Everything Old Is New Again: ZOMFG!!! Ads Influence Our Media!

By now, perhaps, you are aware of the uproar about the ScienceBlogs corner of the bloggysphere. PepsiCo has bought started a blog here, called Food Frontiers. Many are unhappy, bloggers and commenters alike. Read PalMD’s take, and commenters there, for one perspective.

One of the potential disadvantages [of a blog network] is advertising and sponsorship. Here at Sb, we’ve been very fortunate in that our content is completely independent. We control anything in the center column. The top and right however belong to Sb, and they use this space to keep the place running. There have been several times when the advertising has been less-than-appropriate, and SEED has responded by altering it, but in this economy, it pays to be flexible. Ad content can serve as blog fodder. There’s nothing preventing those of us who blog here from critiquing the ad content as vigorously as we wish to…PepsiCo’s PR flacks basically own a the center column content on one of our blogs. This is not only a fundamental conflict of interest, it’s also deceptive. If PepsiCo is providing the content, it should, in my opinion, be clearly labelled as advertising.

The only way to be free of any corporate influence over content is to be 100% ad-free, as Ms Magazine so candidly revealed to us at the beginning of the 1990’s in Gloria Steinem’s famous editorial, “Sex, Lies, & Advertising“, with this stunner of an opener:

Work-Life Balance 3: Less Navel-Gazing, More Scholarly And Institutional Structure Analysis!

First post in this series can be found here.
Second post in this series can be found here.
In my second post in this series, I gave the men a cookie, and commenter rpf accused me of…gasp!…being too nice!
I believe this is the first time this has ever happened.

Work-Life Balance 2: On Stepping Up To The Plate

First post in this series can be found here.
The third and final post in this series can be found here.
ScientistMother really wants DrugMonkey to step up to the plate already. She says that DM laid out his own responsibility to deal, on-blog, with work-life balance issues and to share the details of how it goes down at his own home. Find the full quote in the comments at her post or here in Doc Free-Ride’s post.
As is generally the case, I have a few things to say about this.

An Explanatory Note

I have put in (literally) decades of work acting on the assumption that folks are reasonable and well-intentioned, and trying to be effective and get messages across. Part of that time I was even paid to do so.
IRL, for the most part, I try to interact with people like that.
However, I’m sick to puking of seeing so much shit go down for so long and seeing so little change and seeing progress for women in engineering shudder and stall and hearing over and over and over and over again “we just have to wait for the old guard to die off and for spots to open up and for women to work their way up through the ranks and the younger guys will not behave in these stupid ways the older d00ds do and things are getting better and you can’t make women go into engineering if they don’t want to and men and women just prefer different career choices and it’s a fact of life that women have babies and there’s nothing you can do about it and we’d love to have on campus daycare for everyone but in these tight fiscal times we have to make tough choices and I know that Professors X and Y are not so good with students from underrepresented groups but nobody else really wants to do the student counseling job or the recruiting job and besides if they went back to their departments they wouldn’t really be able to teach or do research and we think this research on how to make departments more welcoming to women is very interesting but we don’t feel that we want to make any changes to what we are doing in our department at this time because our two women professors haven’t told us that anything is wrong and things will get better as time goes on and if there were great women scientists they would have been nominated for the National Academy but the fact that they weren’t proves there aren’t that many and I would be more interested in hearing what you have to say if you weren’t so angry and I can’t help it if I’m staring at your boobs because evolution makes me do it and if you are going to wear that sexy shirt to the lab you have to expect to be treated like a sex object and if you are going to dress in a sack it just proves that all engineering women are ugly dykes and you really cannot expect to gain any allies for your cause when you are so angry and you are hurting the feminist cause and anyway why are you all worked up about privileged women academics who really have it pretty good when women in Some Other Country are being tortured and raped and anyway racism is the real issue* and things are getting better with each generation and my best friend is a woman scientist and she’s never experienced discrimination and this is all just a bunch of political correctness liberal blather and I believe things are getting better and why are you so angry…”
My blog is not primarily about assuming that people are reasonable and well-intentioned and trying to get messages across to them. I’m not exactly sure what it’s all about, but one thing it is about is a place for me to give voice to the decades of accumulated frustration and anger, to not have to talk reasonably and peaceably and calmly to douchenozzles that are driving me fucking crazy. Very few people who work for a living can ever afford to give voice to those feelings and thoughts in public, to analyze the douchebaggery for what it is. I couldn’t when I was working. Now I can.
What can I say? I am a hairy-legged feminazi.
*anyway, racism is indeed the real issue AS WELL, you disingenuous douchebag.

Give the “Witch Hunt” Whine a Rest Already, Please

Jeebus, people, you have GOT to get some new whiney whines, you Whiney McWhinersons.
I’m talking about you, you whiney whiners. Those of you who get all whiney and defensive whenever anyone dares to point out that you have stepped in the dogshit. Stepping in dogshit is an accident and it is something that all of us do upon occasion. Now, when you step in dogshit, do you want to just go blithely prancing about the place, spreading the dogshit hither and yon, stinking up the place to high heaven? Or do you want someone to point out that, jesus h. christ, there’s a great big steaming heap o’ smelly dog turds trailing off your right shoe, why don’t you go scrap ’em off? Or better yet, just get yourself a whole new pair of shoes, for sure Isis can recommend something stylish.
What you do not what to do, under any circumstances, is trot out that old whiney whine about “oh noes! a witch hunt!” Because now, not only do you have dogshit on your shoe, you have “I am an ignorant fool” tattooed on your face. Perhaps you are not familiar with the google? Try typing “witch hunt” into it. Your friend, Wikipedia, says:

A witch hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials.

Crying “witch hunt” every time someone points out that you stepped in the dogshit is an insult to the horrific suffering and deaths of the thousands of women who truly were persecuted just because they were women. It’s also an insane mockery to liken people speaking up for diversity and social justice to killers of women.
Have you been burned at the stake? Drowned? Pressed to death with stones? Hung? Tortured? Forced to give false witness identifying other “witches” who will subsequently be questioned, tortured, hung/drowned/burned etc.? Is mass hysteria sweeping your local village or region, and hundreds of women are being killed? No? I do not think, then, that you are part of any “witch hunt”.
No. I think you have dogshit on your shoes. Which is a lot stinkier than some poor grad student who doesn’t share the U.S. obsession with showering, deodorizing, and perfuming away every last trace of normal body odor Real Americans find so disgusting. Still, stepping in the dogshit, as I said, happens to us all now and then. It’s not a measure of our character or our self-worth. How we react when it’s pointed out is a different story. Do we cling to our shitty shoes, track the shit all over the place, and then point at some foreign brown dude who, you know, you can hardly understand, and his food smells funny, and he just won’t use Axe body spray? Or do we stop a minute, lift our foot, and look at what we’re unintentionally dragging around with us? Oh shit.
Oh, I know. You’re just trying to help them deal with The Way Things Are. And those idealistic diversity nuts just don’t understand How Things Work Around Here. But the issue is not, how do things work around here. It’s how are you going to work around the things that are here.
You can help people negotiate their way through a treacherous, oppressive, racist, patriarchal hierarchy in a way that lets them come out the other side with some part of their soul still intact. Or you can apologize for the oppressor. Whiney “oh noes! witch hunt!” McWhinerson, are you aiming for the former? Or defaulting to the latter? Are you somewhere in between? Do you even know? Maybe you should take some time and think about it.
I wrote this all in English, the official language of How Things Work Around Here. I hope that’s not a problem for you.

Whatever Happened To “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar”?????

I was catching up on reading at Female Science Professor’s place and came across her post: Women Girls.
FSP, as far as I can tell, seems to be saying that the young ones these days are all hip with the term “girl” for women even into their 30’s because…I don’t know why, it’s a peer thing, and we old biddies wouldn’t understand. We must accept that the times they are a-changing. Girls just wanna have fun?
Perusing the comments, I gather that “woman” is stodgy, or P.C. (!), and too mature and “girls” these days are putting off adulthood, and can’t think of themselves as women.
To this, I say, what a load of horsecrap we have have been sold…

You Femsplainers Just See Sexism Everywhere

Over at the mansplaining thread, you can read literally hundreds of hilarious, annoying, frustrating, heartbreaking stories of how women are constantly subjected to intrusive, incessant, insensitive, inane mansplaining. Interspersed you will also find comments from d00dly d00ds whinging away about how awful it is that women are talking so MEAN about men, and their mansplanations about how mansplaining doesn’t exist. Then some douche tried to coin the phrase femsplaining.
Femsplaining, as best I can tell, is a phenomenon that arises in the following manner:

Things You Just Shouldn’t Say Even If You Mean Well

I’m speaking from experience, people, having had most of these lobbed at me one time or another. Please feel free to add to the list in the comments section.
1. “When is the baby due?”
I’m not pregnant, you douchebag. I’m fat. If I were pregnant, I’d probably be prancing around telling everyone and her goddamn sister about it because that’s what we do in our society. Or, if I were pregnant, and afraid I might lose the baby, maybe I wouldn’t want to talk about it. In any case, if I were pregnant, and you haven’t heard about it yet, wait for me to talk to you about it. Otherwise, STFU. Now move out of my way and let me at the food in the buffet line, because I am so going to need more chocolate after your insensitive remarks. Oh yeah, DON’T follow up with, “Oh…you looked pregnant…”
2. “Wow! You’ve lost so much weight! You look GREAT!”
Yes, you douchebag. I’ve lost weight because I’ve been SERIOUSLY ILL for the last year and unable to eat almost anything. But thanks. I appreciate your comments and sure, I’d be happy to share my miracle migraine diet with you. It goes like this: First, have a stroke. Next, start having debilitating migraines every two to three days. Lose your job. Become unable to eat anything containing peanuts, yoghurt, bananas, chocolate, and the least trace of onion or onion powder (including ketchup). Try every preventative medicine in the pharmacy, and experience a fascinating and alarming array of side effects. Keep this up for one to three years. You, too, will lose thirty pounds like magic! If that doesn’t work, try cancer.
3. “When are you/you two going to get pregnant?”
When Mr. Z and I lived in Kansas, we used to get harassed ALL THE TIME by the neighbors on our street about when were we gonna reproduce. I mean, it was vigilant social nagging to have babies. We were one of only two couples on the street without kids, and the only couple who had not expressed a desire to have kids. Finally, one day, when there were a bunch of us in a circle out on our front lawn hanging out, and the “you ought to have kids” crap started up again, I just said, “Did you ever think, when you tell people that they ought to have kids, that maybe some people don’t have kids because they can’t have kids?” They STFU and never bothered me again. Mr. Z and I never actively wanted to have kids, though if we had gotten pregnant we would not have been upset about it. I just can’t imagine how I would have felt with that incessant nagging if we had actually been trying and not able to conceive. I hope to hell those idiots will think twice before they start in on other women who have “failed” to pop out babies on a socially acceptable timetable but who knows how long the lesson lasted. DON’T BE THOSE PEOPLE!
4. “You are SO LUCKY to get to stay home all the time!”
Thanks, moron. I am sure you work your ass off at your job and would love to have a break. I feel your pain. So take a goddamned vacation already. But please – do not distance yourself from your fear of what happened to me by telling yourself that it was really a lucky break that I had a stroke and lost my job and “get” to stay home all the time. Seriously.
5. “Everything happens for a reason.”
In the same vein, please do not tell me that it was God’s mysterious will that I have a stroke and lose my job so that I would be available to provide care for my mother just at the time when she needs me. I am sure that is comforting to you and your world view but frankly, it makes me want to blow chunks on your shoes. Maybe God could have sent me a winning lottery ticket instead, so that I could just be independently wealthy and not need to work – and then I could take you out to dinner, too! I think that would have been a lot nicer and more thoughtful of God than sending me a stroke, but what do I know.
6. “So, was it the high blood pressure, or the high cholesterol?”
I can’t tell you how many times people I barely know have probed me for the moral failing that caused my stroke – even after I have told them that it was caused by a migraine. When I tell these nosy douchehounds that I had neither, they reward me with looks of disbelief. Surely I must have been a bad person in some way, to have earned such misfortune (despite it having been God’s will, see #5 above).
People – really – you have got to stop this kind of talk. Bad crap happens for no good reason. Peoples’ bodies are their own business. Repress the urge to comment on their appearance and what they are or are not doing with them. Stick to things like “hi, how are you doing?” and then actually listen to the answer. Please. For the sake of my sanity.
Thank you. That is all.

Thinking Again About The Production of Genius

I am a fan of Oliver Sacks, and will read just about anything he has written – though, interestingly enough, I find myself so far unable to make my way through Migraine. Perhaps this has something to do with the cover illustration of a mosaic aura, which twice induced an aura (scintillating fortification) and subsequent migraine in me. If you are not a migraine sufferer, you might find this slide show of migraine art interesting, for it does depict the migraineur’s experience at the onset of aura. Migraineurs, be warned: viewing the paintings in the slideshow could possibly be triggering for a migraine. Regular botox injections (every three months) have more or less eliminated my auras, if not my migraines though, alas, it appears that viewing the slideshow was still able to induce the headache if not the aura that precedes it.
Well, I find I have thoroughly digressed myself right in the very first sentence of this post, for what I meant to write about is another Oliver Sacks book entirely, and then not even exactly about the book.

The Problem of the Problem of Motherhood in Science

Over at Fairer Science, at the end of an excellent rant about the uselessness of one-shot workshops, Pat Campbell writes:

One other thing, if I see one more article about why there aren’t more women in science that concludes “it’s the children” I am going to run amuck. This one says “Women don’t choose careers in math-intensive fields, such as computer science, physics, technology, engineering, chemistry, and higher mathematics, because they want the flexibility to raise children…”
Say what? Good to know that it’s only the math intensive fields; so friends if you want a science career and a family go to the life sciences or the earth sciences or the agricultural sciences because it’s just the math that makes science careers incompatible with family life, Who knew?

Meanwhile, one of my readers recently called my attention to the 12 March 2009 issue of Nature, which has a book review of Emily Monosson’s Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory. The publisher calls “the unique difficulties of balancing a professional life in these highly competitive (and often male-dominated) fields with the demands of motherhood [an] obvious but unacknowledged crisis–the elephant in the laboratory”.
Is it really? Combining motherhood – combining parenthood – with a career in science is certainly no easy task, but is there, perhaps, an excessive focus on this as the issue for women in science? Is motherhood + science, in some ways, a red herring?