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This was how Tony Blair’s Al Jazeera interview was reported in the Sunday Star Times:

Prime Minister Tony Blair has admitted the Irqa war has been a disaster, in an interview on Arab TV channel al-Jazeera. Challenged that western intervention had ’so far been pretty much of a disaster’, Blair said: ‘It has.’ But he blamed resistance by insurgents rather than failures of planning.

What he actually said was:

He added: “But you see what I say to people is ‘Why is it difficult in Iraq?’ It’s not difficult because of some accident in planning, it’s difficult because there’s a deliberate strategy - al-Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shiite militias on the other - to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war.”

I think the Sunday Star Times summary is awesome, because it points out how ridiculous Tony Blair’s argument is: “There was nothing wrong with our planning, the problem was that there were some people in Iraq that didn’t want to be invaded.” Which is presumably something that they should have planned for.

But he’s right about one thing (I promise this will be the only time I will claim Tony Blair was right) - the problem of Iraq isn’t a problem of poor planning. No amount of planning would have solved the fundamental problem which is that they should have stayed the fuck out of Iraq.

Right now, when people are thinking about ‘other options’ it’s important to say loud and long that the only solution is to end the occupation.

The New Zealand government has sent troops to Tonga to prop up the Monarchy, and help squash pro-democracy protests. Agitation against the current situation in Tonga has been growing, there was a huge public service strike last year, and the pro-democracy movement is getting bigger and more organised. The monarchy control the economy of Tonga as well as its political life, the royal family own many of the companies that control essential industries.

The Tongan parliament planned to stop sitting for the year without debating proposals for reform, so they would have to wait until next year. There were huge protests against this and they were ignored. As people realised that they were being ignored pro-democracy supporters started destroying the property of the government and the royal family. The government has declared martial law, and Australia and New Zealand have sent troops to Tonga to support the current government.

I don’t know enough about the situation right this second to make informed comment, but I wanted to make it clear that I support the pro-democracy movement in Tonga, and the riots doesn’t change that at all.

The Sunday Star Times has a really good article:

Dr Sitiveni Halapua, co-author of an official report on political change in the kingdom, warned in January that the kingdom was slipping into violence. In Auckland yesterday he told the Sunday Star-Times “very serious problems lie ahead”, and called for Prime Minister Fred Sevele to stand down.

A joint contingent of New Zealand and Australian troops flew into Tonga yesterday at Sevele’s request. It includes 62 New Zealand Defence Force personnel plus police and other government staff.

Halapua said Tonga was proud of never having been colonised, and that Sevele, who is royally appointed, had made a serious mistake by inviting foreign forces in.

“That says a lot about him and his government. He knows very well that people don’t have confidence in him any more. In other different governments, they would step down,” he said.

“If Australia and New Zealand police and army are there to prop up the government, they are propping the government up against everybody else. It’s not just the pro-democracy (protesters).”

Halapua said there was a belief among some some people in Nuku’alofa that the New Zealand and Australian forces were coming “to make people afraid and to support the government”.

New Zealand indymedia is also doing really good coverage - I’d recommend their latest feature - which also links to some important back story.

I ran into a couple of friends after they’d been to see The Wind that Shakes the Barley and they described it as a great movie, very harrowing. This seemed to me to be a good reason to avoid it - I’m actually fine not being harrowed.

I hadn’t even meant to go and see it, my friend Josie and I had planned to go see The Devil Wears Prada, guarateened to annoy - not harrow. But due to a minor case of cashlessness we were both suffering from we missed it, so we decided to give Ken Loach’s movie a go instead. It is an incredible movie, I definately recommend it, even though ‘harrowing’ isn’t a bad description.

This isn’t exactly a review, more a discussion of the things that I thought about after watching this movie. I don’t so much review movies as dissect them - a habit that some people find annoying (but I’m not quite sure what the fun in movies are if you can’t discuss the portrayl of gender roles for an hour afterwards). Despite not being a review there are spoilers - so stay away if you don’t like that sort of stuff(and you should go because it’s good - but take tissues, because it’s really, really sad).

The Wind that Shakes the Barley is set in Ireland in 1920, a land which was under British occupation. The main character is a doctor who is about to travel to England, because he’s got a job in a big hospital. His friends ask him to stay to help fight the British, particularly after the British army brutually murder one of their friends. He refuses, until a relatively minor incident at the railway station as he’s leaving that changes his mind.

It’s odd, watching a guerilla army operate on rolling green hills with unwieldy rifles. I’m not used to watching people fight in suits, with vests, watch chains - and an array of slightly ridiculous hats. The film is obviously, at least partly, a comment on current occupations. I think that part of what gives that comment its power is this dissonance. Period movies have a whole set of expectations - and generally it doesn’t involve ambushing soldiers to steal their weapons. We also have a whole lot of expectations about war movies, which generally make it very difficult to say anything worth saying about war.

But we don’t have any preconceptions, filmic or otherwise, about 1920s Ireland (and I’m sure I wasn’t the only audience member who knew very little about 1920s Ireland). So I think people are much more likely to accept the arguments about the necessity of resistance than they would if the film was set in Iraq, or even Vietnam. Partly that’s just plain racism - but it’s about the fact the movie is set in the past.

The weakest part of the film was the love story, whereby the main character falls in love with the only female character who does anything.* Don’t get me wrong I loved Sinnead (the woman in question) - the actress did a great job with an under-written role. But the narrative they told was extremely problematic from a feminist perspective (see I told you we’d get to gender roles).

I don’t have a problem with movies that depict homosocial realities. In some times and places women and men live largely seperate lives. Even when women and men live a more integrated life (as I imagine they would in rural Ireland - seperate spheres is not an ideology that particularly suits rural living) it is not exactly stretching the imagination to believe that men exclude women from some activities and consign them to others.** If movies about the past and present want to explore reality they need to depict worlds. But, it is so easy to tell those stories in a way that centralises men’s experiences, and minimises women’s experiences.

I would have actually had no problem with the portrayal of women in The Wind That Shakes The Barley if Sinnead and Damien had never got together (or had been together from the beginning). We did get to see glimpses of women’s world - and the work that they were doing. If we’d left it at that then the movie would have been implying that women existed in their own world.

Part of the problem is that the woman Damien was interested in was the woman who was doing everything - delivering messages, bringing them guns, running the court. Rather than implying that there was a network of women parallel to the network of men they showed, this implied that there was one really keen woman, who was almost as useful as the men. More importantly Sinnead was one of the four most central characters in the film, and yet she has no agency, she makes no choices, and she never voices an opinion that is seperate from Damien’s.

Of course, I’d be the first to admit that their romance made the movie much more powerful. But if the filmmakers wanted the scene at the end where Teddy tells Sinnead (and it was certainly where the tears that were running down my cheeks bcame sobs), then they should have earned it. They should have made her a person, and shown her world as well as his. Otherwise they are perpetuating the idea that women are just there to serve men.

So having got the gender politics out of the way, I do want to say something about the actual plot of the movie - because it’s left me thinking about guerilla warfare ever since.

Chris, the youngest member of their group (I’d say he was between 14 and 16), works as a farm labourer on an English land-owners property. The land-owner figures out what’s going on and gets Chris to talk about the group. This leads to everyone being captured by the English soldiers, while most of them escape from the prison, three don’t and these three are eventually shot.

When they discover where the information had come from they kidnap the English land-owner and tell Chris to come with them. Damien receives orders to shoot both the English land-owner and Chris, and he does.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my reaction to this. While I was watching the movie I actively wanted them to shoot the English land-owner, and I have absolutely no problems at all with them having done so. But I was, and am, extremely angry that they shot Chris.

In many ways I feel really uncomfortable writing about these issues, because they’re so beyond anything I know anything about. I believe people have a right to self-defence, that if you’re being attacked you have a right to fight back. I also believe that for self-defence to be effective it has to be organised (just like any other form of action). I’m generally going to be on the side of the guerilla army. But I have absolutely no knowledge of what that actually means.

I was really angry when they shot Chris, not just because they were shooting a teenager who was on their side, but because from the narrative the leadership were setting him up for failure. He was a teenager working on an English land-owner’s estate, and the land-owner who knew where his family was. He should not have had any information that could do them any damage. There was no need for him to know where the forces were camped out.

They had let this boy take part in an ambush for which there would clearly be reprisals, but, from his stammering answer when asked where he was that afternoon, they hadn’t even discussed what he should do if someone suspected him. They hadn’t given him any of the tools that you need in that situation and were killing him for failing.

I think that if the stakes are so high that someone might die as a result of leaked information, then those in leadership positions have to be really careful about who knows that information. I would blame whoever let Chris know where they were staying, and whoever let him be part of the action, without teaching him what he needed to know (ie there’s more to fighting a guerilla war that where to find cover) for the deaths of the three men who were captured.

That’s a bit of a cop-out, because it allows me not to look at the more serious issues around how collaborators and spies are treated by a resistance army. That’s where my ignorance comes in, I really don’t know enough about those sorts of wars to write rules about where the line falls between the land-owner and Chris. So I feel kind of silly trying to make pronouncements.

But the more I think about it, the more I think the killing of Chris was indefensible. Not just for the practical reasons (and I think the movie would have been tighter if the set-up had bee more ambiguous), but because of an argument I’m sort of stealing off Howard Zinn.***

As you may already know the Irish nationalist movement got sold out by its leaders, obviously part of this was the creation of Northern Ireland, but for our characters it was more than that. Some of the characters were not just fighting for independence, they’re fighting for socialism.

The film ends with Damien being shot. His executation was ordered by Teddy, the leader who ordered Damien to shoot Chris. The night before Teddy offers Damien amnesty if Damien tells Teddy where the weapons cache is, and Damien says that he shot Chris, who he’d known since he was a boy - to give up would be to make that meaningless.

The thing is that historically all movements for a better world have fizzled out, been crushed, or been sold out. That’s not a reason not to try, not by any means. But it does mean that if the only way you can justify shooting a teenage boy who is on your side, is that you’re creating a glorious future, then it’s probably worth pausing and considering the fact that you might not.

One of the characters who stayed with me the most, wasn’t ever on screen. Damien talks to Sinnead about telling Chris’s mother that he had shot Chris. He tells her that Chris’s mother went and got her shoes, and asked Damien to take her to where Chris was buried. They walked for six hours up into the hills till they got to the chapel. Chris’s mother put flowers on Chris’s grave and then told Damien to go - “I don’t ever want to see you face again.”

*The film does (just) pass the Mo Movie Measure - as long as you consider ‘Nan’ a name, when it’s given to a grandmother.

** I’m a feminist historian, so I feel I need to point out that of course that it is more complicated than that. Gendered division of labour is not static, but a site of contest.

*** Howard Zinn’s version of this argument is an argument for non-violence. He argues that since we never know what is going to happen it is unacceptable to kill people in the belief it will create another world. I’m not convinced by this argument as a whole - because as I said I believe in people’s right to self-defence. But I do think we have to take the range of consequences into account when deciding what’s OK.

Sailorman (who occasionally comments on Alas) has an interesting new argument. He believes that the only way anyone should use the word ‘rape’ is to reflect the exact legal definition of where they live:

Anyone who frequents feminist blogs has seen similar claims, and more. Sometimes the claims are much more explicit: “drunk people cannot legally consent.” “Any pressure means it’s rape.” “If you didn’t want to have sex, it’s rape.”

In many states, those are all lies. And it’s doing no favors to those women who hear them.

If only members of the women’s liberation movement had had Sailorman’s wisdom, imagine how much stronger we would have been there. Obviously the feminists who started discussing ‘marital rape’ weren’t doing women any favours. Legally once , and feminists who implied otherwise were treating women like children and telling them what you think they “want to” or “should” hear ” (to paraphrase the oh so wise Sailorman words).

Because it is all our fault (sorry if you’ve heard that before):

If a woman knew, really knew, that a threat of trying to get you fired would not support a rape conviction, would she still give in to the threat? If she knew that scared silence gives much less support for a conviction than a shouted “no!” would she still remain silent?

I actually have no words to express my anger at the first example Sailorman comes up with. I sincerely doubt that a single person who has ever been raped by her boss has considered what the rape laws in her state when she decided how hard she could resist.

I believe that a woman is raped if she’s drunk, if she withdraws her consent part way through sex, or if she wanted to have sex with someone else. The law doesn’t agree with me. I’ve already written about why I define rape in the way I do:

I define rape in the way I do to support the women who are naming their experiences, and reiterate the idea they have the right to say no to sex.

I also define rape in the way I do as a protection against men who have sex with women who don’t want to have sex with them. I believe that one of the few forms of protection women have against rape is gossip - passing on information that we know about men who hurt women.

Women need to know who the men are who don’t notice, or don’t care, that the women they’re sleeping with don’t want to have sex with them. Calling those acts rape is both protection and resistance.

I still believe that, my definition about rape is about women’s experiences, which is more important to me than the law.

Note for Commenters This post is open for feminist and feminist friendly commentators only. Non-feminists, and those I’ve asked not to post in my feminist only threads are not welcome.

2nd Update: Ok before we move on to the debriefing stage, I just wanted to move this post back to the top to see if we can get a few more answers.  Keep in mind the groups that people disagree on.

Given the debate in the comments section on the immigration thread, I thought this might be a good exercise/thread. This comes from a classroom exercise I used, which is based on an article by Doug Daniels((Daniels, Doug. “The White Race is Shrinking: Perceptions of Race in Canada and Some Speculations on the Political Economy of Race Classification.” Pp. 51-54 in Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror by R. Delgado and Jean Stefancic (Eds.). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.))

For the following groups, please answer whether or not each group is white: YES or NO

1. Chileans
2. Irish
3. English
4. Iranians
5. Cameroonians
6. Israelis
7. Italians
8. Nigerians
9. Chinese
10. Mexicans
11. Portuguese
12. Russians
13. Puerto Ricans
14. Saudis
15. Egyptians
16. Germans
17. Canadians
18. Americans

Feel free to cut and paste your answers into the comments section. If you would like to explain your answers, you can also do this in the comments section.

UPDATE: Part 2 of the project.Now let’s look at the ones that we disagree on………Israelis, Chileans, are there any others? Why do you think we disagree about these particular groups? What do you think this says about the construction of whiteness?

From Reverand Debra at Sexuality And Religion:

Yesterday, I blogged about the Catholic Bishops telling their married congregants not to use birth control.

Seems like the nation’s family planning program could be headed in that direction as well. The Bush administration yesterday announced its appointment of Dr. Erik Keroack as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs, the nation’s official in charge of the national family planning program.
Here’s part of the press release we put out:

“It is a cruel joke on low-income women in America who turn to the government for assistance with family planning services to place Dr. Erik Keroack in charge of the national Title X program.

Dr. Keroack is an anti-contraception advocate who has been serving as medical director of “A Women’s Concern,” an organization with an official policy that states “birth control…is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality, and averse to human health and happiness.”

This appointment doesn’t require an approval from Congress.

In the Washington Post, Cecile Richards (the president of Planned Parenthood) was quoted saying “The appointment of anti-birth control, anti-sex education advocate Dr. Eric Keroack to oversee the nation’s family planning program is striking proof that the Bush administration remains dramatically out of step with the nation’s priorities.”

The boobs at Delta, that is.¹

See that photo, to the right? That’s Emily Gillette breastfeeding her child (as you can see, she’s virtually dancing topless!). And that sight is apparently sooo offensive that it can’t be allowed on planes. From the Burlington Free Press:

Gillette said she was seated in the second-to-last row, next to the window, when she began to breast-feed her daughter. Breast-feeding helps babies with the altitude changes through takeoff and landings, Gillette said. She said she was being discreet — her husband was seated between her and the aisle — and no part of her breast was showing.

Gillette said that’s when a flight attendant approached her, trying to hand her a blanket and directing her to cover up. Gillette said she told the attendant she was exercising her legal right to breast-feed, declining the blanket. That’s when Gillette alleges the attendant told her, “You are offending me,” and told her to cover up her daughter’s head with the blanket.

“I declined,” Gillette said in her complaint.

Moments later, a Delta ticket agent approached the Gillettes and said that the flight attendant was having the family removed from the flight.

The airline’s behavior is appalling. To make it even worse, this happened in Vermont, where state law says that mothers have the right to breastfeed in public (Queenbadmama has the text of Vermont’s law).

Lactivists haven’t been taking this lying down - they’ve staged a nurse-in, a turn of events Emily Gillette was apparently surprised but pleased by.

MomsRising.org has a petition you can sign, “to tell Delta Airlines to get a clue and be supportive of breastfeeding mothers. And tell Congress it’s time to pass the Breastfeeding Promotion Act, which amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect breastfeeding mothers.”

As you’d expect, the Momblogs have been covering this story. More blogging on this topic: Queen of the Bad Mommies (who I adore based on her blog name alone!), Blogher, Playground Revolution, Blogging Baby, Mama Knows Breast, The Zero Boss, Mother Talkers (which has a great header image, by the way), Strange As Angels (who is pissed off!), and Aurelia Ann (whose post is titled “Throw Momma From The Plane”).

Thanks to Bean for pointing out this story to me!

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

1. Freedom Air, actually, but Freedom Air was acting as Delta, or Delta was doing business as Freedom Air, or something. I’ve never quite groked all the little airline intertwining. (back)

We take it for granted that the only controversy regarding Jesus is whether or not he was killed by Jews or Romans; or whether the depiction of his execution by Mel Gibson is too violent for children, all the while ignoring a much larger issue, which is why does Gibson (and for that matter every other white filmmaker or artist in the history of the faith) feel the need to make Jesus white: something he surely could not have been and was not, with all due apology to Michelangelo, Constantine, Pat Robertson, and the producers of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

That the only physical descriptions of Jesus in the Bible indicate that he had feet the color of burnt brass, and hair like wool, poses a slight problem for Gibson and other followers of the white Jesus hanging in their churches, adorning their crucifixes (if Catholic), and gracing the Christmas cards they send each December.

It is the same problem posed by the anthropological evidence concerning the physical appearance of first century Jews from that part of Northern Africa we prefer to call the “Middle East” (and why is that I wonder?). Namely, Jesus did not look like a long-haired version of my Ashkenazi Jewish, Eastern European great-grandfather in his prime.

But to even bring this up is to send most white Christians (and sadly, even many of color) into fits, replete with assurances that “it doesn’t matter what Jesus looked like, it only matters what he did.”

Which is all fine and good, until you realize that indeed it must matter to them what Jesus looked like; otherwise, they wouldn’t be so averse to presenting him as the man of color he most assuredly was

From “White Whine: Reflections on the Brain-Rotting Properties of Privilege” by Tim Wise. Cursty: Newspaper Rock .

The most recent issue of Gender and Society, the top sociology of gender journal, has and article by Paula England and Su Li¹that examines trends in gender segregation of college majors. On a positive note, the study indicates that during the overall time period gender segregation decreased dramatically, but the study also found that the pace of gender desegregation stalled in the later years of the study (It covers 1971-2001).

The data the authors’ use points to the “devaluation of the feminine” argument. This argument posits that the pace of desegregation is driven by women entering male fields; however, men do not reciprocate by entering females fields since these fields are considered a “step down.” Thus, the process of change is asymmetrical–women are changing dramatically and men are not changing much.

The authors summarize their findings in this way:

Baccalaureate degree recipients have gone from 44 to 58 percent women from 1971 to 2002. Women’s representation increased most rapidly in the first decade. Indeed, although the fact that women are getting more college degrees than men has just recently surfaced in the popular press, women’s numbers passed men’s in 1982 and have remained higher ever since. During these three decades, the gender segregation of fields of undergraduate study has declined, but the largest decline was in the first half of the period. During that period, successive cohorts of women changed their field choices quite dramatically toward fields dominated by men—out of fields dominated by women such as education and English and especially into business-related fields. Virtually none of the desegregation came from more men choosing fields traditional for women in significantly greater numbers. In the latter half of the period, women’s probabilities of choosing the historically male-dominated majors failed to continue their upward trek, and their probabilities of choosing fields traditional for women (such as English and elementary education), which had been falling, stopped their fall. This is a large part of why desegregation has stalled. Desegregation was also stalled by the fact that, as fields feminized, men eschewed the fields, especially in the more recent period, as our regression results show. Whether this still-somewhat-segregated equilibrium is temporary or will hold for the long term remains to be seen.

Our interpretation of these patterns draws on two theoretical perspectives with implications for change. The devaluation perspective helps us to understand why gender-related change is deeply asymmetric. While desegregation could come from women’s abandoning predominantly female for predominantly male fields or from men’s abandoning predominantly male for predominantly female fields, almost all the change was of the former type. We believe that this is because any field associated with women has been culturally devalued, so that women have more to gain than men in status and rewards from majoring in fields nontraditional for their gender. Devaluation also explains our regression-based findings that feminization of fields deters men from entering.

The authors also say that this trend is consistent with other trends in gender inequality in recent years. Over the 1990s the indicators of gender inequality such as the pay gap, occupational segregation, and egalitarian attitudes have not changed much. (The authors cite a study by Cotter, Hermsen and Vanneman.)² for the pay gap and occupational segregation. I have a feeling the the 1990s and 2000s are going to be for gender what the 1970s and 1980s were for race–the point at which major progress towards ending inequality stalls. Of course, this is just me speculating.

On of the things that this study suggests is that after a certain point, gender desegregation is really contingent on men’s choices and behaviors. This also leads me to wonder what we can do to get more men to enter fields like nursing or education, since women have been entering fields like engineering and physics in larger numbers.

1. England, Paula and Su Li. 2006. “Desegregation Stalled.” Gender and Society 20(5):657-677. (back)
2. Cotter, David A., Joan M. Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman. 2004. Gender inequality at work. New York: Russell Sage. (back)

Via Dylan at Handle The Truth, a fantastic article by one of my favorite writers, Michael Kimmel, regarding the so-called “Boy Crisis” in education.

After outlining the case for the Boy Crisis, Kimmel effectively goes over the reasons for doubting the “crisis” exists: That historically, panics over boys in crisis surface again and again (and women - whether in the form of female schoolteachers or of feminists - are always to blame); that wage gaps would lead us to expect boys to have less incentive to stay in school (someone who can earn $20,000 a year out of high school is a good deal more likely to drop out than someone who can earn $14,000);¹ how “No Child Left Behind” has hurt boys who would benefit from gym and sports programs, and from counseling; and that far from being a universal among boys, the “boy crisis” is virtually all among boys from lower-income families and boys of color. Kimmell writes:

Why don’t the critics acknowledge these race and class differences? To many who now propose to “rescue” boys, such differences are incidental because, in their eyes, all boys are the same aggressive, competitive, rambunctious little devils. They operate from a facile, and inaccurate, essentialist dichotomy between males and females. Boys must be allowed to be boys—so that they grow up to be men.

This facile biologism leads the critics to propose some distasteful remedies to allow these testosterone-juiced boys to express themselves. Gurian, for example, celebrates all masculine rites of passage, “like military boot camp, fraternity hazings, graduation day, and bar mitzvah” as “essential parts of every boy’s life.” He also suggests reviving corporal punishment, both at home and at school…

I was one of the boys who failed all the “masculinity” tests; I was gentle, overly sensitive, and could no more catch a ball than I could catch a jumbo jet plane. I can’t imagine how I would have survived the kind of schooling Gurian wants to shove boys into. But because wimpy boys don’t fit into the biological-essentialist worldview, their needs are never considered by the boy-crisis mavens. Their allegedly “pro-boy” reforms are really only about helping the jocky boys; all other boys can go hang.²

A crisis among lower-income and non-white boys is still a crisis, of course.³ But to talk as if an inability to do well in contemporary schools comes with the Y chromosome is deceptive. There already are many schools in the USA, right now, in which boys do just as well as girls. Boy crisis mavens tend to talk about how boy brains can’t learn if they’re expected to sit still in class, to read novels, to do homework, and to follow rules; but in schools where boys excel, boys are expected to do all those things.

Nonetheless, it’s a fact that among some groups, boys are doing worse than girls. Why is this? Kimmel argues that a false and damaging conception of masculinity harms boys by dissuading them from putting as much effort as they should into their schoolwork, even as it encourages them to be overconfident about their abilities.

Kimmel has angry words for the anti-male ideology underlying the “boy crisis” panic:

It is not the school experience that “feminizes” boys, but rather the ideology of traditional masculinity that keeps boys from wanting to succeed. “The work you do here is girls’ work,” one boy commented to a researcher. “It’s not real work.”

“Real work” involves a confrontation — not with feminist women, whose sensible educational reforms have opened countless doors to women while closing off none to men — but with an anachronistic definition of masculinity that stresses many of its vices (anti-intellectualism, entitlement, arrogance, and aggression) but few of its virtues. When the self-appointed rescuers demand that we accept boys’ “hardwiring,” could they possibly have such a monochromatic and relentlessly negative view of male biology? Maybe they do. But simply shrugging our collective shoulders in resignation and saying “boys will be boys” sets the bar much too low. Boys can do better than that. They can be men.

Perhaps the real “male bashers” are those who promise to rescue boys from the clutches of feminists. Are males not also “hardwired” toward compassion, nurturing, and love? If not, would we allow males to be parents? It is never a biological question of whether we are “hardwired” for some behavior; it is, rather, a political question of which “hardwiring” we choose to respect and which we choose to challenge.

The antifeminist pundits have an unyielding view of men as irredeemably awful. We men, they tell us, are savage, lustful, violent, sexually omnivorous, rapacious, predatory animals, who will rape, murder, pillage, and leave towels on the bathroom floor—unless women fulfill their biological duty and constrain us. “Every society must be wary of the unattached male, for he is universally the cause of numerous ills,” writes David Popenoe. Young males, says Charles Murray, are “essentially barbarians for whom marriage . . . is an indispensable civilizing force.”

By contrast, feminists believe that men are better than that, that boys can be raised to be competent and compassionate, ambitious and attentive, and that men are fully capable of love, care, and nurturance. It’s feminists who are really “pro-boy” and “pro-father”—who want young boys and their fathers to expand the definition of masculinity and to become fully human.

I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

1. Actually, Kimmel barely touches on the point about the wage gap, but it’s a hobby horse of mine so I’m including it on this list. (back)
2. And even the “help” offered jock boys is dubious; such “help” could be accurately termed “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” (back)
3. Let’s not forget, however, that the same crisis exists among lower-income and non-white girls, whose academic achievement is considerably lower than that of their middle-class white counterparts. The real crisis owes much more to class and race inequalities than to sex. (back)

The Carnival is being hosted by Autobiography of a Face. You can submit here.

From “How Schools Shortchange Girls,” by the American Association of University Women:

A large body of research indicates that teachers give more classroom attention and more esteem building encouragement to boys. In a study conducted by Myra and David Sadker, boys in elementary and middle school called out answers eight times more often than girls. When boys called out, teachers listened. But when girls called out, they were told to “raise your hand if you want to speak.” Even when boys do not volunteer, teachers are more likely to encourage them to give an answer or an opinion than they are to encourage girls.

From the journal Childhood Education (v73 p36-9 Fall 1996):

Teachers call on and interact with boys more than girls (Sadker & Sadker, 1994). This is probably not intentional. During the numerous teacher-student interactions that occur over the course of the school day, boys use creative and effective techniques to catch the teacher’s attention. Boys quickly raise their hands to respond or contribute to discussions, wave their hand around and up and down, change the arm they have raised when it gets tired, jump out of their seat and make noise or plead with the teacher to call on them. Girls, however, raise their hand but will soon put it down if they are not acknowledged. As a result, teachers call on boys and interact with them most of the time, while girls’ passive, compliant behavior often means they are ignored. […]

In addition to allowing boys more time to respond, teachers often extend boy’s answers by asking a follow-up question or by asking them to support their previous response. Girls are more likely to receive an “accepted” response from teachers such as “Okay” or “Uh-huh.” […]Carmen’s answer prompted only the comment “Okay.” These behaviors send a very negative message about the importance of girls’ contributions to class discussions. […]

Teachers tolerate more calling out from boys than from girls. Boys call out answers (when the teacher does not call on them) eight times more often than girls do (Sadker & Sadker, 1994). Teachers often respond to boys’ calling out, thus reinforcing the behavior. When girls call out, however, teachers are more likely to remind them that they are not following the class rules. […]

In one area females usually receive more attention than boys–physical appearance. Girls receive compliments more often than boys on their clothing, hairstyle and overall appearance (Sadker & Sadker, 1994). This emphasis on appearance also influences how their school work is evaluated (Dweck, Davidson, Nelson & Enna, 1978). Girls receive praise for neatness while boys receive recognition for academic achievements.

From “Gender issues in the classroom” (Clearing House, Jul/Aug97, Vol. 70, Issue 6).

David and Myra Sadker researched gender equity in the classroom for over twenty years, and in a 1989 investigation with Lynette Long they explored the progress of gender equity in classrooms since the passage of Title IX. In a follow-up book, Failing at Fairness: How America’s Schools Cheat Girls (1995), the Sadkers, drawing on numerous interviews with students and teachers, found that micro-inequities occur daily in classroom interactions. Included in their study, which investigated verbal interaction patterns in elementary, secondary, and college classrooms in a variety of settings and subject areas, are the findings that girls receive fewer academic contacts, are asked lower level questions, and are provided less constructive feedback and encouragement than boys — all of which translates into reduced preparation for independent effort. The Sadkers posit that this imbalance in attention, coupled with the quality and quantity of interaction, results in the lowering of girls’ levels of achievement and self-esteem.

There is a need for more recent research; I certainly hope things have improved. However, the relatively few recent academic articles on this subject usually find that bias in the classroom remains a problem.¹ And even if things are getting better, the effects of how children were taught 10, 20, 40 years ago will unfortunately be with us for quite some time.

1. Recent examples include “Gender Bias In The Classroom,” Childhood Education v. 81 no. 4, Summer 2005, p. 221-7; and “Three Third-Grade Teachers’ Gender-Related Beliefs and Behavior,” Elementary School Journal, Sep2001, Vol. 102 Issue 1. (back)

Both Newsweek and The Nation have both posted articles about the “Quiverfull” movement - the extremist anti-birth-control movement among right-wing Protestants. (The title of this post is a quote from a leader of the movement, quoted in the Newsweek article). Here are some excerpts from the articles. First, from Newsweek:

Beyond such purists, the anti-birth control message appears to be gaining ground among some evangelicals. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has become one of its most prominent advocates. “If a couple sees children as an imposition, as something to be vaccinated against, like an illness, that betrays a deeply erroneous understanding of marriage and children,” says Mohler. “Children should be seen as good by default.” His stance isn’t as extreme as that of quiverfull followers; for instance, he condones the use of condoms for married couples in extreme circumstances, like illness. Still, Mohler’s views are considered “an oddity” in mainstream Baptist circles, according to Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Land admits, however, that Mohler has certainly expanded his following. “He is seen as the popularizer of a position that is still very marginal, but 15 years ago, it wouldn’t have even been discussed,” says Land, adding that he knows of at least two former students who had reverse vasectomies after hearing Mohler’s arguments. […]

Stephanie Coontz, director of research for the Council on Contemporary Families, says she has increasingly noticed articles on the subject in the Christian press. Part of the reason, she argues, is that conservatives are reacting to revolutionary changes in women’s social roles and seeking to re-impose a more traditional order. “The rhetoric is getting more shrill because people are getting more desperate,” she says. “It’s a backlash that I don’t feel will triumph. In the past, large families were helpful economically, but today, they become a disadvantage, especially to younger kids who don’t get as many resources.”

Coontz has it right; what’s at issue here isn’t just how many children to have, but the sex roles for men and women. Men on top, ruling the household; women below, raising the kids. Lots and lots and lots of kids. From the Nation article:

Quiverfull parents try to have upwards of six children. They home-school their families, attend fundamentalist churches and follow biblical guidelines of male headship–”Father knows best”–and female submissiveness. They refuse any attempt to regulate pregnancy. Quiverfull began with the publication of Rick and Jan Hess’s 1989 book, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ, which argues that God, as the “Great Physician” and sole “Birth Controller,” opens and closes the womb on a case-by-case basis. Women’s attempts to control their own bodies–the Lord’s temple–are a seizure of divine power.

Though there are no exact figures for the size of the movement, the number of families that identify as Quiverfull is likely in the thousands to low tens of thousands. Its word-of-mouth growth can be traced back to conservative Protestant critiques of contraception–adherents consider all birth control, even natural family planning (the rhythm method), to be the province of prostitutes–and the growing belief among evangelicals that the decision of mainstream Protestant churches in the 1950s to approve contraception for married couples led directly to the sexual revolution and then Roe v. Wade.

“Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice,” write the Hesses. Or, as Mary Pride, in another of the movement’s founding texts, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, puts it, “My body is not my own.” This rebuttal of the feminist health text Our Bodies, Ourselves is deliberate. Quiverfull women are more than mothers. They’re domestic warriors in the battle against what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women’s liberation: contraception, women’s careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse, in that order.

Although the Quiverfull movement is an extreme, it’s my impression that an anti-birth-control movement has been rising among American evangelicals. Having sex without women risking pregnancy is seen as abdicating the role women have been assigned by God.

You know what the scariest sentence in the Newsweek article is? “His stance isn’t as extreme as that of quiverfull followers; for instance, he condones the use of condoms for married couples in extreme circumstances, like illness.” Yes, that’s what makes someone a moderate on birth control: Condoms are okay if the mom is too deathly ill to risk pregnancy.

Note also the final page of the Nation article, in which DLC¹ paid researcher Kenneth Longman is quoted recommending that Democrats should bid for these voters by urging a return to patriarchy (and giving up on abortion rights). Unsurprising, but still annoying as hell.

1. DLC stands for Democratic Leadership Council, an extremely influential Democratic Party organ. (back)

Here it is - check it out.

More than three weeks ago now, cleaners in Houston went on strike, in an attempt to get the big cleaning companies to negotiate a union contract. Most cleaners are paid on, or close to, minimum wage and don’t get sick-leave, paid vacations or health insurance.

you should Read these women’s stories

I’m going to quote from Idalverta Vega, not because her story is the most dramatic, but because it is one of the least.

“The children had Medicaid but they no longer qualify,” says Idalverta. She was told her husband’s income is too high, but says the money they make is not enough to pay for a health plan. “When my kids get sick I don’t take them to the doctor and I can’t take them to a dentist either. According to them we’re making ‘too much’ but it’s not true, the money is not enough–we can barely make ends meet.”

Idalverta and her husband are doing their best to make sure their kids have a brighter future. “All of my kids go to school. Sometimes they’re missing some supplies but we do what we can to provide them with what they need.”

Idalverta’s 18-year-old son would like to go to university, but the family can’t afford to send him. Like many other young men and women growing up in working-class neighborhoods, he felt he had few options. “He signed up for the Army so that he can study. But they’re saying he’ll be shipped off to war–it makes me very nervous,” she says.

Winning a good contract would mean many things for Idalverta’s family. “We’d be able to live better. Someday we’d be able to buy a house. That’s one of my dreams-being able to own our home.”

“Everyone comes to this country searching for a better life. Many never make it — they die on the way in the desert,” says Idalverta. “We will go out and march again if it’s necessary. We have to continue the struggle.”

This is a vital feminist struggle, and the cleaners of Houston need your support. Houston Jantiors page has suggestions about how to Get Involved and Labourstart has an e-mail campaign.

From Cognitive Daily:

If I get a phone call from a solicitor asking me to support my local fire department or the search for the cure for cancer, I refuse to give. If a live person shows up at my door asking me to donate to a worthy cause, I nearly always give something.

Dave goes on to suggest that it’s the pressure of being seen by neighbors which makes him give when the interaction is face-to-face - but I’m not sure that’s true. I’m also more likely to give to the door-to-door folks than to the folks who call, and since I generally invite the door-to-door folks in and offer them coffee, what my neighbors see isn’t an issue. (And it really wouldn’t be an issue regardless, in my neighborhood).

Neil The Ethical Werewolf (guest-blogging at Ezra Klein’s blog) cites a study of “get out the vote” efforts, suggesting that we just don’t respond well to phone appeals, compared to face-to-face interactions:

The big study on this issue comes from Donald Green at Yale. From the abstract: “We find that personal canvassing increased voter turnout substantially; direct mail, slightly; and phone calls, not at all.” Green’s hypothesis is that a decline in the amount of face-to-face contact between people and campaigns is responsible for the historical decline in voter turnout.

The top three paragraphs from a story in today’s NY Times:

One of four Army infantrymen charged with raping a 14-year-old girl in Iraq last March and then killing her and her family pleaded guilty today to all charges in a military court at Fort Campbell, Ky.

The plea came on a day when a marine is scheduled to be sentenced at Camp Pendleton, Calif., for his part in the kidnapping and killing of an Iraqi man in a town to the west of Baghdad.

The legal actions are part of the fallout of the fighting in Iraq, where insurgent fighters blend in with the civilian population, frustrating soldiers who are subject to roadside bombing and other attacks.

Holy fucking shit!

So when four infantrymen decide to rape a 14-year-old girl and kill her and her whole family, that’s “fallout” from the frustration soldiers feel because “insurgent fighters blend?”

Yes, I’m sure the soldiers thought that the 14-year-old they raped and murdered - not to mention her 7-year-old sister, who they also murdered - were insurgents blending with civilians. In no way was this a problem of a culture of entitlement, racism and misogyny, combined with giving green soldiers absolute authority over civilians that some of them think of as subhuman.

Heck no! It’s the fault of those damn blending insurgent Iraqis!

(The soldier, by the way, plead guilty in order to take the death penalty off the table. The Times says he’ll probably get sentenced to life, but could be out in 20 years.)

It’s besides the point of this post, but I feel obliged to point out that the other case the Times mentioned involves soldiers who planned to kidnap and murder an alleged insurgent, but grabbed and killed the wrong man. That’s a genuine example of a death resulting from “insurgents blending with civilians,” I guess; but it’s mainly an example of the inevitable result of believing that war justifies punishing alleged “insurgents” without trial or defense. George Bush and conservatives have been fighting hard to erode the right of trial and defense, and their thinking may have influenced the murderers in this case.

[Comments on this post at “Alas” are open to feminists and feminist-friendly posters only. Crossposted at Creative Destruction.]

At Body Impolitic. Check it out!

Ezra Klein asks, “What single piece of legislation would you most like to see enacted?”

Ezra’s answer:

I’ll go with Employee Free Choice Act, a bill restoring the right to organize, which is current de facto absent from the polity. It institutes card check, provides new avenues for mediation, and heavily stiffens penalties for illegal unionbusting. As I think all progressive legislation flows from a vibrant union movement, such a bill looks like the first step towards a restoration of progressive governance from which my other policy priorities could be achieved.

Bradford Plumer agrees with Ezra, and expands the argument a bit.

I’m tempted to agree with Brad and Ezra, because Ezra’s right — without a vital union movement, it’s hard to see how any progressive movement can be sustained in the US. I’d also be tempted to advocate a complete overhaul of the US’s electoral system — starting with the elimination of first-past-the-post elections, but also campaign finance — but I’m not sure that can properly be called a “single piece of legislation,” because it would probably require at least two Constitutional amendments.

However, if I had to choose one and only one, I think that I’d instead endorse directing billions of dollars a year towards non-carbon-based energy - meaning wind power, solar power, and nuclear power. It is plausible that we’re very near a point of no return on global warming - we may have only fifteen years to reverse course. There is no single issue that’s more urgent. And I’m not sure that unions — which, understandably, might not be interested in stopping global warming if it means the loss of some current manufacturing jobs¹ — are always going to be in the right place on this issue.

So that’s me. You?

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

1. I think that in the long run, investments in sustainable technology will create jobs. But unions are more concerned with existing jobs than with potential future jobs. (back)