Discrimination against women, global examples

Girls in Afghanistan are forbidden to ride bicycles, but they can skateboard:

Photographer Jessica Fulford-Dobson Captures the Joy of Young Afghan Skateboarders.

I learned about the bicycle thing when I watched "Wadjda", the Saudi movie about a girl who wanted a bike. Apparently the main concern here is the girl's hymen, i.e. they fear it might rupture during exercise such as riding a bike? Anyone know more?

I used to half-doubt stories about the existence of a hymen-restoring industry, but maybe I AM the naive alien from outer space.

This fatwa seems to be saying that it depends on how likely that really is.

Ok to post other examples? I found this story highly disturbing: Thousands of Young Women in US Forced into Marriage.

>1 LolaWalser:   You Can't POP Your Cherry! (HYMEN 101)  ⬅︎  I love this video, because I wondered long and hard on this for YEARS.  How does a menstrual cycle WORK if the cervix is sealed off???  Now I know.

>3 sturlington:  A friend of mine, completely Americanized, was forced into marriage on American soil.  I graduated and moved away, and knowing what I knew of my friend, I thought she was in control of the situation, even if I thought she was foolish for marrying so young.  I was mortified when I learned the truth.

>3 sturlington: Just in case anyone was starting to think women weren't second class citizens...

>4 justjukka: I had a friend in high school who spent her whole life expecting that she would have a marriage arranged for her by her parents. She accepted it as inevitable and her big debate was asking that it happen when she was 22 and a college graduate instead of 18. That battle she won. She also requested an American-born rather than Indian-born husband. That battle she lost.

>3 sturlington: Legitimized human trafficking.

>2 MMcM:

Google Translate made a right hash out of that, but judging by the existence of the bans, someone thinks it's likely. But I wonder whether the point isn't more to exercise control over women, with the ostensible reason for control being only secondary.

I'm reminded of what an Iranian friend said when we discussed Reading Lolita in Teheran, how all those insanely petty regulations targeting women's appearance and behaviour in public serve to intimidate and destabilise women. Iow, their most important function isn't so much to "punish vice", as to keep women perpetually anxious, wary and subdued. And, with any luck, as reluctant to venture into public life as possible.

>3 sturlington:

Ugh. A few years back I consulted on a breast cancer study among immigrant women here and was astonished, to put it mildly, by the conditions many of them lived in. Ignorance of basic biology and health science was rampant and, side by side with religious/cultural restrictions on women, it resulted in what my clinician colleague said was the most neglected patient demographic he'd ever seen. There were women ashamed to even utter the word "breasts". Small wonder that some made it to the hospital only when they were dying. Cheap lives indeed. Make them procreate as much as possible as early as possible; then discard.

>4 justjukka:

Great vid! Yep, it ain't legit unless she bleeds a couple pints on her wedding night!

>7 LolaWalser:

how all those insanely petty regulations targeting women's appearance and behaviour in public serve to intimidate and destabilise women. Iow, their most important function isn't so much to "punish vice", as to keep women perpetually anxious, wary and subdued. And, with any luck, as reluctant to venture into public life as possible.

i'm in no way conflating or equating the two, but this is great language and perspective for me to use when discussing rape culture here in america. (because even if not the same, there sure are similarities.) thanks for putting it this way.

>4 justjukka: Enjoyed that video, also the Sex Object BS one.

This has been an interesting thread!

I liked the video, although I didn't know that anyone thought that. I see now why they might, but it never occurred to me. But then my 1970s Canadian school actually taught us about our bodies, so there you go.

I'm reminded of what an Iranian friend said when we discussed Reading Lolita in Teheran, how all those insanely petty regulations targeting women's appearance and behaviour in public serve to intimidate and destabilise women. Iow, their most important function isn't so much to "punish vice", as to keep women perpetually anxious, wary and subdued. And, with any luck, as reluctant to venture into public life as possible.

That's a really interesting way to look at it. Note taken. I didn't actually like Reading Lolita in Teheran, but I have to say that parts of it really stuck with me and I learned a lot.

Another pet hate gets global update--the way female characters are used (when they are used at all) in schoolbooks:

See Priya Cook: Gender Bias Pervades Textbooks Worldwide

"What we see is that the boys are being described as daring and brave and kind and intelligent," Blumberg says. "And they're doing things. They're taking action. The girls are essentially nonentities."

Yes. And this is not coincidental, it's deliberate--women are raised as, and to feel as, nonentities. Eternal support and service, never the hero, the "chosen" one--not even to themselves.

Thought this was interesting, and relevant to those of us who read/might attend author readings: http://review.gawker.com/ban-men-from-literary-readings-1700491985

>12 sturlington: The kid who raises their hand all the time in class, or so the stereotype goes, is desperate: to be heard, to be admired, to curry the teacher’s favor. So as not to be thought the stereotypical handraiser—not to be thought the person thinking me! me! pick me!—too many students just keep them in their laps.

Whenever I raised my hand in class it was because I thought I knew the answer.

i feel like the main purpose of a book reading is to get people to read the book, so (i own a bookshop) i want people who haven't read the book to come and ask questions.

but i also don't have a room full of people at any of them, and have to ask many of the questions myself just to get the few people who show up going. so maybe a different environment....

I think the author was in New York, so yeah, a different environment. I haven't really had her experience at book readings either, but like you, I haven't been to many that were hugely attended, or that were moderated by well-known authors.

ETA I learned a fun new word from that piece, though: "dick-washing"!

Somebody proposed women-only train carriages in the UK as an "answer" to harassment.

I link the article less for that topic (personal take, briefly: fuck NO. Women are entitled to the same freedoms men enjoy in public. Instead of sequestering women, raise decent men, or lets start culling them at birth.) than for the capsule insights in systemic misogyny and discrimination women live under in various countries:

Women-only carriages around the world: do they work?

Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me."

Around 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after their first child. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the world's worst nations for gender equality at work. Social attitudes don't help. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives". In a telling Japanese ballet production of Bizet's Carmen a few years ago, Carmen was portrayed as a career woman who stole company secrets to get ahead and then framed her lowly security-guard lover José. Her end was not pretty.

lol

Coincidentally it's Japan again this morning...

Japan top court upholds law on married couples' surnames

Briefly, families must have a single surname and guess who changes theirs, in 96% of cases--right, the woman.

But another tidbit within the article drew my attention:

Separately, a divorced woman had filed a legal challenge to a law that states women cannot remarry within six months of divorce.

The law was originally intended to help determine the paternity of a child born shortly after the divorce.

The Supreme Court agreed with her that it was unconstitutional, but in its ruling left room for the possibility of retaining the law with a shorter waiting period.

What the HELL?! And could they INVENT a more bogus reason than that: paternity of child? Have they not heard of DNA testing? For that matter, have they not heard of infidelity? Who's to say ANY kids were fathered by the legal husband?

I am a-boggle with the WTF.

I am a-boggle with the WTF.

Well said. I have a Canadian friend who has lived and worked in Japan for 30 years, and she is full of WTF stories -- between their sexism and their extreme racism and insularity. (But she still loves it there because there's lots to like too).

Japan fascinates me, but I can't imagine living there... Well, I guess for foreigners being foreign can be as much a protection as a problem?

I had the chance of doing a postdoc but when I saw the accommodations offered, my courage failed.

One of my best friends studied in Japan (she's a lawyer) and is fluent in Japanese, and she has the same love it/hate it feelings about the culture, with an endless supply of WTF stories about being a professional woman in Japan, even though she was a foreign professional woman.

>21 southernbooklady:

Heh, have you read Amélie Nothomb's (autobiographical) Fear and trembling (giving touchstone in French so it doesn't go to Kierkegaard: Stupeur et tremblements)?

She adores Japan, but that's some tough love in return.

Even speaking the language, which must make an immense difference (in fact, that was the biggest anti-consideration for me, that on top of everything, I didn't speak Japanese).

UN Delegation to assess women's rights are horrified by what they found

The delegation visited....Alabama, Texas and Oregon.

>23 southernbooklady: Not surprised at all, but maybe the news of their shock, and their report, will help...a little...

>23 southernbooklady:

Odd about the Polish representative, Poland outlawed abortion after the fall of Communism... IIRC, it has one of the worst systems in Europe.

But, yes, awful stuff, I'm still reeling with the discovery of women getting prosecuted weekly for loss of pregnancy.

Here's another US example that might fit the topic:

The bigger meaning of Bill Cosby's arrest.

The article focuses on 1) why it took so long to charge him (among other things, it often takes a long time for a victim of sexual assault to be able to say they were assaulted), and 2) how the process was hampered by the statute of limitations on sexual assault. -- and that these two things combine to re-enforce rape culture in America:

In 2005, Andrea Constand asked the Montgomery County, Penn., District Attorney’s Office, then led by Bruce Castor, to prosecute Cosby.'

Castor declined in the classic stance of powerful men protecting powerful men. “In Pennsylvania, we charge people for criminal conduct,” he told Bloomberg Politics in November 2014. “We don’t charge people for making a mistake or doing something foolish.”

>26 southernbooklady:

What a complete scumbag. I don't mean for being unwilling on principle to prosecute on the "he said, she said" basis, I mean for judging what Cosby was accused of as "making a mistake" and "doing something foolish". Imagine if he held the same view of theft? And, by November 2014 there had been tons of news and rumours about his behaviour already, not the avalanche that ensued but enough to give anyone pause.

The fact that he will now finally face the possibility of justice tells us that the rape culture is shifting. Powerful men should no longer expect to receive the pass they have received for centuries.

I do so hope. But only if I forcibly make myself stop extrapolating to "globally". Can anyone even imagine how much injury, and injustice after injury women are suffering?

If you don't fancy getting depressed so early in the new year, better skip this, but... it really needs thinking about:

Over 50, Female and Jobless Even as Others Return to Work

WASP pilots denied burial at Arlington Cemetery

Bloody shame. But in this day and age surely an outcry could do something?

Comic book festival bows to pressure after three male artists pull out of award with no women on the short list

Questioned by Le Monde, Franck Bondoux, of the Angoulême festival, said: “The concept of the grand prix is to reward an author for their whole oeuvre. When you look at the prize list, you can see the artists on it have a certain maturity and a certain age. Unfortunately, there are few women in the history of comics art. It’s a reality. If you go to the Louvre, you’ll equally find very few women artists.”

Good for them! And the other unnamed 7 who followed them. I don't know Daniel Clowes or Riad Sattouf, but Joann Sfar has an interesting style and voice, I'm glad to see he is one of the leaders in this pressure. Maybe next time the ass who runs it will remember this and not have to deal with the embarrassment of being forced to add women after the fact.

Esquire has amended their "80 Books Every Man Should Read" list:

http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/news/g2544/80-books-every-person-should-read/

What can we say? We messed up. Our list of "80 Books Every Man Should Read," published several years ago, was rightfully called out for its lack of diversity in both authors and titles. So we invited eight female literary powerhouses, from Michiko Kakutani to Anna Holmes to Roxane Gay, to help us create a new list. Each participant made 10 picks. It's a new year, a new Esquire.com

>33 southernbooklady:

Ugh, what's with all the children's stuff and titles like "Redefining realness"? Ridiculous list. So much so I suspect Esquire of having a go.

>32 .Monkey.:, >31 southernbooklady:

Yes, good for those who protested, but sadly this is nothing unusual for the francophone world of comics (or cinema, or books, or...) It's not a boy's club so much as a whole system of boys' fortresses.

>34 LolaWalser: what's with all the children's stuff and titles like "Redefining realness"?

I don't know. It didn't strike me as too bad. The last person, who I don't know, is the one who had the ya lit and the Redefining Realness book (which I'd never heard of).

It struck me as a self-consciously inclusive list. Almost everyone included both books that were standards on the great books list, but also books that spoke to other diverse experiences. You could almost check off a list: "this one represents the Native American experience, this one the gay experience, this one the black female experience." Its like they were consciously trying not to leave anyone out. But they weren't always articulate about why everyone should read them. Some of those "literary powerhouse" women seemed very young to me.

I think, instead of asking what books everyone should read, I'd be more interested in "what books had the greatest effect on you?" Or "what books made you who you are today?" But that's probably because my personality is built out of books, and I'm the kind of person that judges people by the books on their bookshelves. :)

>35 southernbooklady: I think "literary powerhouse" in this case means "popular on the Internet" or "having a moment." Which is really emblematic of our times. Michiko Kakutan is really a literary powerhouse, and I thought her selections were interesting, although I'm not very likely to read many of them. Lizzie Widdicombe's also seemed thoughtful. Still, it is just another list of books compiled by individuals that one can take or leave as one likes. I have given up on finding a "perfect" list and decided that I have read all of the books I *should* read and am now free to read whatever what I want to read.

The New York Times Book Review features a brief interview with a writer or someone in the arts every week, and I'm always most interested in what's on their bedstand right now and what unusual books they have on their shelves. It does give insight into a person. Here's the archive: http://www.nytimes.com/column/by-the-book

By the way, I notice they didn't ask Rebecca Solnit to contribute. :-)

>36 sturlington: I like those interviews. I have alarmingly similar tastes to Simon Winchester, I've noticed.

Still, it is just another list of books compiled by individuals that one can take or leave as one likes.

Yes, but it seems not all the contributors had the same notion of purpose, with the result that the list is a slapdash mess.

Esquire's previous list had an easily discernible intent: to please and flatter the manly man who also had some aspirations to intellectuality. It was chock full of classics because most of our classics were written by men for men--and most of them were actually good books, or at least books with significant literary quality. The problem there wasn't so much what was included, as what was excluded. It sent a strong message--a very nasty one, where women were concerned, but it said something.

But here... There's little rhyme or reason to it except for, as Nicki says, self-conscious "inclusivity", and the overall message is gobbledygook.

I'd really first want to make a list with the purpose the previous one had: a list of books MEN should read, with a clear and strongly expressed intention of introducing them to point of views they as men are not likely to have.

I think only specific purposes give interesting results. There's nothing "everyone" should read, only what everyone addressing a specific question should read.

>39 LolaWalser: a list of books MEN should read, with a clear and strongly expressed purpose of introducing them to point of views they as men are not likely to have.

"Books that every man should read so they can get it through their thick skulls they are not the center, be-all and end-all, main purpose of the universe"?

Jane Eyre would top that list for me.

>40 southernbooklady: Jane Eyre would top that list for me.

As I was reading this conversation, that's exactly the book that came to my mind too. Great minds, and all that.

>40 southernbooklady:

Heh, I'd start with Ferrante--The Days of abandonment and the Neapolitan quadrilogy (is quadrilogy a word yet?)

And A room of one's own.

I'm actually very short on female authors for this--I would be, since I'm so under-read on female authors. But you see where I'm going with this...

Anyone want to start a thread? I'd be very interested in suggestions and explanations, which books by women best give a kind of experience someone who's not a woman isn't likely to encounter, or think about, or know about etc.

>39 LolaWalser: A list everyone addressing a specific question should read...

You're finally put your finger on exactly what bothers me about all of these everyone should read lists and why they seem finally so unsatisfactory. They do not have a specific purpose but the most generic, undefined goal of all. Thank you.

>43 LolaWalser: I'd be very interested to see what list emerges from such a discussion.

Ta da: http://www.librarything.com/topic/212989

>34 LolaWalser:

i haven't looked at the list yet, but just wanted to say that redefining realness is a memoir by janet mock, about her life and her transition. it's only been out a couple of years but has been a really important book for a lot of trans people.

>46 overlycriticalelisa:

Oh, thanks. "Realness" set my teeth on edge so I didn't look further. :)

>47 LolaWalser:
admittedly it's not the best title, although i understand her sentiment.

>48 overlycriticalelisa:

Yeah, it reminds me of the verbiage in the useless semi-corporate seminars I'm forced to attend every now and then... See, I'd think "reality" would have so much more of a punch. "Redefining reality"--wow.

>49 LolaWalser:

"Redefining reality"--wow.


See, that's one that I'd stay far, far away from - it sounds too much like woo-woo "you can achieve whatever you want if you just want it enough" nonsense, or perhaps credulous pseudoscience, to me. You can't please everyone!

>50 lorax:

Well, I'd say there's less woo-woo in real than made-up words, but agree it's always going to be subjective... "Redefining realness" sounds like nothing at all to me although I guess there's a subtitle I'm missing.

I really enjoyed this piece in the NYT this morning.

When Can Women Stop Trying to Look Perfect? http://nyti.ms/1OUTcK7

Happy Sunday! 12 Historical Women Who Gave No Fucks:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahjewell/historical-women-who-gave-no-fcks?bffb&...

>53 sturlington:

Oh that made me LOL and then LOL again...

Some detractors complained about her assertive questioning style. Luckily, she did not give a single fuck about those assholes.

:)))

Harriot Stanton Blatch: “Sojourner, can’t you read?”
Sojourner Truth: “Oh no, honey, I can’t read little things like letters. I read big things like men.”

awesome.

I'm inspired and my new year's resolution is to make 2016 the year of not giving a fuck.

Shannon, I very much wish that I could upvote that statement.

Piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic on black men defending Bill Cosby and the fictions we create to justify brutality: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/bill-cosby-and-his-enablers/...

In fact, there is no real difference in claiming that a woman in an unmarried man’s hotel room forgoes the right to her body, and asserting that a black boy wearing a hoodie forgoes the right to his. Brutality is brutality, and it always rests on a bed of lies.

>58 sturlington: and

Rape is systemic. And like all systems of brutality it does not exist merely at the pleasure of its most direct actors. It depends on healthy host-body of people willing to look away.

emphasis mine. I despise how good we are at looking away.

Indian Women Seeking Jobs Confront Taboos and Threats

(...) A few weeks earlier, the male elders of their caste had decreed that village women working at nearby meat-processing factories should leave their jobs. The reason they gave was that women at home would be better protected from the sexual advances of outside men. A bigger issue lay beneath the surface: The women’s earnings had begun to undermine the old order. (...)

In India, women’s participation in the labor force stands at around 27 percent, lower than any other country in the G-20, except for Saudi Arabia. Standard models suggest that a lucky confluence of factors — economic expansion, rising education levels and plummeting fertility — would draw women swiftly into India’s economy.

Instead, the opposite is happening: From 2005 to 2012, women’s participation rates slid to 27 percent from 37 percent, largely because rural women were dropping out of the work force. Of 189 countries studied by the International Labour Organization, India ranks 17th from the bottom. (...)

The women of their community live by rules: If an older man approaches, they cannot sit on any surface above the ground, so it is not unusual to see them suddenly slither down off cots and chairs. (...)

A hollow-eyed woman named Pooja announced, with some surprise, that her husband and mother-in-law had stopped beating her. “When you earn money,” she said, “you are of some use to them.” (...)

“When you start working, your heart opens up,” she said. “Then you’re not scared anymore.”(...)

With O.J. Simpson back in the media due to a new television dramatization of his trial, I am again reminded of the queasiness I felt all the time he was in the news. The whole thing quickly became about race, and whether a black man could get acquitted of murder, but what was forgotten is that his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, was a victim of domestic violence that ended in murder, an all-too common story. The woman, the victim, was completely erased from the public consciousness, then and now. I am not watching this show. I don't want to see a wife abuser held up as some kind of hero.

>61 sturlington:

Didn't he pretty much admit to murder? I can't imagine anyone right in their head holds him up as any kind of hero.

On the responses to the article in >60 LolaWalser::

From ‘Bold’ to ‘Bastard,’ Readers Debate Role of Working Women in India

>62 LolaWalser: Sorry, it is Johnnie Cochran, the lawyer, who got Simpson off, who is the hero. Here is the NPR story I was reacting to: http://www.npr.org/2016/02/02/465304940/cochran-would-be-leading-the-charge-in-f...

I suppose it's difficult to deny Cochran's ability, but, yeah, one might wish the ultimate proof were in a case concerning someone innocent. Or, at least, not a huge celebrity.

Surprise! Attacks on Planned Parenthood result in more lower income women having babies after being denied access to birth control.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-planned-parenthood-texas-bir...

>66 sturlington: And how long before we hear statements like "the public shouldn't have to support these irresponsible women who have so many children"?

oh yeah. certain people LOVE to have it both ways.

It all makes sense if you regard having sex as a sin that loose women do, and babies as the rightful punishment for having sex.

I cannot emphasize enough how vile it is that some consider children to be a punishment. But chat with a man who wants abortion to be illegal (and often also contraceptives) long enough, and this will emerge from the dark recesses of their brains.

Nice piece on erasure by Pahrul Sehgal

Fighting ‘Erasure’ http://nyti.ms/1NOC0VQ

>70 sturlington: That is a good column.

This:

To engage with the lives of others, white audiences would have to encounter something far more frightening: their irrelevance. They would have to reckon with the fact that the work will not always speak to them, orient them, flatter them with tales of their munificence or infamy, or comfort them with stereotypes

Or, "it's not all about you."

What I don't really get, though, is why this is such a bad and hard thing for white people. Or straight people, or male people. What is it about us that we get so defensive and angry when we are confronted with other lives, other ways of being human that don't match our own? And more to the point, why do we think those lives aren't relevant to us. If we value our inclusion in the human race, how can they NOT be relevant to us?

I agree that the people of Afghanistant, and much of the Middle East, are uncivilized and unevolved. Think of that country surrounded by mountains, isolated from the rest of the world, the country Alexander the Great couldn't conquer.

I met a man from Israel, an American citizen, a retired bigwig banker, who told me after a few drinks that Arabs aren't human. I wouldn't go that far.

Remember Gulliver's Travels. Gulliver would've done anything to be accepted by the horse species, Houyhnhnms, rather than have something in common with his embarrassing, savage ancestors, the Yahoos.

How do you get an unevolved country to evolve? You don't. They have to evolve on their own. If you live among Yahoos, leave.

>71 southernbooklady:

What I don't really get, though, is why this is such a bad and hard thing for white people. Or straight people, or male people. What is it about us that we get so defensive and angry when we are confronted with other lives, other ways of being human that don't match our own? And more to the point, why do we think those lives aren't relevant to us. If we value our inclusion in the human race, how can they NOT be relevant to us?

i don't get it either, but i'm starting to wonder if figuring out the answer to this question is maybe the most important thing we can be working towards. because if this can shift, then that could be the answer to really addressing oppression on a large scale. i just have no idea where the disconnect lies.

>72 barney67:
The Yahoos are humans. Swift makes that abundantly clear.

Gulliver's attempt to disavow his humanity is a hopeless pursuit. It's not only his ancestors who are Yahoos. Gulliver still is, too. He can't escape it.

Swift also makes that clear.

The main thrust of this thread is the importance of shared humanity.

You seem to be misreading both the thread and Swift.

This risks derailing the conversation. If you want to start a separate thread on Gulliver, I'd be glad to explore this further, if you were inclined. It's a fascinating book.

No need. I read it and understood it. You misread and misunderstood my post.

Can you find anywhere my post where I said the Yahoos aren't human? Can you find anywhere in my post where I said Gulliver has nothing in common with them?

On the contrary, I said that they are his ancestors. An ancestor is a biological descendant. Because he is human, so are they, and because they are human, so is he, which is how genetics works. Gulliver doesn't want to admit it. He finds them, as I said, embarrasingly savage. He wants to be one of the horses, whom he finds noble, beautiful, and rational, but they eventually reject him. He goes home.

You put what I said in your own words as if I had never said them, as if I had neither read the book nor understood it. I have the letters after my name to prove that I did both. What I would like to give you, and most of you, is a lesson in how to read, specifically in how to read without trying to find something hidden in the spaces between them, how to read without typing the first thought that pops into your head, like a Coke can rolling down a vending machine. But I end up doing that nearly every time I post, not because I want to, but because I'm constantly being misread by people who jump to conclusions and repeat some hand-me-down opinions they got from an editorial somewhere. Their impulsivity and excess emotion leads them to post without thinking and hurl all kinds of terrible accusations at me. Thinking is hard. So is reading. Not that hard. But it has to be learned correctly.

The Yahoos are unevolved humans, apelike, chimplike, savage, selfish, growling, dirty. Democrats, in other words. The people that are described here in the Middle East and the Arab world overall are unevolved, nearly every bit as unthinking as Yahoos. Have you ever seen a human face that looks animalistic? I have. Think for example, of that hideous woman who married, married mind you, the terrorist who dreamed up the recent California community college attacks. Smart enough to use Facebook, but not nearly human enough to know how to interact with people. Look at her face. Vacant, distant, blank, barely human.

Yahoo.

>75 barney67:

Nowhere did I suggest that you hadn't read the book, or that Gulliver had nothing in common with yahoos. Quite the contrary. I said that I thought you misread what this meant.

I care a lot about reading. But not at all about letters after someone's name.

I stand by my assertions. Your description as "barely human" in your last post of that "hideous woman" sadly illustrates my points. Swift himself--a clergyman, a Tory, a go-for-the-jugular satirist--wasn't so disdainful of his rivals. He didn't assume he was so different from them. He was a yahoo, too. It was all part of a fallen human condition, which nobody could escape. Nobody.

This thread, I repeat, also addresses an idea of shared humanity. The premise is outrage about global examples of discrimination against women.

Given the specificity of this OP, I think it's better for most of us guys to lurk and listen, unless there's something especially urgent to share. (Is that really the case here?) I'm not talking about shutting anybody down; it's just a matter of taking turns. Sharing the see-saw.

That's why, I repeat, maybe we should take this conversation about Swift to another thread. If you want to discuss and argue about Gulliver, fine--I can talk about that stuff till the sun goes down. Or take it up on our profile comment space. But this isn't really the place for that digression.

• "Your description as "barely human" in your last post of that "hideous woman" sadly illustrates my points."
You mean I'm not allowed to say bad things about terrorists? What if they're accurate? Why can't I call her hideous? Why does that bother you? It shouldn't. That female terrorist is unattractive in so many ways, I don't know why anyone would want to defend her. You should have noticed I said "barely human" rather than "not human." You turned this example into male/female, but it isn't. Her husband is just as loathsome. All I see in those eyes is the abyss. Do I have anything in common with Yahoos? Yes, but I consider myself further evolved.

• "Swift wasn't so disdainful"
Oh, yes he was. Gulliver's Travels is a gloomy piece of work. No 18th century Tory was a cheerleader for the human species. Remember the Swift of A Modest Proposal. Now that's creepy stuff.

• "I think it's better for most of us guys to lurk and listen"
Speak for yourself. I won't apologize for not being a milquetoast. Nor do I believe in one reality for women, one reality for men. That strikes me as the sort of double standard that feminists complain about. That there are certain subjects only women can talk about and certain subjects only men can talk about strikes me as borderline totalitarian.

You are still misreading my posts.

How to be a woman in Tehran

Whenever my mother would talk to me about her thirty-five years of marriage to my father, she’d end on a familiar refrain: “I was always my own woman. And I was always my own man too. You see, I had to carry my own weight every day of every year, and I mean every bit of it.”

A single woman who is a professional journalist on why she stays in Iran when like-minded friends all leave for Europe and America.

>78 southernbooklady:

Hmm, I don't understand what "I am my own woman and I'm my own man" means. At all. What's it mean to you? (Maybe it makes more obvious sense in Persian.)

As someone who wouldn't last twelve minutes in Iran without braining someone, or doing myself in after a first taste of that "I see nail polish. I see makeup. You are not covered enough. Where's your male guardian etc." infernal bullshit, I totally recognise her immense strength in just putting up with it. But is that all to the "fight"? I'm not suggesting anything, just asking. I've no idea how far a "fight" is possible at all. And no idea what just existing some place like that is worth. I mean, if she'd made a point of showing up for the interview with the mullah with nail polish and makeup, that would to me make more sense as a "fight", but I don't see how complying with rules thrown at you can be a fight.

And I don't get the why of the conflict with friends who have left. First of all, why doesn't she tell them sincerely what she thinks? Why lie about "not wanting to speak anything but Persian" and such nonsense?

I don't see the point here, I guess.

>79 LolaWalser: I don't understand what "I am my own woman and I'm my own man" means.

the author goes into a little more detail in the next paragraph:

a country where authority, religion, and fate would have it so that even someone like my mother had to pull a permanent double shift as both a woman and a man throughout her entire adult life. I can’t say if, as a country, Iran is unique in this way, but I do know it is one place on earth that is emphatically this way—a place where women are in every measure equal to men, and in every measure not.

In a patriarchal culture where human=man, a woman has to insist on her right to be considered human, while still being a woman. It's a weird kind of double existence that patriarchy forces on women. I think that's what Adrienne Rich was talking about when she said that women were forced to "live a lie."

As for why she didn't tell her friends something more blunt or direct than, "not wanting to speak anything but Persian," I could follow it, although like you I would wither and die in such a culture. But if you decide to be the subversive woman in such a culture, then I can see why you'd pick your battles.

In any case, I thought it was an interesting account of one woman's navigation of her own independence and agency against a culture that obstructed her at every turn.

>80 southernbooklady:

I read that but didn't and still don't get it. How did her mother "pull a double shift" of being a woman and a man?

I can speculate about what she means to say--despite being oppressed women are worth as much as men--but I think it's getting garbled with this phrase.

But if you decide to be the subversive woman in such a culture, then I can see why you'd pick your battles.

It seems as if the "battle" she's talking about here is primarily with her friends, and if it is that important to focus an article around it, then why isn't it important enough to suss out with them? Although, I suppose the very article serves that purpose, assuming she's identified.

P.S. Sorry if it sounds as if I'm kvetching about the poor woman; just trying to grasp it all.

>81 LolaWalser: I agree, it seems like if these were friends, and they were leaving because they didn't like how things were there, that those would be the kind of people she would want to explain her position to.

>82 LolaWalser:, > 83, they were leaving because they didn't like how things were there, that those would be the kind of people she would want to explain her position to.

Ah, the advice of the well-meaning friend. You know what it reminds me of in a way? There was an account in Catherine Reid's book "Falling Into Place" where she describes how she and her partner were one of the very first same sex couples to get married when Massachusetts legalized it. One of the weirder aspects was how their liberal friends all wanted a large ceremony so they could come and demonstrate their progressive inclinations and support.

It's clear that everyone who knew the author was afraid for her. But there seems to have been little in the way of anyone attempting to understand her -- from her mother to her editors at the newspaper, to her friends who limited their exposure is life under theocratic government to occasional vacation trips. But I can't fault her for deciding on what parameters she needed to operate under to remain in the country, an example of a self-determined woman. I identify with it, I guess. After all, I'm an atheist gay woman in a Southern town a notch away from the buckle of the Bible belt. Plenty of people have asked me why I stay here instead of moving to some more gay-friendly community. I like it here, and I've said so, but that doesn't seem to really satisfy the people who ask.

>84 southernbooklady:

I don't know what her friends want for this woman, she doesn't really say anything about that. Are they trying to convince her to leave?

I would also say that they are probably the people most likely to understand her, whatever she chooses to do. They know as we can't what it's like to live there. And she still refers to them as "her milieu" although they don't live in the same daily routine any more. Seems to me that justifying herself to them is something she internalized, something that would go on even if no one said anything.

Plenty of people have asked me why I stay here instead of moving to some more gay-friendly community.

If the asker is merely satisfying an honest curiosity--how do you/she/etc. manage to live given the circumstances, what makes you prefer to stay rather than go somewhere without such and such specific hassles, I can understand that. But if they are implying or expressing some judgement on you/her/etc., that's a different thing.

It seems this woman feels the latter is the case--that her friends are judging her, reproaching her with something. But I don't understand why; why she thinks so and why they would judge her.

This is not a special situation. There are tons of countries with political strife, oppression etc. that for many people, especially those who can easily afford to leave, pose a question of "should I stay or should I go". I've never seen one in which either type of answer couldn't be justified.

I want to add: I don't think her situation compares to yours, Nicki. Existing as a gay person somewhere where gays are oppressed is a definite "contrarian" gesture, before and without any other "action". Your mere existence, presence, is revolutionary, whatever else you may or may not do that would compound that.

But just being a woman in a society that oppresses women doesn't in itself mean anything special. And if the oppression is severe enough--if the penalties incurred for rebelling are so swift and heavy that further action is compromised (if not life itself!)--then it could be very difficult to develop any kind of resistance marked enough to count as such. I mean, if she obeys all the rules in public, if she wears covering dutifully, and removes makeup as expected; how and where can she "resist" and yet preserve that way of life?

Seems to me it must be a very limited and anodyne kind of resistance.

>86 LolaWalser: I wasn't trying to compare, exactly, and no, my existence is nothing like hers -- hers is much much much worse. But we each perhaps have decided to be something that is not reflected in what the society we live in says we can be. We are each "self created" in that sense. Under patriarchy every woman has to be self created. Jafarian takes care to take off her nail polish in order to interview an Imam. But she does not ever consider not interviewing him. In effect, she chose to be the woman he would have to talk to. That strikes me as a person fairly conscience of her own agency.

>87 southernbooklady:

But we each perhaps have decided to be something that is not reflected in what the society we live in says we can be.

Perhaps, sure, but I fail to see how she is anything that's not "reflected" in her society. (Naturally, I'm talking about an impression based on very little--just that article.)

But she does not ever consider not interviewing him. In effect, she chose to be the woman he would have to talk to. That strikes me as a person fairly conscience of her own agency.

But she's a journalist, she's doing her job. And if he hadn't agreed to give her that interview, she couldn't have met him.

>88 LolaWalser: But she's a journalist, she's doing her job.

Which brings us back to being "a woman and a man"

>89 southernbooklady:

What, having a job makes her "a man"? Khomeini never prohibited women from working.

Well it doesn't appear to make her a woman. I don't think I'd read any more into it than that.

I'm sorry for appearing pettily argumentative when such people and lives are concerned. Bottom line is, I don't think she needs to justify anything to anyone, but if she feels the pressure to do so, perhaps it would be better to talk it out with those who affect her that way the most... maybe they'd at least stop.

Have you read Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis comics? I don't remember whether she addressed this directly, but she does show both those who leave and those who stay. I get the impression that lots of people are "non-conforming"--in their heads and in private. Public behaviour is much trickier to take risks with.

Hausa women's subversive fiction in the middle of a jihadist war:

littattafan soyayya

The link will make you disable your ad blocker to see it, fyi.

Interesting piece on the word protection as applied to women:
Do Women Need Legislative ‘Protection’? http://nyti.ms/20DAT2z

Another example is in dictionaries. Last month, there was quite a discussion on social and news media about how dictionaries are quite sexist in the examples they use to illustrate words in sentences.

https://medium.com/space-anthropology/sexism-in-the-oxford-dictionary-of-english...

But, of course, this isn't new, as this article points out:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/27/eight-words-sexism-heart-en...

And, it's not just the venerable Oxford English Dictionary, I'm sure.

>95 jennybhatt:

Yeah, we had one of those "justifying feminism by his comments" events in connection to the OUP here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/218032

>96 LolaWalser:: Ah. Didn't realize there was a whole thread for it. Makes sense. :) Thanks.

Let's let sleeping dogs lie, as it were.

This is just lovely. If you're single and give birth, your baby doesn't get a birth certificate. Who votes these people in?

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/illinois-gop-bill-attacks-single-moms-no-birth-...

So if you don't name a father, your child doesn't exist? What?

>100 southernbooklady: I know! If you told me ten years ago that insanity like this would happen in the US, I would have thought you were clueless. Turns out it's me who is clueless.

It strikes me as, I dunno, unconstitutional or something. If you are born in this country you are automatically a citizen, yes? So how could a state refuse to confirm your existence?

>99 Nickelini: It sounds like a cross between The Scarlet Letter and the Maury Povich show.

>98 RidgewayGirl:

I understand the sentiment, but I don't think it's a good idea to let anyone think threads can be destroyed like that, people chased away.

>99 Nickelini:

Truly grotesque. It's like the final scenes in monster horror movies, with the creature revealed, hideously melting in a horrible death. The Republicans gave it all up, they don't even pretend to be human any more.

>105 southernbooklady: KFC has been on the forefront of protecting people's rights for a while. There's a reason they were the company most contrasted with Chick-fil-A when that nonsense was going on.

Dirty Secrets of the World's Worst Employee by Jenn Sadai has lots of great examples of women being marginalized and mistreated in the workplace. It's a true story too and some of the crap she dealt with is the same I've experienced.

>105 southernbooklady: I can't tell you how pleased and surprised I was out the outcome to that story. Just occasionally, things do get a little better.

Why do women historians sell fewer books than male historians? From Mary Beard's excellent blog:

Women and history writing (and history selling)

Every Sunday I read through the New York Times and I usually get angry. There was plenty this week to make me mad but I think this piece will be of most interest:

She Wanted to Do Her Research. He Wanted to Talk ‘Feelings.’ http://nyti.ms/1Qzftik

My mother and I had a conversation after reading this. How can we combat sexism when it is so ingrained and so systemic, so tied up in entitlement that many people literally cannot see the problem? It is like fighting a many-headed Hydra.

By the way, here's another piece in the same paper that will make you angry but won't surprise you:

The Return of the D.I.Y. Abortion http://nyti.ms/1SqKs4P

>110 sturlington:: I read that first article shaking my head throughout. Having been at the receiving end of such unwanted attention during my career too, I know the shame/guilt it used to make me feel to have to deal with it or even reach out for help. If nothing else, articles like these will increase public awareness and reduce such shame/guilt among other women dealing with such attention.

>110 sturlington: from the article: "Female scientists like me will be solicited* for constructive solutions that don't involve anybody getting fired."

In other words, "how do we make this go away?"

I think the columnist is right that the only option is "establishing strong professional boundaries and enforcing them because no one else will," but I'll admit that there is a healthy vindictive streak in me that thinks public shaming is the way to go: post the emails to Facebook and name names.

*interesting word choice.

This article bothered me a little bit -- about Hillary Clinton's voice *sigh* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-voice-msnbc_us_56dd403de4b0f...

I don't disagree that her voice does grate a little. But, pretty much all the nominees have different voices in conversation vs speeches. So, why is she being singled out for this? Have there been articles about how Ben Carson's drone makes people want to fall asleep? Or that Ted Cruz's nasal tones make it sound like he's always whining? Do we really need to go there rather than focusing on *what* is actually being said?

My personal opinion is that she has to raise her voice to sound more authoritative and keep the audience's attention (particularly so if the audience is more male than female). If she didn't do so, that would be held against her too. I've known of women in the corporate environment getting particular and frequent feedback re. their voice (speaking too fast/slow; speaking too high/low; not pausing enough; and so on) while men seem to get away with pretty much anything.

I read the article on harassment in STEM jobs and it made me angry. Must it always be such a systemic and chronic problem?

As for the critique of Hillary's voice, I've really limited my exposure to this election cycle. There doesn't seem to be any effort being made to separate criticism of her policies and criticism of her gender. There are things to be said about her previous positions, but when they're bracketed with misogynistic slurs, I have trouble reading any further. I think the big step forward in equality will be when a POC and/or a woman can run for office without that being the focus of insults.

>110 sturlington:

Mm, yes, I had seen that, but didn't want to comment. On the one hand, sexual harassment is a thing everywhere and obviously we should criticise it and try to fight it; on the other, there's something I really dislike about the way that argument is presented in the article. But I'd rather reserve that criticism, lest it becomes more focussed on the unknown woman and the author than the problem in general.

I've no reason to think sexual harassment is worse in STEM than elsewhere, in terms of statistics, number of events, but the context in which harassment may happen makes for some unique difficulties.

In many fields women are so outnumbered by men that they may hardly have any female colleagues, especially "higher ups". This doesn't mean that men will converge on the lone girl, but it does mean that women are frequently isolated and left out of networks (just the other day someone gave me yet another cutout, from one of the Nature magazines, about another study showing that "networking" profits men orders of magnitude more than women--duh.)

What this means is that women can't count on collegial solidarity when some problem with another colleague happens, especially of this nature. I don't mean just regarding the specific incident, but also with whatever happens in future.

This isolation is made worse by being hostages to references, especially in junior stages. As the author of the article notes, just one negative voice can ruin your career, depending whose it is and at what stage of your career it happens.

I could go on about other problems gender disparity creates. But something else feels more urgent to say: we can't lose sight of the fact that we're all only people working along other people, creating, more or less willingly, an array of relationships across hierarchies. Some of these relationships will be superficial, some intimate, some pleasant, some not. But it can't be programmed.

I think it's very important that those with formal power over others be trained not to abuse that power--which would include explaining (with occasional but constant refreshments) why sending a love letter to a subordinate or anyone who might need your official help is placing that person in a difficult position. (You might think any adult knows this without special instruction, but there's no limit to how clueless people can be.)

Against real bastards who entrap you perfectly aware of what they are doing, going public with complaints is still the only recourse and, really, I fail to see what else can be done. Besides, if you have someone like that on the prowl, the sooner they are found out the better.

Bastards there'll always be, but so will--many more, I think--people who meet someone on the job and make friends, or lovers, or partners etc. same as it happens anywhere else.

Erdogan marks the Women's Day in his own, dog-like, fashion:

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: 'A woman is above all else a mother'

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said he believes “a woman is above all else a mother” in a speech marking International Women’s Day.

Not surprising, remember this: Turkish President Says Women Shouldn’t Be Considered Equals was his contribution at an international conference on justice and rights for women.

>116 LolaWalser:: He'd fit right in with several politicians of India's ruling BJP party. Jeez.

Not surprising: strong gender bias found in school textbooks from around the world.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/08/textbooks-worldwide-rely-on-gender-...

>118 jennybhatt:

Ugh, still makes me sick (compare to >11 LolaWalser:--almost exactly a year to date)--at least it's something that seems to be noticed more or less regularly now! And it's good to see at least someone is trying to rectify it...

>119 LolaWalser:: Wow. Just looked through that earlier link. What will it take to make the needed changes? Makes me sick too. The next generation is studying from these books even as we talk/discuss such articles.

This is an interesting view of how many women vs men get to talk on television during this US Presidential election cycle. I'm glad something is being done about it. I had signed the 'Morning Joe' petition and that had so much support that it did make a difference.

The taming of the shrill

But the female authority figure with the ‘shrill’, ‘grating’ voice is not just unlikeable. She’s also often depicted as sexually repulsive. When Sylvia Shaw and I analysed media commentary on the UK General Election for our book Gender, Power and Political Speech*, we were struck by how frequently women in authority—and not only politicians, but even the woman newsreader who moderated one of the TV debates—were compared to archetypal female ‘battleaxes’ like the headmistress of a girls’ boarding school, the sadistic nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and ‘Matron’ from the ‘Doctor’ and ‘Carry On’ films. What these fictional characters have in common is that they’re grotesque: ageing, usually ugly, and either totally sexless or sexually voracious, terrifying the male objects of their insatiable desire.

>122 southernbooklady:: This is so true in the corporate environment where I worked for decades. Heck, it is even true for the kind of Indian family that I come from, where women are mostly seen and not heard. So that when they do want to be heard, the novelty of their speaking up is not taken well at all. My generation has fared better, of course, but, each time I return to India for a visit, I am reminded that the best option for me, in mixed gatherings or around my elders, is to hold my tongue. Sad.

If we we accept a single woman as evidence of progress, we establish a system whereby women are forced to pit themselves against one another to attain the one coveted spot.

http://www.featureshoot.com/2016/03/artist-photoshops-men-out-of-political-image...

>124 RidgewayGirl: It isn't just the tokenism of one or two successful women. I found it very telling that the "You might also like" suggestions after the article were all for photos of nude women. Apparently if you read something, anything, about women, what you really want is to see them undressed. We have such a long way to go.

What an eye-opener:
As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops http://nyti.ms/1R8scJc

Not only does pay remain lower for jobs traditionally done by women, but when women enter new fields, the pay also drops in those fields.

Yes--flipped out over it yesterday and still feel like flipping out.

It would be interesting to see international comparisons, though. I imagine it's even worse elsewhere.

From another thread, my bolding:

Homme de Plume: What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name

I wanted to know more of how the Georges of the world live, so I sent more. Total data: George sent out 50 queries, and had his manuscript requested 17 times. He is eight and a half times better than me at writing the same book. Fully a third of the agents who saw his query wanted to see more, where my numbers never did shift from one in 25.

(She acknowledges it would probably be even harder for "ethnic"-sounding names...)

>127 LolaWalser::

In the tech world, when there are complaints about gender pay discrimination, the typical argument is that women are in more administrative, management, and non-tech jobs in those tech firms, so their pay cannot match those of men, who are in the more skilled/technical/leadership positions. Of course, every company is a bit different once you dig into the details. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, was recently on CNN, saying that he had his HR people go through their databases to fix pay discrepancies between men and women where skills, experience, and contributions were comparable. He said that all CEOs now have a lot of data at their disposal to make the right decisions re. gender pay but that they are clearly choosing not to do so because they're afraid of losing their stars.

There are regular stories of how Google or Facebook pay their brogrammers a lot of money to not take a job elsewhere in Silicon Valley. I understand the need for talent retention in a very competitive industry, but the amounts are ridiculous and tend to make the whole pay balance even more skewed.

Another example, Yahoo is going through troubled times. Last year, 17+ executives left the company -- most of them were guys, of course. So, their CEO, a woman (Marissa Mayer), has now offered retainers and stock options to several existing executives so that they don't jump ship too. Most of these are, of course, guys. Their HR database was already lopsided and will be even more so now.

Also, I find it laughable that the teamwork/leadership/collaboration skills that women bring to the table are valued less. Most of the women I know in the tech world tend to be the ones who do the team "building, tending and nurturing" work within their teams. This is something most male leaders don't bother with.

Though these are tech industry examples, I have heard similar stories across other industries too.

There are regular stories of how Google or Facebook pay their brogrammers a lot of money to not take a job elsewhere in Silicon Valley.

"Brogrammer" does not just mean "male programmer", or "male programmer in a department dominated by men." It is a specific subculture, and - as a woman who has worked in software both at very brogrammer-ish and very non-brogrammer-ish places, I'll say that from everything I've heard it is not prevalent at Google or Facebook. I've not worked at either place myself, so this is not personal experience. (I did work at Yahoo, but that was more than five years ago, and thus not terribly relevant to the current situation.)

(This Huffington Post article comes with those annoying sound/video "enhancements" but you can disable them by clicking the icon in the lower right corner.)

Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream: The dangerous culture of male entitlement and sexual hostility hiding within America's national parks and forests.

Probably best to avoid looking at comments...

ETA: I don't mean so much because of asshats (there are some) but because it's fucking unbelievable and terminally depressing how many women are chiming in with "me too" and saying they abandoned the jobs and whole careers because of things like this.

>130 lorax:: Google and Facebook were both consulting clients around the 2010-2012 timeframe for me. My team and I identified what we thought was some "brogrammer" culture then. It may well have changed since then. I know that both Google and Facebook have been working on gender bias training and gender pay equality. This is pretty good stuff, so I agree that things are likely better than they used to be.

https://managingbias.fb.com

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-unconscious-bias-training-presentation-201...

In line with some of the tech-related sexism issues, here's a recent one. Microsoft had grown women dressed as scantily-dressed schoolgirls dancing on stage at the Gamers Development Conference last week. Even some MSFT employees were taken aback.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/18/11262888/microsoft-gdc-2016-party

After the negative response in some media outlets, the company sent out a stern memo to the particular staff team responsible. But, of course, the damage had already been done.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/18/11264930/xbox-gdc-2016-sexist-event-response

What I don't get is how something at such scale manages to get through all the way to execution. I can understand some bros sitting in a bar after work and cackling about how this could be f!@#ing great. But, surely, a bunch of guys then sat together in a conference room in the cold light of day to discuss whether it was indeed a worthy approach. And, surely, someone at an executive level reviewed and signed off on purchase orders or expenses. Then, surely, a bunch of people pulled all the logistics together, did dry-runs for the big day, and so on. So, with these many people involved, didn't anyone pause for a second throughout the months-long process (I'm sure) to say out loud, "Hey, guys, you know, I don't think this might be our best idea as it kinda objectifies women in the gaming industry where women are already marginalized and abused. Plus, well, this is about how our company's brand comes across. Why don't we think of something different?"

>133 jennybhatt:

That deserves to be illustrated... Here it is endorsed by GamerGate scum:



The subject "Up Yours, Brianna" refers to Brianna Wu, a game developer who has received death and rape threats, been doxxed, stalked etc.

Heckuva job, Billy!

>134 LolaWalser:: Yes, that image is very telling. Really, what was MSFT thinking?

The latest VIDA count is out.

http://www.vidaweb.org/the-2015-vida-count/

They've sliced the stats for diversity as well this time.

Interesting. I wish there were such surveys in other countries. Just the other day I was thinking I have yet to see a single article by a woman on Al Jazeera. French, Italian, Spanish and German news have terrible female participation. And I tend to follow more lefty sources too, those supposedly justice-loving egalitarian types... but in fact wall-to-wall bastards all.

Donald Trump has moved his position in abortions farther to the right than pretty much anyone by saying that women should be punished for getting abortions.

Pressed on an Abortion Ban, Donald Trump Sees a Penalty for Women http://nyti.ms/1qjXZjH

>137 LolaWalser:: "...but in fact wall-to-wall bastards all."

I nearly choked on my drink here. :)

This visual history of the gender pay gap over the years is rather interesting.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/03/a-visual-history-of-gender-and-employment

>140 jennybhatt:

that was fascinating, thanks.

The Dirty Old Men of Pakistan

(...) A few weeks ago, Pakistan’s largest province passed a new law called the Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence Act. The law institutes radical measures that say a husband can’t beat his wife, and if he does he will face criminal charges and possibly even eviction from his home. It proposes setting up a hotline women can call to report abuse. In some cases, offenders will be required to wear a bracelet with a GPS monitor and will not be allowed to buy guns.

A coalition of more than 30 religious and political parties has declared the law un-Islamic, an attempt to secularize Pakistan and a clear and present threat to our most sacred institution: the family. They have threatened countrywide street protests if the government doesn’t back down. (...)

>142 LolaWalser:: Good Lord. Really depressing -- I have no words besides these.

>143 jennybhatt:

Well, that the government, albeit in only one province, in 2016 C.E. actually tries to protect women legally from domestic violence is A Good Thing.

I can't tell what portion of the public opinion is represented by the religious creeps. One would hope a minority, but I haven't a clue about what it's really like in Pakistan.

A tiny spark in the darkness? http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/5/1510797/-Brewery-owner-boots-sexist-custome...

Here's another tiny spark:

Periods as Protest: Indiana woman call Governor to talk about menstrual cycles

The transcripts are all kinds of awesome.

>145 Bookmarque:

Cool guy, although protecting employees is no more than one's duty. But that perp. I don't get those people. If they like staring so much, why not do it discreetly and in silence so they can continue doing it? Unless they get off even more at making women uncomfortable.

>147 LolaWalser:
making women uncomfortable

Isn't that the crux of it? It's all a power trip for them.

>147 LolaWalser:, >148 Taphophile13:, right. It's not like staring at a pretty sunset. Men stare at women, at least in public, because they need the reaction from them. Their self worth is dependent on that reaction.

As part of a series on the rising global phenomenon of online harassment, the Guardian commissioned research into the 70m comments left on its site since 2006 and discovered that of the 10 most abused writers eight are women, and the two men are black.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men.

An Unbelievable Story of Rape has won a Pulitzer. It's a frightening story.

Horrible.

French Women Fight Back http://nyti.ms/254RY9C

Fighting back against rampant sexism and sexual harassment

The effing "Latin Male" pursuing his god-given right to cheesecake... I started following that but got sickened by the dolts... There was ONE man calling out male politicians and intellectuals to make a public stand, one man who confessed in print he had been a witness to sexual harassment and did nothing and now felt compelled to discuss that and do something... and he was a German actually.

Sexual assault investigations at MSU: A broken system and the efforts to fix it

Investigations that are mandated by Title IX to take 60 days, the University says will take 90 days, and usually take 8 months to a year and a half. And conclusions can be overturned by the Vice President of Student Affairs.

It's not so much about this one incident as about the mentality and custom behind it--meaning, the presumably unquenchable source of incidents like this. Who knows how many things like this are happening but not making it into the news:

Muslim Boys at a Swiss School Must Shake Teachers’ Hands, Even Female Ones

There was the student at a university here who requested to be taught separately from female students (as far as I know, the request was rejected).

There was that Muslim-owned barbershop incident, when they refused to accommodate a female customer (who wanted a man's haircut, not something they were unable to provide).

Incidents of the sort kept coming up last year, as the refugees were streaming in--a bus that was delayed because the driver was a woman, which didn't sit well with some Muslim men; rudeness toward female police officers etc.

But, you know, these all come up as isolated events and clearly most people either don't think like this, or manage to co-exist without drawing attention to this kind of attitude.

What bothers me is when "the principle" rears its head, with all its monstrous justifications. Because the perversity is breathtaking:

The brothers were not available Wednesday for comment. But in an April interview with Die Welt, the German newspaper, the younger of the brothers said the two were merely following the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, whom he called their “idol.” Lamenting all the fuss, he stressed that their actions were not hurting anyone.

The brothers, he noted, were trying to protect the dignity of women with their refusal to shake a woman’s hand.

Little fuckers, 16 and 14 year old, "protecting the dignity of women", and in this way. I don't know whether I feel more pity or revulsion for them.

And:

But the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland... said that policing physical contact between individuals was a form of totalitarianism, and vowed to take legal action if the ruling was enforced.

What else do THEY do if not "police physical contact" by enforcing sexual discrimination and myriad prohibitions on an individual's behaviour? I guess it's only not totalitarianism when religious police do it.

i interviewed my best friend's mom in college - they are orthodox jews - for a paper about judaism and feminism. she insisted that a similar tradition - men and women not touching at all, even for a handshake - is a sign of huge respect for the women. ditto that the obligation to attend synagogue didn't always apply to women (so they could be at home cooking for the family) and how nice it was that judaism acknowledged all that women do for the home and give such respect for women. i can't remember how she managed to interpret the law that men can't touch their menstruating wives - or sit in a seat they'd vacated or accept food or anything else from their hands - as respect, but she did. wasn't convincing to me, but she was all in. my friend was more of a lapsed orthodox in college (early 90's) but when he got married a few years ago he was back in the fold and had i gone to his wedding, i would only have been able to congratulate him vocally, over a low barrier that divided the room between men and women.

>157 overlycriticalelisa:

People believe all sorts of crap, and religion works hard to make sure of that.

It's a thoroughly revolting topic. Either women are people like men are people, or they are not. A handshake can't be respectful in one case and hugely disrespectful in another. It's clear they are predicating this on the view of women as some man's chattel, and not on women as free, autonomous, independent subjects with exactly the same rights as men.

The little shits who already, at age 16 and 14, think that touching a woman in any way is automatically compromising her "dignity", are already prepped to see women as things and men's property. I wish I could "touch" them with a kick in the pants and tell them, there, worry about your own dignity and nobody else's, because nobody can protect another's dignity any more than anyone can compromise it through a touch. "Honour" doesn't reside in cunts--or balls; one's own dignity is subject solely to one's own behaviour.

But the presumption, the arrogance... are truly breathtaking.

Depressingly, I just read Ayad Akhtar's play Disgraced, which openly states that the "all Western women are whores etc." prejudice is in fact an opinion widely held among Muslims. It's not that I didn't know this, exactly... only it's usually brought up by types who have no business criticising Islam, so one prefers not to think about it. But those two pathetic little creeps make me think about it.

>158 LolaWalser:: This attitude towards a woman's "dignity" and "honor" is not restricted to Muslims, though. In India, Hinduism also promotes these same things. There's no handshaking, etc., for the same reasons. And that belief that all Western women are wanton/slutty is also prevalent because of the comparatively freer ways that Western women tourists walk, talk, dress, etc. Indian women raised in or living in the West know this well enough, so when we go to India, we tend to cover up, avoid eye contact, and generally hide behind our male relatives rather than engage with men we don't know, which can invite unwanted attention (or more).

>159 jennybhatt: And that belief that all Western women are wanton/slutty is also prevalent because of the comparatively freer ways that Western women tourists walk, talk, dress, etc.

The salient point here is that women in patriarchal cultures have one ultimate purpose -- to bear children. The entire cultural edifice we exist under has been constructed to enforce this one fact, this one fate for every female. So any time a woman does something that rejects that role and fate she becomes "whore" and "slut" by default. "whore," "virgin," and "mother" are the only states of existence allowed to her.

>160 southernbooklady:: Exactly so. Sad though, that this is still the case in 2016.

Well, this is happening in New York city and it's germane to the discussion:

Everybody Into the Pool http://nyti.ms/1WY79Qr

>162 sturlington:

Let those who cannot abide public, secular rules at a public, secular pool find their own private place to swim when and with whom they see fit.

Amen. I'd tell them where to get off, commandeering public space like that in the name of religion.

>159 jennybhatt:

This attitude towards a woman's "dignity" and "honor" is not restricted to Muslims, though.

I never thought it was.

when we go to India, we tend to cover up, avoid eye contact, and generally hide behind our male relatives rather than engage with men we don't know, which can invite unwanted attention (or more).

I know women who've been to India (or live there) who don't bow to pressure. I'm not saying everyone should do one or the other, but, if one cares about human rights issues, this is a human rights issue. It's criminal to accept that someone's judgement of how we "dress, walk and talk" gives them license to attack us in any way.

>160 southernbooklady:

Exactly right. All this meddling "on behalf" of women and "for" women boils down to the aim of controlling women as if women weren't free autonomous subjects.

>163 LolaWalser::

I know women who've been to India (or live there) who don't bow to pressure. I'm not saying everyone should do one or the other, but, if one cares about human rights issues, this is a human rights issue. It's criminal to accept that someone's judgement of how we "dress, walk and talk" gives them license to attack us in any way.

The first few times I visited India, I had this exact attitude. I decided to be just as I am when I'm in the US because, dammit, I'm a human being and I have the same rights as men. Plus, I was in a major city like Bombay, so I thought, it's going to be fine. I couldn't have been more wrong. I won't recount every incident that I was groped and subjected to lewd comments by strangers and then offered "well-meaning" advice by family/friends on how to dress/talk/walk but suffice to say that it was beyond my comprehension and ability to cope with in a sane manner. I'm not saying what happens is right and a part of me dies every time I have to conform to such norms. But, there it is -- public spaces in India are almost always dominated by men and they call the shots. It is better than it was when I was growing up. But, it's a long way away from being good enough.

What happens is that you have to pick your battles in cultures like this. Either you fight to dress/talk/walk a certain way each time you step out the door -- which is a huge mental effort -- or you choose the bigger battles of being allowed into the workplace, of being allowed to marry or live with whomsoever you choose, of being allowed to even step out the door past a "respectable" hour, and so on. There are so many daily battles on so many fronts that you have to choose. For the record, I've been living in India for the past 12 months or so and speak from ongoing experience.

The decline of women's rights in Brazil linked directly to the rise of evangelism

http://jezebel.com/the-fight-against-the-growing-dehumanization-of-women-i-17796...

Campus rapist given 6 month sentence to avoid being unnecessarily harsh on him:

http://boingboing.net/2016/06/03/campus-rapist-given-lenient-se.html

>164 jennybhatt:

What happens is that you have to pick your battles in cultures like this.

Always true. Anywhere, I might add.

I'm insanely busy and have no time for anything but I wanted to park this somewhere, for future reference too (I think I may have linked the quoted study about high rates of PTSD-like symptoms in women who have NOT been in wars etc.--just live as, well, women... but maybe it's new.)

What Does a Lifetime of Leers Do to Us?

(...) Researchers interested in objectification theory — the idea that the way women are looked at and dehumanized affects their mental health and their sense of self — have found that women often change and constrain their behavior because of past experiences with sexism. A study published in 2015 found a link between the misogyny women face and psychological distress.

>167 LolaWalser:: That is a very interesting article. Thanks. I'm going to have to unpack some of that in my head before I can respond.

>168 jennybhatt:

I didn't intend it as direct response to what we were talking about but now that you mention it, it really does relate!

The theme is one of "my" big ones, I always pounce on it. I grew up in several Mediterranean countries where patriarchy is the order of the day, misogyny something we imbibe with mother's milk, and women are things and (man's) property from cradle to grave--with all the resultant treatment and behaviour that entails.

To me it's a scene of a crime--in space and time and ONGOING--and I can't help returning to it.

Valenti's book sounds like something I or any million of women could have written. Perhaps we should all write it.

South Korea’s Misogyny http://nyti.ms/1UpBgyg

>170 sturlington: "Women made up 86% of all violent crime victims in 2013."

Holy fuck!

86%? That's not "a problem." It's systemic oppression.

...also, re female presidents or presidential candidates, it is telling evidence of how deeply ingrained misogyny is that strong female role models make no impact on male sexism. Just the opposite, in fact -- such women seem to elicit an instinctive and hostile response in many men that is delivered, scattershot, at every potentially uppity woman in their line of sight.

With our ever-increasing reliance on machine intelligence, this is seriously important to read.

Artificial Intelligence’s White Guy Problem

(...) Sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination are being built into the machine-learning algorithms that underlie the technology behind many “intelligent” systems that shape how we are categorized and advertised to.

Take a small example from last year: Users discovered that Google’s photo app, which applies automatic labels to pictures in digital photo albums, was classifying images of black people as gorillas. Google apologized; it was unintentional.

But similar errors have emerged in Nikon’s camera software, which misread images of Asian people as blinking, and in Hewlett-Packard’s web camera software, which had difficulty recognizing people with dark skin tones. (...)

Last July, computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University found that women were less likely than men to be shown ads on Google for highly paid jobs. The complexity of how search engines show ads to internet users makes it hard to say why this happened — whether the advertisers preferred showing the ads to men, or the outcome was an unintended consequence of the algorithms involved.

Regardless, algorithmic flaws aren’t easily discoverable: How would a woman know to apply for a job she never saw advertised? How might a black community learn that it were being overpoliced by software?

We need to be vigilant about how we design and train these machine-learning systems, or we will see ingrained forms of bias built into the artificial intelligence of the future.

>172 LolaWalser: Users discovered that Google’s photo app, which applies automatic labels to pictures in digital photo albums, was classifying images of black people as gorillas.

whoa. that one got by me. I did read about the "three black teenagers" thing though.

I'm no expert, but aren't search engine results/rankings at least partly dependent on user input? Still someone's algorithms behind it all, of course. But in the above examples it's things like camera software, analysis of neighbourhoods... It's pre-packaged prejudice even more starkly.

>174 LolaWalser: Right. It's like a snapshot of our social preconceptions and unquestioned prejudices.

>172 LolaWalser:, >174 LolaWalser:, >175 southernbooklady: Maybe and maybe not. The deal with the Deep Learning aspect of the latest generation of Neural Nets is what is called the training set. Basically, there isn't a lot of algorithm construction what there is are VERY large data bases of examples of whatever it is that you want the machine to recognize labeled as "correct". The problem is the issue of the construction of the these data bases with enough variety of correct examples to guarantee proper identification.

I don't have the article handy, but I do remember reading several years ago that during the first gulf war they tried to speed up the photo interpreter's job by feeding aerial recon pictures of Iraq into the machine in an attempt to quickly identify the number and location of tanks. The effort failed and it was only in the aftermath that it was discovered the image training sets did not include imagery of tanks against a background of sand/desert.

I can't speak to the specific issues raised in your posts but, having had experience with these programs, I do know just how difficult it is to build a good training data set.

>176 alco261:

I don't think that's the point (difficulty). Of course it's difficult to simulate intelligence, the history of AI speaks plentifully to that. (Ironically, computer scientists turned out to be the worst people to take on "constructing" intelligence...)

But that doesn't explain the kind of bias people are uncovering in software etc. If it were just some nebulous "difficulty", there'd be no reason for these things to target women and PoCs.

I agree with the author of the article--this is the result of a "white guy" POV, the same POV that dominated and dominates media, advertising, science, research. No one is saying it need be deliberate. But in environments with low diversity, such as most of these fields have been and still are, who's to remind them they are not the only people in the world?

Consider, for example, the computer game developers--I think a Microsoft bunch--who threw an official party with female go-go dancers dressed in fetish schoolgirl uniforms, in 2016. Can we really believe these same people would know to avoid, or care to avoid, sexist biases in what they are making, or remember to include the features of non-white faces in the repertory of "human faces" etc? I'd want someone checking that they do.

>177 LolaWalser: Can we really believe these same people would know to avoid, or care to avoid, sexist biases in what they are making, or remember to include the features of non-white faces in the repertory of "human faces" etc?

The people who are tasked with the creation of "virtual reality" have probably not given much thought about how real their conception of reality actually is. Just as the "man" and "human" are interchangeable terms because the male point of view is the default, so the unexamined "reality" of the programmer is the model on which virtual reality is created. They'll spend untold hours getting the scenery to be realistic but the avatars are all going to look like something out of a comic book.

>177 LolaWalser: I don't think this is a nebulous difficulty. Rather it is one of failing to consider the possibility that the data used for "training" is not a representative sample and that would mean representative to the point where a machine would not make mistakes such as those cited with respect to image interpretation.

There is the perception in some quarters that, since this is the era of "Big Data" we have ample data on everyone and everything, any errors or biases have to be due to external meddling. This is a false perception. The problems with big data bias and under sampling are exactly the same as those with small sample misrepresentation. Unfortunately, people take the word "big" and turn it into a synonym for "complete' - this not the case.

I don't know the particulars of the Google or Nikon image software but I do know how easy it is for this sort of thing to happen with big data. Many years ago I worked for Kodak and one of the sections where I spent some time was with engineers who were trying to make the automatic printing software do a better job of providing correctly exposed prints - specifically, providing correctly adjusted pictures of people who were not white.

The data we had consisted of thousands of negative scans. We already knew that roughly 95% of all pictures taken in the world were landscape format, taken between the hours of 10AM and 2PM on a sunny day and featured a person or persons in the center of the image and the overwhelming majority of those people were white. Once the huge bias towards white skin was recognized we went back to the data and searched for non-white images. The percentage of images of POC was so small that any attempts made to use what we had to adjust for this difference failed. Ultimately, a group of the engineers came up with a way to gather more images of POC and that led, in turn, to the construction of additional pre-printing negative testing software which could detect the difference between white, brown, and black. The end result was prints where people looked like people regardless of skin tone and the rest of the image had the correct exposure balance.

Please don't interpret the above as an attempt to imply everything you SBL and others have said in this thread is due to nothing but poor sampling. I'm sure there is more to it than that but, at the same time, I don't think you can lay everything on the doorstep of deliberate OWG meddling.

>179 alco261: I don't think you can lay everything on the doorstep of deliberate OWG meddling.

On the contrary, I don't think there is anything consciously deliberate about it at all. I don't think, for example, that someone at Google tweaked the code so that searching for "three black teenagers" would produce pictures of mugshots.

"OWG" ("old white guy"?) perspective is just the default.

>179 alco261:

Well, again. We all know this bias happens and it doesn't happen "of itself", for some mysterious reasons, any time data is called "big" or "complete". That just goes to show people have no idea what is really "complete", and/or that "the white guy" easily overlooked the lack of anyone unlike himself.

I don't think you can lay everything on the doorstep of deliberate OWG meddling.

Which is what I didn't say; in fact I SAID "It need not be deliberate." Subtle discrimination and prejudice in the "invisible" range is probably the worst culprit here. Where people don't even know they are doing it.

The percentage of images of POC was so small that any attempts made to use what we had to adjust for this difference failed.

I find it hard to believe the billions of Chinese can't come up with at least one photo per--I presume you mean only what was available to whoever looked wherever they looked? In any case, whatever the percentage of images of PoC on the globe, fact is PoC are a global vast majority. If I wanted to sell cameras to the world, I'd take that in account regardless of what ready-made stock photography looks like. Makes sense, no?

>181 LolaWalser: Big data sets are what are referred to as happenstance data. Bias in such data does happen by itself for the simple reason that it is, in fact, happenstance. The only way around something like this is designed data and that, in many arenas, is either impossibe to get and/or far too costly to acquire.

I used the Kodak example to illustrate the point of limitations of big data. I suppose you could argue that some kind of subtle discrimination or prejudice was in play but I don't think so. The data was the Kodak Park data base and there certainly weren't billions of Chinese - not in the late 1970's (think Cultural Revolution) just as there weren't billions of any other POC images.

The reason for the poor representation of POC images was due to the existence of Kodak processing centers all over the world. The reason Kodak film was so widely accepted was because those process centers had already manually adjusted their printing to reflect local needs. We were aware of the local adjustements and the time involved in making them. It was in the interests of reducing process time that the group was looking for ways to automate those adjustments.

The reason for the initial assumption that the Park images would be representative was because the Park did get film for processing sent from all corners of the globe. Of course, once we looked into it we found that while we did process film exposed all over the world, the sample we did process was not representative enough for our needs.

The Supreme Court has struck down the Texas anti-abortion bill that would have closed most of the abortion clinics in the state:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/us/supreme-court-texas-abortion.html

One part of the law requires all clinics in the state to meet the standards for ambulatory surgical centers, including regulations concerning buildings, equipment and staffing. The other requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

"We conclude," Justice Breye wrote, "that neither of these provisions offer medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes. Each places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previatility abortion, each constitutes an undue burden on abortion access, and each violates the Federal Constitution."

While I'm glad they struck it down, my Texas friends say the damage has already been done. Many have already had to close and huge areas of the state have no clinics left. This seems to be these states' game: pass something even unconstitutional because in the time it takes to make it through the courts, it'll work.

This is why I think downticket races are so important.

Has everyone seen this? I only became aware from TDS's "moment of zen" with the quick clip of it.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabian-women-love-bumper-cars-but-not-for-bum...

Instead, they go there to get behind the wheel—even a bumper-car wheel—in a country that bans female drivers.
There are no loud bangs or ferocious head-on crashes. There are a few slow-speed collisions, but also a lot of dodging, as many women are content with just gliding over the smooth surface.

Outside the theme park, activists, writers and even some politicians now are pushing to lift the ban on driving actual cars. One of the strongest cases proponents make is financial: Many women, even those with jobs, simply can’t afford a driver.
In this conservative society, there are many who resist it, warning that allowing women to move freely without a male guardian would expose them to social evils and personal trouble.

“It’s OK if they drive here,” said Mr. Bayea, a Riyadh native who was on vacation in Jeddah. But he said he wouldn’t want them driving in the real world. “I am a nice guy, I don’t flirt with women. But other men will.”

How sad is that? A society where women eagerly excitedly line up to drive bumper cars to pretend like they are truly driving because they are not allowed on the actual road. :|

>185 .Monkey.: So often, women are grouped with children. It's okay to let them play with toys but we can't give them adult rights. After all, they're only children.

Right? And it's how they're appearing, too, just like little kids getting so excited about bumper cars and go-karts, "yay I get to drive!" because they can't actually but there they can pretend. So now adult women get that same treatment. *shakes head*

So much easier to corral the women than control the behavior of men.

>185 .Monkey.: “I am a nice guy, I don’t flirt with women. But other men will.”

In other words, women are sequestered because men can't control themselves. Who is really the childish one here?

X-post with >188 Bookmarque:!

That whole great minds thing, right? lol

Recently I read The Last Painting of Sara de Vos that features a woman in 17th century Netherlands who was basically the only woman admitted to the painter's guild. The reason being it was for landscape artists and women weren't allowed to paint landscapes because it would put them outdoors and it might make them too unsafe. Meaning they could be attacked by men. Rather than curb that shit, they relegate women painters to still-lifes and portraiture. Oy vey.

>183 southernbooklady: So glad to see this!

>184 sparemethecensor: You are right, but I'm hopeful that a backlash is brewing based on feeling the very real effects of this legislation and now having the backup of the highest court in the land.

The wider implications of the Supreme Court ruling

the ruling upholds challenges to abortion restrictions in several other states.

>182 alco261:

The "white guy" bias is inbuilt in the world, so there is no magically neutral "happenstance". We get repeated examples of subtle/not so subtle bias against women and PoC (such as described in the article), and never of bias against the "white guy".

You seem to be stuck on the idea that it's about "blaming", say Kodak in your example. That's not the point--the point is to recognise bias existed already at the stage of collecting data, and the "explanation" is of secondary importance (every explanation reduces to discrimination against one and favouritism of another). Again, we all know why and how men and whites are favoured in zillion ways--the problem is to notice, analyse and correct when it happens this subtly.

Oh, FUCK YOU:

Tutors See Stereotypes and Gender Bias in SAT. Testers See None of the Above.

The two items, one in the verbal portion and one in the math section, posed what some test-prep experts considered a textbook example of “stereotype threat.” When people are reminded during a test of a negative stereotype about their race or sex, psychologists say, it creates a kind of test anxiety that leads them to underperform.

The math question involved a chart showing more boys than girls in math classes over all.

The verbal section asked students to analyze a 19th-century polemic arguing that women’s place was in the home. (...)

The reading item paired 1837’s “Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism” by Catharine E. Beecher with an 1838 reply from Angelina E. Grimké, an abolitionist. It asked questions about how to interpret the passages.

The Beecher essay argues, beginning around Section 99, that by divine law, women have a lower station than men and wield their influence through the domestic sphere.

I mean, I went through, survived and relatively prospered against such shit, but it does make me mad to see it perpetrated still. "Stereotype threat." That's exactly it.

Both positive and negative reinforcements can work in subtle ways, experts say. For example, some research has found that boys got a boost just from being asked to mark down their sex before taking the test, as if it helped to be reminded that they were boys, Dr. Aronson said.

Fuck everything!

Also, no guns for people convicted of domestic violence

>193 LolaWalser: I appreciate not all data is free and clear of gender/race/political bias but, as someone who works with data all day every day and who has worked with large blocks of happenstance data in industry and medicine, the fact remains bias in real happenstance data does, in fact, just happen and has nothing to do with the subtle conscious or unconscious aspects of anyone. I guess the best thing to do here is just agree to disagree and hope that the epithet in >194 LolaWalser: was aimed at the cited article and not our discussion.

>196 alco261: If data is actively being collected then unconscious bias would always be a factor by default. Data isn't like air, swirling around waiting for us to breathe it in. If we are collecting data, we are fishing for it.

If your data is all the photos processed by your photo processing business and most of those photos come from the US then the data is likely biased but is that data actively collected by your definition? If so, then whose unconscious bias is it?

>198 jjwilson61: Yes, that is "actively collecting" data. The point here is that if you are trying to make a determination about, say, the human race -- in this case an assessment of skin tone values in order to correct for a goal of "naturalness" -- then your data sample has to be representative of the human race. It's not a question of blaming anyone, it's a question of being aware at the outset that your data sample is limited and will contain a bias, which has to be pinpointed and then countered.

I completely agree that the collectors of the data need to be aware of any biases in their data. I just disagree with calling that an unconscious bias because it insinuates that the data collector's are biased, but the bias doesn't come from the collectors, it comes from the nature of the source.

To put it another way, imagine that the photos are collected from PhotoShop kiosks and are more likely to contain vacation photos than photos of people at work. Would you say that the people collecting that data are unconsciously biases against working people?

>200 jjwilson61: To put it another way, imagine that the photos are collected from PhotoShop kiosks and are more likely to contain vacation photos than photos of people at work. Would you say that the people collecting that data are unconsciously biases against working people?

They are if they are trying to create a representation of "how people spend their time" and don't take into account the limitations of their data source.

Well, I wouldn't call it an unconscious bias of the collectors of the data but a bias in the data that wasn't accounted for. You can continue to call it whatever you want.

>202 jjwilson61: I wouldn't call it an unconscious bias of the collectors of the data but a bias in the data that wasn't accounted for.

What's the difference?

One is a bias introduced because of a defect in the way someone looks at the world and the other is just an oversight because it's really hard to think of everything.

eh. I think that's a platitude. "really hard to think of everything" is an admission that we have defects in the way we look at the world.

>205 southernbooklady: So, if your spouse forgot to run the dishwasher last night it must be because they have a defect in the way they look at the world?

ETA: I guess you're bias is that you're biased to believe that errors of omission are caused by people's biases?

Not a good analogy. The spouse would have to not realize the existence of the dishwasher. The spouse would be looking at the world as if clean dishes "just happen."

ETA: I guess you're bias is that you're biased to believe that errors of omission are caused by people's biases?

>206 jjwilson61: ETA: I guess you're bias is that you're biased to believe that errors of omission are caused by people's biases?


There's no need to be so defensive. We are all prisoners of our own preconceptions and assumptions. The goal of the scientist is to correct for internal bias.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/the-humiliating-practice-of-sex-testi...

Gender testing for female athletes, and the issue of intersex individuals competing in a binary-gender sports environment.

Here's something a little more light-hearted:

Couple pickets anti-abortion protesters with inappropriate signs

>196 alco261:

(#194 had nothing to do with the previous :))

Sorry if it seems I'm harping on this, but I think it's important, although it's annoying that we aren't talking about the same things, exactly--but I tried to connect everything I said to the article I quoted. First, your example of Kodak's pool of predominantly white photos isn't analogous to the examples given in the article I linked--but I'll come to that later, after I try to explain how I see the problem in your example.

You seem to be talking only about sampling bias, from a given pool of data. I'm seeing bias already in that pool of data. "Bias" here need not denote some specific malicious intent--I'm not supposing Kodak collected predominantly-white photos as a specific racist policy or some such.

Point is, that pool of data is already skewed in a certain way--let's say, mostly white faces. With that as our starting point, it's not surprising statistical sampling would give rise to some "white-face" pattern or whatever. But to describe the result as happening through "happenstance"--just because you've sampled "correctly"--would be misleading. And as you yourself say, people did realise they had to consider the composition of their data pool. I'm just saying we, nowadays especially, ought to be aware of of this possibility of in-built bias BEFORE we start "sampling".

And the article talks about problems TODAY.

Consider the example in the article when they found their software was mislabelling blacks as gorillas and mistaking Asian facial features for blinking. It's 2016. If image data pools somehow enter into it, it's hard to believe pictures of whites and gorillas (still) vastly outnumber pictures of Asian and black faces. And even if they did, surely there is a higher awareness of diversity than there was at Kodak in the seventies?

Again, I'm not saying things like this must happen through actively racist action and neither does the author of the article. That, actually, is exactly what makes it so troublesome--the blinders are on subtly and insidiously. Making an algorithm that decides people with epicanthic folds are blinking or squinting points to a fundamental definition of "human face" as "white human face". It's hard to believe it could arise, deliberately or not, outside the context of white supremacist culture (I mean "supremacist" in the broadest sense of imposed white values, not some local neo-Nazism).

This isn't a new notion or consideration (except maybe in the stupid-clever world of computer programming). In the seventies they included a plaque on Voyager and the human male-female couple depicted had vaguely "Polynesian" traits because these are sort of half-way between or a mix of black, white, Asian features. But then the people involved remembered, deliberately thought about diversity.

>212 LolaWalser: I agree with what you are saying up until this point,

Making an algorithm that decides people with epicanthic folds are blinking or squinting points to a fundamental definition of "human face" as "white human face",

where you went too far. No one made an algorithm that defines what a human face is, they made an algorithm that you feed tons of pictures into and tell it which ones are faces and which aren't, and the algorithm learns what a face is. I agree that the people who input the data needs to be aware of their assumptions, but no one defined a human face except by example.

>213 jjwilson61: no one defined a human face except by example.

And we're back where we started.

>213 jjwilson61: Never mind. I just read that sentence again and I see now that it can be read in two ways, either that someone created an algorithm and put into that algorithm the definition of a human face is, or that someone created an algorithm and the algorithm itself decides how to define a human face. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Please continue as desired here, but I'll turn the thread for loading convenience at this point.