The invisible women

On Friday I went to the Wellington launch of a new book, Child Poverty in New Zealand, by Jonathan Boston and Simon Chapple (Bridget Williams Books). It's been heartening to see the recent upsurge of attention being paid to child poverty, with 285,000 children living in families with incomes below the most generally accepted poverty line: 60% of the median income after housing costs. (The book explains in detail exactly what such "lines" mean and how they work.)

But I've been getting steadily more concerned about what seems to be a general refusal to consider mothers' poverty. Children are almost never independently poor, they are poor when their parents are poor. The group of parents-and-children who are far and away the most likely to be poor in New Zealand are sole parents and their dependent children. And the vast majority of these families are headed by women: 125,000 out of 151,000 in June 2013.  The percentage of those receiving a sole-parent benefit who did not have enough income to meet daily needs was 42.2% in 2008, 45.7% in 2010, and 51.1% in 2012. Close to two-thirds of poor children (64%) do not have a parent in full-time paid work. BUT 29% of poor children do have at least one parent in full-time paid work. Despite the state topping up low wages through Working for Families, even full-time paid work does not necessarily keep families out of poverty.

When I've finished reading Child Poverty in New Zealand, I'll be writing more about this issue. But the focus should not and cannot be solely on poor children, and to come up with useful solutions, any analysis has to take the effects of gender inequality fully into account.

Rugby without the side order of queer-bashing, thanks

Hannah Spyksma cannot expect to go to a rugby game without homophobic abuse, because Eden Park and New Zealand rugby don't want to be the "PC Police."

Quite right too, how on earth could they be expected to challenge men calling players not behaving in manly enough ways for them "homos and faggots"?  What is this, communist fairy land?

We haven't done that anywhere else, after all.  People can be told to stop "acting gay" at work and that's fine, right?  Or be criticised for having "man hands"?

It's not ok for politicians to say or do homophobic things either. 

Let's face it, this list could go on and on.  The point is homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are everywhere, and challenging them is a part of many queer* people's lives, as well as cis-gendered and straight people with integrity and confidence in standing up against oppressions they do not experience first-hand.  And rugby is far from alone in being a safe place for queer* hating.

But my second point is this: being able to go to flagship social events - and in Aotearoa New Zealand, an All Blacks game is a flagship social event - and not be surrounded by abuse should be a right.  We shouldn't have to listen to racist or sexist or gender policing or homophobic or biphobic or transphobic or ableist abuse.  We should be able to expect to enjoy a flagship social event safely.  We should be able to cuddle our same-sex partner or sit in our wheelchair or korero Māori or wear a short skirt or play with our gender presentation or not fit rigid gender norms.......

Without that being terrifying.  Without being scared of being verbally abused.  Without being threatened by people around us. 

So come on sports venues and sports bodies.  Welcome the bravery of Hannah Spyskma.  We shouldn't accept homophobia - or any other kind of oppression, discrimination and hate speech - in our sports grounds or anywhere else.  Other multi-million dollar professional men's sports have taken a stance on homophobia - why not the All Blacks?

Bad science isn't sexy

Gender differences are science, dammit, when will you silly social constructionists get over yourselves and admit girls just like looking after people, trying to be pretty and only having sex if they really, really love him.

When gender differences underpin your scientific investigations into gender differences, we have the kind of causal loop which produces complete nonsense.  And perhaps the worst area for this, scientifically, is around sex and desire.

Scientists have "proved" that women want sex less than men and that men have more sexual partners than women, wanting to spread their evolutionary seed around.  It all goes back to Mr Darwin.

Except they haven't.  Turns out when we remove the gender difference assumption, we remove the gender differences.

In 2003, Michelle Alexander and Terri Fisher used a simple test to investigate attitudes and behaviours around sex, asking questions when their subjects were connected to a fake lie detector, or not.  When asked about sexual partners unconnected to the lie detector, more men reported getting jiggy with it than women.  When subjects believed the lie detector would catch them out - no gender differences.  In fact, women reported ever so slightly more, on average, sexual partners than men.

Then there is the long cherished idea that men will shag anything in the inner-drive-rooted-need to be the daddy.  Speed dating had been previously used to "prove" this.  Basically, men were less choosy in speed dating scenarios, more likely to be keen to give someone a go.

Until you switch who sits still and who approaches the potential date.  Turns out all the earlier studies had men moving around.  Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick swapped the roles in 2009.  Just being the approacher, rather than the approachee, is the key in dating situations.  You are more likely to have a favourable assessment of a potential date if you're the one putting it out there - regardless of your gender.

Finally, attitudes to casual sex might not be quite as different as more neanderthal scientists have previously proven either.  Terri Conley found in 2011 that if you remove situations in which women's assessment of danger might impact (a stranger asking you back to their place for sex), and focus on actual desire (a close friend you think is sexy invites you to spend a few hours of fun), gender differences in enthusiasm for sexual play without commitment disappear.  Again.

The evolutionists aren't going anywhere.  Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote an email to respond to these studies to the New York Times, saying:

“A study which shows you can push some phenomenon around a bit at the margins is of dubious relevance to whether the phenomenon exists.”

 The gender difference is there, dammit, there.  Just look harder.

The more complex gender gets, the more we need male superiority

I first thought about gender testing in sport while reading Mariah Burton Nelson's phenomenal feminist love prose to women's athleticism.  As her target audience - sporty, able-bodied, playing serious representative sports and oh yeah, feminist - her analyis of sports providing a counter-discourse to it being all about the pretty rang true for me.  Sports have given me a sense of my body as functional, useful, strong, competent, all part of an embodiedment that feels privileged rather than typical for women.

Ms Burton Nelson described deliberate gender segregation of sports which had previously been gender mixed, like shooting, as functioning to promote and maintain gender differences, and as importantly, promote and maintain male superiority.  She pointed to sports like gymnastics, in which events were introduced or altered when men started competing, because some of the things women gymnasts could do with their bodies were more difficult for men - and then segregated.  Hence all the upper body strength tests for male gymnasts - complete inventions to make sure men could be good at it.

Women who are athletic and strong are often accused of not being real women.  We break gender rules.  Serena Williams and Martina Navratilova were both called "shemales" repeatedly because of their beautiful muscular tennis; out lesbian Amelie Mauresmo was famously described as "half a man" by fellow player Martina Hingis.  Most recently, weightlifter Zoe Smith had no trouble with being a woman stronger than the majority of men, despite being told her muscles are "unfeminine".  When "throwing like a girl" means seventy metres, is gender inequality just a little destabilised?

I was in the first group of women cricketers allowed access to the elite High Performance Centre in Christchurch in the early 1990s.  We were tested for strength and speed, learnt how to run faster, and got to play with machines that made this sci-fi geek smile.  After the first few of us - all batswomen - had gone through reflex testing, they stopped the tests to make sure the machine was working properly.  Our results, as fast as male cricketers, were pointing to reflexes being a function of the role a sportsperson has in the team, not the gender of the sportsperson.

In 1994 Brian Lara was one of the best batsmen in the world.  Yet he was comprehensively dismissed by star Australian Zoe Goss in a charity match.  If even the best men aren't always better than a woman, what does that mean for other men?

I don't want to over-estimate the importance of sport, but culturally it is perhaps one of the last bastions where completely different treatment of women and men is frequently justified on the basis of biological difference.  And where, to be honest, we don't even know how much biological difference actually exists, because we segregate sports, treat athletes completely differently on the basis of a binary gender assumption, and punish women who are "too good" in all kinds of ways.

The sexist assumption that all men are better than all women at all sports was the reason gender testing was introduced in the 1960s to the Olympics.  The fear was, men were pretending to be women to win medals their country was not entitled to receive.  The early gender tests involved female athletes having to parade naked for judges to decide whether their bodies met the grade.  South African runner Caster Semenya has had to endure this as recently as the last couple of years.

Yet testing every female athlete at the Olympics between 1968 and 1998 revealed the fact that gender and sex are complex.

Three decades of unsuccessfully attempting to develop a definitive test for female sex has given the IOC Medical Commission an intimate scientific knowledge about variations in chromosomal, hormonal and morphological sex.  This elaborate knowledge about sex produced an anxious realisation about the myth of dimorphic sex within sport within the Medical Commission.

The gender verification tests have never discovered a male athlete pretending to be a female athlete.  They have identified some people for whom the gender binary does not fit - intersex people - and in some cases, stopped those people competing as women, even when that was the gender they had been assigned at birth.  The process has also involved rewriting stories of gender variance to create gender certainty.

Now the Olympics have decided on a new strategy - test for testosterone, and if female athletes have "too much", they might be allowed to reduce it medically, but if not they won't be allowed to compete.  Again, we assume that having "male" levels of testosterone will make you a better athlete, even though clearly all the people with "male" levels of testosterone are not male.

This assumption turns out to not be that hot, because 25% of male Olympians have lower testosterone levels than "average" for men.  Maybe testosterone inhibits athletic performance sometimes? 

Gender verification has emphatically shown us that many of our assumptions about gender are incorrect.  This would be amusingly ironic, given it's purpose was the opposite, if it wasn't playing out in real people's bodies, and constraining our ability to embrace our gender identity whatever it runs like, swims like, lies around and reads like.  The fact is, there is more gender overlap than gender difference in most physical skills, and when we pretend otherwise not only are we invisibilising gender variance, we are shoring up a false gender certainty and enscouncing ideas that men are inevitably stronger, faster, more athletic than women.

Is there choice hair?

When we discussed women's pubic hair a while back, there were lots of interesting comments from people with very diverse views on the subject.  So you can just imagine my excitement when someone sent me research which asked female students to grow their body hair - legs and underarm - for 10 weeks and record reactions from others and their own feelings in diary format. 

The 34 participating students were all under thirty, mixed racially (41% non-white) and mixed in terms of sexual orientation (70% opposite sex attracted; 18% both sex attracted; 12% same sex attracted). They did not have to disclose that they were growing their body hair to anyone else, or discuss it if they did not wish.

"Choice" is such a contentious term in feminism.  I am not down with giving women a hard time about any choice we make about how we present ourselves or live our gender, whether that means rebelling, subverting or conforming to traditional ideas of femininity.  But finding ways to consider how our choices are constrained and enabled I find endlessly fascinating, and I'm often frustrated when attempts to discuss this turn into "all choices are equally fine."  Because while they might be equally fine in the choosing, they are certainly not equally fine in the consequences for women.  Which is why, of course, we all pick our battles around rebellion, subversion and conformity, based on energy, desire, analysis, capacity, access to resources etc etc etc.

For me, feminism is about a whole heap more than getting to do whatever I want because "it's my choice."

Back to body hair.  Women participating in this research talked about a cluster of concerns the researchers call "heteronormative social control" and "gendered anxiety" while watching their leg hair lengthen.  They were worried about receiving homophobia; being seen to be queer; or if queer, being outed when they did not wish to be.  For many women, this included being scared about physical violence:

I keep worrying that it’s not just fun and games having body hair. Maybe some guy at a bar will see my armpit hair and think I’m a lesbian and he’ll round up a group of guys and attack me. I have heard about it happening to women who are perceived as dykes. I’ve seen guys harass women who don’t want anything to do with men.

Lots of women also talked about the social controls they experienced around suddenly not being seen as "real women" or male.  One woman's mother told her that her legs looked like men's legs now; others had people in their lives asking if they were wanting to become men.

 I was asked a question by a male coworker if my husband and I have sex during my body hair growth. I replied by saying yes. He asked if my husband thought he was having sex with a “dude.” I told him, “Why would he think that, the rest of my body is still there, I still have boobs and a vagina. I’m still the same person as before, I just have some hair.” I have really enjoyed making the guys at work cringe.

More than half the women talked about feeling "on display" during the assignment, having their underarm hair paraded by others as a "tourist attraction" or "circus act."  There was no question they were breaking gender rules.

The final cluster of concerns women shared in this research was to do with women's bodies and male possession.  Nearly all partnered heterosexual women were asked if their male partner approved of them growing their body hair.  Many women also talked about ongoing social expectations that they should get their body hair under control in order to be attractive to men.

My fiancée told his father about the body hair thing I’m doing. He was very offended by it. The first thing he asked was, “Did she ask for your permission first?” I was so offended by this. As if my fiancée is in control of what I do to my body! I don’t need anyone’s permission for anything I want to do with my body. And if my fiancée said absolutely not, I would do it anyways and probably wouldn’t be marrying him right now. I guess his dad went on and on about how women need to have smooth bodies, that he couldn’t be with his own wife if she didn’t shave. “Women with hairy legs, it’s just not right!” Guys like him are the reason why I was so obsessed with shaving my entire body. Those guys ruined my self-esteem, my self-worth, and my confidence. Body hair isn’t gross. Men like him are!

This research is interesting because it questions the idea of choice explicitly.  Can we "choose" not to shave body hair?  Without punishment?  Or when we call some things "choosing" are we glossing over social controls and constraints which are ultimately harmful to all genders?

I stopped shaving my legs when I was 18, and my underarms when I was 21.  Both were feminist decisions about wanting to explore why body hair on women was unacceptable, and how my body would feel and look if I broke those rules. 

My lovers have only ever expressed support and desire around these choices; no doubt potential lovers who haven't approved have gone elsewhere.  There's also no doubt I'm not interested in being sexual with anyone who doesn't like my body. 

None of my family have ever commented, except for my mother who despite shaving herself explicitly supported me choosing to abstain and said many times she wished she had never started shaving.  But as with the women in this research, there have been a multitude of ways I've been reminded over the years that this "choice" is deviant by others - that, I'm afraid, is another post entirely.

Basically, if it's going to happen.....

I want to live in a world without sexual violence, and I believe that is possible, because I believe the causes of sexual violence are things we can change.  Gender beliefs around men having an unstoppable sex drive, around women expressing desire being problematic or shameful.  The eroticisation of vulnerability and violence.  Restrictive gender rules which tell us all that men should be in control of what is happening sexually, and should know what to do without asking their lovers.  Institutions which use sexual violence as punishment, or as expression of power.  Sex being seen as a spoil of conflict of any kind.  Entitlement to sex being defined by one person in their own terms, regardless of what the other's wishes are.  Not raising children to believe they have control over who touches their bodies.  Not developing language and skills in talking about our bodies and sex.

You get the picture.  So when I read, in an article about a man being raped in prison:

Prison officers do their best to prevent it, but basically, if it's going to happen it'll happen.

 what I think is, to be frank, what absolute defeatist, apologist nonsense.  You know what would stop rapes in prisons?  Institutional condemnation of rape in prison.  Not putting prisoners in double-bunking situations.  Taking action against rape.  Treatment for men in prison - because people who work with male survivors of childhood sexual abuse will tell you that one outcome for male survivors is rage at a system which has failed them.  Rage with frequently ends up with those male survivors becoming violent offenders - not necessarily sexual - sitting in our prisons. 

When we accept that sexual violence is inevitable anywhere, our world dies just a little.  Rape and sexual violence are violations which our social norms about sex, gender, power and violence allow.  We can change all of those social norms to make coerced, unwanted and forced sex completely unacceptable.

Basically, if we think it's going to happen, let's stop it.

Deceit

Fairfax NZ article 'Cross-dressing teen dupes friends for sex'

A 19-year-old British girl lived a double life, dressing up as a boy to dupe her friends into dating her.

Gemma Barker, from Middlesex, wore boy's clothes and gave herself three false identities so she could have sexual encounters with her 15- and 16-year-old friends, the Daily Mail reported.

Prosecutor Ruby Selva told the Guildford Crown Court Barker set up Facebook profiles for her different personas and had individual dress styles for them.

She completely fooled her friends and their families by posing as Aaron Lampard, Connor McCormack and Luke Jones. 

It's very difficult to know exactly what's going on here, particularly given my low low low opinion of media reporting when it comes to anything relating to sexual violence OR gender identity.

There is no question that pretending to be someone else to someone known to you so they will engage in sexual activity with you is non-consensual and morally wrong.

And it is wrong whether you are male, female, both or neither, whether you use a male or a female or a gender neutral name, whether you wear male, female or gender neutral clothes.

The fact the article fixates on these isn't just irrelevant; it's downright dangerous. I have no idea as to the gender identity of the person in question - zie could be a cisgendered woman who enjoyed pretending to be male or a trans man, or any other of a number of possibilities. Irrespective, the way this has been reported on is dangerous.

Because we live in a world people murder trans* people for 'concealing' their assigned-at-birth gender from sexual partners - and feel justified in doing so. Where dressing in clothes that don't match your assigned-at-birth gender - because you identify with another gender, or you enjoy wearing those clothes, or anything in between - is seen as something for people to be wary of. Where social networking sites routinely shut down accounts for not using your "real" name or "real" gender or having multiple accounts (as I have known several people to do in the early stages of transition) - which may seem trivial, but if you're an isolated teenager, Facebook can literally be a lifesaver.

But it seems it's easier to play into bigoted ideas of gender trickery than it is to have a meaningful exploration of what consent means.

It's the putting right which counts

I went to Camp Betty a while back now, and have been meaning to blog about it since. Billed as a "three-day festival celebrating and unpacking sex, sexuality & gender against a backdrop of radical politics and DIY action," Betty wasn't all that for me, but I loved the "Intersex 101" workshop run by some intersex activists from Australia and beyond.

I loved the fact feminism was regularly mentioned as part of the ways in which gender oppression (against intersex people) might be challenged. I loved it because I learnt lots, being woefully ignorant about the kinds of experiences intersex people have in the world, and I felt humbled because it was probably the only workshop I went to where I discovered a new to me way of treating other human beings with the utmost disdain.

By that I don't mean I'm some sort of pain groupie - I'm not, these revelations made me cry - but that I'm pretty familiar with most of the ways gender and sexuality oppression happens. So workshops about trans hatred and same-sex domestic violence, for example, were awful, but not really new to me.

Anyway, the Intersex workshop, and a definition:

Intersex people are people who, as individuals, have congenital genetic, hormonal and physical features that may be thought to be typical of both male and female at once. That is, we may be thought of as being male with female features, female with male features, or indeed we may have no clearly defined sexual features at all.

Basically, intersex people confuse our binary world - not with behaviour, though perhaps that too - but with anatomical differences from medical ideals of female and male. Their very existence proves that our binary world view is flawed. But this flaw has, increasingly since the 1950's, been "put right" by medical professionals with cosmetic surgery and treatments designed to make sure all the external bits of children and infants "look right."

Many believe such medical response should not be performed on children and infants, due to the psychological and physical damage such treatments cause. Since the 1990s, hundreds of intersex people all over the world have come forward to say these treatments should be stopped until intersex people are old enough to come to an informed decision.

What I found even more disturbing though, were some medical interventions being trialled here and now in Cornell University by Professor Dix Poppas. Professor Poppas cuts off bits of little girl's clitorises which are "too big." Then, in front of their parents, he engages in "follow-up clitoral sensory testing" - he uses a vibrator on girls as young as six to see if they still have any feeling in their butchered clitoris. Of course, if they don't it's a little late, but that doesn't seem to worry the medical profession, as he's one of New York Magazine's Doctors of the Year for 2011.

Let me be very plain about this. This is sexual abuse. It should be being shouted from the rooftops by those who care about sexual violence. How this procedure was ever ethically approved is completely beyond me. And the idea that a clitoris can be too big? Sounds like binary-supporting, woman-hating, pleasure-phobic nonsense to me.

If, like me, you find this completely repulsive, feel free to join intersex activists in telling Cornell University.

Then there is the dexamethasone controversy. Dex is being given, now, to pregnant women in US, to make sure their daughters, if they have congenital adrenal hyperplasia, do not develop "ambiguous genitalia." It's not being given to mothers of sons with CAH, because it does nothing to impact on the other characteristics of CAH - it just makes girls "ambiguous genitalia" nice and womanly.

These treatments haven't been medically approved. In fact, there's some ethical concerns because giving dex to pregnant animals leads to birth defects. Early studies with people show brain cell death.

Dr Maria New is one of the world's experts in CAH apparently, and the most enthusiastic cheerleader for pregnant women being given dex. Turns out she also writes papers on women with CAH, not only about "ambiguous genitalia," but on them finding other women sexy in higher numbers than average. One of her collaborators also talks about CAH girls not being interested enough in getting married or playing with dolls. Hell, why wouldn't you prescribe something which might cause brain damage if it's going to result in fewer queers/unnatural women, right?

Pre-natal dex is opposed by intersex activists, endocrinologists and bioethicists.

These are human rights issues beyond doubt. "Intersex 101" was open in it's invitation for non-intersex people to support the struggles for intersex people to have autonomy over their bodies.

And I love their slogan "Everybody equal, nobody left behind."

KAZAM! Rainbow Youth Fundraiser - Akl, Wed 1st June

Many thanks to aboveandbeyondgender for the tip off :-)

Come join in a lil bit of Wednesday night fun..... JUNE 1st - 7:30PM - @ Kamo Bar and Cafe – 382 K Rd, AKL.

We are raising money for our upcoming national Takatapui, Queer and Trans Youth Hui in West Auckland over queens birthday weekend.

Please join Rainbow Youth, Blake Skjellerup, Toby from Kamo Bar and his staff, MC Steven Oates and Ms Heidi, plus special guests for an evening of entertainment and help us blast thru our final fun...draising goal!

Up to 200 youth from across Aotearoa are gathering together for a weekend of fun, activities and discussion. In joining us on June 1st and donating a lil bit, even by purchasing a drink at Kamo, you will help to assist youth to travel the country to be there, cover registration costs for each youth and give these young people an opportunity to belong in as vibrant a community as the one we have in Auckland.

Toby and Kamo staff have offered Kamo Bar and Cafe to host this event, and entertainers have generously offered their time and support free of any fees, so thanks to them.

Facebook event page here.

I'm not just a vagina who likes men.

Cross posted from Well behaved women rarely make history

My name is Scuba. Danger. Nurse. – yes my middle name is danger. I am THAT awesome!!
I was born with a fully formed vagina.
As a child I self identified as female with occasional yearnings to be a boy, when I realised I couldn’t climb trees that well.
As an adolescent I developed late at around 16, with acceptable female hormone levels and a socially acceptable female mammarys.
I became attracted to men once the hormones kicked in. Previous to that they were there to take me for bike rides and make dinner (dad) or fight (every other boy).
I occasionally feel that being a lesbian would be an acceptable choice for me when I see a petite masculine featured woman, but don’t really feel like the sex stuff with them, which makes it all a bit half hearted really.
I am in a long term, committed relationship with a man, and if the cysts on my ovaries are not an impediment I would like to one day become a mother by means of sexual male-female reproduction.

Are you confused about why I shared all of this?
It all seems a bit freaking pointless really, since it tells you exactly jack about who I actually am.
It tells you nothing about my hopes, dreams, personality, ethics, morals, lifestyle, and sense of humour, strengths or weaknesses (unless you count climbing trees).

So why do people who are Gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans have to explain every facet of their lives?
Why, when someone comes out as Trans, do people feel an explanation is due as to what “level/stage” they are at?
Why do people feel that if someone is not straight, they can quiz someone on when, where, how and what they like as if they should validate what they feel?

People are people, no matter who they love, and what their junk is.
Let people tell you who they are, in their way, on their terms.
Find out the usual way, by leering at strangers in bars, and comparing notes on your favourite films.
Because my vagina and sexuality tell you zilch about which film stars turn me on, and whether I want kids or can have them, or what I want to do with my life.

Judge people by the sum of their parts. Not their parts, or who they bump parts with.
(sorry had to do it!)

Putting women first

This post is a quibble about something that may look really tiny, compared to all the Big Issues. But it's been bugging me all week.

Paul Warren’s column on linguistics in Tuesday’s Dom-Post was curious, to say the least. Writing about why English speakers might put one name of a pair first, he recalls a study he helped run some years ago, which included respondents from New Zealand, Britain, and Singapore.

"We gave people printed sheets with pairs of names (these could be both male, both female, or a female name followed by a male name, or a male name followed by a female name). They had to put the names into sentence frames such as ‘–– – and ––– went to the park’, using whatever order they preferred for each pair…
        When the names in our study clearly indicated different sexes, then there was an overall preference for a male name to be followed by a female name rather than the other way round. This preference was very marked for the Singapore English speakers, but less so for both the British and New Zealand English speakers, suggesting that the latter may be influenced a little more by political correctness [my bold].
         On the basis of the overall findings for the New Zealand English speakers in our study, our prediction would be that the Breakfast hosts will become known as Corin and Petra (the male name first, and a more open final sound in the second word).  However, I'd put a bob each way, as I suspect the final vowel in Petra might get elided, giving "Petr'and Corin", with a trochaic rhythmic pattern and a politically correct female-first order [yes, my bold again].”

So let me get this straight. Where there’s a clear preference, even a strong preference, for putting the male name first, that’s just – normal. No comment or explanation needed, or given.

But when this preference becomes “less marked” – so that the female name comes first some of the time, though still not as often as the male name does – that’s because of political correctness? As opposed to a shift towards equality and away from automatically seeing males as taking precedence – a shift which seems to be much more marked in Britain and New Zealand than in Singapore?

The hoary phrase “politically correct” here implies, as it always does, bad faith. In other words, the “reversed” name order is nothing to do with a genuine reflection of changing attitudes and the decline of a kneejerk male-first response. No, the people who do this weird thing – putting the female name first – must be doing it because they somehow want to appear up to date, or fear not being seen to be in favour of equality. They do it self-consciously, it doesn’t come naturally. Because putting female names first is somehow unnatural, eh. Whereas putting male names first isn't.

a call to men

trigger warning for sexual violence.



a must watch. hat tip to shakesville, who have a full transcript.

is it ideal?

i've been meaning to link to this post by pablo at kiwipolitico for some days now. it deals with the depiction of men in advertising on certain types of commercial radio stations:

But three things stand out about the depiction of ideal NZ men in these ads.

[...]

The third and perhaps most interesting aspect of the depiction is its representation of “manly” values. Men are mates; hard drinking, carousing, happy go lucky, staunch (especially when drinking), fast driving, opportunistic and impulsive horn dogs working hard on the ladies. Nowhere in the depiction are there notions of honour, valour, courage, sacrifice, sincerity, solidarity (except with mates), humility, basic intelligence and knowledge of current global affairs, or interest in the needs of women, children and the family. That is a bit odd simply because the early 20 to 35 male demographic is the one that is reproducing the most (presumably a manly trait), has young families, is starting careers and otherwise has the burdens of post-adolescence crashing down on it. Yet the values being reified appear adolescent.

you'll need to read the whole post to find out what the other two aspects are, and i'd strongly encourage you to do that (if you haven't already). i thought it extremely well-written.

what i'm just a little disappointed about is the number of comments, which is not too many. but this is only because i'd like to have seen more of a discussion, especially from the male readers, about how they feel about this kind of portrayal, and how it affects them (if at all). it's not often that we see this kind of discussion (or maybe i'm looking in the wrong places!), so i was really glad to see it come up.

Books and boys: policing masculinity

"Study shows boys and books don't mix", said the Dom-Post headline on Saturday. "Boys think reading books is for girls..."
           In fact the study, by teacher Sheryl Wright, showed nothing of the kind. What it did show was that Year 7 boys (aged around 11) had two different opinions of reading books, depending on whether they were talking to the researcher by themselves or in a group of boys.
          "The minute I got them into the group they started the subtle put-downs...It was all 'that's a girl's book' or 'you're a girl', whereas while they were talking one-on-one they were happy to say they read books."
           This fits perfectly with what a major NZ study of gender and education found. To lift boys' achievement, we have to tackle the way "reading books", and study in general, is cast as "for girls", and the way boys endlessly police each other to hold the line. (When they're older they don't just say it's for girls, they say it's "gay" - an even worse slur on the masculinity of any boy seen to be flouting the rules.)
            Wright says, too, that having a male in the house reading for pleasure is "incredibly powerful for boys", and that if you can find a series they like - such as Harry Potter - you've got them hooked.
            I find it fascinating that after so many years of seeing girls as just naturally deficient in various ways (to explain why they did less well than boys in education), followed by working out how sexism was holding girls back, we're now having to understand how sexism holds boys back too.
           

FGC at Cornell University

Cross posted

Careful - this may be TRIGGERING, and the links may be TRIGGERING.

Dr Dix P. Poppas of Cornell University Medical School has been performing genital surgery on little girls, and then doing follow-up work testing how much sensation the girls have (left). Here is the abstract for the article in which he reported the research: Journal of Urology: Nerve Sparing Ventral Clitoroplasty: Analysis of Clitoral Sensitivity and Viability: Volume 178, Issue 4, Supplement, Pages 1598-1601 (October 2007).

Here is the article on Bioethics Forum which reveals the story.

Bioethics Forum: Bad Vibrations

The Hastings Center, which hosts the Bioethics Forum, is well known for its work in bioethics. I've been reading Hastings Center reports for years, in connection with my work. It is a reliable source. The authors of the post are Alice Dreger and Ellen K Feder. Dreger has been criticised by intersex people, but that particular line of criticism does not seem to have a bearing on this issue.

Alice Dreger has a follow-up post at her Psychology Today blog: Can you hear us now?.

I'm appalled. How could this still be happening, in the 21st century? Dreger and Feder compare the doctor's actions to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, because he conducted his research in plain view, but I think there are closer parallels with Herbert Green and his non-treatment of some women at National Women's Hospital. In both cases, I see a doctor determined to prove that he is right, and to hell with the consequences for the people he is supposed to be trying to help.

The obvious question is how on earth did Dr Pappas get his work approved by Cornell's Ethics Committee? The answer is that he didn't.

How come the article says Poppas had IRB (ethics oversight) approval and we suggest he probably didn't? Because what he has approval for is retrospective chart review, a harmless little look back at what he recorded in the charts as having happened to his patients. What he didn't do was to get approval in advance for the "clitoral sensory testing" that he was writing down in the chart and then used to produce the systematic and generalized conclusions about his technique. This may sound like a technicality. It isn't. If he had sought IRB approval for the "sensory testing," the ethics staff might have sat up and asked him what the heck he thought he was doing to these girls, and they would have tried to make sure the parents were informed about the unknowns and risks, and the girls could have refused to participate.

Source: Alice Dreger's blog post.

This doctor has been using "medical vibratory devices" on little girls and calling it research.

I feel ill.

Melissa has opened a discussion about it: Discussion Thread: Cornell University and FGC, and Melhoukia has been writing about it: This makes me sick: There are not enough content warnings in the world for what you are about to read. I first heard about the article through Feminist Philosophers: FGM at Cornell.

You can contact the Dean of the Cornell Medical School here: dean@med.cornell.edu

things worth listening to...

in lieu of a proper post, i'll do another plug for radio nz by saying you should listen to these interviews:

• this one with geena davis (nine to noon, friday 12th march, 10.10am) about gender equality in children's film and tv. she founded an institute to do research on this issue - go her!
• this one with leslie kenton (also on nine to noon - you're brilliant, kathryn ryan - monday 15th march, 10.07am) about her experiences of sexual abuse
• and this one with phil wallington (afternoons, tuesday 16 march, 13.24, and about 16 minutes into the clip), in which he tells us why he hates all sport on tv.

in regards the latter, i actually don't hate all sports on tv - i actually enjoy watching tennis, and also managed to catch a reasonable amount of the winter olympics coverage because of prime tv's live streaming. but i do agree with a lot of the points he makes and enjoyed the idea of the anti-soccer club (or some such).

sport is, after all, just another form of entertainment equivalent to movies but not reaching the pinnacles of artistic endeavour quite so often - though there are the odd moments where a particular sporting moment has all the best elements of drama and beauty that you could hope for. highly-paid sports stars are no different in my mind to highly paid actors, and very often behave much worse when they aren't performing.

in any case, back to radio nz, if you haven't joined the save radio nz facebook page, you can do so here. and you can sign a petition to the minister of braodcasting here.

gender testing kits

found this clip from morning report yesterday (radio nz, 8.39am) about testing kits that will tell you the gender of your baby from 2 months into the pregnancy. these are seen as controversial, in that there are fears that people will choose to abort if they have the wrong gender baby. and of course, the fear is that they are more likely to abort if there is a female feotus.

when i got pregnant, i wanted to find out the gender of my baby as soon as i was able. however, i was disappointed when the specialist who was looking after me announced that she never revealed this information to parents. it really annoyed me at the time, and it still really annoys me. i wonder if a medical professional actually has the right to withhold that information. at the time, i assumed that the doctor was always right and that i had to accept whatever i was told. "patient's rights" were a concept that had never occured to me. now that i'm older and wiser (or maybe just older!), i might actually have thought about challenging her position.

as for the fear about increased abortions, if i remember correctly, someone mentioned in the clip that there was no evidence for this happening in other countries where the test was already available. and if someone really doesn't want a daughter, they'll find ways to get rid of her, whether this test is available or not. i've heard some pretty nasty stories about female infanticide which i don't feel the need to repeat here, but it certainly isn't a modern concept. not by a long shot.

the point is that if you want to stop abortion of female foetuses, you have to improve equality for women. there's no point mucking around trying to withhold technology. it's the underlying societal values which must change. otherwise all you get is people working around the ban to achieve the same thing.

Good luck raising that gender-neutral child

There is an article called "Good luck raising that gender-neutral child" over at Salon that explores ideas of gender development in children.

The article starts with the following interesting anecdote:

A Swedish couple has refused to reveal the sex of their 2-year-old to anyone -- except those on diaper duty. When word got out about their decision to eschew personal pronouns and sex-appropriate clothing, the parents made international headlines. The mother explained her thinking to the press: "It's cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead."

The Salon article, however, is focussed on discussing physiological and psychological differences between boy and girl children based on recent studies of children.

Full article here.

The very public humiliation of Caster Semenya

It's been hard not to cringe watching the fallout from Caster Semenya's extraordinary 800m win in Berlin. Everything about the way she's been treated and reported on has been wrong, wrong, wrong.

It started with the assumption that an athlete so talented couldn't possibly be a woman. Now that testing has confirmed Semenya is intersex, cringeworthy headlines and comments are popping up all over the place: 'Caster Semenya's sex stripped bare' on Stuff; a comment by Peirre Weiss, the International Association of Athletics Federation secretary general, that "It is clear that she is a woman, but maybe not 100 per cent"; and this Daily Telegraph article, which is so disgraceful that I'm not going to quote it.

What's surprising about Semenya's story is not that an intersex woman is competing at the highest level in athletics, but - as a representative of Intersex Awareness New Zealand pointed out - that the sporting fraternity seems so unprepared to handle the jandal. Semenya surely isn't the first intersex person to complete, and certainly won't be the last. But the world of sport is like the wider world in that regard - neatly divided into a binary, and hostile to those who don't fit exactly on either side of the dividing line. Semenya's story is a reminder of the callousness and lack of understanding with which those who don't meet gender expectations are sometimes treated.

I'm not sure how best intersex can be included in sport, but the answer is surely not to require them to go through public testing regimes, like Caster Semanya, while a sneering media looks on. In all the excited attention to the intimate details of Semanya's biology, the fact that she's an extraordinary sportswoman - and, more importantly, a human being with feelings - has been sadly overlooked.

The reluctant tweenie

In a few days' time, my daughter turns eight. Unbeknown to her, she's about to enter a new consumer group: the tweenies. And buying presents for tweenies is a difficult business, particularly when your tweenie is actually, and quite happily, still a little girl.

M's dad and I agreed that new swimming togs would be good, and dad was duly despatched to the Warehouse. He came back complaining that only two styles were available in M's size - and one style had padded boobs! I was horrified by this. It's not that I can't cope with the idea my daughter will one day grow up and have sex. Rather, it's that there seems to be a dwindling social space in which little girls can be just that. There isn't much you can buy for a girl my daughter's age that is appropriate to her general developmental level, but isn't tweenie-orientated.

More than two decades ago, when I was a similar age to my daughter, I seem to remember girls doing traditional little-girl things until the age of, say, ten or eleven. My schoolfriends and I played with dolls, or pretended to keep house in a tree hut at school. We liked the idea of becoming grown ups, but that transition began later. As the teenage years crept closer, 'adult' activities like going to the movies became more appealing. (These were the days before the internet and mass-produced cheap toys ... it seems like a lifetime ago. And given how strongly traditional gender roles came through in the way my friends and I played, I can't be uncritically nostalgic about the 'good old days'.)

Then, some entrepreneurial individual noticed that girls aged around 8 to 12 were a potential consumer group. Plenty of M's peers are into cellphones, fashion or Bratz dolls, and adore Hannah Montana (even as the conservative portion of the US population tries desperately to prevent Miley Cyrus from becoming an adult, sexual woman). I honestly can't tell whether this tweenie stuff responds to a particular developmental phase, or it's just another example of manufactured need in a commodified society.

Whatever the case, lots of little girls love tweenie paraphernalia. Wanting to play at being grown up is a pretty normal impulse for kids, and so too is a growing interest in sexuality. But it's sad to see girls' curiosity in this area turned into a bunch of commercial enterprises, selling little girls clothing that cultivates the body-image anxiety often felt by teenage girls and older women. And the flood of tweenie commodities sends the message to little girls, like my own, that being grown up is all important - and that there's something wrong with the little girl who still likes ponies and fairies and hanging out with her family.