Sex, the media & personal freedom

I realised I condensed a few thoughts in a very short piece in my post Sexy, so here are a few more thoughts.

Dignity: my main objection to the perpetual portrayal of people, mostly women, as sexual objects is that people are deprived of their humanity. I’m fed up with seeing mainstream media trashing our human dignity. Our imagination and psyche are being desensitised to the humanity of those around us. It might lead one to think that it is they who are the objects, not us, however by seeing others as less than ourselves aren’t we diminishing our own humanity?
Furthermore, a negative construction of gender such as that given by many music videos and similar material affects everybody in as much as we are judged against that yardstick/model of femininity or masculinity or feel the pressure to follow those images. Ideas and images surrounding femininity have changed, of course, but the construction of gender is always there to remind us that we do not own our social body.

Liberation vs. Liberalisation: there is the trite and idiotic argument that women working in the sex industry comes from sexual 'liberation'. It’s a rather old and disingenuous argument, which has really past its sell by date. Some, of course, might feel ‘liberated’ by playing at being sexual objects or predators. However, I think it’s more a sign of liberalisation of sex rather than liberation.
It is true that there isn’t only one form of sex work and that not all sex workers ('Prada prostitutes') are victims (although they are the majority). Nevertheless, I think that, as a society, we should strive to ensure everyone’s personal freedom. This means that we should concentrate on those who work in the sex industry as a result of having been trafficked, abused or who are addicted to drugs. I think we should also make more available treatment for sex addiction.

Consumerism: leaving gender aside, the mainstream media have concentrated in reducing us to consumers driven by our appetites and basic instincts (that’s why I refer to my post on the Century of the Self). It’s quite interesting to see that actors smoke far less in films nowadays than they used to in the past. Times have moved on, so why can’t there be a portrayal of sexual relationship and 'roles' that is more positive?

Moralisers vs. sexual freedom: some object that to see stripping or half-naked women as degradation is bigotry. The argument is flawed on three accounts. Firstly, to think of lap-dancing or soft-porn music videos as separate from the sex industry is naïve, especially given the rise in sex addiction. I am not arguing for censorship but for responsibility by those who produce videos and films.
Secondly, isn’t degrading to be seen as body parts (mostly women) or as sex-driven robots (mostly men)?
I seriously doubt that, in the majority of cases, sex workers choose freely the profession. By the way, free choice is more than lack of coercion.
Thirdly, to the risk of patronising the body parts & the robots, isn’t this just the acting out of hegemonic images? (see Gramsci!) Doesn’t labelling detractors as moralisers suit the narrative of the ‘producers’ of ‘sexy’ material? Doesn’t it equate to being a product in the consumerist chain?

The media control the media: those working in the ‘media’ often shy away from taking responsibility hiding behind the usual lame excuses, such as the trend in depicting sex & violence being widespread and the public wanting it. Images of greed, egotism and objectification are widespread, but who shapes the trend?
The idea that it’s the public who want to be fed rubbish is nonsense. After all, the public got fed up with being fed junk food at McDonald’s and McDonald’s had to switch to ‘healthier options’. How about using imagination for once rather than the trite bad taste images that fill our space?

Masculinity and femininity might be in crisis (finally!), so what? Why can't we be human? :)

Sexy

I keep on coming across appalling music videos where women act or are paraded as if they were for sale. There seems to be a very fine line between what is deemed 'sexy' in a woman and the debasing display of body parts.
Men (and women) are fed an awful lot of nonsense about what a man is supposed to like and what women are supposed to be like. The driving force is supposedly sex, which is reduced to the physical act and deprived of everything I would personally define as sexy. We are constantly being told that half-naked women behaving like idiots are sexy, that men like that and find confident women intimidating. It might be the case for many, but I believe many more are simply victim of these messages. A few considerations:

What is sexy? No, I don’t find half-naked people sexy. I don’t like body parts, I like the whole person. I find people sexy when they have sense of humour and are comfortable with themselves. I like warm clear voices and sincere smiles. I think sense of humour is the basis of attraction.
Yet, we are fed an ugly narrative that deprives us of our humanity, of our imagination and personhood. If women (or men) are reduced to body parts or men (or women) to their basic sexual instincts severed from desires, imagination and mind, what are we?
Nothing to do with sex. Research shows that men who go to lap-dancing clubs, pay for sex and so on, are not simply reacting to basic sexual instincts, they are seeking power. The idea of sexy as portrayed in a million billboards, music videos and films is one that is constructed around the dynamic of power and powerlessness. A confident woman is intimidating because she is not powerless. Music videos seem to be the worst with half-naked women crawling around with no dignity. It is a rather pathetic spectacle.
Addictive images. The ‘producers’ do not respond to a need, rather they create a dependent consumer by perpetuating a view of the world based on the old-fashion power relations. They create identities based on domination and debasement. And they are not even subtle at that! It’s advertising after all, Bernays-style!
Sex addiction is on the increase, will advertisers start thinking about the health implications of the junk they produce?

...on addiction to sex, see this from the FT. Addiction seems to be dependent on genes. However the constant exposure to the same messages, the same iconography, the same narrative habituates us to viewing the world in a certain way, anaesthetises the brain and creates a need. We banned tobacco advertising and are trying to tackle junk food, why not junk sex? For the record, I'm not advocating censorship, just responsibility. After all, the media control the media!

Dating - second episode

This dating thing is not going too well. The first time I logged on I felt really awkward. Most people don't write much. Some are overconfident, some try not to undersell themselves by adding 'my friends say', some stick to plain descriptions and some paint a rather boring picture. You end up looking at a series of photos, which made me feel very uncomfortable. I cannot look at people as if I were shopping for food. I can't get passed this consumerist element.
Internet dating sites are fundamentally flawed because they don't match one according to one's description of oneself, rather on the standard computer-generated replies such as height, look, language, location, profession, age etc. This means you need to read through people's profiles, which really doesn't cut time. I suppose I'm not serious about this and I don't read and look with the right spirit. It's just that the more I look the more beautiful they all look. They all seem vulnerable, even the most self-confident. I really can't form a picture of these people at all.
Looking at Jdate.com I've come across quite a few Londoners who, like me, are simply looking for friends. It seems to me quite incredible that in a metropolis like London with so much happening people cannot meet. The geography, the architecture, our stressful lifestyles seem to be conspiring against us. There are no spaces for people to meet and chat. No piazza, no stroll in the centre of town.
It could be quite simple. You just need a book, a talk, a film, a painting, a sporting event and people gathering in the same place to discuss it. Maybe not, maybe we'll increasingly spend more time in cyberspace without ever meeting our Facebook friends.

So I joined a dating site ...

I’ve been nagged left, right and centre about registering with a dating website, so in the end I did. I lied a bit about location & name given that I’m likely to be the only Italian Jewish woman living in Cardiff. I still manage to come across people I know and, worse still, who know me. Lucky I didn’t talk myself up at all, in fact I told the awful truth pointing out that I’m awkward and difficult. I could have said: ‘just don’t bother’, given that I don’t answer any message anyway, which I think it’s how it’s meant to work, isn’t it? ;)
Leaving my total ineptitude aside, these dating websites are very interesting. They do their best in trying to overcome the inherent difficulties of a global and mobile world. Once upon a time, it was easier. People met others from their social background and geographical environment. They had less choice, which meant more realism. They also didn’t seek perfection in the other while lacking it in themselves and expected things to be difficult.
What I find strange is that these website aim to match you with yourself. There are many things I like doing, including politics, but I would be bored to death if I had to listen to someone talking politics all evening, unless it’s about public value management theory and local government finance, which anyway come second to Maimonides’ philosophy and its relevance for liberal democracy.
So I go back to being Linus Van Pelt in this comfy place of my blog!

Trafficking of women - is anybody listening?

No, this is not a feminist issue. It is a morality one! Let's not forget the violence the living suffer: the estimated over 50,000 rapes women suffer every year in the UK alone, the women who are beaten and die as a result of domestic violence and the women and, indeed, children trafficked and used as sex slaves. Why is nobody doing anything? Here's an interview with Emma Thompson. Here's her video where she impersonates a victim, made available by La Repubblica. Now watch it.

Abortion rights and wrongs

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, wrote a very measured piece on the Observer yesterday about modern attitudes towards abortion. He expressed concerns that there has been a “weakening of the feeling that abortion is a last resort”. He laments the fact that there’s no longer the presumption of marriage as a lifelong union, that marriage and family are no longer seen as the “foundational things in a properly nurturing and stable society”, rather, people choose not to marry in ever greater numbers. Of course, he is not condemning anything, not against divorce, not against civil partnerships. In fact, he does not even suggest to outlaw abortion, but to tighten the law. … And?
I’m not sure whether Rowan Williams is trying to boost his liberal profile after the hard line taken against the American Episcopalians recently, or simply get some press coverage ahead of the anniversary of the Abortion Act 1967 and show that he’s doing something. He might just be concerned and want a more stringent law. But why?
The law generally reflects society’s morals; it does not teach them. If Williams is right and abortion is no longer seen as ‘last resort’, but another form of contraceptive, which I’m afraid is what is being inferred here, the law would not change people’s minds a bit. This is the fundamental misunderstanding of some Pro-Life groups: they want the law changed to enforce their view. That’s why, I believe, in the US extremist Pro-Life groups went on to become violent. After all, if you think right and proper to force a particular moral view, the logical step is to force it by ‘other means’. It feels like the Catholic Church is smarter and better at the game. Whilst they do their bit of condemning, they concentrate on instilling their views in people’s minds. Nevertheless, it’s probably impossible to tell if it works given that any comparison between the US and Catholic countries would need to take into consideration too many factors influencing one’s behaviour in this matter.
The problem I have with all this stuff is that I can’t help finding it self-indulgent. Let me first say where I stand: I do consider abortion morally wrong because it’s ending potential life. In Judaism, foetuses are not equal to human beings, so abortion is not murder. Nevertheless, I believe abortion should indeed be last resort. This should not impact on a woman’s right to choose what to do with her life and future. Let's be clear: nobody wants more abortions. I, like everybody else, would like to see fewer abortions, I’d like a world where women are not raped, where they can demand the use of contraceptives without being thought of as ‘difficult’ or ‘fussy’, where couples have meaningful and respectful relationships. If pro-lifers were serious about this, they would try to find out why people resort to abortions rather than passing judgement. How many abortions are sought as a result of rape/incest? How many as a result of medical complications? How many simply as a result of ‘inconvenience’? All the abortion cases have their own story, their own real people facing a dilemma. By the way, a dilemma is a choice between wrong and wrong, not between right and wrong!
The language of ‘foetal rights’ obfuscates the reality of abortion and instils a presumption that many women choose lightly to have an abortion and treat it as another form of contraceptive. Even if this was the case, it would be symptomatic of the need for better sex education, which would include the discussion of human relationships, for moral, financial or human support.
Nevertheless, one cannot help thinking that some groups advocating morality devote more attention to ‘foetal rights’ than to the deeply immoral injustice, poverty, discrimination and violence many people experience every day in the UK. Morality is a political issue. Let’s bring it to the fore of public debate: let’s talk about violence, injustice and poverty.

Abortion, the Catholic Church & Amnesty International

If it weren’t for the Guardian, my pedantry would be forever frustrated. I share, at least in part, Zoe Williams’ indignation at the Catholic Church’s opposition to Amnesty International due to their campaign in support of safe and legal abortions for victims of rape and incest. However, this latest episode has nothing to do with faith schools. As far as I understand it, government funding to faith schools is not being used to support external organisations. Furthermore, the Catholic Church, as a totally separate entity from the government, is free to invest its money as it sees fit. On the contrary, government money, as previously argued on this blog, could and should be used to impose certain conditions on faith schools, such as equality training, anti-bullying policies etc.
The issue at stake here is the moral dilemma the Catholic Church is ignoring. The Church considers the foetus as a human life and abortion as murder, it follows that one would be guilty of murder under whatever circumstances (except in case of danger to the mother's life). Furthermore, the Church would argue that the foetus is not responsible for the violence perpetrated on the mother. On the other hand, it can be argued that forcing victims of rape and incest to continue their pregnancy is a further violence and humiliation. In this instance, Amnesty International are asking for safe and legal abortions when sought by victims of rape or incest. This means that abortions are being carried out every day and this is because victims of rape and incest do not want to continue the pregnancy. Yet, by not having access to safe abortion, many of them die. A moral dilemma is facing the choice between two evils, not between good and evil. As such, if you know that a person who is a victim of rape/incest, is seeking an abortion, would you make sure that she has access to a safe abortion or would you let her undergo an unsafe procedure carrying a high risk to her life? Is an absolute principle worth so many lives? These are the questions that should be put to the hierarchy, not a blanket boycott of faith schools.

Circumcision - what's your view?

The FT magazine today carries an article on the potential health benefits of circumcision. The author stays clear from taking a side in this rather controversial topic. I won’t comment on the religious meaning of it, partly because I believe that most religious practices are vested with religious meaning once they have become customary for whatever reason (political, sanitary, social …). Circumcision, dietary laws, dress (of whatever religion) were not ‘invented’ by a religion, rather they were employed by the religious authorities/community and have thus received spiritual meaning. This does not mean that I consider them devoid of religious meaning or value. I just think that it’s up to you! And I won’t state where I stand personally (and theologically) because I’m not that sure and as I’m female I don’t need to worry!
There are Jews and Muslims, though, who would advocate circumcision on hygienic grounds rather than religious grounds. I believe this is an apologetic stance aimed at rationalising something that touches one’s emotions deeply. So what’s the evidence?

"In March, the World Health Organisation and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) urged countries to consider implementing circumcision programmes to combat Aids. The scientific basis for that statement was the combined evidence from three substantial clinical trials conducted in Africa that compared the rate with which circumcised and uncircumcised heterosexual men contracted HIV. The studies – one in South Africa, another in Kenya and a third in Uganda – showed that men who had been circumcised had a roughly 60 per cent lower risk of becoming HIV positive than their uncircumcised counterparts."

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, yes, but as Tim Hargreave, a urologist from Edinburgh, who has written the WHO/UNAids manual on performing circumcisions, explains in the article:

“In countries with high prevalence of HIV, cost-benefit analyses would suggest circumcising this group is the most cost-effective thing that can be done.”

What about Western countries?

"Most mainstream medical societies’ positions on the practice broadly agree: in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and elsewhere, the relevant bodies say that, for the most part, there is no good clinical reason to subject infants to it. “There is no medical indication for routine neonatal circumcision,” the Royal Australasian College of Physicians says, although it adds that circumcision significantly reduces the risk of urinary tract infections (which affect fewer than 2 per cent of boys) and penile cancer, which affects one in 100,000 men in developed countries. Balanced against a complication rate from circumcision of up to 5 per cent, the Australian doctors say, it just isn’t worth it."

Percentages aside, what is interesting is that there are very strong views on both sides. It is also interesting to note, as the article mentions, that the prudish Victorians were quite keen on circumcision as they turned against the foreskin with vengeance and blame it "for everything from syphilis to masturbation and bed-wetting."
In my view, in the context of a contemporary Western liberal democracy, circumcision has very little to do with health and very much to do with religion and sexuality, gender and identity. But I'd like to hear your view.
That aside, it seems rather obvious to me that better hygiene, starting from the regular use of the bidet, is essential. I wonder whether there’ll ever be a study establishing the percentage of risk as a result of poor hygiene. In the meantime, wash your bits!

Italy, the land that feminism forgot?

The FT had a very interesting article on the death of Italian feminism. I share Adrian Michaels’ frustration with the explicitly sexual (and sexist) imagery dominating Italian television and publicity. However, in his comparison with Britain and the US, he seems to paint a too stark picture of Italy as ‘the land that feminism forgot’. After all, I remember a similar frustration and surprise at the relatively ordinary ‘nakedness’ of young women in Britain going out clubbing, when I first moved here nearly ten years ago. I'm afraid sexism is alive and well across the globe. The dire state of Italian publicity has more to do with its clients not seeking creativity than Italians being comfortable with it. Nevertheless, it is true that the situation in Italy is indeed worse; however it is primarily due to structural rather than cultural reasons. There are, of course, cultural differences, such as an understanding of sexual explicitness as rebellion to Catholic predominance and therefore as a liberating tool. There is also a more open attitude to sex than in Anglican/Protestant cultures, hence censorship being less rigid. Regrettably, across the western world, the sixties’ revolution liberalised sex instead of liberating it from its male-centredness and its objectifying nature.
However, Italian publicity is saturated with naked women for the same reason why economic structural reforms are extremely difficult. Italy is a country still steeped in corporatism, dominated by the vested interest of a myriad of groups. Italian politics and economy are in crisis due to their subservience to groups of power, traditionally dominated by (older) men with strong political links to ensure influence. Such groups hold the key to personal and corporate success. They are boys’ clubs making the rules on who is on television, in politics and in the academia, to name a few. So far they have excluded women, young talent and innovation. It is a deeply felt crisis resented by all. When I visit Italy, I see men and women just as embarrassed and angry at the ubiquitous display of female flesh on billboards and television as they are at the tight grip with which Italy’s elders are strangulating the country.

nakeditaly

Fighting honourably

An article on today's Guardian by Dr Victoria Basham highlights the problems with "the all-too-familiar tale that the presence of women in the military causes boys to be boys". Following an article reporting of the court case where a service man was convicted of the rape of a female colleague, Basham criticises the reporting slant, which "reinforces the notion that problems with servicemen are an outcome of allowing women to serve in the armed forces". Quite. This is a timely reminder that we have stopped scrutinising society's misogynistic assumptions. In the belief that equality has been achieved, we often forget about our psychologies, which evolve over longer stretches of time than those required to change the law.
However, it leaves untouched the problem of our 'psychologies at war'. I believe there is a strong link between sex and aggression. In conflict situations, soldiers have always sexualised violence which was perpetrated on men and women alike. The enemy becomes the Other, the (sex) object, onto which one projects one's misogynistic fantasies. The rape of Nanking is but one such example. Do men engage in war in a different way from women? Is there such a thing as a 'positive' aggression or is it necessarily fed by prejudice and hatred? War is changing as combatants engage less and less in physical combat and 90% of victims are civilians. What are the consequences on our service men and women? I cannot help but think that violence is always destructive and affects one’s psychology deeply. Can one really fight honourably?
I believe it is possible to channel aggression positively (although I'm not a psychologist so I have no idea how), just as I believe that sex needs to be dissociated from violence. Somehow, I don't think I'll see the end of violence though!

Artificial Equality

As reported in Reuters, the government aims to give students from poorer backgrounds more chance of entering university, by letting admissions officers see family occupations and whether their parents have a degree themselves.
And once they know that the parents have degrees, what happens? Do applicants whose parents have no degrees get points? The government’s initiative aims to widen the social mix in universities, presently skewed heavily towards middle class students. Presumably ‘widening participation’ means that Universities will give precedence to candidates from ‘disadvantaged backgrounds’.
I wholly agree that selection should not be solely based on candidate’s performance at A-levels. There is a need for a more complete picture in order to assess one’s attitude and abilities. I think there should be exams and interviews, and maybe CVs.
There are people who have had fewer opportunities than others, whose social background has affected one’s learning. There are those who have suffered from a mental or physical illness and so on. There is also discrimination within the educational system. However, these are separate issues that should be tackled separately instead of being labelled ‘disadvantage’ or made to fall under an equality strand. I’m not convinced that one’s intellectual abilities are seriously jeopardised by one’s social-economic background, unlike learning. Social background affects one’s opportunities to learn and acquire knowledge. People whose parents speak various languages are more likely to speak more than one language. In my childhood, I was traumatised when taught maths, so I don’t ‘do’ maths, however I can still understand the concepts and I have a strange liking for local government finance. 'Social determinism' is just as flawed as 'biological/genetic determinism'.

This initiative is an example of the essentialisation of ‘disadvantage’. It also means that ethnicity or some parents’ occupations end up being considered a disadvantage.
A parallel issue is the low number of women MPs, which is a real concern, however the reasons behind this are discrimination, the lack of support women receive and the prejudices they endure within their party. I’d like to see a political party offer training on gender equality (to men in particular) rather than patronise the women with segregated training on how to campaign. I’d like to see a more open and inclusive mentality within political parties.
Instead of labelling people, the Government should have the guts to tackle discrimination, poverty, the widening gap between rich and poor with an adequate politics of redistribution and civic education (including gender, racial stereotypes etc.).
The ‘equality strands’ agenda paints a simplistic picture of people’s diversity. It essentialises strands leaving no room for complexity, for different interpretation, for overlapping identities. It divides society into groups competing for the same resources instead of creating a society where the common good is paramount and to which each one of us has the duty to contribute.

Babies do better with fathers

Err... Told you so!

Acoording to a report by the Equal Opportunities Commission reported today in the Guardian:

Children are more likely to suffer development problems if their fathers do not take paternity leave or spend enough time with them when they are very young, according to an analysis of thousands of babies born around the turn of the millennium.
...

Children are more likely to suffer development problems if their fathers do not take paternity leave or spend enough time with them when they are very young, according to an analysis of thousands of babies born around the turn of the millennium.
A report published today by the Equal Opportunities Commission and based on research tracking 19,000 children born in 2000 and 2001 found emotional and behavioural problems were more common by the time youngsters reached the age of three if their fathers had not taken time off work when they were born, or had not used flexible working to have a more positive role in their upbringing.

Previous research has highlighted the importance of a mother's involvement when a child is small, but the EOC says this is the first study to confirm that the close involvement of a father also has a significant impact on a child's future.

However, it also warns that British families face an income divide, with poorer families less able to afford the time away from work and the access to good quality childcare that will benefit their children.

The findings come as the issue of parenting, and fatherhood in particular, has shifted decisively from the private sphere to the political agenda, with Conservative leader, David Cameron, stressing the need to support families and proposing tax incentives to boost marriage. Meanwhile the chancellor, Gordon Brown, will tomorrow discuss children and parenting with a group of 70 parents at an event hosted by the EOC and the Fawcett Society.

The EOC research, The State of the Modern Family, shows how the once standard model of homemaker mother and breadwinner father is firmly in retreat. By the time children reach the age of three, just 29% of families tracked in the Millennium Cohort Study featured a working father and stay-at-home mother.

The most common pattern now, at 35% of families, is a full-time working father and part-time working mother, while in 11% of families both parents are in full-time work.

The analysis finds no evidence that mothers' employment influences the extent of development problems in three-year-old children - in contrast to research published in 2005 by the childcare expert Penelope Leach which suggested young children looked after by their mothers did better than those cared for in nurseries or by relatives.

Indeed, it suggests that children who, at nine to 10 months, received formal childcare while their mothers worked had a lower likelihood of development problems at age three than those who were cared for by a parent or in other informal childcare such as by grandparents.

For fathers, though, early involvement is linked to positive development once a child is three. The EOC points to a "social revolution in fatherhood", in which fathers are increasingly involved with their children's upbringing and feel confident as carers, yet 63% felt they did not spend enough time with their new baby.

Flexible working, my dear, flexible working!

(for articles where 'I told you so' click on feminism or economy)

The reluctant feminist

So what's feminism all about? God knows! There are various types but I can't see feminism being prominent, in fact I believe there's been a backlash which has not brought about a new direction, only negative reactions, especially from women wanting to be 'women', which for them equates to making babies and baking. Am I being dismissive? I hope so!
I don't generally call myself a feminist and when I do I feel no pride, no self-confidence, rather a melancholic and powerless feeling. I call myself a feminist when I hear people talking about the essential differences between men and women, the ‘natural’, biological or genetic characteristics of male and female. Most of these differences are in their heads and that’s the problem. Joe’s post on women’s social fear of men is quite insightful. If I were a man I wouldn’t want to be feared, if I were a man I would like to be with a human being, equal to me, not a ‘woman’ identified with a set of ‘natural’ characteristics. I often hear men saying that they cannot understand how some men can ‘hate’ women and that they ‘love’ women. That’s the perfect example of misogyny. It starts by categorising a gender and objectifying it. You stop being a human being and become a woman, whose essence has been shaped and decided by a male society (and a male society’s interpretation of genes). The problem is that misogyny has been around for a very long time and we have internalised it. It is not just hatred and often it’s expressed in its ‘benign’ form such as stereotypes that, however, ‘disable’ women. Men are still the ‘I’, the ‘Self’ and women the ‘Other’, the ‘Second Sex’.
Women’s bodies still belong to society: from what they should wear, how they should look, how they should give birth (regardless of the woman’s choice or safety), how many months they should breastfeed etc. We live in a society that has a seriously unhealthy relationship with the body, where being ‘fat’ (or not skinny) is the ultimate sin. And the body is still primarily that of women.
Nevertheless, feminism for me is partnership. It’s about recognising men and women as human beings and going beyond societal structures and ideology. It’s about going beyond our fears and desires, it’s about belonging to the same oneness.

Feminism & the family

Feminism is much more pro-family than 'traditional society'. The problem is that nobody has bothered to listened.
Oliver James on the Times this morning rightly identifies the benefits of flexible working practices. However, he fails to understand feminism entirely. Feminists have been campaigning for flexible working and ‘fatherhood’ for over twenty years. Whilst James would like to see “men becoming much more involved in caring for their small children”, he assigns the main responsibility of childrearing to the mother. There is no rational basis for this except a prescriptive differentiation of roles that has excluded women from society for millennia. It is not based on biology. Breastfeeding (as recommended by the latest medical research)should last up to 6 months, childrearing lasts for many years. This division of labour has discriminated women and put many in a situation where they must decide between a family and work.
Recent research has shown that women returning to work after starting a family are around 40% less likely than the average white, able-bodied man to be offered a post. As I argued on this blog and in my letter to the FT The industry’s reluctance to embrace the work/life balance agenda is myopic and ultimately counterproductive. Flexible working arrangements have been shown in several studies to reduce dramatically sickness absences (26%), increase savings (£5-6m for BT) and innovative thinking. If both parents worked flexibly,they would spend more time with their children and thus give them better care. However, as long as men and society at large see flexible working as a woman’s issue that comes with her ‘role’ as a mother, it will remain the second-class form of working that traps women into poverty and jobs for which they are overqualified. It is feminism that is promoting a family where children have finally both parents and the nation is not deprived of talented workers. The rest is nonsense! (and has forced me to create a new label!)

Masculinity in crisis, yawn!

Seventies Man is back, we are told. The new drama series Life On Mars will take us back to the 1970's where men were 'men', meaning boorish sexist, racist, alcoholic and chain smokers. How delightful. The article suggests that the makers of the show did not have a problem with the sexism because "we've overcome that". Maybe on Mars, certainly not here. If we've overcome that, why has the consumption of pornography increased drastically? Why have 'lads' mags' made their appearance relatively recently? Why are women still being paid far less than men (18% for full-time work and 40% in part time work)? And why are men attracted by 1970's masculinity? Rather than the 'heroic rebel', the seventies man is affected by the Peter Pan complex, he's a child who is afraid to grow up and take responsibility. Nostalgia signals insecurity and lack of vision. Masculinity is in crisis, but looking back will not help.

Sexuality & God

What has God got to do with sex? Sexuality has been treated with suspicion when not rejected altogether by religious authorities throughout the ages. ‘Primordial’ fears of the body, its functioning and sexuality have led to a rigorous control and even regulation of sexual activity. Sexuality has thus been socially constructed in, primarily, a negative way. Women’s bodies were often seen with disgust (and I assume it still happens in many quarters), with rabbis referring to the womb as ‘place of rot’, not to mention patristic misogyny. Women have been associated with sexuality and have come to represent ‘the body’ and thus despised, needing regulation. They have been kept at a distance from … anything really! From the ‘sacred’ so that it would not be ‘defiled’, from political and economic power and, of course, from the intellectual sphere.
Those who wielded power created a ‘space’ for women and endowed them with domesticity. The traditional female role was (and still is) a self-denying one, at the service of others. The regulation of sex has been vital part of this process of ‘putting women in their place’. (By the way, the rejection of homosexuality falls under this category for it represents a challenge to heteropatriarchy, the gendered structures of power).
It was oppression, but it was dressed up as tradition and tradition was mistaken for authenticity. What I most object to is the fact that religious authorities used God to justify their prejudice that women were something apart. They thus sanctified oppression.
Many still think in this way, that there are ‘natural’ gender characteristics, that women are best at nurturing, caring and bringing up children. This obsession with establishing difference comes up every now and then. I wonder why people are so afraid of freedom, of being able to shape their lives without complying with mythical gender (or other) stereotypes. Why are people so keen for society to decide who they are?
But God has to do with the body. After all, it is through our body that we relate to others and it is through relationships that we encounter God. Me thinks God is a feminist! :)

Gendered brains & the accountant gene

Now that feminism and critical theory are gone, biological determinism with its gender bias makes its return. What is fascinating is that, notwithstanding the lack of systematic hard data, notwithstanding the significance of all the other aspects of life that have an impact on human behaviour (culture, upbringing, society, and also one’s own experiences), there’s always a bunch of eejits who make the illogical jump between one’s biological make-up and professions. Interestingly, they do not touch on genetics, I was hoping for the discovery of the ‘accountant gene’. But let’s start from the research. A rather comprehensive article appeared on the Economist last August.

1. The article starts by noticing that

which of the differences between the sexes are “biological”, in the sense that they have been honed by evolution, and which are “cultural” or “environmental” and might more easily be altered by changed circumstances, is still fiercely debated.

Please note the link between biology and evolution. Without going into Lamarckian theory, it is important to consider that biology has also adapted throughout history. This means that we are not the same we once were and that present and future challenges will determine biological differences.

2. The article then surveys relevant studies.

Simon Baron-Cohen and Svetlana Lutchmaya, two researchers at Cambridge University, found that boys exposed to relatively high levels of testosterone in the womb looked less often at their mothers' faces, made eye contact less frequently and had smaller vocabularies than those exposed to lower levels—though this study has yet to be replicated successfully by other researchers.

Please note the lack of further evidence and also the following:
a) “the results of hundreds of tests of vocabulary and reading comprehension show there is almost no gap between the sexes.”
b) Simon Baron-Cohen focussed on autism, which is an extreme example and is by no means relevant to the rest of the population.
c) “the problem with trying to argue that the male tendency to systemise suggested by Dr Baron-Cohen might lead to greater mathematical ability is that, in fact, girls and boys are equally good at maths prior to puberty.”

3. Differences between male and female brains (such as percentage of grey matter, white matter, synapses and so on) have been explored, however, “these examples show how tricky it is to find correlations between behaviour and differences in brain structure and brain activity. And even if a connection to brain structure is found, that does not mean it is innate. Most of these studies are done on adults, so it is not clear when differences start to arise. The brain is by no means immutable, even in adulthood. In the hippocampus, an area thought to be involved in spatial learning, new nerve cells can be born in an adult and hormones influence their birth and survival. Dr Shors says that her work has shown that the female brain, at least, is very plastic, changing dramatically during life in response to pregnancy and menopause as well as puberty.”

Please note that
a) no correlation between the brain structure and behaviour has been found;
b) the studies were done on adults therefore ‘environmental’ factors and their life experiences will have had an influence behaviour (and I would say the most significant influence);
c) the brain is not immutable. Shame that neuro-endocrinological research is still in its infancy, hormones clearly have an impact on us. But how much? And what kind of impact?
d) how much do environmental and personal experience change the brain?

4. However,

there are a number of problems with these studies. One, according to Dr Hines, is science's bias towards reporting positive results, so that research which shows no differences is likely to get lost. Another is that because differences between the sexes are so often popularised and played up in the popular media, people tend to pay them disproportionate attention.

Please note scientists are not free from cultural influence. I would also add that science has rarely been free from ideology, and that today there are numerous problems with the lack of transparency of the conduct and results of experiments (remember the BMJ protest?).

5. Going back to the ‘evidence’,

researchers use a statistical measure called d. … For behavioural and psychological phenomena, a value of d greater than 0.8 is considered large, of 0.5, moderate, and of 0.2, small. Any d less than 0.2 is a negligible difference. … Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to investigate just how different men and women are. She collected all the important meta-analyses that have been conducted on differences between the sexes. … Of the 124 effect-sizes she calculated, 30% had a value of d close to zero and in a further 48% of cases, d was small. In other words, only 22% of reported behavioural differences between the sexes are worth raising an eyebrow over. … The largest gaps were, not surprisingly, in physical attributes such as throwing velocity (d=2.14) and throwing distance (d=1.98). These closely reflect the difference in height between men and women.

Please note the finding of negligible difference in attitudes. Another consideration to be made is about statistics. Statistics is not an exact science (not all disciplines that use numbers are exact science), it’s based on the law of average. It follows that there cannot be any biological determinism: not all men and women have respectively ‘male’ and ‘female’ characteristics. Which explains why most of the women I know who took Simon Baron-Cohen’s test found they had a male brain.

6. There is little evidence to substantiate (statistical) difference in spatial ability, however "in this case the limited evidence available suggests the difference is related to the post-birth testosterone surge in boys.” Also, men do not excel in all spatial tasks”. Furthermore, abilities can be trained and this has been shown to work. “Spatial ability is amenable to training in both sexes.”

Conclusion

I do think this research is a waste of time and I was very reluctant to even mention this topic. The main difference between male and female are hormones. There are variances between hormonal levels between individuals, individuals are also affected differently. We are different. People might have different innate (inherited or not) abilities, but where do these abilities come from? Clearly not from gender. What impact socio-environmental factors have on abilities? Finally, abilities can be trained (genius included and it has been shown).

However the most stupid and surreal aspect of the ‘diatribe’ (or monologue), is the correlation between a biological ability, for which we have very little evidence, for which nobody has taken into account society and personal experience (which includes training), with someone’s ability to do a particular job. This pathetic non-evidence is supposed to account, at least in part, for fewer women in science or engineering and so on. How about plumbers then? Alleged biological differences have always been used to justify the social construction of femininity and women’s roles in society. Sadly, it appears that this is still the case. For both biological determinists and sociological determinists (where everything is determined by society), individual liberty is a delusion. If you’re such a miserable git, why should you make everybody miserable as well?
Fortunately, there have always been people who have gone against this dogmatic determinism and have fought to own their lives. The world is not divided between men and women, but sheep and dogs. Dogs might be loud and rebellious but they lead. The sheep only follow.