revenge of the lazy

Been scorned? Dumped, duped, hurt, or treated in a way that made you sob not just from the hurt or harm but the utter injustice? Then you've probably had a revenge fantasy. (Not necessarily an endorsement of the entire content, here's a free online article from the American Journal of Psychology on (compulsive) revenge fantasies in psychotherapy)

The kind that is most compelling for me is the idea that I will get a front row seat to the object of my vengeance's trauma at the hands of fate. I think this appeals most to me for several reasons.
1. Low investment for me.
2. Low risk of me getting caught or hurt in the process or of me causing hurt to someone else who doesn't deserve it.
3. The feeling of cosmic justice that comes from it. Whether you chalk it up to a higher power, fate, furies, or simply the great wheel spinning its way back around, the sense that - yes sometimes the asshole gets what's coming to him is (for me) life affirming in some small way. The article I linked to above calls this "pride at being on the side of some spiritual primal justice".

Is it small to feel that way though? Maybe sometimes, if what was done to you was a small or slight offense. But what about when it wasn't?

I have absorbed the socialization that it is petty and mean to experience a happy warm feeling of knowing someone who hurt you is hurt. I know this because I do have that momentary flash of something like guilt when I enjoyed, say, hearing that a faculty member was getting divorced*. When I heard about his divorce, I smiled. Then I thought "gosh, am I a shitty person for enjoying this? Maybe I shouldn't be enjoying it" I tabled the guilt and got on with enjoying it more or less quietly and have continued to warm myself by the glow of the thought now and then when I encounter this man directly or indirectly, and remember that he so casually invalidated so much suffering I had gone through, however Bubblewench recently held a contest which has provoked me to return to the issue.

The responses could be thought of as a continuum which runs from the episodic little schadenfreude moments to revenge fantasy to actual revenge acts. I'm not sure they are all of a piece emotionally or societally, but culturally, my experience is that we (especially women) are taught that all of the above are bad because nice ladies don't do or feel things like that. Underlying that message is reasoning along the lines of nice ladies don't get intentionally hurt, raped, hit, or oppressed, so if this did happen to you, it's probably your own fault and you've got no one to blame but yourself so stop "playing the victim card"/"grinding an axe"/"holding a grudge", etc.

I vehemently disagree with that reasoning. Also, I take issue with the notion that all feelings of vengefulness are all bad, although I do so cautiously. I do believe that consuming vengeance is not healthy for the person who is consumed. What's more, for me personally, the thought of my moving from a revenge fantasy to actually committing a deliberate, premeditated, and for lack of a better term, large vengeful act makes me feel a bit discomforted (I'm not talking about not holding the elevator or stuff on that level). Is my feeling due to internalized cultural norm, fear of getting caught, or does this really go against my principles and morals? Now that I put it out there, I have to say I think it's mostly pragmatics for me. Either that or just serious laziness.

With most things, I weigh cost with product, or risk of cost with promise of product. I could be high minded and say the gain is restoring the balance, taking down a villian, etc. Sometimes my desires for vengeance are born at least partly of this but it would be absurdly arrogant to say that is the entirety of my motivation. Truly, the (desired) product is also in no small part that feeling I described in (3) above. That a bad guy didn't get to make me feel bad or hurt me without getting hurt him or herself. And to be certain of that, I'd either have to do something really expressly bad to this person or I'd have to do some serious homework and legwork to calculate a specific torment which would, to anyone else, not be a big deal (best example: My brother says when our father is old and in a nursing home, he will be sure to drop by at least once a week and force the man to watch Three's Company reruns for hours on end). The former is likely to violate my morals, and the latter is, well, work. It's time and energy and possibly cost I could spend on something else that might make me feel good without being about this asshole. With most cases where someone's gotten a chunk of me, if I take the time to think about it, I find I don't want to give that person MORE of me. Plotting is time, and so even if I have the desire to wreak vengeance on someone in a wily and well executed way, I peeter out as time passes and I realize I'm letting this asshole take up more of me and my time.

But if I stumble across an opportunity which is not a lot of effort, isn't horrible, and has a pretty good chance of making that person's life difficult even for a minute without screwing someone else over in the doing, I am quite likely to jump right in and do it. Low cost, low risk (to me and to unimplicated bystanders), high probability of result.

* This was a faculty member who just one year previous, while I was recovering from a second surgery for endometriosis, had trashed me to other grad students for what he saw as my lollygagging my way through a PhD program. Lollygagging is not what I'd call getting divorced, needing 2 surgeries for extrapelvic endometriosis, having undertreated neurolyme for a year before a month of PICC IV antibiotics (the placement of which line was a disaster and a half), developing what looks to be an autoimmune disease and all that comes with it, "breaking up" with my toxic parents, and dealing with a dear family member who has life threatening substance and medical problems.

oh boy

Today I noticed an ad for a book called "The Trouble with Boys". That tired shit again? It's so January 2006. Oh wait, it turns out the author of the article (Peg Tyre) has written a same titled book which was just published.

I can sum up the arguments in the article as follows: boys' needs aren't being met because boys are made of snips and snails and puppy dogs tails, thus they like to get up and move around and girls like to sit quietly like little sugar and spice-full ladies. Therefore any educational context where students are not treated like monkeys in a zoo is an environment where boys will not thrive (and by "thrive" we mean dominate) and everyone knows boys just DESERVE to thrive even if it is at the expense of not only other students' learning but safety.

I'm going to assume Ms. Tyre expands on this general theme in her recent book devoted to the topic of the boys' entitlement movement.

Interestingly, within just 9 months of Tyre's Newsweek article alerting everyone to the crisis of boys not thriving in schools, prompting the claims that boys were "under attack", the US had two high profile mass assaults which provided what I'd consider clear evidence of girls being under actual attack. Platte Canyon High School - September 27, 2006 and West Nickel Mines school - October 2, 2006.

So my thoughts on this Wednesday morning are this. When our boys are similarly systematically hunted and assaulted, then I will respond to calls of boys being under attack. Until then, Ms. Tyre and the other boys' entitlement advocates can fuck right off.

Context?

What was Ferraro talking about when she first made her "race remarks", the ones which I read today had triggered "fury" from the Obama campaign? (quoted phrases from the press)
By my reading of what the comments quoted, I don't have an automatic interpretation. It's clear to me from the quoted remarks that Ferraro was talking about racism and sexism. Ok, so is talking about racism is automatically racist? Is assuming that sexism exists automatically sexist*?

Answers to those questions aside, it seems Ms. Ferraro, even if we take a less reproachful interpretation of her comments, is guilty of failing to accommodate a cardinal rule: you can't talk to the media about the media's biases and expect them to play nice. It's not like this is news to Ferraro. My god, the woman's been involved in politics for over 30 years now. I think it's fair to say she's someone who should know the deal by now.

After seeing headlines about the "fury" over her race remarks, I had to track down the remarks myself. (the "full" interview is below)

What I see is Ferraro speaking about racist** and sexist** attitudes and motivations as if we all knew they existed. I can see that there's room for interpretation, or more properly, interpretations. What I mostly notice is that Ferraro's commentary, as excerpted in the "full" interview below, seems to be a candid discussion about the social implication of what is clearly for some people a contest between their racist or sexist attitudes.

Do we have to pretend the world isn't sexist or racist when we speak of public, media, and media fueled perceptions of the candidates in terms of race or sex? Is there a list of words which have to be preceded by "alleged", "purported", or some other qualifier - even in a context where we all supposedly understand that racism and sexism exist?

I would have so much rather seen a response to Ferraro's comments which addressed what I see is more the point. I want to see a public discussion of institutional sexism and racism, how the manifest and interact. An open and intelligent discourse about this is so notably absent, I can't help feeling in part because as soon as a person says "sexist" or "racist" or something about sex or about race, the conversation becomes a hazardous material and we are all required to stand at least 20 yards away while the men in suits come to clean it up.

Racism and sexism are toxic, that's for sure. But discussing racism and sexism, well, that's more waste than toxic waste. More shit than poison. It can be ugly. It smells bad. It reminds us of something disgusting about ourselves, a thing we'd prefer not to think about perhaps. When we are confronted with it, we want to deal with it carefully because god knows no one wants it to hit the fan and go all over the place. Hell, there are even some people who, in a discussion of the shit, will decide to throw shit at others because they are fucked up and mistake an occasion about shit for an opportunity to revel in shit. But the shit alone, it's not going to kill us or even harm us unless we fail to dispose of it properly.

So shit's there and it's not going anywhere. It's piling up while we alternately pretend not to notice it, or notice it each time anew as if it was NEVER there before with cries of OH MY GOD HOW DID THAT SHIT GET IN HERE???!!! and then an often short lived shit storm ensues.

Well, below is the latest shitstorm. The selection below is representative. So far, absent from the reaction in the press is the reasoning behind the interpretation that Ferraro's comment are racist. I am definitely interested in hearing comments from anyone who has that perspective and can discuss*** it with me. If there's some reasoning which would make this something other than a "YOU SAID JEHOVAH!!!" reaction here in the press, I'd truly like to understand it.

* = I've experienced the latter accusation first, second, and third hand in a variety of contexts.
** = I mean these terms to include so called "benevolent" forms of racism and sexism, not just the other more familiar kinds. Benevolent racism is what underlies the "That Barrack Obama/Condoleezza Rice is so articulate!" sort of comment. Benevolent sexism is what my neighbor was spouting last month when he told me he'd vote for "Hillary over Obama" (note which names are used) because "women's hearts are more peaceful. Women are more caring. We need that right now."
*** = No shit throwing allowed. Please keep hands and feet inside the cart at all times while the ride is operating. Do not taunt happy fun ball.


Geraldine Ferraro let her emotions do the talking, now people are talking!
The Daily Breeze
By Jim Farber, Staff Writer
As the only woman ever to be selected by a major political party for the position of vice president of the United States, Geraldine Ferraro is uniquely suited to comment on the political events of the day.

An outspoken advocate for women's issues and a staunch supporter of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, Ferraro offered her views on the state of the nation and the race for the White House.
...
Speaking by phone from her New York law office, the 72-year-old former Democratic congresswoman outlined the themes of her talk. She also offered pointed observations regarding the Barack Obama juggernaut and what she sees as a sexist media bias against the candidate of her choice.
...
When the subject turned to Obama, Clinton's rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Ferraro's comments took on a decidedly bitter edge.

"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Ferraro does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.

"I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he's going to be able to put an end to partisanship," Ferraro said, clearly annoyed. "Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship - that's the way our country is."
...

Reaction:
Obama fury over Clinton backer Ferraro's race remark
AFP
"That's a really outrageous and offensive comment," Rice said on MSNBC television after Ferraro, who sits on Clinton's finance committee, had said: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."

"It is the sort of comment that we have heard repeatedly, I'm afraid, from some of the Clinton surrogates," said Rice, Obama's leading adviser on foreign policy.

She said Ferraro's remarks were "far worse" than those of another foreign policy aide, Samantha Power, who was forced to resign from the Obama campaign last week for calling Clinton a "monster."

"I think if Senator Clinton is serious about putting an end to statements that have racial implications, that diminish Barack Obama because he's an African-American man, then she ought to really repudiate this comment and make it clear that there's no place in her campaign for people who will say this kind of thing," Rice said.

break

It's break here. My fella says since he's on break he may just start randomly flashing people. I told him if he starts doing this, he'll also have to adopt other pop culture spring break behaviors like grabbing whichever same sex friend is nearby and making out if someone trains a camera on him. (If he were to wear chaps while doing this, we'd know we had entered an evil alternate dimension)

Flashing and other popcusexual* shenanigans aside, I think we'll be having a pretty tame and lame break. He's got a paper rewrite deadline on Saturday and I've got hey, what else is new....job searching, grading, and doctors' appointments. Oh yeah kids. Hold onto your hats (and lunch) - it's Spring Break, grad student style!

* = Popcusexual. N, Adj. /pȯp-kyü-sek-shə-wəl/ (only because the more morphologically transparent /pȯp-kə-sek-shə-wəl/ seems a bit anemic - although the usage board is divided on which is preferred). Apparent sexual orientation and/or preferences primarily determined by believed appeal to a pop culture audience. Also, popcusexuality.

Douchebag du jour (VIII and V)

It's that steaming pile Mark Rowan again.

I don't blame you if you're thinking "Who the fuck is that?" He's a nobody but he's been working hard to make a name for himself by being a major douchebag. Let's not disappoint him folks. I may not say it in a paper funded by student (and indirectly, taxpayer) dollars, but I'll write it here. Mark Rowan is a douchebag who deserves, no I'm sorry, who it seems really needs to someday personally experience what genuine suffering feels like.

That life tends to involve pain for all humans is rarely a thing I take solace in, however when it comes to people like Rowan, I find a comfort in knowing someday life will kick him hard. Maybe it won't be until the end, when he's drooling into his hospital jello cup, subject to the numerous degradations of age and illness that a modern "middle class" and better life nearly guarantees as its final reward. But it will come. I sincerely hope that during whatever dark hours life holds in store for this birth defect, he has a moment to ponder the many ways in which his existence has been a waste of human - hell, even mammalian - potential. The boy simply refuses to heave himself up off his scaly belly and stop rolling in his own muck. Someday, I hope that muck drowns him.

For those of you who don't remember Rowan, he's the editor of a campus newspaper in CT, The Recorder. He's the guy who approved and defended a column called "Rape only hurts if you fight it" in February 2007. Shortly after the shit rather publicly hit the fan over that column, Rowan called his decision a "lapse in judgment". His apology for that lapse was pithy, but only in an ironic sort of way.
"We didn't know the campus community as well as we thought we knew, and because of that that's why we're getting this backlash and we're sorry because of it."

Rowan won douchebag du jour (V) here way back in May of this year for being the umpteenth "boy who called witch hunt" when the community The Recorder is funded by tried to hold him accountable for his seriously fucked up take on editing.

This time, Rowan has approved and defended a cartoon published in The Recorder called "Polydongs" which makes a joke about the abduction and torture/assault of a teenage minority female. The Recorder ran this cartoon on September 12th - about a day after the story about Megan Williams' abduction and torture broke.

Below is a description of the cartoon from Take Back the Recorder.

Panel 1: Polydong 1: "You know...when I eat a bowl of smacks or golden crisps, my urine smells like honey."

Panel 2: Polydong 2: "...Does it taste like honey, too?"

Panel 3: Polydong 1 (faded, focus of panel is on a door barred with chains and a padlock): "I dunno. I'd have to ask that 14 year old Latino girl tied up in the closet." (from under the closet door: "!Yo tengo hambre!")

Panel 4: Polydong 2 (in a bubble bath): "Oh. Tell Jaunita I say 'hola.'"

Beneath the panel: "The Recorder does not support the kidnapping of (and subsequent urinating on) children of any age or ethnicity."

Rowan's defense this time:
Rowan noted that he got two comments from Hispanic girls who thought the comic strip was funny.

blog like a girl?

You throw like a girl.
Your hair looks like a girl's.
You run like a girl.
Your bike looks like a girl's.
Your ride your bike like a girl.
You dance like a girl.
You kick like a girl.
You play like a girl.
You cry like a girl.
You scream like a girl.
You dress like a girl.
You drive like a girl.
You swing like a girl.
You fight like a girl.
You sing like a girl.
You sneeze like a girl.
You laugh like a girl.
You talk like a girl.

Note that "girl" and "fag" are interchangeable in the above.

Here's what I think.

The insult in its common use has little to do with a direct comparison to any particular individual - which would explain why the authors of such insults rarely feel their words are sexist or in any way bigoted. The insult calls on a definition of "girl" or "fag" which means not so much "juvenile female" or "gay guy" but more specifically things inappropriately unmasculine.

That these labels are used for this purpose does kind of make me wonder if this is an indication that all things are supposed to be masculine. Sort of subverts the whole binary gender role thing though.

And I think ultimately it's just an analogy. That is, while there is no individual or perhaps no specific people (whole real people) who are being referenced in the "like a _____" frame, there is a semantic collection, a prototype which has an unfortunate negatively tinged essence. This property of the abstract group can and will be applied to (even real) members of the group, current or subsequent.

It's hard to know how the negative "unmasculine" property (or set of properties) came to be applied to the group and the group members even in the apparent absence of experience with individuals from the group or with contrary experience with individuals from the group. My guess is that it occurs through a top-down, category to member spreading of the negatively charged property after this property has been applied to all categories which could be defined as definitionally non-masculine.

This contrasts with a bottom-up property affiliation, where icky, weak, whiney individual "girls" one after the other built up and reinforced the properties of the category.

My main reason for thinking it's more the former because honestly, how many gay guys could your average 10 year old boy have met? I know full grown straight men who, when asked "are you friends with anyone who is gay?" have to honestly answer that to their knowledge, they don't even know anyone who is gay. How fucked up is that?

I find it personally insulting and I think it's socially damaging that "girl" is used as such a negative label. I sometimes wonder if I am making too much of it. I wonder this when men who I thought were not dipshits go and say stuff like this ("crying like a girl") as a joking insult to one another, or even as a self deprecating comment. When I inquire, I am invariably told by such men that they have (a) engaged in a fair amount of self reflection and (b) they do not believe that the term implies a stereotypical set of beliefs about gender and subsequently (c) that the use of the term in this way (as opposed to _____ way?) is not sexist, does not transmit sexism, does not perpetuate sexism, is not derogatory to women and girls, does not reinforce the equation of NOT MASCULINE = BAD = FEMALE/GAY which can effectively serve to limit what roles real individual "not masculine" individuals are allowed while living in a world dominated by the NOT NOT MASCULINE.

Which brings me to today's news blurb.

Bad Thai cops to endure Kitty shame
Thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.
...
The striking armband features Hello Kitty sitting atop two hearts.

"Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor," said Pongpat, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok.

I bleed

Below is an excerpt from an eMedicine article about a somewhat controversial condition called "premenstrual dysphoric disorder". For a not terribly well done overview of the controversy, see this APA Monitor piece.

(gotta love the feminist argument in that link, btw. By the argument as it is alluded to there, no one should be diagnosed with or treated for conditions like endometriosis because such a condition reaffirms stereotypes about women, i.e. that female anatomy and physiology are pathological as is evidenced by the monthly disability they cause.)

In the eMedicine article, the cognitive and social learning theory and the sociocultural theory are both pretty swell. But the one below, the psychosocial theory, is my absolute favorite. It's not just favorite PMDD causal theory, but my favorite example of misogyny and outdated shrunken gender roles being applied to clinical practice. I copied it and hung it up on my wall in my office.

The psychosocial theory hypothesizes that PMDD or PMS is a conscious manifestation of a woman's unconscious conflict about femininity and motherhood. Psychoanalysts proposed that premenstrual physical changes reminded the woman that she was not pregnant and, therefore, was not fulfilling her traditional feminine role. Obviously, proving this theory through scientific evidence is quite difficult.

Yeah, obviously.

Privacy

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had an idiopathic seizure this week. During the seizure, he fell and sustained a mild head injury. News reports indicate this is not the first such episodes he has had.

The article I read goes on to quote Dr. Marc Schlosberg, a neurologist at Washington Hospital Center, who says that by definition, someone who has had more than one seizure without any other cause is determined to have epilepsy.

The article closes with attributing the following conclusion to Dr. Schlosberg.
Whether Roberts will need anti-seizure medications to prevent another incident is something he and his doctor will have to decide.

Good thing he's got that right, you know the one where he and his doctor privately decide what medical treatment is best for him without interference by anyone else (i.e., anyone like the parent or guardian of a minor or the state...). Couldn't one make at least a superficially compelling case that the treatment of such high governmental officials are a matter of genuine public concern and interest? Shouldn't we consider that potential impairments, whether immediate or long term, of the official's physical or mental acuity as a result of this condition or of the treatment of the condition could quite directly affect the official's ability to function at a level and manner necessary for the successful execution of the office?

Rhetorical questions largely. Here's another.

Why should the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court have MORE rights and BETTER rights than any old Jane Roe?

For some informative and creepy reading about current and recent US Supreme Courts' interpretations of the scope and expectation of women's rights to privacy in medical decisions, see Gonzales v. Carhart

no more good days

In the first (GOP) presidential debate held on May 3, 2007, the candidates were asked "Would the day Roe V Wade is repealed be a good day for America?" Here's what the candidates said[1, 2].

Former New York City Mayor Giuliani - it would be "OK" to repeal Roe v. Wade

Senator McCain - "Yes"

Former Wisconsin Gov. Thompson - "Yes"

Former Virginia Gov. Gilmore - "Yes, it was wrongly decided"

Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney - "absolutely"

Former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee - "most certainly"

Sen. Brownback - "(It) will be a glorious day of human liberty and freedom."

Rep. Tancredo - "After 40 million dead because we have aborted them in this country, I say that that would be the greatest day in this country's history."

I can't help wondering if the kind of "good days" these men had in mind take into account acts like the one alleged here? Or like those alleged in this case? (warning: rough story in that first link)



[1] On The Issues: Abortion
May 21, 2007
[2] video of candidates' responses
May 3, 2007

"target of sexual harassment"

Here's some nice newspeak for ya.

Sex suit could be problem for Bloomberg
By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press writer
Sunday, July 29, 2007

NEW YORK - Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks his mind and that is a big part of his cachet in anything-goes New York. But a sexual harassment lawsuit he settled in 2000 and other racy comments over the years show how his blunt style could prove a liability if he runs for president as an independent.

Before his election as mayor in 2001, Bloomberg was the target of a sexual harassment suit by a female executive who accused him of making repeated raunchy sexual comments while he was chief executive of his financial company, Bloomberg LP.

(emphases mine)

The story mentions that the details of the suit and full accusation are not available. Thus there is no way to confirm the assumptions inherent in this article. It bears mentioning that the details were not available to the story's author either, and yet she treats us to her apparent implicit assumption that the charge was unwarranted. And to the (presumably shared) conclusion that having had cause to settle a sexual harassment suit is evidence of being a person who tends to "speak his mind".

I tend to speak my mind too. But so far, no one's accused me of sexual harassment.

better than other people

Holier than thou. This is how academics see themselves and their profession.

Indeed I am generalizing, but not all generalizations are invalid. This particular one is not formed out of prejudice. This is a statement based on years of empirical evidence, gained from years of insider observation. There are some academics for whom this doesn't hold, or doesn't hold entirely, but these folks are the exceptions. And being such an exception tends to result in much head scratching (all around) if not outright discomfort. I'm not thinking so much of me here, my reaction and people's reactions to me are not so subtle. I'm thinking more of the people I've known who were driven out or nearly out of academia despite being what could be considered "successful". People like the professor from my former department who, a semester after getting tenure, ran away to Europe on "sabbatical" to never return. She just left. No notice, just gone. It might have had something to do with one of our esteemed tenured full professors having called her a nazi...

Because holier than thou academics live under the strong (and unexamined) belief that they and "people like them" are somehow not subject to the same very human traits the rest of the general population exhibit, when workplace issues like incivility, discrimination, and sexual harassment come up, community responses reflect this attitude. Whether the individual response supports or negates the attitude, the "it can't happen here" air is part of a context which is an inseparable aspect of the response.

I came back to this post to add a little something here. I'm not talking about the casual ego-centrist behavior which is sort of common across any walk of life, nor am I saying any given academic IS like this (or that any given non academic isn't). There may be other fields where this sort of behavior and attitude is as pervasive as it is in academia too.

For a nice, fresh personal example of this attitude in action, consider the following. Academics in social and life sciences often collect research using data from human subjects. Their careers and reputations depend on them publishing (you know "publish or perish") and those publications are often dependent on if not the quality then the amount of data they can collect in a given period of time. Needless to say, such pressures as well as a few notable, notorious research examples mean such data collection is overseen by review boards. These boards like all things institutional, are far from perfect in implementation. However, they serve a good purpose.

And yet there is though a disturbing trend in some departments for faculty and grad students (monkey see, monkey do) to repeatedly, publicly, and apparently unashamedly mock and deride not just the board but it's purpose. It's a petulant and deeply disturbing backlash, seemingly in response to what is seen (by the researchers) as meddling and a threat to academic freedom.

Academic freedom is certainly a legitimate concern, however there are MUCH better, more appropriate domains to fight for it in. Rather than (or possibly in addition to) taking up the legitimate threats to academic freedom, or even addressing the elements of the review board behaviors which may in fact go "too far" and have nothing to do with protecting the rights of research participants, the elements of academic culture I've seen promote an increasingly malicious attitude towards the research participants. "Ah hahah! This one girl was like crying during our experiment!" a student recently boasted to a table full of grad students. "Oh my god, are you serious?" I asked him, clearly concerned. "Well no, but she was pretty upset," he said, brushing it off. This is the same person who earlier this year claimed he was going to "make" all the students in his class participate in his experiments. (I later found out from a faculty member that he was "just joking" to get at a female grad student who had been hoping his class would be part of a larger participant pool. I was horrified and told the faculty member that her students had a fucked up sense of humor. She genuinely didn't seem to understand my reaction).

So this is a group of people where I've seen some pretty shitty behavior. It's not isolated to my department. Sexist comments, lewd unprofessional remarks in a professional setting, abusive behavior, exploitative treatment of minority grad students, preferential behavior based on personal relationships, racist slurs, and deeds and stated beliefs which skirt the line of ethical - I've seen several examples of each of these. But stop and question one of the perpetrators of such a thing (which I have) and they will find your questioning preposterous. I remember the faculty member who was shocked that I told him his behavior in a seminar was sexist. Why? Because, as he said "I've always considered myself a feminist!" Plus, everyone knows liberal faculty members can't be sexist. They can say these things and act this way with impunity because apparently those social codes, institutional rules, and laws apply to someone else.

For some disturbing reading and insight into the sort of thing I'm talking about, go here. It's the Chronicle of Higher Education forum, a thread started by an untenured junior faculty member asking for advice on how to respond to the inappropriate and unprofessional behavior a senior faculty member has directed at her. Some of the assertions made by folks who seem to be more than a little ignorant about sexual harassment law and specific institutional policies are perhaps shocking if you don't know academics - i.e., if you don't know that they are so smart and know so much they can reason out what is and isn't true, what is an isn't valid, and what is and isn't a policy even without ever having read up on it. The information and knowledge about any topic simply seeps into them by their choosing to focus their massive intellect on the issue from the comfort of various armchairs and loungers.

My god, do I sound bitter?
Jaded?
Jaundiced?

How about informed, aware, and disgusted? My preference is for that last description because it more accurately avoids the connotation that I have no valid claim to this set of thoughts and feelings on the matter. I've done my research. I've made my conclusions. I am open to adjusting them should new evidence come to light - and I very much want new evidence to come to light because at heart I am a polly-anna and want to believe that people will be as excellent as they can be. In the meantime, I watch, listen, and read.

Wal-mart pays $2M for...uh...um...er....

Fired Wal-Mart pharmacist awarded $2M
Associated Press
June 20, 2007

A pharmacist who claimed she was fired by Wal-Mart after asking to be paid the same as her male colleagues has won a nearly $2 million award against the retail giant.

A Berkshire Superior Court jury concluded Wal-Mart discriminated against Cynthia Haddad and awarded her nearly $1 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages Tuesday.

"It sends a message that you can't treat people poorly because of who they are," said David Belfort, Haddad's attorney.

Great ruling, but what is up with the lawyer's remark. "...You can't treat people poorly because of who they are"? What can you treat them poorly for then?

This wasn't about "Treating people poorly". This was about discrimination (as a legal term, not psychological). While discrimination includes treating someone "poorly" (usually), I think you'd have to agree that simply treating someone bad is not sufficient to cause discrimination.

For example, one could say I treat The Fluffy Professor in my program poorly. Or that I treated my mother poorly. In neither case would I be open for a discrimination law suit.

I'm sure what the fellow meant to say was "sexism is bad", or at least that's what he would have meant to say if it weren't forbidden by an increasingly strong taboo. To claim sexism (even when a jury was pretty convinced of it in fact if not name) is to invite invalidation.

chock full o'fuck

I had surgery on Friday. Between post-op nausea and having seen what was done to my tonsils (presumably during intubation (or extubation)) the thought of bathing my throat in hot carcinogenic smog made me shudder a bit. This is why I have had so few cigarettes. I did smoke a little last night though. I had a really seriously rotten day yesterday. I mean rotten. Bad bad bad. There's at least one faculty member who I am planning to verbally spank when I am back in the swing of things.

The nice thing about the smoking is that I guess when I am emotionally ready to quit, perhaps I will have an easier time of it physically than I thought.

Today I'm feeling dangerously better. Dangerous in that I'm nowhere near healed up enough to be lifting stuff or engaging in my habitual cleaning fits which call to me when I am in a rotten mood (woke up thinking about yesterday's fuckery) but I feel well enough at times during the day that I find myself eyeing the vacuum cleaner warily, as if I might sneak up on it and wrestle it into coming along quietly and not putting up a fight.

My advisor called yesterday to ask how the surgery went. A____ talked to her since I was still in bed at 11:00 having been up at 5, 7, and 8 AM to take pain meds and chew on some rolaids since the pain meds have been beating up my stomach. A____ told her it went well and that I was recovering. No details. She'll press me for those later, sounding concerned. I will be inclined to answer very sincerely, as I usually do, only to find later that her extremely short term memory for any of the details and inability to apply the information pragmatically ("right, that's why you weren't in that first week in June...") suggest the concern was barely more than polite interest on her part. I can't stop her from being who she is. But I suppose I can try to modify my own behavior. So I feel like I need to come up with a version of an answer to the question of "how'd it go" which doesn't downplay serious health issues or their impact on me but also doesn't make me feel like I divulged too much personal detail for no good reason.

So here's the version she probably won't get.

It sucked, I felt like shit, but I am quite certain that the surgery was a very good call. I honestly hadn't expected it would be as extensively fucked as this. I had endo all over the place. It was in the uterosacral ligament, on a ureter, and all throughout my intestine. Regarding the last set of sites, some were quite deep. From what the doctor described to A___ just after the surgery, if I'd waited much longer I'd have been looking at a bowel resection.

Also, it turns out my uterus is not only enlarged but also had a few growths. The GYN removed the growths and they are being tested. Until I get the results, I'm supposed to be reassured that the cause of the enlargement may be adenomyosis, which is shitty and has no cure (other than hysterectomy) and little treatment, but won't kill ya. It will cause lots and lots of pain, but because it won't kill you it's called "relatively benign" in medical literature.

It's been almost a week since I heard all this news and I am still pretty damned pissed at my about to be fired GI doctors. I'm pissed at them because I now have confirmation of what I suspected which was that they were prematurely giving up on a diagnosis after having done everything one would to diagnose (one of them said that to me - like I was some freak who was just dying for another colonoscopy). Turns out they forgot I wasn't a 57 year old man but was in fact a premenopausal woman who has a stated, surgically confirmed history of endometriosis.

The whole situation has been like gasoline on the constantly smoldering disgust and contempt I have for the medical profession in general.

sexism

I have of late had several interactions with people, mostly male, about sexism.

In general they do not go so well. They do not degenerate into name calling, barely and only through immense patience and a damned good sense of humor on my part (no really, I AM laughing at them usually). However, they always leave me tired and somewhat repulsed. Oh I know what it feels like. There was this place in Michigan called Heath Beach I think. It was not much more than a slightly large, chlorinated farm pond. It was chlorinated mud full of people, mostly kids swimming and peeing and their attending adults standing knee deep in the muck - a long neck in one hand and a cigarette clenched between their lips which they removed with the free hand only long enough to yell something like "Krystal-Lynne, you stop holding your brother Kyle down under the water!"

After these interactions, I find that I often I feel like I went swimming at Heath Beach.

There are some, mostly female, who will think me silly for trying to have a decent if difficult interaction with people about sexism at all. If someone doesn't come with some sort of anti-sexism pedigree, I should say "fuck it, fuck them, and fuck that". This goes against a good slice of my core reasoning, core reasoning being part of what keeps me chugging. This chunk goes something like "If I'm going to be part of this, I will not be a passenger."

In short, I do try to drive the bus sometimes. It's that or let it do things like drive off the cliff, and since I'm ON the bus, I have a problem with it going off the cliff.

Change

I'm too tired to blog articulately at the moment. Grocery shopping was draining. I forget how much it sucks to go on a weekend. E gads. I tried to be zen about it so as not to get all worked up (not because I worry about freaking out on people, which I should, but because I don't like how it makes me feel in both the physical and metaphysical senses) but it was like dipshits getting in the way of other dipshits which makes a huge dipshit clusterfuck mess day in CT. I managed to not get too worked up but boy it took a whole lot out of me.

What's caught my attention since returning home and what I spent a good deal of time talking about with my sister on the phone tonight is the issue of the recent reaffirmation that rape through deception is legal in MA, and the broader issue of the legal definition of rape in Massachusetts (I'll get back to the financial aid thing, I hope).

I hate that the rapist walked, but I hate it more that the Massachusetts law is so poor. I do think the court is right that the state legislature should do their job and fix the damned law. They've had quite some time to address the disturbingly narrow rape definition on the books. And why haven't they? Rants abound - none of them well researched enough to bear posting at the moment.

For now I'll just say I am delighted to see a couple of lawmakers stepping up to fix this.
(from The Republican)

State legislators to act on rape decision
By Dan Ring
BOSTON - Outraged over a ruling by the state's highest court in a Hampden County case, state legislators are crafting a bill to broaden the definition of rape to include sex obtained with a fraudulent identity.

The state Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday threw out a rape charge against a Westfield man, Alvin Suliveres, 44, who was accused of duping his brother's girlfriend into having sex by impersonating his brother during the night.

The court said it is not a crime when consent to sex is obtained through fraud or deceit. The court said that in order to convict someone of rape, the act must be by force and against the will of the victim.
...
Two former assistant district attorneys, Sen. Stephen J. Buoniconti, D-West Springfield, and Rep. Peter J. Koutoujian, D-Waltham, said they will file a bill that would change the definition of rape to include sex obtained through an impersonation or possibly through other frauds.

The legislators are working with Jane Doe Inc. on the language for the proposed bill.
...
"Here, we have a rape of a victim - sex not consented to - and we can't pursue that," Koutoujian said. "It simply doesn't make sense."

Buoniconti, a Hampden assistant district attorney from 1996 to 2001, said he was appalled by the court ruling.

"I don't think anybody thought there was a loophole like that in the statute," he said.

If you live in MA, you have an opportunity to be part of ensuring the definition of rape is changed to close this loophole. Please write to Senator Stephen J. Buoniconti and Representative Peter J. Koutoujian and thank them for addressing the outdated definition of rape in Massachusetts (cc it to your local legislators) . If you know people who live in MA, ask them to write to these legislators and express their support for the proposed bill.

What's that? You're feeling the familiar sucking inertia of cynical voter alienation? Do you know who your state legislators are? You go find that out, spend a term looking them over, track a couple of bills you like, take a tour of the State House, maybe attend a legislative committee public hearing, meet your legislators, and then vote as an informed voter in the next election. When you've done all that, you come back and tell me if you think it doesn't matter what you do. I'm open to that idea, but only from someone who has actually made a point of being an active participant in their government rather than a spectator.

Thank you to Catlady for the link and discussion of the issue of consent.

mandatory reflection

S.C. Senate passes abortion compromise
COLUMBIA, S.C. - Women seeking an abortion in South Carolina would be able, but not required, to view an ultrasound first under a compromise bill that received approval Wednesday in the state Senate.

The legislation is a softer version of a proposal that passed in the House in March that would have required women to view the images.

The compromise, passed on a voice vote without debate, would also require women to reflect on the image they saw. It meant to maximize the time between a woman seeing her ultrasound, if she chooses, and her scheduled abortion.
...
State law already requires abortion providers to tell women the likely age of their fetus and provide them with information about fetal development and alternatives to abortion. Women must have at least an hour to consider that information before terminating a pregnancy.

In other bizzaro news:
Another stronger house version of the bill would have required a provider to give the woman a list of suggested baby names, to compute an astrological chart for a child born on the estimated due date, and to obtain a woman's signature indicating she had spent at least one hour consulting a ouija board and magic eight ball before being allowed to schedule an appointment for the procedure on the next full moon after a sunday. In this version, providers were allowed, but not required, to rub the woman's tummy and say "Hello in there little Justin/Kylie! What's that? You want me to tell your mommy not to kill you?" before the woman was locked in a tower for her mandatory reflection period.

no girls allowed

When a university does not address sexual assault, it is essentially hanging up a "no girls allowed" sign. By "address" I mean any number of actions - maintain a rape crisis center and rape crisis counsellor team, ensure campus is well lit and safe, provide facilities and operational support for a campus safety escort service (i.e. walkers and vans), make sexual assault defense and prevention programs available for all students, promote sexual assault awareness campaigns among the campus and greater campus community. All of those things take funding and in today's climate of profiteering universities, funding is the last thing they are going to put into a problem they'd rather not acknowledge in the first place.

Take Yale. (please)
Today, Yale was in the news. A Yale student who says she was sexually brutalized after a party dubbed "Camp Yale" is accusing the university of not enforcing underage drinking laws or doing enough to warn students and faculty about sexual assault.

Oh the Hartford Courant. So willing to give the benefit of the doubt despite the legality of the situation. It's not a matter of the student "say(ing) she was sexually brutalized". The woman's rapist plead "no contest" to the charges. Why continue to play the "who says" and "alleged" game after a conviction has been secured? Why do it if we are going to unequivocally declare the Duke lacrosse players innocent without their having been found innocent at trial.

But I digress. I read the Yale lawsuit article with interest, translating from the original misogynist text as I went. I think this is an interesting tactic this woman is taking in suing the university. My own experience at universities is that they do NOT like to address the fact that sexual assault occurs on their campuses or among their student populations. It is frustrating to watch as someone who has been largely indirectly affected by sexual assault. This woman was assaulted by a man who had been allowed to stay on campus after a prior similar assault
The lawsuit says that Yale should have known about Korb's violent tendencies, after he allegedly bit another student. The suit accuses Yale of glossing over previous incidents of sexual violence and failing to educate students about the problem.

Wait, they knew he bit someone before? What the hell were they thinking? Were the Yale administration waiting for him to go buy some guns and shoot up the school? Ah but I forget. Only sensible people would consider a college aged boy who goes around BITING girls to be in any way pathologically fucked. And sensible, when it comes to assault on women and the men who assault them, is not the common approach. The immediate Virginia Tech response to the first two killings showed the common thinking on it: Providing the boy only bites/stalks/assaults(bites?) girls, he's not going to be considered a threat to the community as a whole. Hence no need to throw him out of school, alert the community, mandate counseling, or treat him as any kind of threat. He's a personal problem, a disturbance at worst. No reason to rock the boat or worry people needlessly.

But I have to say, what struck me was this little nugget.
Responding to years of complaints, Yale last fall opened a rape crisis center that combines counseling and prevention programs under one roof.

Allow me to underscore the important part of that sentence:

Last year Yale finally got around to opening
a rape crisis center.

LAST fucking YEAR?!

Here's a random thought - I can't help thinking that had there been a means for support and empowerment of the victims of sexual assault before LAST fucking YEAR, perhaps we as a country would have been spared some men's rise to power as political figures.

The thought that Yale only just LAST fucking YEAR opened a rape crisis center makes me seethe. I want to go put a brick through something Yale-ish. It's so indicative of the problem though isn't it? It's a perfect illustration of what marginalized groups face in US culture these days, especially in the academic culture. A flat out denial of a problem, a complete disavowal of any possibility of racism, sexism, ageism, anti-gay belief (gotta have a new word btw, a post for another time), classism (oh god a huge one) on the one hand while ensuring there is NO way to record or address any instances of the afore mentioned "-isms" available to students, staff, or faculty. The way harassment, discrimination, bigotry and other systemic oppressive behaviors are treated on campus is to allow the denial to dictate funding and programming - no sexism = no need for a sexual harassment office. A belief in no rape = no need for a rape crisis center. And thus there are no records. Or falsely low records of occurences of discrimination, harassment, rape.

How many complaints do you think are likely to result when the university model is to say "Look, it's not that we don't believe you. It's just that we only take complaints written in orange ink" and then refusing to buy orange pens.

The unsurprisingly low number of official (orange inked) complaints are used as further evidence that nothing like that happens here, further cause to not fund such facilities and programs, and the whole thing perpetuates itself.

I am glad someone is suing. Yale's obvious lack of concern for the reality of sexual assault is tantamount to a civil rights violation. It wouldn't be if rape didn't happen. While we'd all love to believe this it is not only incorrect, it is wrong.

I'll be sure to follow the lawsuit as well as I can. I don't know that it will be easy since following the story means it needs to make it into the news as it progresses and I have no faith the news outlets will pick it up to report on anything beyond the novelty of a woman having the chutzpah to sue over a climate which made the sexual assault more likely, which one might argue facilitates and enables sexual assault.

A diamond is disgusting

I think I just vomited in my mouth.

I was reading this article on a town in Massachusetts where a proposal has been made to double the excise tax on SUVs (which makes me chuckle) and I noticed an ad for a diamond seller/jeweler.

Around mother's day and valentine's day, all jewelers are diamond peddlers. One of these days I am going to make that diamond ad parody for the station, I swear.

For now I'll suffer with choking down the bile when I see something like this ad, which has text which starts with "This mother's day..." under a picture of a man being kissed on the lips by a woman. The man's head is the main focus of the frame with the woman who is planting one on him barely making it into the shot. We can see all of his big head but only the important part of hers (her face) as she holds the man's face in her manicured hands (no pigment in that polish though). That was enough to get the stomach churning. What launched it was the trademarked logo under the company name: "Every kiss begins with _____"
(where ______ is the name of the jewelry/diamond company)

Every on the closed lips oedipal kiss might indeed begin with them, however my completely non-oedipal smooches are non of their fucking business and began with a desire for human intimacy. Not feminine decoration bestowed on me by a man.

Douchebag Supreme

It shouldn't even take three guesses to get who the major Douchebag is.

Bush vows to veto abortion-rights bills

The Republicans who held power in past sessions of Congress ensured that spending bills included language prohibiting federal funding for abortion except to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest, and restricting funding for international family planning groups that might give advice on or provide abortions.

Now in the minority, House and Senate Republicans recently wrote the president urging him to make clear that any weakening of those restrictions would be unacceptable.

"The standing pattern is that appropriate conscience protections must be in place for health care entities, and that taxpayer dollars may not be used in coercive or involuntary family planning programs," Bush said in letters dated Thursday.

"I will veto any legislation that weakens current federal policies and laws on abortion, or that encourages the destruction of human life at any stage," he wrote.

The nifty "Americans Suffer..." poster (along with some other damned funny shit) can be found in the "Pro-life gear" section of the online giftshop at Whitehouse.org.

designer baby?

Another one from Reverse Paranoia. Or rather through. While looking up her link to the "rump presentation" story on the BBC online, I found this one.

Early baby sex test over the web baby gender

A test is being sold on the internet that enables parents to check the sex of their unborn baby at just six weeks.

The kit, sold by DNA Worldwide for £189, is controversial. Critics claim it may prompt parents to abort if they are unhappy with the test result.

The company rejected these claims, saying the early results, obtained from a finger-prick of blood, allow parents more time to plan for their baby.

Michaela Aston of the pro-life charity LIFE ...rejected the notion that the test would allow parents more time to plan for their baby's arrival, arguing that the needs of baby boys and girls were identical.

The saying "Even a broken clock is right twice a day" comes to mind regarding that last line.

It just kills me that the company could even think that the justification of needing more time to plan for the sex of a baby would wash with anyone. I mean, obviously they suck, but consider what it says about the public that the company (a) exists and (b) could use this defense for their existence.

They're exploiting an attitude which is already prevalent. Granted, they are probably stretching it a bit - I mean even if some loser is planning on having extremely gendered baby gear, does she really need to have it 1 and 1/2 months into her pregnancy when she's not even sure if her body's going to keep the little womb-booger or not?


Oh, relatedly - I just ran across the nursery rhyme "Monday's child..." (elsewhere but here's a non-obnoxious link). Perhaps intolerant gay hating would be parents should try to postpone delivery to after Sunday since according to the rhyme, Sunday's child is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

Destined to be "good and gay"? Check here.