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In case you've been living under a rock, Words with Friends is a wildly popular online Scrabble clone that is tied into Facebook. I was playing last night, and I could have turned a 31 point play into a 64 point play if only "ZE" was a word. Despite the fact that I once had all the 2-letter words memorized, it took me a while to convince myself it wasn't a word, since I see that very word used frequently by a few bloggers at FtB (e.g. Crommunist, Natalie, etc.) as the subject form of the gendered-neutral personal pronoun.
The past decade has seen a number of two-letter words added to the Scrabble lexicon, including QI, ZA, etc. Some have complained that this makes Scrabble dangerously close to becoming unbalanced, as some of the more difficult letters can now be dumped more easily.
Surely, adding ZE and HIR would be the beginning of the end for Scrabble. So my question is: Feminists, why do you hate Scrabble?
(j/k)
There's been something I've wanted to say in the wake of Elevatorgate and all of the reverberations it continues to send through the skeptic blogosphere. I haven't said it for two reasons: One is because I'm not sure exactly how to get the idea across without making it sound like I am defending people whom I really don't wish to defend; and the other reason is because I'm not so sure the point I want to make matters all that much in practice (even though I think it is true and accurate). What people like Watson et al are asking for -- a little bit of thought about how our words and actions can make women feel welcome or unwelcome in the skeptic community, and just a tiny bit of effort trying to skew it towards the "welcoming" side -- is a bona fide good thing and I don't want to hinder that.
I've wanted to say something about the mindset of at least some of the people who are resisting this obviously good change, and why I think, even though their actions have obvious misogynistic consequences, they can be trying their best to be good people and still find it difficult to see this. And thanks to a recent SMBC comic, I think I just figured out how to say it.
This is exactly how a lot of lonely guys feel a lot of the time. (Take it from me; I was one for a loooong time) Unfortunately for everyone involved, young men are even more likely to feel this way if they find themselves in communities where women are significantly underrepresented, since this means they statistically will have fewer opportunities for successes that might help them overcome this crippling fear of Rejection Bacteria -- and of course these are exactly the same communities in which women are already going to tend to feel unwelcome due to being in a distinct minority.
What does all this have to do with Elevatorgate? Here's the thing: When that creepy guy asked you out, he very possibly overcame a crippling fear of Rejection Bacteria in order to do it. He seriously thought a flesh-eating microbe was going to eat his limbs right off his writhing body, but he faced down that fear and approached you anyway. In comparison to Rejection Bacteria, your passing discomfort or brief fear of being raped in an elevator seems incredibly trivial. "How dare you complain about being made to feel unwelcome when I just faced the risk of certain death to ask you on a date?"
Of course, sexual harassment and assault are real, while Rejection Bacteria are not. And so this is not a defense of Elevator Guy or anybody else who is being creepy.
But when you wonder why some of these guys, particularly the single ones, are just Not Getting It, this is at least part of your answer. I don't know if this has any value; perhaps the best way of winning this fight is to just keep speaking out against the behavior we don't want and eventually it will become socially unacceptable and/or people will start to "get it". Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to acknowledge that it can feel very difficult to be a lonely guy in a male-dominated community, to reassure people like this that we understand their challenges -- but that, whatever they might imagine, it's worse to be a woman in a male-dominated community.
I don't know, I don't know if that's helpful or not. The SMBC comic just struck me because, yeah, that's pretty much dead on what it feels like. For whatever that's worth...
Update: Jason Thibeault, who has a much larger readership than I, helped me publicize this issue (thanks Jason!)... and the co-founder showed up in the comments and provided some corrections. Apparently this is the case only the case with the sports cars: the other models put the woman in the driver's seat. I still think it would be even better if all of the shapes were such that they could be rotated 180 degrees, but it seems the company has been trying to do the right thing from the get-go. Kudos to them.
I am still reading Susan Calello's comments and may have a second update later.
Some cursory googling seems to indicate I am the only person to have noticed this (or at least, the only person to have noticed it and blogged about it). The otherwise excellent toy Automoblox appears to have a subtle -- and probably unintentional -- misogynist implication inherent in its design. This is not really a huge deal, and since I'm thinking about posting this to Facebook (where my cousins, who bought them for my son, might well read it) let me say that this does not change the fact that my son loves them, I still think it's an absolutely fantastic toy, and I am ever so grateful to the Geigers for the gift. This is merely meant as food for thought.
So what's the misogynist implication? Well check this out: The two figures that ride in the car have features that strongly imply gender, and the way the car comes preassembled, the man is in the driver's seat. That by itself is not really an issue (it would be a nice feminist statement of Automoblox to have reversed it, but I can't expect everybody to actively support every cause 100% of the time) but the problem lies in that, although Automoblox can be reassembled in a variety of different ways -- this is part of what makes it an excellent toy -- a bizarre quirk of the design makes it so that you can't ever put the woman in the driver's seat.
In describing the educational benefits of Automoblox, Wikipedia states that "the passengers in each car have specifically shaped bases which lock into matching sockets in the car to encourage shape recognition and matching." Indeed -- except that the male passengers have either a square- or circle-shaped base, meaning that they can be rotated in any direction, while the female passengers have either a star- or triangle-shaped base (both with an odd number of sides) meaning that they cannot be rotated exactly 180 degrees from the default position.
You can reassemble the car so that the star-shaped socket is on the driver's side, but you cannot face the female passenger directly forward. No matter how you configure it, she will always face at an off angle if placed in the driver's seat. What's frustrating is that if they had just used, say, a hexagon and an octagon for the bases, this problem would be averted.
I imagine this was unintentional. And it's an excellent, excellent toy. I suppose the next step is to contact the company and maybe if they get enough pressure, in future versions they can correct this. Or am I just being hypersensitive here?
I've been making an effort in the past year or so to use the female pronoun whenever referring to a hypothetical person. There was recently a discussion about pronouns over at Crommunist (and by the way, if you aren't reading Crommie, start now!), and coincidentally the gender politics of pronouns came up twice yesterday at work... so I've been thinking about it quite a bit over the past several days.
One can make an argument that simply replacing the male pronoun with the female one when referring to a hypothetical person is not really any better. I think this opinion commits the fallacy of ignoring the broader social context, but after some recent contemplation I'm going to go one further: Even if it really isn't any better, it's still a worthwhile exercise simply as a matter of consciousness-raising.
If you're a man -- especially if you are a white heterosexual middle-class man like myself -- it can be difficult to put yourself in the shoes of a person who experiences institutionalized bias. I can abstractly recognize that it's a little messed up for the male pronoun to just be acknowledged as the default, but that doesn't tell me anything about how it feels. However, experiencing other people using the female pronoun as the default, especially when I am being asked to picture myself in the role of the hypothetical person they are referring to... well that's an eye-opener. It feels weird, doesn't it? I think a valuable piece of knowledge is gained when one viscerally experiences that weirdness for oneself.
I'm also certain I would not have spotted one of the incidents yesterday were it not for the effort I have been making to substitute my default pronoun. Two co-workers were explaining to me some work they have done that involves a collaboration with educators, primarily with elementary school teachers. I noticed every time they referred to a student, they said "he"; and every time they referred to a teacher, they said "she". Both did it, consistently, without exception. (I'm probably going to mention something about it to them today or tomorrow, but I've been mulling over how best to approach it without coming off as confrontational)
So even if female-as-default really is no better than male-as-default (and as I said, I don't think that's necessarily the case when viewed in a broader context), it's still a good exercise in consciousness-raising. If you haven't tried it, you ought, at least for a little while. It's, well, it's weird. And I guess that's the whole point, isn't it?
The title to a PZ post today helped me tie this together with another thing I've been thinking about: Whether some of the more confrontational secular holiday displays that have gone up are a good thing or not.
While these displays surely tell the truth, and while I am certainly not concerned about constantly policing tone in general, some of these displays don't exactly make me feel holiday cheer inside, y'know? In a perfect world, holiday displays would all be positive messages, and some of the secular ones going up clearly are not. Negative messages are often necessary when opposing injustice or changing the social zeitgeist, but at Christmas/Channukah/Solstice? It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Yet I still felt like I supported the controversial displays anyway, even if I don't personally like them. And now I think I can articulate why: It's yet another exercise in consciousness-raising.
Yeah, these displays probably do make believers feel uncomfortable at a time when we as a society have traditionally tried to come together in mutual joy and generosity. But you know what? That's exactly how many non-Christians feel when an elaborate government-sponsored creche is on display to the exclusion of menorahs or Santa or anything else. That's exactly how many non-Christians feel when the War on Christmas people demand that Happy Holidays be expunged from our vocabulary in favor of an abject deference to Jesusmas. Like a man being asked to put himself in the place of a hypothetical person being referred to as a female, this asks Christians to momentarily slip into the shoes of a maligned minority, a minority whose holiday traditions are demeaned and devalued.
An eye for an eye is obviously not a good long term strategy, especially when we're talking about actual violence. But when we're talking about the possibility of maybe some mild discomfort and some hurt feelings, and when a big part of the problem is that the privileged group simply can't understand what it feels like to be in the out-group because they've never experienced it -- yeah, this is fair game.
Always using the female pronoun may not really be any better than always using the male pronoun. And an aggressively atheist holiday display may be no better than an aggressively Christian holiday display. But what both of these things do is make you think, to put yourself in the place of the other. That's what consciousness-raising is all about.
I've been meaning to write this post for a week or two, and the latest post from Jason Rosenhouse addresses a very similar topic, so I figure I best get on it.
At a party the other weekend, I was talking to a friend and mentioned my blog (which he was already aware of) in passing. Actually, I only mentioned it because I was saying how relieved I was that the looming Markuze threat had been neutralized -- here's hoping Dennis is feeling better, by the way! In any case, this prompted him to say, "That reminds me something I've been meaning to ask you," and for clarity, I'm going to loosely paraphrase him in the first person:
I'm an atheist, but I have no desire to engage religion on any level. The whole idea just seems incredibly silly to me, and I'm just not really interested in discussing it.
But lately I've been thinking about third-wave feminism, about how a lot of young women today don't appreciate, or even want to disassociate themselves from earlier first-wave feminists like Susan B. Anthony, or second-wave feminists like Gloria Steinem. They've grown up with the default assumption that women and men ought to be treated equally, and it's disappointing when they aren't willing to acknowledge how hard their predecessors had to fight for this basic notion.
I started to wonder if that's me in regards to my atheism. Am I obligated to be outspoken, to be part of the struggle? Or can I just be myself?
Hopefully it is not too unseemly to have a pair of thirty-something guys discussing how young women are "doin it rong" in regards to feminism! But I think the analogy is clear -- who has not had the cringe-inducing experience of hearing a young woman declare that she is "not a feminist" or "not one of those feminists"?
I think it is a very good question, and my answer was this: You have absolutely no obligation to do anything you are uncomfortable with, to be more of an "activist" than you are naturally inclined to be. The only thing I think is important is that you don't throw other atheists under the bus because of their own way of expressing it. To extend the analogy to feminism, I don't think that every single woman ought to feel compelled to get out there and "burn her bra" (to use the popular metaphor), but I do find it unseemly when women are critical or dismissive of those who do. By the same token, you can just be an atheist and you don't have to make a big deal out of it or push for greater acceptance or try to highlight the flaws of religion. You are totally fine just ignoring it -- but please don't make other atheists out to be villains because they have a different approach.
The one thing I did say I thought was useful for all atheists to do, if they can -- although situations vary and this is not always practical -- is to be open and forthcoming about their lack of belief, to be "out" as it were. Drawing an analogy this time to the gay rights movement, I don't think there is pressure for every LGBT person to march in Pride parades, to campaign for marriage equality, etc., but there is at least some pressure to come out of the closet, if they can. And I think this is appropriate. Obviously some circumstances dictate remaining in the closet, whether it be an LGBT person or an atheist -- a young person living at home in an unaccepting family, the possibility of damaging one's career, etc. But generally speaking, this is something which everyone ought to do if they can, as it can have such a powerful effect on public perception.
Beyond that -- be yourself! And let other people be themselves too.
The Rosenhouse post today quotes from a bridge-building atheist -- as opposed to an I-don't-care atheist like my friend -- but the principle is the same: Everyone has their own approach, and that's okay. What's not okay is telling somebody else their approach is wrong and they should shut up. We ought to all be on the same side here. It's this throwing-under-the-bus that separates nice guys like Bruce Hood from dickheads like Nick Matzke.
"I'm not one of those atheists" is just as unseemly as "I'm not one of those feminists." Look, you don't have to be. Just don't demonize us.
Over at Butterflies and Wheels, Ophelia Benson issued a challenge to have a "nuanced dialog" about whether sexist epithets are acceptable. It seems other candidates either refused to use their real name, or else had other issues complicating the debate, so I have volunteered to take up the other side.
This is going to be challenging since unfortunately I'm basically on the same page with Benson. But I feel there are just enough differences in where we stand that if I focus on those aspects, we may be able to get something going here. Maybe. Already at least one commenter has noticed we don't hardly disagree. But hey, it's a challenge, right?
I won't bore anyone with the details, but I just totally whupped Dan Cooper (yes, that Dan Cooper) in an argument on Google+. After I said that he had earlier indicated there was no gender discrepancy in earnings, Cooper said:
Prove to me that I said what you say I said.
A fair request. I obliged, in detail, although I did have to admit he only implied the salary gap was a thing of the past, rather than stating it explicitly. I must have really hit the mark, though, because his sole reply was:
You're totally castrated. Very sad. And you think men run things? You are ruled by women.
Awesome. Not even a "you're wrong" or "I didn't imply anything" or even an "I don't have time for this." I prove he contradicted himself, and he responds by saying I have no dick. Never have I won an intertubes debate in such spectacular fashion. Full of win!
The catalyst for this post, of course, is the ongoing Rebecca Watson/Elevator Guy/Richard Dawkins debacle. I don't want to say much about that, beyond just that my position is similar to Ophelia Benson's, i.e. Dawkins was wrong but not that wrong. I'm hearing now that some people are upset more over how Watson treated McGraw than anything else, but I've already expended too much mental energy on this whole little blow-up to look into it any further.
I think the majority of gnu atheists would consider themselves feminists or pro-feminism -- after all, religion has historically been used as a tool of misogyny (or is it the other way around?) and so it's only natural that those who ardently oppose the negative effects of religion would also oppose misogyny. But there also seems to be a very large contingent who, despite being nominally in favor of gender equality, are deeply resentful of what they see as overly "strident" feminists. They complain that it was not "us" who caused all of this oppression, both historical and ongoing. They complain that they are being treated unfairly, perhaps even claiming to be the victims of misandry.
Well, gnus shouldn't be making that type of mistake. Gnus, of all people, should be sympathetic towards the most outspoken forms of feminism -- even if that position can be wrong at times. Now I'm not saying someone ought to adopt an incorrect opinion, but gnus should not be infuriated by it, and should understand the value of these "strident" voices. And here are three reasons why:
Gnus ought to know that when attempting to change the public conversation, being polite, even-handed, or fair is not always the most important thing. The phrase you hear bandied about often is the Overton window, though I've become less comfortable with that term over time simply because of Glenn Beck's stupid novel of the same name. The point is that for far too long women have been expected to shut up and take their proper subservient place. And make no mistake, it's still socially acceptable in far too many contexts to express that view. On the flip side, far too many people find it unseemly or rude for a woman to speak up about gender issues.
This ought to sound all too familiar to atheists. And as gnus, how have we chosen to tackle that problem? By refusing to stay silent about our views, even in situations where it is perceived as rude or inappropriate to air those views. Our criticisms of religion may not always be entirely fair, but goddamnit, it's high time somebody said those things anyway. Gnus ought to understand that the same thing goes for feminist viewpoints, which have historically been squelched. You don't fix that problem by asking politely if maybe it's your turn to talk now; you fix it by expressing your views openly, unapologetically, and even vociferously. Eventually it just becomes okay to talk about those sorts of things, and then the nice calm polite conversations take place.
We're still not at a point in our society where everyone can have that nice calm polite discussion, and that goes whether you are talking about religion or gender. As a result, I don't blame atheists for being loud, ardent, or even rude. And I don't blame feminists for it either.
Gnus ought to know that crowing about 'persecution' from a position of privilege is pretty unflattering. When Christians in America complain about being 'persecuted', boy does that make my blood boil. It's true that Christianity is sometimes ridiculed in the media, sometimes even unfairly. But by god, Christians can proudly say that every elected US president has shared their religious views; they can expect their faith to be perceived a a positive character trait by the vast majority of the population; there is no shortage of media catering directly to their religious tastes, including whole separate musical genres; and numerous points of Christian dogma are codified into law, with far too many legislators talking with a straight face about adding even more. Yeah, you're not being persecuted, STFU.
News flash: That's how feminists feel when men complain about misandry. Are men sometimes criticized unfairly? Oh sure. But uh... yeah, you and I have got it pretty good, bro. Every elected US president has been a man; men are perceived as more capable than women in a wide variety of tasks, to the point where we can just expect a higher salary without even trying; there is no shortage of media catering directly to men, including the fact that the vast majority of protagonists in popular media are men; and until very recently, numerous laws were explicitly beneficial towards us. (As a side note, it is true that alimony law requires reform in many states now that, you know, we're actually letting women have jobs and stuff... but this is a legacy artifact of historic misogyny, not a result of misandry. Get that straight please.) On top of all that, most of us men don't have to constantly worry about getting raped.
So yeah, you know... stop complaining. I think it's okay sometimes to point out ways in which men are screwed over by laws or societal mores or whatever (as evinced by my parenthetical remark about alimony reform) but as the privileged group, we need to approach that sort of thing with due humility. No whining.
Gnus ought to know that cultural criticism doesn't take place in a vacuum. This is sort of the reverse of the previous point. I am much harsher when criticizing American Christians, for example, than when criticizing American Muslims; and by the same token I am much harsher when criticizing Muslims living in Islamic countries than I am when criticizing American Muslims. American Muslims may at times be worthy of criticism, but they are also getting a whole lot of bigotry and prejudice thrown their way. I always try to check myself, to see if I'm really trying to follow a legitimate point, or if I'm getting bamboozled by what essentially amounts to racism and/or jingoism.
Those who are formulating a criticism of an outspoken feminist would be well-served to do the same sort of introspection. There may be valid criticisms, but is the perceived importance of those criticisms getting amplified by the continuing societal hostility towards feminism and towards women in general? Are you getting bamboozled by misogynists? It's worth reflecting on.
To sum up, when you are advocating in favor of a group that has historically been oppressed, silenced, discriminated against, and devalued, it's okay to be a little brazen, a little overly harsh, a little angry, and at times even a little unfair. For too long, religious belief and open misogyny have simply gone unquestioned, enjoying a privileged position where not only do those on the wrong side wield the power, but have manipulated the bounds of socially acceptable conversation to squelch any opposing voices. Now after all these centuries, atheists and feminists are speaking up, making their story part of the public consciousness. And those who, in the face of that history, would criticize these proud new voices for seeming a bit too shrill -- maybe they ought to reconsider that.
Well there's a potential minefield for ya. I'm not sure why I would hazard to even try and write about this -- as a man, me telling women "ur doin it rong" in regards to feminism is unsavory at best, almost always condescending, and just generally a bad idea. But I have some thoughts about it, and I'd like to take my mind off some other stuff, so I thought I'd share what I have to say.
My thesis here is that the most sensible "feminist" position on the issue would be that a) women should be maximally facilitated to breastfeed if they choose to do so, including legal protections on doing so in public and employers providing a place to pump; while b) women should not be unduly pressured to breastfeed if they don't want to, that they especially should not be made to feel like they have failed or anything like that, and that if somebody's reason not to is simply "I just don't want to", that should be accepted uncritically. I will now try and defend that position.
It is important when we discuss anything like this to be ever mindful of the naturalistic fallacy. Nature has given women a distinctly different deal than it has given men in regards to this issue, and we should not be confused into thinking that this implies anything about what ought to be the case. At the risk of pissing off so-called lactivists -- whom I largely agree with, by the way -- the fact that breastfeeding is natural doesn't inherently argue that women ought to do it, nor does it even in and of itself mean that it ought to be socially acceptable to do so in public. There are plenty of things that are "natural" that we don't tolerate in public, sometimes with very good reason. I happen to feel very strongly that public breastfeeding ought to be tolerated and even encouraged, but my reasoning has very little to do with it being "natural".
So shall I proceed to those reasons? For starters, there really isn't any defensible reason not to tolerate public breastfeeding. There's nothing other than social convention that makes some people find it unseemly. Nature enters into it a little here in that if people did naturally find it disturbing, then we might want it to be a private activity; but it's not like that and I really just can't see any argument not to tolerate it.
More importantly, however, a lack of tolerance for public breastfeeding adds an additional burden to those who might choose to breastfeed. Constantly being shunted off to a bathroom or some other private location interferes with a breastfeeding woman's ability to fully participate as an adult in social and professional situations. Nature has already dictated for us that if a child is to be breastfed, it is the mother who will be doing the bulk of the work; there's no reason we should exacerbate this imbalance.
There's an important caveat here, that if a woman is not herself comfortable with breastfeeding in public, that is her business and nobody should be criticizing that. I guess some people even feel that it is a betrayal of values for a woman to cover when she is breastfeeding in public! No way. Even if it is an unfair social convention that creates this lack of comfort, a woman should not be forced to be a martyr for social change if she wishes to breastfeed.
I think this is so important that I favor legislation clarifying that any place which allows infants must also allow breastfeeding, and legislation forcing employers to provide for mothers to pump during the workday.
I don't want to make it sound here like I am characterizing breastfeeding as an inherently unpleasant or burdensome activity -- far from it, many women find it very rewarding and enjoyable. In fact, biology has also been unfair to men here, in telling us that we can't breastfeed even if we want to. (I guess it can be done with hormones and such, and certainly feeding an infant from a bottle provides some of that same feeling of bonding... but the point is that even if we have overcome nature in this regards, which I'm not convinced of, our natural biology was still unfair) I do not want it to come across as if I am saying, "Nature has shafted women by making them breastfeed, and we should undo the damage as much as possible." Rather, I am saying that our biology creates an inequity, and that inequity should be minimized without regard to whether it is inherently positive or negative.
So what about the flipside? Can advocacy in favor of breastfeeding become an anti-feminist position? Again at the risk of being patronizing, I think it can if we are not careful.
As already mentioned, even in the best of situations nature has dictated to us that if a child is to be breastfed, the mother will be doing most of the work to facilitate that. (Even if the mother were to exclusively pump and her partner or other family members did all the feeding, it still can be a physically and emotionally demanding activity, and in any case some women simply may not feel comfortable with it) By providing an alternative to breastfeeding, formula potentially frees mothers from this obligation. You can now be a mother and not breastfeed if you don't want to. When we denigrate that, we are aiding and abetting an unfortunate misogynist aspect of our biology.
Another important digression on the naturalistic fallacy is due here. The preponderance of evidence does seem to show that breastfeeding is superior to formula feeding -- but we can only have determined that by evidence, not by reasoning it out or favoring what is "natural". There are plenty of examples where "unnatural" things are clearly superior. Just thinking in the category of "things that are consumed", fortified milk, iodized salt, and fluoridated water are all relatively uncontroversial examples. (Apart from the anti-fluoridation crackpot conspiracy theorists, there are some legitimate questions about the cost/benefit of the amount of fluoridation that is employed in some areas, but there's little doubt that the practice itself has been beneficial) So it could have been the case that formula turned out to be much healthier than breastfeeding for some reason. It's not, but we couldn't have known that without evidence.
And furthermore, it's important not to oversell the benefit. While the data is mixed, the benefit does appear to be fairly modest. It's not like using formula is automatically going to make your child fat, stupid, and emotionally maladjusted. It may very slightly increase the odds that she will be obese as an adult, to pick one example of a possible benefit to breastfeeding -- but we all make choices every day that affect our children's future, sometimes negatively, and unless it's something with a really pronounced effect, e.g. like smoking during pregnancy, there ought not to be a moral stigma attached to it.
Telling a woman that she is failing her child if she doesn't breastfeed is equivalent to saying that you should not be allowed to be a mother unless you are willing to conform to your "proper" womanly role. And that is a distinctly anti-feminist thing to do. In my male opinion, that is.
Biology has not given men and women equal treatment; we cannot change this. But as I have argued previously, that doesn't mean gender inequality is a good thing! If we value gender equality -- and I do, very much so -- then we ought to do whatever we can to minimize the impact of those facts of biology which get in the way. In the case of breastfeeding, that means doing everything we can to facilitate women who choose to breastfeed, and it also means letting women know it is perfectly alright to make a choice not to breastfeed. Ultimately it's about empowering the individual to be whatever he or she wants to be -- nature be damned.
A friend posted a link to Facebook that showed two word clouds, one showing words used in advertising for toys aimed at boys, the other showing words used in advertising for toys aimed at girls. I'm not actually going to post the link here, because while I think the author's point is correct, I think the post itself does nothing to support the point being made, and this is all a distraction from what I actually wanted to talk about. There's been something I've wanted to say for quite some time about gender stereotypes, gender bias, and biology; and thinking about how some toys are perceived as gender-specific finally revealed to me what I think is the right way to say what I am trying to say, without coming across as patronizing.
Is gender discrepancy in toy preference purely a societal construction, or does it have any biological roots? Well, I don't think one can assert a clear answer to this question (it's undeniable that social convention reinforces this discrepancy, even if it didn't create it, which makes it very difficult to measure). But consider the following facts: Men are on average larger and more muscular than women. Babies only come out of vaginas, and milk (generally; don't distract from the central point) only comes out of the nipples of women. Given those realities, I don't think it would be surprising if we were to discover that, independent of culture, boys were more likely to play with fighting superhero toys, and girls were more likely to play with baby dolls. I'm not asserting that as true, but I really don't think it would be surprising.
But that's only a bit of speculation about what is; it says absolutely nothing about what we ought to do about it. Worse yet, it's not even the complete picture: It's undeniable that, even with gender stereotypes being bolstered by powerful cultural reinforcement as they are today, many boys would still rather play with dolls and many girls would still rather play with superheroes. It is not fair that these individuals be short-changed or stigmatized just because they don't fit a stereotypical mold, even if that mold has a perfectly natural origin. (Edit: In re-reading this, I think I inadvertently came across as presenting somewhat of a false dichotomy, i.e. that each individual either likes "boy's" toys or they like "girl's" toys. That's bullocks, and of course equally important is that even if, say, a given boy might usually want to play with superheroes, he should ideally not feel reservations about playing with baby dolls on occasions when it strikes him to do so.) Individuals should be empowered to do what they want, to act according to individual preferences and desires. This personal liberty and autonomy is one of our most important shared human values!
The upshot of this is that if it is the case that gender stereotypes have a biological basis (and again, I do not believe there is sufficient evidence to make an assertion about this either way), then that would only intensify the importance of minimizing any cultural reinforcement of those stereotypes. It might even suggest that we ought to work towards not only elimination of that cultural reinforcement, but an outright reversal of it, i.e. a society where it's "cool" to explore the opposite gender stereotype.
There is absolutely no reason to believe natural selection should be egalitarian in regards to gender. The moderate sexual dimorphism of our species suggests evolution has not been entirely blind to gender in H. sapiens (though thankfully we are quite a bit better off in that regard than C. lectularius!), and therefore we should be prepared that there might very well be natural behavioral differences between men and women. But as organisms with a uniquely powerful ability to reason about concepts of fairness and morality, we owe it to ourselves to do better than unguided evolution in this regard. The possibility that conventional gender roles might have biological roots is not an excuse to shrug our shoulders at stereotyping and inequality: rather, it is a call to redouble our efforts in combating those pernicious effects.
The American male culture of not showing fear or other perceived signs of weakness may be emotionally stunting, but damn, now and then it can have it's advantages. I'm scared out of my wits right now, but if I had a male friend and a beer in my hand, I'd be cracking jokes and ready to dive right into the job.
Some backstory... we are renovating our kitchen, and there is this thing coming down from the ceiling (we are calling it a soffit, which I guess it technically is, although usually when you say "soffit" in relation to kitchens, you are talking about the part of the ceiling that comes down above the cupboards) that has nothing in it but a single recessed light (which might as well be on the ceiling proper) and a bunch of insulation. No ducting, nothing. We haven't quite figured out why anybody would have put it in to begin with. It looks safe to remove, so... we're gonna do it.
This fucker is coming out. |
You can see the soffit in the picture to the right. Sorry for the bad lighting; the electricity is off in the kitchen (for obvious reasons). You can see the soon-to-be-former recessed light hanging out, and then a pole that I stuck up in there. I'll tell you why the pole in a second.
As I mentioned, the thing is stuffed with insulation. I had originally been anticipating a god-awful mess, a veritable rain of insulataion, at the point when I planned to saw the drywall out -- but then my sister suggested there is probably a crawlspace above the kitchen, and maybe I could shovel the insulation out first. So there is, and as intimidating as crawlspaces can be, on reflection I think that is the right solution.
So here I stand, with the crawlspace open and a halogen light shining into it, completely shitting my pants about going in there. It was bad enough opening the door -- I expected a gollum to jump out and bite my face off, or at the very least for a big pile of dead bodies to come rolling out and knock me off the ladder. The fact that I don't believe in monsters is cold comfort when you are by yourself, on a ladder, opening a creepy looking door that you anticipate crawling through in the near future.
It's a mess up there. To get my bearings, I stuck a pole up through the hole where the recessed light is, so I can see how far back I will need to go.
There's this weird perceptual effect... if I walk from the garage (where the crawlspace entrance is) to the kitchen, I would estimate the soffit is maybe 10-15 ft away from the entrance. "Your mission, should you choose to accept it..." (The pole is circled in red) |
But when I peer through the crawlspace, my estimate is more like 25-30ft!
If only I was holding a cold beer and had a guy friend here. That old male conditioning would kick in, and I'd just take a big swig and say (imagine frat boy voice here) "Let's DO it! Hell yeah!" But alone, beerless, and with no incentive to conform to a specific gender role... damn, this sucks.
An argument that those who pine for the days of unrepentant misogyny are fond of repeating is the idea that gender equality has eroded traditional ideas of chivalry that actually benefit women, e.g. holding the door and letting women go first, etcetera. I don't expect that any readers of this blog will harbor sympathy for that argument, so I won't spend time pointing out the flaws.
I do want to make an observation, though, in regards to the way the lack of gender symmetry in these traditional "chivalrous" ideals can wind up making people just plain rude. Now, I have to be careful here, because I'm making a little bit of a generalization based on anecdotal observation, so just keep in mind that I don't mean this as absolute, and it's quite possible I'm just wrong on this one. With that in mind, here we go...
If someone is five steps in front of me, it is their call if they want to hold the door. I usually will hold the door for people in that circumstance, but if I'm in a hurry I might just pretend I don't see them. When someone is that far behind, it requires one to stop and wait, and while it's certainly courteous to do so, I don't think it's compulsory. But if somebody is just one or two steps behind you, it just seems like basic common decency to, if not actually hold the door for the next person, at least give it a little shove so they can catch it as they reach the doorway, rather than making them lean in to open it again after you just opened it a second and a half ago.
And yet, every now and then, someone who clearly knew I was there (this morning I even made eye contact with the person as we were approaching the door from different directions) just lets the door close immediately behind their ass -- something I find pretty rude. It's a dis. An unnecessary door-in-the-face, that the person could have prevented with a little push.
And here comes the dangerous generalization: It seems to me, in my experience, that the people most likely to do this are older women. Sometimes a younger woman will do it, and I've even had a man do it to me on a few occasions. But I suspect this has something to do with this outdated notion of "chivalry". I suspect that, to some women, men hold the door for them, but they do not hold the door for men.
Like I say, that's fine if the person is five steps behind you. But to not even give the door a "push" so someone a step behind you can catch it? Please. That's so fucking rude. And I blame chivalry for it. Screw that.
