesday working with two little ones in a special needs classroom as a para-professional. One is sight-impaired and the other is hearing-impaired. I hope that the two years of ASL I’ve slogged through might pay off in a real world situation with one of the kids.

Today I have next to no responsibilities (for once). I got another wild Crockpot hair up my butt and decided to cook Navy beans and sausage for dinner — and what’s funny is that I’ve never really liked them. I had a craving. I also plan on preparing a sock so someone can help me pick up stitches along the heel flap at tonight’s knitting group, knitting a bit more on the Klaralund, doing some laundry, and reading a lot of Shakespeare that I don’t care about. In addition, I may add more to the ed blog on some issues I’ve been mulling over.

Other than that, today is a day for sweatpants. Excellent.

Hugo Schwyzer with Glenn Sacks

I’m currently listening to Hugo Schwyzer talk to Glenn Sacks. Wow. Just wow. I don’t think Sacks could be any more patronizing to Hugo as a “male feminist.”

Sacks just interrupted Hugo by turning off his microphone. Nice. The advertising is unbelievable – talk about targeting groups. Every ad is for men who have lost their jobs, men going through divorce, or men in custody suits. Even lawyers for men accused of rape. Not kidding. Oftentimes, the ads are read by women.

Ampersand of Alas, A Blog just called in. This is craziness.

If you hurry, you can listen to it now.

Wear It, Bitch: Musings on Beauty Culture and the Femme Feminist

Several years ago, Anne leveled an accusation at me that straight pissed me off. She said I was vain.

Me? Vain? Pshaw. I mean, I was only spending an hour on my daily beauty routine and maybe two hours for a really big night. Perhaps twenty or so hours a week on the stair machine and the weight benches at the YWCA. Vain? For real. There was an art to this package.

But the more I thought about it and shucked the initial repulsion of identifying myself with a culture I despised, the more I realized she was correct. I was spending an unbelievable amount of my time maintaining an image I didn’t value. I took it as a challenge, stopped blow-drying my hair, cut the makeup down to three products, and cut the shower routine down to soap, shampoo, conditioner, and a razor (and most of the time, not even the razor). I also cut back on the time at the gym, partially because the YWCA doubled their rates and I could no longer afford it. I substituted an at-home yoga and pilates routine which soon faded for more lifestyle-exercise activities.

To my genuine surprise, I didn’t look much different.

In fact, I looked healthier and more well-rested.

I never gave up the skirts and heels that I took up during a self-imposed pant boycott, partially because I like them and partially because nearly no one my age wears anything remotely similar except to job interviews. But I’ll tell you this, a skirt is far more comfortable than pants on most days.

I’m late to this article, a response to the lawsuit in which the court found that women can be fired for not wearing enough of, or the right, makeup:

Never again is anyone allowed to give me crap about how women naturally want to adorn themselves with makeup, as if there’s some genetic urge to look fake that’s wended its way here on the sparkly pink path of evolution. This ain’t biology. This is your government, endorsing your corporate lackey’s creepy-ass urge to make me turn my happy, natural face into a twisted parody of comeliness. This is some cosmetics executive getting rich on state-enforced gender norms.

This quote resonated with me as well.

Let’s not get into the question of whether it’s degrading or sexist for women to wear makeup. Sure, it might be for some women – but there are plenty of politically aware girls out there who like to get dolled up. The question here is whether women who are forced to wear makeup when men aren’t can be described as experiencing gender equality. The 9th Circuit’s opinion acknowledged that makeup costs money and takes time, then dismissed this point as “academic.” But if these costs are so insignificant, why not require Harrah’s to pay to keep its female employees looking as if they’d just had a makeover? Maybe the company could even pay these women for the time it takes to keep their faces properly clad.

My defiant nature dictates that anyone who requires me to adhere to a gender-based standard will quickly find me behaving in just the opposite fashion. The pedestal of femininity is not only a high place from which to fall, but I will whip that thing out from under me and hit you with it faster than you can blink. Nothing (nothing!) irritates me more than someone informing me how I or someone like me ought to appear or behave.

The operative term here is “ought.”

The lovely Bitch Ph.D. touches on these points in a completely unrelated post:

Now, by doing all this shit, I recognize that I am being shaped by (and myself contributing to) a system that judges women by how they look, that burdens us temporally and economically with adhereing to a fairly narrow standard…

At the same time, I do speak out about the falsehoods inherent in these systems. Should I walk the walk as well as talk the talk and refuse to play the game at all? Should I refuse to wear stylish clothing, refuse to spend $50 on a haircut, refuse to consider my appearance, eschew vanity? Doing so would, on one level, be consistent with my beliefs. But not entirely, because frankly, I enjoy this shit. I enjoy it when my colleagues whisper, “fantastic purse!” or “we were talking earlier about how great your shoes are!” after a meeting. I take pleasure in compliments, and I like it when people find me attractive. I’m not interested in a revolution where I can’t dance, and I think there is not a goddamn thing wrong with enjoying pleasure and flirting. I also, of course, reserve the right to schlep around and look like crap on a given day, and I’m not going to play the game of running other women down, and frankly I go through periods where I am more or less femmey (right now I’m in a femmey phase), and I’m cool with that too.

Because frankly, even while I can criticize the system, even while I can bitch about the beauty standard and point out the constructedness of gender and all of that, I am also well aware that I do live in that system. We all care about what we look like, even if the look we choose to project is “I don’t care about what I look like” or “fuck your fascist beauty standards” or “combat boots kick ass.” I can pull those looks off, too, and sometimes I do. But it is a fact that, if I stand up and identify myself as a feminist, the fact that I am femmey, the fact that I am married and have a kid, the fact that I have a Ph.D., gives my words a certain kind of weight.

In my unbiased opinion, the words of a femme feminist help, in some unenlightened circles, to defy the stereotypical feminist image. This notion in itself is inherently irritating — while my words are rarely different than, and rarely more poignant than, most feminists, the messenger sometimes makes the difference.

One of my goals here on the blog has been to mix the personal and political to an indefinable mush. We cannot easily divorce our politics from our personal experiences thus this has been my experiment in the opposite. I have found readers who have reluctantly begun to stick around and like what I have to say about feminism because something about the rest of my online persona appealed to them, just as I have had people in my tangible life who have approached me for my looks or femmey personality and been turned onto feminism by virtue of my physical persona.

While this wasn’t a conscious effort on my part, I have noticed over time that for some people, especially young women, the acceptance of the belief system and the feminist label are far more acceptable from someone who appears in every other way to be like them (and for young men, from someone physically unthreatening). Sometimes I want to hold them down and wash them of this silliness, but I usually tell carefully crafted stories about my coming out as a feminist at the same time I came out as an unabashed femme.

This may get me some criticism, but I’m not sure I care. As the doctor paraphrased: “I’m not interested in a revolution where I can’t dance.”

Today’s Observations

Because I feel like bitching about my illness:

1. If I see Donald Trump one more time today I will throw something through my television.

2. The chili was excellent, thanks for asking. However, it is probably a good thing I am sleeping alone tonight.

3. I must shave my cat — there is no other solution to The Hair Problem. (and by that, I mean Pablo. Don’t read into this)

4. Finished three books today: A People’s History of the United States, Stolen Harvest, and Nickel and Dimed.

5. No, there will not be a book report. They have been sitting around half-read for well over a month and it was my duty as their owner to read them.

6. My bathtub is absolutely filthy, but taking a bath in it is very close to cleaning it, so that will have to do.

7. Why must I always have a horrendous break out when I get ill? Really.

8. Stephen King’s made-for-TV movies are really bad, but I will watch them anyway.

9. “Anways” is not a word. Neither is “irregardless.” Let’s strike them from the lexicon.

10. No, I do not want the “watch this blonde hottie strip for the camera now!” or “enlarge my penis in ten days!” so please stop soliciting me.

11. I really don’t like those Lysol wipes thingies, but Ethan was so excited that they were on sale at the grocery store that I bought some and he cleaned two whole bathrooms today on his own. And liked it! His next lesson in home maintenance: shoveling the driveway.

Now, back to the dishes and the floors and the hearty expulsion of phlegm.

Month: January 2005