Decline and Fall of American Civilization

Decline and Fall of American Civilization

When I was young, there were radicals who argued that women should be regarded as the intellectual equals of men--that regarding women as sexual objects was degrading and wrong. Maybe I grew up in a "weird" home, but this didn't seem terribly radical to me. I had always understood that women were different, but different didn't mean inferior--just different. Part of this liberating radicalism was the idea that strip clubs, pornography, and the like, by objectifying women, were reducing women to an inferior status.

You could argue that the traditional approach of American society, which put women on a pedestal, claiming that they were too pure to be part of a man's world, was an excuse for keeping women in a lower station, not a higher one. But at least on the pedestal, they weren't being degraded.

You doubtless know what pole dancing is--an "art form" that you will see in strip clubs and such. I was utterly startled when my wife told me that she had heard advertising for a fitness club that teaches pole dancing--in Boise. And sure enough, it's true. From the December 18, 2008 Boise Weekly (one of the alternative weeklies):

For thousands of years, Chinese acrobats have awed and amazed as they perform spins, lifts, holds and inversions on vertical poles, showing off their strength, flexibility and concentration. But when a Western woman performs some of the same moves, the connotation suddenly becomes one of sex, conjuring images of clubs with low lighting.
But women­ are taking control and taking pole dancing out of the clubs thanks to pole dance fitness classes where strength, grace and flexibility are stressed, rather than the inherent sensuality.
"Some people see it as demeaning or degrading," said Allison Holley, a Boise-based pole dance instructor. "But I see the opposite in class. It's empowering."
Holley is one of a handful of instructors in the Treasure Valley to bring what has quickly become a national trend to the Gem State. Holley began teaching classes early last summer, and since then, her classes and workshops have quickly filled with the eager and the curious.
"If you even whisper 'pole dancing,' they will come," Holley said of the response to the classes.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that it really does strengthen all sorts of muscles. But pretending that something that is so intimately tied with sexual exploitation of women is "empowering" is rather like reading feminists defending Islamic clothing rules as liberating women from being ogled by men.

Another Reminder That Women Weren't Allowed To Do Much Long Ago

Another Reminder That Women Weren't Allowed To Do Much Long Ago

I was looking for some scholarly work on the Statute of Labourers (1351), which was the English government's response to the scandalous rise of peasant wages after the Black Death. I found what is sometimes called "posthole history"--the very detailed, very comprehensive study of documents that might seem terribly narrow, but provides the research information for broader histories. In this case, the book is The Enforcement of the Statutes of Labourers During the First Decade After Black Death, 1349-1359. The book is by Bertha Haven Putnam, Ph.D., who taught at Mount Holyoke College. Any guesses before you click the link as when this book was published? 1908.

There are a lot more women doing "men's jobs" back in the day than many feminist polemicists would want you to believe.

PajamasMedia Publishes Another!

PajamasMedia Publishes Another!

"Armed and Female"

Feminist Naomi Wolf On The Superiority of Islam

Feminist Naomi Wolf On The Superiority of Islam

There are days when it seems like feminists are beyond parody, since they seem intent on parodying themselves. Naomi Wolf's August 30, 2008 Sydney Morning Herald article is championing how much more liberated Islamic women are:

A woman swathed in black to her ankles, wearing a headscarf or a full chador, walks down a European or North American street, surrounded by other women in halter tops, miniskirts and short shorts. She passes under immense billboards on which other women swoon in sexual ecstasy, cavort in lingerie or simply stretch out languorously, almost fully naked. Could this image be any more iconic of the discomfort the West has with the social mores of Islam, and vice versa?

Ideological battles are often waged with women's bodies as their emblems, and Western Islamophobia is no exception. When France banned headscarves in schools, it used the hijab as a proxy for Western values in general, including the appropriate status of women. When Americans were being prepared for the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban were demonised for denying cosmetics and hair colour to women; when the Taliban were overthrown, Western writers often noted that women had taken off their scarves.

Now I won't dispute that there are aspects to how women have been sexualized--and especially so since the 1970s--that have been very destructive. When young girls are told--as the popular culture has been doing for several decades--that they are only of interest to men if they are sexually attractive and available--it is enormously destructive. The increasing dominance of rap culture has taken women down several steps below where they were before. But let's not pretend, as Naomi Wolf does, from where this degradation comes:

Nor are Muslim women alone. The Western Christian tradition portrays all sexuality, even married sexuality, as sinful. Islam and Judaism never had that same kind of mind-body split. So, in both cultures, sexuality channeled into marriage and family life is seen as a source of great blessing, sanctioned by God.

Huh? I don't recognize this "Western Christian tradition" that she is describing at all. The Western Christian tradition, at least in my lifetime, has recognized married sexuality as a positive. The reason that feminists became so hostile to Christianity was because it would not endorse unmarried sexuality, homosexuality, and the leering depravity that Wolf's political allies on the left have long supported.

It gets better:

Among healthy young men in the West, who grow up on pornography and sexual imagery on every street corner, reduced libido is a growing epidemic, so it is easy to imagine the power that sexuality can carry in a more modest culture. And it is worth understanding the positive experiences that women - and men - can have in cultures where sexuality is more conservatively directed.

And who is responsible for this epidemic of pornography and sexual imagery on every street corner? Wolf's political allies, the ACLU, the Democratic Party, Playboy, and the rest of the crowd that insists that virtual child pornography can have "redeeming social value."

UPDATE: Whoops! That was in 2008, not 2009 that this article appeared.

Women in History

Women in History

One of my readers who graduated from MIT pointed me to this interesting reminder that, in spite of social barriers, women were in the sciences in the 19th century:

Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842-1911) was the first woman admitted to MIT, receiving her S.B. degree in 1873 (the first graduating class of MIT was 1868). She entered in 1871, one of 90 first year students, and had already graduated with the first class of Vassar College (1870). The title of her thesis was "Notes on Some Sulpharsenites and Sulphantimonites from Colorado." In 1875 she appealed to the Women's Education Association of Boston for help in establishing a laboratory at MIT for the instruction of women in chemistry. The Women's Laboratory opened in 1876 with Professor John M. Ordway in charge, assisted by Richards. She held the position of instructor in chemistry and mineralogy in the Women's Laboratory until it closed in 1883. From 1884 to her death in 1911, Richards was instructor in sanitary chemistry at MIT.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt was the astronomer who discovered the relationship between Cepheid variable star period and absolute brightness, which made it possible to determine the distance to galaxies. She died in 1921.

Extraordinary women in American history have managed to transcend sex-based obstacles, just as extraordinary poor Americans have managed to transcend class-based obstacles. (If they were barriers, you couldn't get past them.)

More Women In Important Jobs When You Don't Expect Them

More Women In Important Jobs When You Don't Expect Them

From the January, 1922 issue of Mental Hygiene, a professional journal:

A SOCIAL-SERVICE DEPARTMENT IN A STATE HOSPITAL

MARIE L. DONOHOE

Head Social Worker, Boston State Hospital

The Oppression of Women

The Oppression of Women

As I was growing up, a recurring theme of feminist literature was that throughout history, women have been oppressed, preventing from holding any jobs of importance outside the home. And yet, I keep running into these reminders that if this was really the case, the system of organized oppression wasn't doing its job very well. I was surprised to find a Boston city directory from 1800 that listed Hannah Pope, whose occupation was "cancer doctor." (I have since found this directory online.) And indeed, she seems to have been regarded as such. I was also surprised to find a woman gunsmith in early Philadelphia.

I was reading through an old issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry while looking to verify and enhance research for my next book. While it wasn't germane to my research, I was struck by the name and title of the author of one of these articles: Esther Loring Richards, M.D., Instructor in Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University. So, do you want to guess what year this article was published? Was it 1970? Or 1960? Maybe, 1950? Nope. This is in the January, 1919 issue.

Now, I won't claim that Dr. Richards was typical. But it does raise serious questions as to how much the status of women was part of some intentional effort to keep them down, and how much was assumptions that were widely held, not only by men, but by women. Certainly, the conspiracy model of organized oppression doesn't much explain Dr. Richards, does it?

Part Of Why I Don't Think Much Of The State of Academia

Part of Why I Don't Think Much Of The State of Academia

This abstract from a recently published piece in the Berkeley Journal of Law, Gender, and Justice:

Yet, despite the conceptual centrality of sexual desire and sexual activity, family law says nothing explicit about sexual pleasure. And despite the salience of gender equality in contemporary family law, the field remains preoccupied with performances that produce heterosexual men's orgasms while ignoring or rejecting women's interest in orgasmic pleasure. As a result, family law today is marked by fundamental omissions and inconsistencies.

This paper attempts to begin to fill the gap and to explore the incongruities. It builds on Susan E. Stiritz's Cultural Cliteracy: Exposing the Contexts of Women's Not Coming (published as a companion piece) and examines the relevance of Stiritz's analysis for family law. According to Stiritz, "'[c]ultural cliteracy' denotes what an adequately educated person should know about the clitoris, which is that it is a culturally despised body part because it is an obdurate reminder of women's independence and power and supports women's liberation." Stiritz tracks the role of the clitoris and women's sexual pleasure through history, compares past and contemporary anatomical understandings of the clitoris, and then demonstrates through empirical studies, based on courses she has taught, how cultural cliteracy can empower women and bring new insights to the reading of women's texts. She calls for the integration of "adequate understandings of the clitoris" into a variety of different discourses, including law.

The paper isn't much less silly. "Culturally despised body part"? This isn't East Africa, or Afghanistan. The paper gets properly upset about some things:

Overall, popular culture remains notoriously androcentric, sexualizing even young girls in the interest of men, reinforcing traditional gender hierarchies, and creating dangers (including exposure of young persons to sexually transmitted disease) abhorred by family law.

And yet it is clear that the author has not a clue that is the collapse of traditional values, and its replacement with the values that the author certainly approves of, that has created this disaster.

Preventing Entry Into Paradise

Preventing Entry Into Paradise

I mentioned a few days ago the man who ran a TV station trying to promote a positive image of Muslims, now charged with beheading his wife. When the subject came up over at Volokh Conspiracy, the usual liberals of course argued that this wasn't specific to Islam, and making a big deal of this domestic murder was just stereotyping and bigotry. One very PC sort argued:

Setting that aside, some sources have suggested that the guy wasn't even a particularly devout Muslim. So it's not automatically an honor killing or what have you. I don't think there's enough information to know whether it was a religious thing, a cultural thing, or simply a domestic violence thing. You don't have to be a Muslim to have anger issues.

Another commenter, rather full of the political correctness that was starting to grab hold, observed:

Maybe it was an *accidental* decapitation? I know *I* hate it when that happens.

For that matter, is there any proof she didn't decapitate herself? Eh?

Anyway, more recent news coverage does suggest that, no, the beheading really did have something to do with Islam, and wasn't just domestic violence that got a little carried away. From February 20, 2009 Canada Free Press:

Information obtained exclusively by the Northeast Intelligence Network and Canada Free Press by a source close to the investigation during a telephone interview yesterday provides additional insight into the savage murder of the young and once vibrant Aasiya Zubair (Hassan).

Doug Hagmann, director of the Northeast Intelligence Network and contributor to Canada Free Press, interviewed this police source by telephone, who agreed to speak on the strict condition of anonymity. According to this source, Aasiya Zubair was stabbed multiple times, suffering perhaps as many as three dozen stab wounds with a steak knife in what was described as a “frenzied killing.” She was then beheaded by the same instrument.

Also according to this source, Mr. Hassan told police that because she was beheaded, she would not be permitted entry into paradise, an alleged reference to his Islamic beliefs. “It was all about honor, and the dishonor she [the victim] was bringing upon him and his family,” stated this source. “There was definitely a cultural if not a religious aspect to these incidents,” added this source.

A steak knife? I want you to think long and hard about that. (You probably don't, however.) Can you imagine the effort and time that it would take to behead someone with a steak knife?

The notion of beheading her so that she can't get into Islamic Paradise may seem like a remarkably vicious thing to do--but hardly unknown. A couple of years ago, I posted a review of Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, a powerful memoir of a woman watching Iran's Islamic Revolution--which she had supported--turn into one of the great barbarous tyrannies. She told how one of her students spent time in prison for participating in anti-Revolutionary demonstrations, shortly after Khomeini came to power. Many of the women who were arrested were passed around by the guards to be raped before being executed, so that there could be certainty that they were "dishonored" and therefore unsuitable for Muslim Paradise. Ditto, for the al-Qaeda affiliates in Indonesia that raped and then beheaded Christian schoolgirls there a few years ago, and the rape of little girls at Beslan by Chechnyan terrorists.

There is a misogny in Islamist radicalism that makes "barefoot and pregnant" look positively feminist.

This Smells Of A Social Science Experiment

This Smells Of A Social Science Experiment

This January 12, 2009 Telegraph news story at first just sounds like another reminder of the decline and fall of Western civilization:

A student who is auctioning her virginity to pay for a masters degree in Family and Marriage therapy has seen bidding hit £2.5million ($3.7m).

Natalie Dylan, 22, claims her offer of a one-night stand has persuaded 10,000 men to bid for sex with her.

Last September, when her auction came to light, she had received bids up to £162,000 ($243,000) but since then interest in her has rocketed.

The student who has a degree in Women's Studies insisted she was not demeaning herself.

Miss Dylan, from San Diego, California, USA, said she was persuaded to offer herself to the highest bidder after her sister Avia, 23, paid for her own degree after working as a prostitute for three weeks.

She said she had had a lot of attention from a wide range of men, including "weirdos", "those who get really graphically sexual about what they want to do to me" and "lots of polite requests from rich businessmen".

I am almost afraid what she considers "weirdos" when you look at what she is proposing to do. But there's part of this story that smells like an elaborate social science experiment. No, I don't mean her remark:

She added: "It's shocking that men will pay so much for someone's virginity, which isn't even prized so highly anymore."

I mean her undergrad degree, and what she is going to use the money for:

The student who has a degree in Women's Studies insisted she was not demeaning herself.

...

to pay for a masters degree in Family and Marriage therapy

I'm skeptical that she's telling the truth about this.

Working Moms Running For Office

Working Moms Running For Office

Like a lot of other conservatives, I cringe at kids in daycare. There are a lot of families that don't have much choice on this; they need both incomes to pay the bills--and they aren't living all that well, even with both Mom and Dad working full-time. (Oddly enough, back when most mothers stayed home to raise kids, there were thus about 70% fewer Americans looking for jobs. Individual worker wages were higher, and many fathers were able to raise a family on one income. Odd how that works, isn't it?)

There are other families that do have some choice on this. We used to live in California. One of our neighbors did daycare. She finally stopped doing it because of the situation with one of the kids. Mom had some important job with a bank in San Francisco; she drove a shiny new BMW. Six weeks after giving birth to her son, she was dropping him off at daycare every morning and heading to work. She was gone from 7:00 AM to 6:30 PM.

Dad gave instructors to the daycare provider to not tell Mom about the first time her son rolled over, or took his first steps, or spoke his first words. Dad wanted Mom to think that she was there for these emotionally significant steps. By the time this yuppie puppy was two years old, he would only call the daycare provider "Mom" and would actually hit his biological mother when she arrived in the evening to pick him up. If that doesn't make your want to cry, you might want to skip the rest of this posting.

Some Democrats are criticizing Governor Palin for putting the pursuit of political office above the needs of her family. Now, if conservatives were doing so (and a few, such as Dr. Laura Schlesinger, apparently are), it would be a consistent position, although one that you could still criticize as "old-fashioned." But the Democrats are the party of subsidized daycare and aggressive, sometimes bizarre enforcement of laws against employment discrimination based on sex. And they are complaining that Governor Palin shouldn't be running for office because she has three kids at home, one of whom has Down's Syndrome and thus needs more attention? If Democrats who are making this criticism mean it, I guess that they will be arguing for revising the sex discrimination laws next to allow--no require--employers to discriminate against women with minor age children at home.

Would I like to see more mothers staying home to raise their own kids? Absolutely. Should they be required to do so? No. They should have that choice, free of the continual culture war sniping of the left that any woman who stays home to raise her own kids is somehow beneath contempt--practically a domestic, in the eyes of many feminists.

UPDATE: Karl Lembke makes a very similar argument (great minds think alike) over here:

A third argument has to do with the pregnancy of Palin's daughter. If this had happened in a leftist family, there'd be much less fuss made over it, or expected in the media. The daughter could abort, and it would be a woman exercising her freedom of reproductive choice. Or she could move in with her boyfriend (or girlfriend) (or both) and it would be celebrated as an "alternative lifestyle". But conservatives advocate standards, and any deviation from those standards is always called "hypocrisy", never "being human and failing to live up to high standards". Here, we have the Left assuming the Palin family, and indeed, the entire pro-life movement, acts like the caricatures dreamed up by the Left. Upon hearing of Bristol's pregnancy out of wedlock, they imagine the instant response is to drag her out to the city gates and stone her to death. Well, maybe just kick her out into the street and erase every mention of her from their lives. For a pro-life, conservative Christian to love and support anyone who has strayed from the straight and narrow must be hypocrisy.

Expect to see more of this sort of argument. Expect accusations of double standards to be leveled. Expect critical distinctions to be blurred, in an effort to make this argument more credible.

The Virtues of Motherhood

The Virtues of Motherhood

This article in the May 23, 2008 Daily Mail (a British newspaper identified with the Conservative Party) about the virtues of motherhood and how "Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness" wouldn't surprise you if it came from Phyllis Schlafly, or Focus on the Family--but it's from Rebecca Walker, daughter of feminist writer and icon Alice Walker:

The truth is that I very nearly missed out on becoming a mother - thanks to being brought up by a rabid feminist who thought motherhood was about the worst thing that could happen to a woman. You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.

In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Far from 'enslaving' me, three-and-a-half-year-old Tenzin has opened my world. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late - I have been trying for a second child for two years, but so far with no luck.
I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. But I strongly feel children need two parents and the thought of raising Tenzin without my partner, Glen, 52, would be terrifying.
As the child of divorced parents, I know only too well the painful consequences of being brought up in those circumstances. Feminism has much to answer for denigrating men and encouraging women to seek independence whatever the cost to their families.
My mother's feminist principles coloured every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn't even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her.
I love my mother very much, but I haven't seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son - her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.
Well, so be it. My mother may be revered by women around the world - goodness knows, many even have shrines to her. But I honestly believe it's time to puncture the myth and to reveal what life was really like to grow up as a child of the feminist revolution.

Title Nining The Sciences

Title Nining The Sciences

Professor Volokh pointed to this very interesting article by Christina Hoff Summers at the American Enterprise Institute which provides a useful overview of the effort now underway to use Title IX's approach to college athletics as a method of increasing the number of top researchers in the physical sciences:

Women now earn 57 percent of bachelors degrees and 59 percent of masters degrees. According to the Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2006 was the fifth year in a row in which the majority of research Ph.D.’s awarded to U.S. citizens went to women. Women earn more Ph.D.’s than men in the humanities, social sciences, education, and life sciences. Women now serve as presidents of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and other leading research universities. But elsewhere, the figures are different. Women comprise just 19 percent of tenure-track professors in math, 11 percent in physics, 10 percent in computer science, and 10 percent in electrical engineering. And the pipeline does not promise statistical parity any time soon: women are now earning 24 percent of the Ph.D.’s in the physical sciences—way up from the 4 percent of the 1960s, but still far behind the rate they are winning doctorates in other fields. “The change is glacial,” says Debra Rolison, a physical chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Rolison, who describes herself as an “uppity woman,” has a solution. A popular anti–gender bias lecturer, she gives talks with titles like “Isn’t a Millennium of Affirmative Action for White Men Sufficient?” She wants to apply Title IX to science education. Title IX, the celebrated gender equity provision of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, has so far mainly been applied to college sports. But the measure is not limited to sports. It provides, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex...be denied the benefits of...any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

While Title IX has been effective in promoting women’s participation in sports, it has also caused serious damage, in part because it has led to the adoption of a quota system. Over the years, judges, Department of Education officials, and college administrators have interpreted Title IX to mean that women are entitled to “statistical proportionality.” That is to say, if a college’s student body is 60 percent female, then 60 percent of the athletes should be female—even if far fewer women than men are interested in playing sports at that college. But many athletic directors have been unable to attract the same proportion of women as men. To avoid government harassment, loss of fund­ing, and lawsuits, they have simply eliminated men’s teams. Although there are many factors affecting the evolution of men’s and women’s college sports, there is no question that Title IX has led to men’s participation being calibrated to the level of women’s interest. That kind of cal­ibration could devastate academic science.

Summers goes on to point out that there is a fair amount of evidence that the gender disparity in the physical sciences reflects gender differences with respect to interests. In the veterinary sciences, which are also quite demanding, women are rapidly becoming dominant in research, at least partly because its connection to medicine goes well with a female tendency towards caring and concern. She also points out that this may not be just a cultural thing:

Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser has what seems to be the appropriate attitude about the research on sex dif­ference: respectful, intrigued, but also cautious. When asked about Baron-Cohen’s work, Hauser said, “I am sympathetic…and find it odd that anyone would consider the work controver­sial.” Hauser referred to research that shows, for example, that if asked to make a drawing, little girls almost always create scenes with at least one person, while males nearly always draw things—cars, rockets, or trucks. And he mentioned that among primates, including our closest relations the chimpanzees, males are more technologically innovative, while females are more involved in details of family life. Still, Hauser warns that a lot of seemingly exciting and promising research on sex differences has not panned out, and urges us to treat the bio­logical theories with caution.

Nevertheless, it is hard not to be attracted to theories like Simon Baron-Cohen’s when one looks at the way men and women are distrib­uted in the workplace. After two major waves of feminism, women still predominate—some­times overwhelmingly—in empathy-centered fields such as early-childhood education, social work, veterinary medicine, and psychology, while men are overrepresented in the “system­atizing” vocations such as car repair, oil drilling, and electrical engineering.

The real danger here is that using the Title IX approach--as both Democrats and Republicans in Congress seem inclined towards doing--might have the same effect as it has in college sports--largely wiping out male athletics, because there simply aren't that many college women for whom athletics is a major focus. And unlike athletics, our nation's ability to defend itself and innovate is dependent on the physical sciences.

As one of the commenters over at Volokh Conspiracy points out:

Veterinary schools have over 75% female students, medical schools are over 50% female, I would guess the grad student enrollment at many schools of education is over 70% female and I heard 90% female percentages of grad students are not uncommon in English departments.

Imposing gender preferences in STEM using Title IX would seem to further unbalance the female/male overall student ratio.

And I rather doubt that anyone is going to require those female-heavy departments to "do something" about the shortage of men.