Smile, Boys! It Would Make The World So Much Prettier For Us Women!

The other day, a male friend of mine was at the grocery store in the check out line. He was not feeling particularly happy, and, I guess, was frowning a little. A dude in line behind him tapped him on his shoulder to get his attention and when he turned around, the dude said, in a bright voice, “You dropped something,” and was pointing to the floor. My male friend looked down and said, “I don’t see anything.” The dude then told him, “You dropped your smile.” My male friend was not amused. He turned around going back to his business saying, “Oh, OK.” The man proceeded to walk away mumbling, “Don’t look so serious. It’s only the grocery store.”
That doesn’t sound right, does it?
No, because it really happened to a woman. There, that feels more…normal, doesn’t it?
Isis got a letter from a PhD student who was told in a teaching evaluation that she needs to smile more. Isis gave her some excellent advice but I want to address this whole “needs to smile more” issue from a different angle.

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:

The Thread That Keeps On Giving…

That mansplainer thread just won’t quit – it is the gift that keeps on giving. Well, if you can call continuing recitations of the endless ways women are constantly mansplained by the d00dly mainsplainers of the world a “gift”. Along with the mansplainer d00ds who show up to mansplain how mansplaining does not exist, should not be called mansplaining if it does exist, is a benign and non-sexist practice if it does exist, and anyway, I THOUGHT THIS WAS SCIENCEBLOGS WHAT ABOUT THE SCIENCE DEAR GOD WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE POOR SCIENCE????
Which brings us to Ace’s most excellent and apropos comment:

Is there another word like manventing for conjuring elaborate situations in your head that explain away any situations that contradict your “facts”? Ex: I was mansplained to that the reason one of my homework questions was wrong was not because I had simply lost track of a wayward negative sign, but because women cannot understand physics with their poor tiny non-spatial brains. Yet when I pointed out that that I had scored roughly 20% higher in physics on our (non-curved) graduation exams than he, he manvented the “fact” that the government adjusts womens’ scores in math and science to make them feel better. Or something. Because I didn’t actually write a perfect exam, I just scored higher than the rest of the inferior females.

You cannot make this shit up. Oh wait, you can. If you are a manventer.
Ladies of the mansplainer thread, I am happy that you have found community, and a word for that which has so plagued your existence. Naming experience is so very important – once we can give a name to what is happening to us, it has a little less power over us, at least a little less power to make us feel so crazy about it. There’s a whole category on this blog called “naming experience” to reflect that importance. I’m just sorry that there are so many of you, and that your unhappy mansplaining experiences are so varied and many.
Here’s hoping all your mansplainers, with their manvented facts, develop a long-lasting case of laryngitis. I’m talking years-long. May you enjoy the sweet sounds of mansplaining silence, at least for awhile in this month celebrating women’s history.

“The Myth of Black Disingenuity”: Exploring the Intersection of African American History and the History of Technology

I failed to produce this post in time for DNLee’s Diversity in Science carnival – Black History Month: Broadening STEM Participation at Every Level. That’s mostly because I had a bunch of personal stuff going on in the past couple weeks that just wouldn’t leave me alone. I think I’ll be back to more regular blogging now.
You might have already read my brief post on Hercules, the chef enslaved by George Washington who eventually escaped to freedom. In it I noted “It was no small thing to be a chef under such circumstances, and the degree of technical skill required was surely astonishing.” Even the highest tech 18th century kitchen still demanded a range and depth of technical competence that today’s average pampered cook just can’t imagine.
When I read about Hercules in that fantastic set of articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, I might not have given much thought to the degree of technical skill he must have possessed to turn out state dinners in such circumstances. What put me in the state of mind to ponder such matters was a book I had recently begun browsing: A Hammer in Their Hands: A Documentary History of Technology and the African-American Experience, ed. Carroll Pursell. This book would be worth its price if only for the introductory essay which contextualizes the collection of primary sources that follows with the intersection of African-American history and the history of technology, all in a few short pages. Pursell speaks of the “prehistories” of these fields, and notes the following:

Maternal Sentimentality and “The Box”

Not that it matters much with this dreadful film, but if you’re worried about spoilers, don’t read this post till you’ve seen the movie. You’ve been warned. Proceed past the jump at your own risk. Movie trailer can be found here.

Cooking: A Primitive Protection Racket

Bloggingheads.tv has John Horgan interviewing Richard Wrangham of Harvard on a variety of topics related to his new book Catching Fire. The part of interest to me – and to our ongoing discussion on patriarchy – relates to cooking as a “primitive protection racket” in which men agree to protect women’s food supply in return for being fed so they can just hang out and do manly shit. It’s a fascinating discussion, if you can get past Horgan giggling in sheepish delight every time Wrangham points out what a shitty deal patriarchy is for women.
Interestingly, this section of the interview is advertised as “ancient connections between food and sex” but it would more properly be described as “ancient connections between food and the sexual division of labor”. I guess “sex” is more sexy and sells better than “sexual division of labor”. Because Wrangham clearly points out that the sexual division of labor that involves women cooking and feeding men is NOT related to who’s having sex with whom.
He also clearly makes the point that this sexual division of labor is not a result of our biology, but a consequence of a choice of a particular set of social relations – one of which, in modern industrial societies, we have chosen in many ways to undo. Single men are able to feed themselves, if only by ordering pizza, and married men often do the cooking these days.

Incidentally, the mini-review of Wrangham’s book on Amazon illustrates why the term “mankind” is not an appropriate substitute for “humankind”:

By making food more digestible and easier to extract energy from, Wrangham reasons, cooking enabled hominids’ jaws, teeth and guts to shrink, freeing up calories to fuel their expanding brains. It also gave rise to pair bonding and table manners, and liberated mankind from the drudgery of chewing (while chaining womankind to the stove).

The second sentence is trying to have its cake and eat it, too. It sounds sort of nice on first glance with that oppositional mankind and womankind. Until you realize that those who were liberated from the drudgery of chewing were, well, everyone, women as well as men. The sentence sounds like it’s working to say men got liberated from x while women got chained to y by the move to cooking, but that’s not what happened. Humans got liberated from x, while simultaneously, a subset of humans, women, got chained to y. Using the term humankind would make it clearer that women simultaneously benefited from and were harmed by the move to cooked food. Using mankind as a substitute for humankind attempts to work both meanings into this sentence. First, the fuller and true meaning, that humans benefited from something that also harmed a subset of humans. Second, the less true oppositional meaning that men (only) gained and women were harmed. That second oppositional meaning also serves to reinforce the notion that mankind really means men and that women are a special (lesser) case of mankind – a subtextual meaning that the use of the word humankind in this instance would not convey.

Zuska’s Outreach Project For D00dly D00ds

Well, that’s quite a vigorous discussion we’ve all been having these past few days over proto-feminist d00ds, no? I am grateful to you all for your participation and for the many good suggestions made to help proto-feminist d00ds along the path of growth. In case some of you missed it, Comrade Physioprof offered his own handy-dandy guide for d00dly commenters over at Isis’s place.
With all the interest in these two posts, I’m thinking that maybe we need to spend a little more time talking to/with/for the d00dly d00ds. Herewith, I am proposing Zuska’s Outreach Project For D00dly D00ds. Specifically, I’m going to suggest that those of you who are interested, get a copy of Allan Johnson’s The Gender Knot and read along with me. We’ll take a chapter a week and discuss here on blog for everyone’s pleasure and enlightenment. Discussion of first chapter to commence on Wednesday, May 27, which for you U.S. folks is the Wednesday after Memorial Day weekend. Now you have something to read while grilling the burgers during the cookout.

What Should a 20-year-old Proto-Feminist Guy Be Reading?

In the midst of a vigorous discussion on my last post, reader Deatkin expressed his frustrations as to how he might engage in a positive manner in a discussion of feminist issues. In this case, it was not the hairy-legged man-hating feminazi Zuska who was intimidating; it was Comrade Physioprof.

Now, I’m perfectly willing to accept that the problem lies with me on this… In sum, I may simply be too immature (I’m 20 and a mere undergraduate) to think broadly and imaginatively enough on feminist issues in order for me to reach a conclusion that somebody such as [Comrade Physioprof] would find satisfactory… But instead of attributing comments that you perceive as off-base to some insidious, malignant strain of male paternalism, isn’t it more likely that the person is someone like me, genuinely troubled by all the ways in which women are inhibited and made uncomfortable by men in society, but uncertain as to what attitudes we could hold that women would appreciate? Isn’t it possible that people like me are actually afraid that self-described male champions of feminism such as yourself will ridicule our attempts to communicate solidarity with feminism and embarrass us in front of the women we are trying to support? That’s definitely the case for me.I feel that most men (in my age group, at least) want to support women’s issues, and maybe it is our fault if we support them inappropriately, but it is definitely your fault if we persist in our ways because you mocked rather than enlightened us. I would appreciate, but am certainly not demanding, a comment, detailing some of the ways in which you explicitly and constructively promote feminism in general and women in academia in particular, and providing some sort of template from which a male such as myself could go about doing the same.

I will not go so far as to agree with Deatkin that it is CPP’s fault (or anyone else’s fault) if he “persists in his ways” because of mocking or anything else. If one is committed to social justice and equity, then one must proceed down that path no matter what obstacles, mocking included, one runs into. Getting your feelings hurt is not sufficient cause to stop educating yourself about how to be a better human being.
But I do think we can make the effort to lend a brother a hand now and then, no? Pass along some good advice, point them to sources of information. I’m not suggesting we baby them and spoon feed them every bit of information they need to have. Just sayin’, I didn’t come to my gloriously enlightened feminist state all on my own. I had teachers. I took classes. I had books. I had a biweekly reading group of fab feminist babes who pushed me to think.
So, Deatkin, here are Zuska’s Guidelines For Dudely Proto-Feminist Development:

1. Get thee to a bookstore. Or online to Amazon, and purchase for thyself a copy of Allan Johnson’s The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy. You may also wish to read his Privilege Power and Difference. Mr. Johnson explains to d00ds how being a feminist man does not make your balls shrivel and penis drop off. He explains how patriarchy is actually bad for men, too. I think it’s good for men to hear another man talking about these issues.

2. Taketh thee an introductory women’s studies course. And while in said course, try to listen more than speak. When speaking, try to ask questions to clarify points and learn more, rather than to pontificate and explain things to the ladies. If you behave in this manner, you may find that the ladies will occasionally ask you for your perspective. Even if they don’t, you will learn a hell of a lot just by listening and reading. I’m not just talking pie in the sky theory, either. You may learn, for example, as one young man I know did, about the existence of the clitoris and its central role in the female orgasm. Women’s studies classes are life-changers, I’m tellin’ ya.
3. Read thou freely and often amongst the feminist blogs. You will want to read the women-and-science blogs, of course, if you are a scientist (see here and here for a comprehensive list of links) but you will also want to read others. Bitch, PhD is a good one. Feministe (and anything on their fabulous blogroll), Shakesville, and, let us not forget, Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog. Read Echidne’s Feminism Series.

This should give you a good start. Try to remember that it’s more or less a lifelong process, this un-learning of the prejudices and stereotypes we breathe in daily, that our brains have bathed in since birth. It’s a little like gardening. You work the soil, you put in the best-looking plants you can get your hands on, but it’s all going to go to hell if you don’t water and weed regularly. It’s so very easy to fall back into old stereotypes; gender schemas aren’t obvious unless you are on the lookout for them. (And check out these tutorials on gender schemas.)
Readers, I ask you: what other resources would you recommend to a 20-year-old proto-feminist d00d? What have you read that was helpful in developing your own feminist viewpoints? Dudes, how did your own feminist journey begin? Leave your stories in the comments, please!

What Should a 20-year-old Proto-Feminist Guy Be Reading?

In the midst of a vigorous discussion on my last post, reader Deatkin expressed his frustrations as to how he might engage in a positive manner in a discussion of feminist issues. In this case, it was not the hairy-legged man-hating feminazi Zuska who was intimidating; it was Comrade Physioprof.

Now, I’m perfectly willing to accept that the problem lies with me on this… In sum, I may simply be too immature (I’m 20 and a mere undergraduate) to think broadly and imaginatively enough on feminist issues in order for me to reach a conclusion that somebody such as [Comrade Physioprof] would find satisfactory… But instead of attributing comments that you perceive as off-base to some insidious, malignant strain of male paternalism, isn’t it more likely that the person is someone like me, genuinely troubled by all the ways in which women are inhibited and made uncomfortable by men in society, but uncertain as to what attitudes we could hold that women would appreciate? Isn’t it possible that people like me are actually afraid that self-described male champions of feminism such as yourself will ridicule our attempts to communicate solidarity with feminism and embarrass us in front of the women we are trying to support? That’s definitely the case for me.I feel that most men (in my age group, at least) want to support women’s issues, and maybe it is our fault if we support them inappropriately, but it is definitely your fault if we persist in our ways because you mocked rather than enlightened us. I would appreciate, but am certainly not demanding, a comment, detailing some of the ways in which you explicitly and constructively promote feminism in general and women in academia in particular, and providing some sort of template from which a male such as myself could go about doing the same.

I will not go so far as to agree with Deatkin that it is CPP’s fault (or anyone else’s fault) if he “persists in his ways” because of mocking or anything else. If one is committed to social justice and equity, then one must proceed down that path no matter what obstacles, mocking included, one runs into. Getting your feelings hurt is not sufficient cause to stop educating yourself about how to be a better human being.
But I do think we can make the effort to lend a brother a hand now and then, no? Pass along some good advice, point them to sources of information. I’m not suggesting we baby them and spoon feed them every bit of information they need to have. Just sayin’, I didn’t come to my gloriously enlightened feminist state all on my own. I had teachers. I took classes. I had books. I had a biweekly reading group of fab feminist babes who pushed me to think.
So, Deatkin, here are Zuska’s Guidelines For Dudely Proto-Feminist Development:

1. Get thee to a bookstore. Or online to Amazon, and purchase for thyself a copy of Allan Johnson’s The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy. You may also wish to read his Privilege Power and Difference. Mr. Johnson explains to d00ds how being a feminist man does not make your balls shrivel and penis drop off. He explains how patriarchy is actually bad for men, too. I think it’s good for men to hear another man talking about these issues.

2. Taketh thee an introductory women’s studies course. And while in said course, try to listen more than speak. When speaking, try to ask questions to clarify points and learn more, rather than to pontificate and explain things to the ladies. If you behave in this manner, you may find that the ladies will occasionally ask you for your perspective. Even if they don’t, you will learn a hell of a lot just by listening and reading. I’m not just talking pie in the sky theory, either. You may learn, for example, as one young man I know did, about the existence of the clitoris and its central role in the female orgasm. Women’s studies classes are life-changers, I’m tellin’ ya.
3. Read thou freely and often amongst the feminist blogs. You will want to read the women-and-science blogs, of course, if you are a scientist (see here and here for a comprehensive list of links) but you will also want to read others. Bitch, PhD is a good one. Feministe (and anything on their fabulous blogroll), Shakesville, and, let us not forget, Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog. Read Echidne’s Feminism Series.

This should give you a good start. Try to remember that it’s more or less a lifelong process, this un-learning of the prejudices and stereotypes we breathe in daily, that our brains have bathed in since birth. It’s a little like gardening. You work the soil, you put in the best-looking plants you can get your hands on, but it’s all going to go to hell if you don’t water and weed regularly. It’s so very easy to fall back into old stereotypes; gender schemas aren’t obvious unless you are on the lookout for them. (And check out these tutorials on gender schemas.)
Readers, I ask you: what other resources would you recommend to a 20-year-old proto-feminist d00d? What have you read that was helpful in developing your own feminist viewpoints? Dudes, how did your own feminist journey begin? Leave your stories in the comments, please!

D00ds – Step AWAY From Your Caves!

Every manly man of means these days has gotta have a man-cave, right? Every man gotta be a caveman, right?

Wrong. D00ds, step away from your caves! You must read The Caveman Mystique, and if you cannot, as a self-respecting caveman, be bothered to read a whole freakin’ book, at least read this post over at The World’s Fair. Fab interview with Caveman Mystique author Martha McCaughey.
Maybe if you read the book in a techno-geeky way, say, on Kindle, you could preserve your caveman status even as you are deconstructing it????
Image from Flickr, posted by VonMurr http://www.flickr.com/photos/20193184@N00/920433587