Engendering Discussion…
UPDATED below and in the footnotes (2015/7/22).
I just stumbled on this recent Christina Hoff Sommers interview.1 In light of recent events, I thought it was a particularly interesting look at a more famous feminist who appears to have been ostracized by feminist academia for criticizing its co-option by its more extreme idealogues.
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Apologies to everyone for the inconvenience. Please bear with us.
Ally Fogg has a couple of great posts up over at Heteronormative Patriarchy for Men about a recent report from the British Crown Prosecution Service about domestic abuse.
The report, entitled “Violence Against Women and Girls, crime report 2014-15” has one wee little problem, as Ally notes in this post:
One might reasonably presume from this that the report details statistics for crimes of violence committed against women and girls. … This is quite simply not true. …[O]ne has to delve deep into the raw data sections to uncover that of the victims under consideration, 70% were female, 13.4% were male and 16.6% gender unrecorded or unknown. In raw numbers, the offences described in yesterday’s report include at least 13,154 male victims, probably considerably more.
To be clear, it is not the case that many thousands of male victims of these offences have been excluded from the analysis. They have been included, but what happened to them has been categorised as crimes of violence against women and girls.
Some UK-based surfers visiting my website will by met by a blocking page declaring it to be a hate site. It isn’t. There’s no hate-speech there. It’s a progressive, leftwing site which is pro choice, pro gay-rights, pro trans-rights, and supportive of abuse survivors. Unfortunately it is also fiercely critical of a movement with enough institutional clout to persuade the authorities to silence its critics.
(If you can’t view any of the pages linked above, look at the URLs to get a sense of what they’re about.)
maha1 of the Mahablog has criticised Lindsey Graham for some stupidly bigoted thing he allegedly said.
In general, I’m in favour of people criticising the stupidly bigotted things people say. In this case, I don’t actually know whether Graham really did say the stupidly bigoted thing he’s alleged to have said, because instead of linking to said bigoted stupidity, she links to another critic, and I’m not sufficiently interested to work my way the chain of links to get to the primary source, or to look the matter up. I don’t even know who Graham is, nor do I particularly want to, unless he wins the Republican Primary, in which case let me know2. There is no shortage of people in this world saying stupidly bigoted things.
I’m rather more concerned that maha has decided to insult Graham by calling him a girl who wears crinoline. maha is a liberal. I’m also a liberal. So from one liberal to another, what’s up with the gender-shaming? Please stop; it’s embarrassing.
And if you’re going to use gender slurs, it would be much better if they are a blemish in an otherwise hilarious takedown, rather than a blemish in…, well, just a blemish.
Kudos to those in her comment thread calling this out. Hat tip to Clarissa.
There are many reasons why I might want to save a comment locally. Please do not assume that the blogs in question are in the habit of deleting or moderating my comments generally, or that I have any fear or expectation that they are likely to do so in this instance.
By the way, The reason I’m not doing the NoH/RP thing just now is spoon related.
“Dissent”
Opinions which are welcome at feminist panel discussions, so long as the speaker is polite and respectful and does not disrupt or derail the discussion.
“Disruption”
The change in direction of a discussion that inevitably results from the expression of a dissenting opinion, however politely and respectfully expressed.
“Derailment”
See Disruption.
“Anti-harassment Policy”
Calling the police on the people you’ve just thrown out of your expo for holding a peaceful informal meeting in a public park half a mile away with other people who came to your expo to see them.
You can hear the Honey Badgers disrupting the panel discussion between 18:33 and 29:53 on the following recording.
No RP because I don’t have the spoons.
Britain was blessed this morning by an eclipse of the sun. In Scotland maximum cover was >90%. Naked eye viewing conditions from my home were perfect. There was enough of a cloud cover that the sun could be looked at without eye protection, but its shape could still be clearly seen. There won’t be another like it visible from Britain in my lifetime.
UPDATED below 2015/3/11. Footnote updated 2015/3/13.
Over at a recent FeMRADebates discussion, one commenter remarked to another that women were still “lagging” behind men, citing an article at The Economist entitled, “Women And Work: The Glass Ceiling Index.”1
Curious, I clicked through to the article, which happened to be new. It provides the reader with nine different ‘sliders’ and a ranking of most of the advanced industrialized nations in the West.2
The sliders include categories such as “higher education gap,” “wage gap,” “paid maternity leave,” and “women in parliament,” among other things. By shifting the sliders based on which categories you want to rank as most important, the article’s app will adjust the rankings for the 27 nations in the survey, letting you know how far each country “lags” in “equality” based on how you’ve ranked the issues you think are most important.
It’s a great concept which had the potential to be illuminating. Unfortunately, the app and article are using the patriarchal feminist concept of “Equality(TM)”3 which focuses exclusively on any adverse circumstance affecting women and ignores adverse circumstances affecting men.
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