Super-Change Agent - Susan Stryker Is Changing the Conversation on Transgender Issues

From the Tucson Weekly, a very cool article on Susan Stryker and her work with transgender issues at the University of Arizona Institute of LGBT Studies. Here is a little biography from Wikipedia:

Susan O'Neal Stryker is a US American professor, author, filmmaker, and theorist of gender and sexuality. She is currently an associate professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Arizona, and is the director of the university's Institute for LGBT Studies.[3][4] She has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Simon Fraser University.[5] Stryker is an openly lesbian trans woman who has written extensively about transgenderism and queer culture.[6]

Stryker received a bachelor's degree in Letters from University of Oklahoma in 1983. She earned a Ph.D. in United States History at the University of California, Berkeley in 1992;[7] the doctoral thesis she presented was Making Mormonism: A Critical and Historical Analysis of Cultural Formation.[8] She began to transition from man to woman shortly after earning her doctorate.[9] In 1994, her essay "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix" became the first article to be published in a peer-reviewed academic journal by an openly transgender author.[10]

Stryker was later awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship in human sexuality studies at Stanford University, sponsored by the Social Science Research Council and the Ford Foundation.[5] From 1999 to 2003, she was the executive director of the GLBT Historical Society.

This is a nice profile of her work.

Super-Change Agent

Susan Stryker is changing the conversation on transgender issues and more at UA Institute of LGBT Studies

by Mari Herreras @tucsonazmari

CURTIS RYAN - Susan Stryker at the Institute for the LGBT Studies
at the University of Arizona.

If you missed viewing excerpts from Susan Stryker's film Christine in the Cutting Room at downtown's Playground Bar & Lounge, I feel your pain.

After sitting in Stryker's office and listening to her talk about her project, which focuses on the world's most famous transsexual, Christine Jorgensen, I'm kicking myself for not being there.

Stryker, associate professor of gender and women's studies and director of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the UA, says she wants to change how we think about queer media with this project. Jorgensen wasn't the first person to change genders. But in 1952 she became a celebrity because of that decision and the times in which her transition took place.

The clip Stryker plays on her office computer practically jumps off the screen: a narrator speaks from Jorgensen's point of view, with film and photos of Jorgensen mixed in with clips that highlight the tensions of the era, such as fear of communism, fear of the unknown and fear of the nuclear bomb. It's what Stryker describes in the clip as "the Age of Anxiety."

Stryker says the project, when complete, won't be a typical documentary. It's not, for instance, like her previous film, Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, which won a 2006 Emmy for telling the story of what's considered the first militant queer resistance to police harassment in San Francisco, three years before Stonewall in New York.

"This is a multimedia experience. It's going to be more about using Christine Jorgensen's story to explore the relationship between embodiment and image, and between cinema and surgery, than just a typical bio-pic. Jorgensen is a really interesting case," Stryker says.

"She was trained as a photographer and film editor before she became a celebrity for being transsexual. What I see when I look at her is somebody who knew how to make images whichever side of the camera she was on. Some of her appearance-making practices involved cutting film, and some involved cutting her body. I want to look at the relationship between those practices in my media project, and make people conscious of the different 'cutting' practices going on in her work through how I present her story. I want people to interact with the media in lots of different ways, not just seeing an image on a screen."

During two sit-downs with Stryker, the word change comes up often in our conversations. There's no doubt that this historian, academician, filmmaker and activist is a change agent through her work, and she's also amazingly persistent.

"If we talked 20 years ago about what I was going to do, if I said, 'Help create a field in transgender studies, teach graduate students, create a graduate program, help create a whole new field,' you'd have ..." Stryker pauses and feigns a yawn. "OK, maybe you would have rolled your eyes."

Back then, the ideas of marriage equality and of gays and lesbians serving openly in the military were barely a dream in the LGBT community. So, yeah, Stryker is probably right. People would have rolled their eyes, or at least been patronizingly nice.

But Stryker, a transsexual lesbian woman, decided 20 years ago it was time to change the conversation on transgender people, and that's exactly what she's done.

"I decided 20 some years ago that—partly out a sense of outrage—I was going to change things. Not in a kind of a heroic sort of way and certainly not feeling like I'm the only person who ever felt like this. There's a real social movement of people working in many different fronts on this," Stryker says.

"I just decided, look, what do I have to bring to the table in this social justice struggle? I am a historian. I'm an academic. What do I do? I change how people think ..."

Stryker has attained many of her goals. In fact, she's accomplishing more of them right now, such as with the release of The Transgender Studies Reader 2, which she co-edited and contributed to; the creation of a scholarly transgender studies journal; and teaching transgender studies to graduate students.

Stryker was the keynote speaker at Wingspan's annual dinner last year. She outlined a career that started in the world of academia when she received her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation was titled Marking Mormonism: A Critical and Historical Analysis of Cultural Formation. Stryker also began to transition from man to woman soon after she got her Ph.D.

Stryker did postdoctoral research on human sexuality at Stanford University, and then forged a life as a visiting professor, including at Harvard University; the University of California, Santa Cruz; and Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She also spent time away from academia, working from 1999 to 2003 as executive director of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.

Her first book, published in 1996, was Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was followed by Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback in 2001, and Transgender History, published in 2008. There have been dozens of scholarly papers and other works in between.

Stryker left her job as associate professor of gender studies at Indiana University to come to Arizona in 2011, replacing Eithne Luibheid, founding director of the Institute for LGBT Studies. Stryker says the institute's origins stretch back to the 1990s, when faculty and staff from several UA departments—women's studies, anthropology and others—came together to do more LGBT-centered programming and, eventually, classes.

When the institute was formally created, the UA asked Luibheid to make a five-year commitment, which she fulfilled, returning to full-time faculty life in gender and women's studies when Stryker was hired. During Luibheid's tenure, the institute received its first major gift, from Jim Leos and Clint McCall. Other fund-raising efforts through private donations and the UA president's office helped in the creation of the Miranda Joseph Endowed Lecture Series, which continues to bring LGBT scholars to the UA.

Under Luibheid's direction, the institute funded research projects and helped create five courses in LGBT studies at the UA. Other projects included a public forum with Derechos Humanos on the needs of LGBT immigrants and refugees.

During her keynote talk at the Wingspan dinner, Stryker remarked that she feels lucky that she's found meaningful work in academia, but noted that, "I had to help create the field I work in, in order to get hired to be an expert in this field."

Stryker says she's striving to honor the institute's original vision: focusing on research, class development and bringing in scholars. There's also the work of raising funds. Stryker recently announced another gift from Leos, a Tucsonan and UA alum, who pledged $40,000 a year for the next five years to benefit the institute and the lecture series. When she's not raising funds or promoting the institute, Stryker is focused on teaching. She's currently working with graduate students, and next fall she'll work with undergraduate students. She will be working with gender studies majors, and next spring she will teach a class she created, Sex, Gender and Technology. "It's the kind of class that will get butts in seats," Stryker says, smiling.

There's also the Jorgensen film project and another book she's working on.

"The problem is that there's not enough time in the day to do everything that I want to do," Stryker says. "I like my teaching, and I like having the chance to build a research unit on campus. It was already here when I came, but I like the work of making it bigger, faster, and stronger."

One goal that will soon be accomplished is the publication, starting next year, Transgender Studies Quarterly, a scholarly journal to be published by Duke University Press. Stryker is co-editor.

Stryker turns to a web page dedicated to the journal on the institute's website and notes the tag line: "Changing the way the world thinks about transgender issues."

Then I ask her facetiously, "Is it time to say the world you wanted to change 20 years ago has indeed changed?"

No, Stryker says, there's still a lot that needs to happen. One of her goals is to establish a master's degree program in transgender studies for pre-med students and others who want to work with trans clients.

There's also a project under development at the institute to extend its work to the greater community. "How do we be an engine to make a difference?" Stryker asks. "How do you drive change and how do you do it using a queer perspective?"

What Stryker wants to do, and in many ways already has, is spark conversations—and action—beyond the UA campus. The institute recently hosted Karma R. Chávez of the University of Wisconsin who spoke about queer leadership in the DREAMer immigrant rights movement and its strategy to force the federal government to provide protected legal status to prevent an estimated one million undocumented youth from being deported.

"We are a way for LGBT communities to interact with the university and vice versa, and there is always a divide that has to be overcome, such as those divisions that exist between those who have found a way to access higher education and those who haven't," Stryker says.

It's part of Stryker's work to change how people think, whether its on gay and lesbian issues or trans issues. The LGBT population, she says, remains historically underserved. "We need to do things and bring resources to the table for projects and issues through programming or making donations to the community. Given that we've received significant financial support from members of the Tucson LGBT community, we think it's right to put that money into programs that really serve the community—we've plowed that money back into community events like the Lesbian Looks and the Out in the Desert film programs, doing programs with Fluxx, and Wingspan, and the Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation."

Changing the perspective on LGBT issues has been a long-term process, she says. "I've come a fair ways down that road in 20 years. I don't talk about (my own transition) so much. I just do what I do. I really try to get away from that since it's not the only thing I have to say about myself. We know a lot of gay people who aren't trans, and is the only thing we can say (to them), 'Can you tell me what it was like to come out?' What about, 'Did you like that movie? What are your politics about food? Who do you love?' The coming-out story is not the thing that defines someone."

Stryker says she's not into before-and-after pictures, and she never tells people what her name was before she transitioned. "If someone wants to dig around they could find it."

None of that really matters to her, because Stryker has work to do. She knows she's cast a big net of big dreams. Her life, she says, is about swinging for the fences and dreaming big, although she doesn't expect to hit a home run every time.

"Rather than saying I am going to plot my next move very carefully in a very cautious manner, I might actually start 10 things and eight of them will actually happen," Stryker says.

"It's always been about changing the conversation and changing the way people think. Transgender issues are no longer a small, obscure topic. How we see gender is changing at a global level. I see that in our work here at the UA. Investigating transgender becomes a way to view and study how that system is changing."

TEDxNorthwesternU - Alice Dreger: Is anatomy destiny?

Another interesting TEDx Talk, from Northwestern University. I present this with some trepidation - in working with transgendered men (FtM), for many of the men I have spoken with and whose stories I have read, the body is ego-dysontic for them, so change is necessary (in their experience).

It would be great if there were no cultural stigma to be intersexed or cross-gendered, but ther reality is otherwise. For those who feel the need (not the want, but the literal need) to change bodies, we should help them do so and support their identity.

Alice Dreger works with people at the edge of anatomy, such as conjoined twins and intersexed people. In her observation, it's often a fuzzy line between male and female, among other anatomical distinctions. Which brings up a huge question: Why do we let our anatomy determine our fate?

Alice Dreger is a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University in Chicago. She describes her focus as "social justice work in medicine and science" through research, writing, speaking and advocacy.

She's written several books that study subjects on the edge of norm-challenging bodies, including One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal and Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex and Intersex in the Age of Ethics.

She says: "The question that has motivated many of my projects is this: Why not change minds instead of bodies?"

Scientific American Mind - The "Bitch" Evolved: Why Girls Are So Cruel to Each Other

Hmmm . . . not sure about the title, nor about the premise than women are worse to each than men are. Maybe more subtle, maybe, but no worse.

The "Bitch" Evolved: Why Girls Are So Cruel to Each Other

Researchers study the natural foundations of female social aggression

By Jesse Bering

Jesse Bering

About a month ago I was invited to give a brief talk to my nephew Gianni’s first grade class—nothing too deep, mind you, rather simply about what it’s like living in a foreign place such as Belfast. The highlight of my presentation was the uproarious laughter that erupted when I mentioned that people on this side of the Atlantic refer to diapers as “nappies” and cookies as “biscuits.” But one must play to the audience.

Now, my sister resides in a small town in central Ohio, so perhaps there’s something about the mid-West which breeds especially endearing and affectionate six-year-olds, but I should be forgiven for momentarily siding with Rousseau that afternoon on his overly simplistic view that society corrupts and turns such naïve, innocent cherubs into monstrous adults. To give an example, one little girl waved at me in so kind a manner that it seemed, in that instant, I was in the presence of a better species of humankind, one that naturally regards other people as benevolent curiosities and the contrivances of social etiquette haven’t tarnished and brutally tamed genuine emotions.

What punctured this rose-tinted illusion of mine was the knowledge that these diminutive figures giggling and sitting Indian-style on the carpet before me might also be viewed as incubating adolescents. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’d swear the world knows not an eviler soul than an angry, angst-ridden, hormonally intoxicated teen. And if this little pigtailed girl is anything like the rest of her gender, in just a few years’ time she will unfortunately morph into an eye-rolling, gossiping, ostracizing, sarcastic, dismissive, cliquish ninth-grader, embroiled in the classic cafeteria style bitchery of adolescent female social politics.

If that strikes you as misogynistic, rest assured it’s merely an empirical statement. (Rest assured, also, that I’m afraid I have much in common with this tactical style, and I have great respect for more refined Machiavellians, so I’m not casting stones here.) In fact, over the past few decades, scholars from a variety of disciplines—including developmental psychology, evolutionary biology and cultural anthropology—have noted a striking difference in the standard patterns of aggression between reproductive-aged males and females. While teenage boys and young male adults are more prone to engage in direct aggression, which includes physical acts of violence such as hitting, punching and kicking, females, in comparison, exhibit pronounced social aggression, which includes such obnoxious things as mentioned in the various acts of bitchery listed above.

A prototypical example of an act of teenage social aggression is given by University of Flinders psychologists Rosalyn Shute, Laurence Owens and Phillip Slee in a 2002 article published in the International Journal of Adolescence and Youth:

Jo is a fifteen-year-old girl. She is average at her high school work and she is involved in school tennis in summer and netball in winter. In the past, she was well accepted, having a close group of friends and getting along well with most of her peers. After a day off with illness, she returns to school to find that things have changed. She walks over to her usual group but when she tries to talk to any of them, their responses are abrupt and unfriendly. She tries to catch the eye of her friend, Brooke, but Brooke avoids her gaze. In first lesson, she sits in her usual seat only to find that Brooke is sitting with someone else. At recess time, she joins the group late but just in time to overhear one of the girls bitching about her…

In peer discussion groups with teenage girls in South Australia, Shute and her colleagues found that Jo’s situation is incredibly common. And what’s especially sad is that adult authority figures such as teachers and parents often miss such devastating acts of reputational violence because they’re so subtle and often occur “in context”—that is, they’re less conspicuous than the physical altercations of boys.

Let me attempt to preempt the obvious criticism that this is not, of course, to say that all teenage girls are catty—need I really point out the obvious that many are of course wonderful, thoughtful and mature people? Nor is it to say that teenage boys are never socially aggressive or that girls don’t occasionally display physical violence. But the culturally recurrent findings of female social aggression, and the largely invariant age distribution where such behaviors and attitudes are especially prominent (flaring up between about age eleven and seventeen in girls), do suggest a strong psychological bent in the fairer sex that leads “naturally” to these types of catty displays.

This question of whether female social aggression is innate, much like men’s reaction to curl their hands into fists, was explored recently by Washington State University at Vancouver anthropologists Nicole Hess and Edward Hagen. In a 2006 study reported in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, Hess and Hagen rounded up 255 undergraduate students—men and women ranging from eighteen to twenty-five years in age—and asked them to read and mull over the following social scenario, which I’ll summarize here for brevity.

Let’s say that you’re at a campus party and out of the corner of your eye you notice one of your classmates (another male student for male participants and another female student for female participants) conversing with the teaching assistant for the class you share with this other student. The other student, who is unusually short, is overheard saying some rather nasty lies about you—in particular, he or she is telling the teaching assistant that you haven’t been working on a joint project for the class. Instead, this person says, you’ve been slacking off, coming to class with a hangover and partying in Baja. Your TA glances over at you, with your beer in hand, and then glances away quickly as if disgusted. Then your duplicitous classmate walks over to you and says, innocently, “Hey! How are things going? Hasn’t the weather been great lately?”

Once participants read this basic story, they completed a questionnaire about how they’d like to respond. On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being “disagree strongly” and 10 being “agree strongly,” participants were asked questions such as, “I feel like punching this person right now,” “I feel like telling people at the party that this person is clueless and spews useless comments during lecture,” and “I feel like saying, ‘Yeah, the weather has been nice.” Whereas the first two items are measures of direct and indirect aggression, respectively, the last item presumably tapped into the participant’s willingness to turn the other cheek, so to speak. Importantly, Hess and Hagen also asked the participants how appropriate they thought various acts of violence against the treacherous classmate would be.

Findings from this study indicated a clear difference in aggressive responses between the genders, with women overwhelmingly compelled to retaliate by attacking the offender’s reputation, mostly through gossip. This gender effect panned out even after controlling for participants’ evaluation of the social appropriateness of such acts. In other words, in spite of the fact that the women realized malicious gossip wasn’t socially appropriate, this was nevertheless their preferred first point of attack. Men, on the other hand, were more evenly divided in their response, but failed to show the same preferential bias for acts of “informational warfare” against the unlikable classmate.

Although most researchers acknowledge the somewhat speculative nature of evolutionary arguments in this area, female social aggression among reproductively viable females is usually interpreted as a form of mate competition. Hess and Hagen, for example, suggest that the sex differences uncovered in their study would likely have been even more pronounced in a younger group of participants. Evolutionarily, historically and cross-culturally, they point out, girls in the fifteen- to nineteen-year-old range would be most actively competing for mates. Thus, anything that would sabotage another females’ image as a desirable reproductive partner, such as commenting on her promiscuity, physical appearance or some other aberrant or quirky traits, tends to be the stuff of virile gossip. Also, the degree of bitchiness should then demonstrate a sort of bell-shaped curve over the female life course. On the surface this seems mostly true. Anecdotally, I can’t think of a single postmenopausal woman who seems hell-bent on undermining another woman’s dating life—unless, perhaps, that involves spreading rumors about the sexual rival of her fertile daughter, in whom she has a vested adaptive interest. Then I can actually give you a name. As with most overarching research questions, though, there are many empirical studies yet to be run on the peculiar nature of female social aggression.

And I should say, if you’re still unconvinced and you’ve any doubt about acts of social aggression occurring in practice, have a gander at the current topics of ongoing conversation among the girls of Jezebel.com.

~ In this column presented by Scientific American Mind magazine, research psychologist Jesse Bering of Queen's University Belfast ponders some of the more obscure aspects of everyday human behavior. Ever wonder why yawning is contagious, why we point with our index fingers instead of our thumbs or whether being breastfed as an infant influences your sexual preferences as an adult? Get a closer look at the latest data as “Bering in Mind” tackles these and other quirky questions about human nature. Sign up for the RSS feed or friend Dr. Bering on Facebook and never miss an installment again.

Tags: gender studies, Psychology, culture, Scientific American Mind, Jesse Bering, The "Bitch" Evolved, Why Girls Are So Cruel to Each Other, female social aggression

GenderAnalyzer

GenderAnalyzer looks at your blog and tells you whether it was written by a man or a woman. When I plugged in IOC, the results came back as 80% sure I was a male (which is slightly more sure than I am some days).

When I plugged in Masculine Heart, one of my other blogs, it came back only 51% sure I was male, which is cool, because most of what gets posted over there is by other men -- men who are awake and sensitive, as well as masculine.

Thanks to elephant journal for the heads up on this site.

Tags: GenderAnalyzer, blogs, blogging, gender

Silverton, Oregon elects nations first transgender mayor

Very cool - a step forward in gender identity issues.

Silverton, Oregon elects nations first transgender mayor

Barack Obama being elected America’s first African-American President wasn’t the only first this year, as Silveron, Oregon has now entered the record books as the first place in America to ever elect a transgender mayor.

Stu Rasmussen was elected mayor of Silverton, Oregon by a handsome margin of 13%. Rasmussen had previously had 2 terms as mayor in the 1990’s, but as a man, before he had breast implants and wore high heels.

“I indentify mostly as a heterosexual male,” Rasmussen said. “But I just like to look like a female.”

He attributes his victory to his knowledge of the issues. “The first 30 seconds they think, am I in a freak show? Is there a camera behind me? What’s going on here?” said Rasmussen. “And then we get down to discussing whatever the issue is — city business or whatever — and they figure out this guy’s different, but he knows what he’s talking about.”

Tags: Silverton, Oregon, election, first, transgender mayor, Politics, gender roles, gender studies

The Sex Difference Evangelists (and a History of Feminism by Camille Paglia)

Slate has a nice article on the reality (or lack thereof) of male / female sex differences. Below that, check out the newest article from Camille Paglia on the history of feminism.

I agree with this statement from the article [emphasis added]:

The bottom line from the science should really be this: Some differences between the minds of men and women exist. But in most areas, they are small and dwarfed by the variability within each gender.

Here is the first half of the article.

The Sex Difference Evangelists

Amanda Schaffer
Meet the Believers

If there's one question we never tire of, it's whether men and women speak or feel or think in fundamentally different ways. Do women talk more than men? Are their brains hard-wired for empathy? Can innate differences explain men's and women's career choices? This is today's iteration of Mars and Venus, and it's everywhere.

Amanda Schaffer and Emily Bazelon examine the science behind claims about sex difference and the brain.

The preoccupation plays out in marketing to women and tips on dating, like products designed to "attract women by GETTING THEM TO TRUST YOU." It infiltrates magazine stories, TV, and radio. Grounding the trend and giving it traction are a handful of scientists and clinicians who have made themselves over into sex-difference evangelists. Two women in particular exemplify this move, and as self-described feminists, their work is often accorded special credence. Louann Brizendine, a psychiatrist at U.C.-San Francisco, hit the best-seller list in 2006 with The Female Brain, a book that could "change the conversation at any social gathering," as New York Times columnist David Brooks put it. Brizendine argues that "outstanding verbal agility" and "a nearly psychic capacity to read faces and tone of voice for emotions and states of mind" are "hardwired into the brains of women." Canadian psychologist Susan Pinker drove home similar claims this spring with The Sexual Paradox, which argues that innate psychological differences between men and women are vitally important and too often underestimated. These writers cast themselves as reluctant truth-tellers: "I have chosen to emphasize scientific truth over political correctness," Brizendine writes.

But are she and Pinker, in fact, fearlessly revealing? Do they show us a deep mental chasm between the sexes?

The bottom line from the science should really be this: Some differences between the minds of men and women exist. But in most areas, they are small and dwarfed by the variability within each gender. To be fair, Brizendine and Pinker intermittently acknowledge this point, and they translate complex material for a wide audience, which necessarily involves simplification. They get credit for trying.

But in the end they don't leave their readers with the correct, if unsensational, impression, which is that men and women's minds are highly similar.

Both authors push the science further than it really goes, often brushing past uncertainties or making confused evidence appear clear-cut. Even on the most hotly contested questions—like whether women have better verbal skills, or are hard-wired for empathy, or have cognitive differences that limit their advancement in math and science—the case for large, innate disparities is messy and, for the most part, underwhelming. This is especially true when it comes to neural and hormonal claims, which tend to be controversial. These writers offer canny caveats about culture and its role in gender difference. But they tend to imply that if a difference has innate roots, it's likely to be relatively fixed. And that's not necessarily so. In crucial ways, the mind is malleable. Ultimately, the evangelists aren't really daring to be politically incorrect. They're peddling one-sidedness, sprinkled with scientific hyperbole.

Read the rest of the article.

* * * * *

For another take on the issue of women and feminism, here is the newest from Camille Paglia, writing over at Arion. She is essentiually looking at the history of feminism as a reform movement.

Feminism Past and Present: Ideology, Action, and Reform

CAMILLE PAGLIA
Click Here to View .pdf Version (Recommended)

Feminism is back in the news. After a long period when feminist debate has been mainly confined to Web sites and to books that, however well reviewed, did not find a readership beyond that of other feminists, the current presidential campaign has restored gender war to the center ring. There has been an explosion of international publicity and acrimony over the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Hillary is not, as is too often alleged, the first woman to run for president: she has a long line of strong-willed precursors beginning with Victoria Woodhull in 1872 and Belva Lockwood in 1884 and extending to Margaret Chase Smith, Patsy Mink, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Patricia Schroeder, Leonora Fulani, and Elizabeth Dole. However, Hillary, as she collects state primaries like trophies, has progressed much farther than any woman candidate before her, and, win or lose, she is blazing a trail for ambitious women who come after her.

Controversy will continue for many years over the degree to which sexism has or has not hindered Hillary’s campaign. Has she been treated more severely by the media than her male opponents? Has she herself opportunistically played the gender card? There can be no doubt that Hillary, for complex reasons, has attracted archaic, mythic stereotypes—the witch, the crone, the bitch, the shrew, the ball-busting nutcracker. The National Organization for Women, which has languished in relative obscurity for almost a decade, recently seized the moment to proclaim, in a press release about Hil­lary entitled “Ignorance and Venom: The Media’s Deeply Ingrained Sexism,” that “Media misogyny has reached an all-time high”—a statement that, as a professor of humanities and media studies, I quite frankly find ridiculous.

Earlier this year, there was a major intervention by Gloria Steinem, the doyenne of American feminism for nearly four decades, who in an incendiary New York Times op-ed defending Hillary declared that “gender is probably the most restricting force in American life”—another highly questionable generalization. Steinem portrayed Hillary as a noble victim of sexism and in effect lobbied for all women to vote for her merely because she is a woman. In the blogosphere and in reader letters on news sites, women Democrats like me who are supporting Barack Obama have been called “traitors” who are undermining feminism. My defense would be that women have been advancing so rapidly in politics—we have female mayors, senators, governors, and even a woman Speaker of the House—that there is no longer a need, if there ever was one, for lockstep gender solidarity. Women are rational creatures who can vote in each election on the merits.

In any case, it can be argued that Hillary is an imperfect feminist candidate insofar as her entire public life has been tied to her husband’s career; her past professional performance, furthermore, notably in regard to healthcare reform, has been uneven. The US has embarrassingly lagged behind other nations in never having had a woman leader, but this is partly due to the special demands of the presidency. It has been much easier for women to become prime minister, the leader of a party who assumes office when her party wins an election. The US president symbolizes and unifies a vast nation and must also serve as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, which puts special pressure on women seeking that role. Education, fractured by identity politics, has inadequately prepared women for seeking the presidency—which is why for nearly twenty years I have been calling for young feminists to study military history.

Hillary Clinton’s candidacy has done more to awake and re-energize feminism than anything since the enormous controversy over Anita Hill, who testified against Clarence Thomas’ nomination for the Supreme Court in 1991. Hence, it’s time to reassess. Where has feminism been, and where is it going? And why did feminism recede after its high visibility during the culture wars of the 1980s and early ’90s—when feminist leaders were routinely consulted by the media on every issue facing women? Ironically, it was during the two Clinton presidencies that feminists began to lose ground as key players in the public arena. Throughout the 1990s, news stories regularly reported how few young women were then willing to identify themselves as feminists.

Two technological innovations—cable TV and the World Wide Web—broke the hold that American feminist leaders had had on media discourse about gender for twenty years. Suddenly, there was a riot of alternative points of view. Most unexpectedly, a new crop of outspoken conservative women arrived on the scene in the ’90s—Laura Ingraham, Barbara Olsen, Monica Crowley, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin—who blurred conventional expectations about female self-assertion. These women, who had attended elite colleges and in some cases had worked in the Republican administrations of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, were aggressive, articulate, funny, and startlingly sexier and more glamorous than their dour feminist adversaries. The old Pat Nixon stereotype of conservative women as dowdy, repressed, soft-spoken, and deferential was annihilated. Old Guard feminists, who came across as humorless and dogmatic, were losing the TV wars to a spunky new breed of issues-oriented women. Barbara Olson, who died in the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11, was a co-founder of the Independent Wo­men’s Forum, an association of conservative and libertarian women that was first formed as a response to liberal media bias in reporting during the Anita Hill case, in which Northeastern women journalists were directly and perhaps inappropriately involved.

After 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, gender issues were even further sidelined by questions of life and death and the clash of civilizations in an era of terrorism. There was a resurgence of popular interest in military regalia and history and in traditional masculinity, showing up even in children’s toys. Feminist commentary on this development—which was predictably labeled “reactionary”—has seemed out of touch with the times. Perhaps whenever survival is at stake, we need to unite as human beings rather than as quarreling genders. The legacy of 9/11 has certainly presented a problem for Hillary Clinton in her political aspirations. The necessity at this time for a woman candidate to look strong and to show command of military issues certainly led Hillary to vote for the fateful war resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force in Iraq—a decision that has come back to haunt her and that has made her a constant target of that audacious and ingenious female guerrilla group, Code Pink.

What precisely is feminism? Is it a theory, an ideology, or a praxis (that is, a program for action)? Is feminism perhaps so Western in its premises that it cannot be exported to other cultures without distorting them? When we find feminism in medieval or Renaissance writers, are we exporting modern ideas backwards? Who is or is not a feminist, and who defines it? Who confers legitimacy or authenticity? Must a feminist be a member of a group or conform to a dominant ideology or its subsets? Who declares, and on what authority, what is or is not permissible to think or say about gender issues? And is feminism intrinsically a movement of the left, or can there be a feminism based on conservative or religious principles?

While there are scattered texts, in both prose and poetry, which protest women’s lack of rights and social status, from Christine de Pisan to Anne Bradstreet and Mary Wollstonecraft, feminism as an organized movement began in the mid-nineteenth century, inspired by the movement to abolish slavery—just as the resurgence of feminism in the 1960s was stimulated by the civil rights movement, which targeted segregation and the disenfranchisement of African-Americans in the Jim Crow South. Feminism was therefore keyed to the expansion of liberty to an oppressed group. And feminism was always linked to democracy: it is no coincidence that feminism was born in America and that that became the early model for British feminism.

In general, feminist theory has failed to acknowledge how much it owes to the Western tradition of civil liberties grounded in ancient Greece, not simply in the flawed democracy of classical Athens, with its slave economy and its severe circumscription of women’s lives, but much earlier in the first appearance of the individual voice in Archaic poetry, one of whose finest practitioners was the world’s first major woman writer, Sappho of Lesbos. Second, feminist theory has failed to acknowledge how much the emergence of modern feminism owes to capitalism and the industrial revolution, which transformed the economy, expanded the professions, and gave women for the first time in history the opportunity to earn their own livings and to escape dependency on father or husband. Capitalism’s emancipation of women is nowhere clearer than in those magical laborsaving appliances such as automatic washers and dryers that most middle-class Westerners now take for granted.

Third, feminist history has insufficiently acknowledged the degree to which the founders of the woman suffrage movement—that is, the drive to win votes for women—were formed or influenced by religion. It is no coincidence that so many early American feminists were Quakers: Susan B. Anthony, for example, was the daughter of a Quaker farmer, and Lucretia Mott was a Quaker minister. It was in Quaker meetings, where men and women were treated as equals, that women first learned the art of public speaking. The quest for suffrage, motivated by religious idealism and paradigms, cannot therefore automatically be defined as a movement of the left. Indeed, the social conservatism of most of the suffrage leaders was shown in their attraction to the Temperance movement, whose goal of banning alcohol in the US finally led to the fourteen socially disruptive years of Prohibition after World War One. In the nineteenth century, alcohol was seen as a woman’s problem: that is, working-class men were alleged to waste the meager family income on alcohol, which led in turn to the neglect or physical abuse of wives and children. Temperance, flaring into public view in the 1870s, was called the “Women’s Crusade” or “Women’s Holy War.” Temperance women gathered in groups outside saloons, where they prayed, sang hymns, obstructed entry, and generally made nuisances of themselves. Many saloons had to move or close. It was one of the first examples in history of women mobilizing for social action.

However, the impulse to regulate private behavior that can be seen here was a persistent element in feminism that would resurface in the virulent anti-pornography crusade of the 1970s and ’80s. The nineteenth-century suffrage leaders reacted punitively to Victoria Woodhull, who espoused free love—an issue that Susan B. Anthony and others felt would tar the entire movement and doom it politically. They were motivated by a contrary goal to rescue women from “vice,” that is, the clutches of prostitution. Sexuality outside of traditional marriage was seen as a danger that had to be curtailed by moral norms. The preeminence of ideology over the personal can also be seen in Anthony’s nun-like devotion to the cause and in her prickly resentment of the way her colleagues were pulled in another direction by the needs of family and children. By the end of her life, Anthony was revered and universally honored, but her obsessive focus on a single issue was perhaps not a model for the balanced life.

Read the whole article.

Tags: Sex Differences, History of Feminism, Camille Paglia, Amanda Schaffer, Emily Bazelon, Susan Pinker, Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain, The Sexual Paradox, Psychology, gender studies, brain, culture, Slate, Arion

VIDEO: China's "Kingdom of Women"

A cool video from National Geographic on the matriarchal Mosuo culture of southwestern China, where women own property and determine family relationships. But this "so-called free-love society" is under threat from modernization.

To me, this is proof that not all modernization is good -- there are exceptions. These people have worked out an equitable and egalitarian culture that is much more progressive than the rest of China, or the United States for that matter.

Tags: China, matriarchal, Mosuom, culture, relationships, anthropology, gender studies, modernization

NYT: Gay Unions Shed Light on Gender in Marriage

An interesting article from the New York Times on how gay relationships are helping researchers understand gender roles in marriage. It seems that traditional gender roles (somewhat obviously) cease to exist in gay partnerships -- they are much more egalitarian.

Gay Unions Shed Light on Gender in Marriage

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Published: June 10, 2008

For insights into healthy marriages, social scientists are looking in an unexpected place.

A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships. Most studies show surprisingly few differences between committed gay couples and committed straight couples, but the differences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of conflicts that can endanger heterosexual relationships.

The findings offer hope that some of the most vexing problems are not necessarily entrenched in deep-rooted biological differences between men and women. And that, in turn, offers hope that the problems can be solved.

Next week, California will begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, reigniting the national debate over gay marriage. But relationship researchers say it also presents an opportunity to study the effects of marriage on the quality of all relationships.

“When I look at what’s happening in California, I think there’s a lot to be learned to explore how human beings relate to one another,” said Sondra E. Solomon, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Vermont. “How people care for each other, how they share responsibility, power and authority — those are the key issues in relationships.”

The stereotype for same-sex relationships is that they do not last. But that may be due, in large part, to the lack of legal and social recognition given to same-sex couples. Studies of dissolution rates vary widely.

After Vermont legalized same-sex civil unions in 2000, researchers surveyed nearly 1,000 couples, including same-sex couples and their heterosexual married siblings. The focus was on how the relationships were affected by common causes of marital strife like housework, sex and money.

Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.

While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.

“Heterosexual married women live with a lot of anger about having to do the tasks not only in the house but in the relationship,” said Esther D. Rothblum, a professor of women’s studies at San Diego State University. “That’s very different than what same-sex couples and heterosexual men live with.”

Other studies show that what couples argue about is far less important than how they argue. The egalitarian nature of same-sex relationships appears to spill over into how those couples resolve conflict.

One well-known study used mathematical modeling to decipher the interactions between committed gay couples. The results, published in two 2003 articles in The Journal of Homosexuality, showed that when same-sex couples argued, they tended to fight more fairly than heterosexual couples, making fewer verbal attacks and more of an effort to defuse the confrontation.

Controlling and hostile emotional tactics, like belligerence and domineering, were less common among gay couples.

Same-sex couples were also less likely to develop an elevated heartbeat and adrenaline surges during arguments. And straight couples were more likely to stay physically agitated after a conflict.

“When they got into these really negative interactions, gay and lesbian couples were able to do things like use humor and affection that enabled them to step back from the ledge and continue to talk about the problem instead of just exploding,” said Robert W. Levenson, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

The findings suggest that heterosexual couples need to work harder to seek perspective. The ability to see the other person’s point of view appears to be more automatic in same-sex couples, but research shows that heterosexuals who can relate to their partner’s concerns and who are skilled at defusing arguments also have stronger relationships.

One of the most common stereotypes in heterosexual marriages is the “demand-withdraw” interaction, in which the woman tends to be unhappy and to make demands for change, while the man reacts by withdrawing from the conflict. But some surprising new research shows that same-sex couples also exhibit the pattern, contradicting the notion that the behavior is rooted in gender, according to an abstract presented at the 2006 meeting of the Association for Psychological Science by Sarah R. Holley, a psychology researcher at Berkeley.

Dr. Levenson says this is good news for all couples.

“Like everybody else, I thought this was male behavior and female behavior, but it’s not,” he said. “That means there is a lot more hope that you can do something about it.”

Based on this research, if the fundamentalists want to save the idea of marriage, their best bet would be to let gays and lesbians get married too. The breeders keep messing it up, and the non-breeders seem to be pretty good at it.

Tags: New York Times, Gay Unions, Gender, Marriage, relationships, culture, gender studies, egalitarian, gender roles, same-sex couples

Camille Paglia - Obama's Best Veep Choice

Didn't know Paglia was an Obama girl. In her new article at Salon, Camille Paglia tells us just who is Obama's best VP choice. One of the names in the news has been Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, and it seems Paglia likes her, too, although she describes the governor as possessing a "blandly generic WASPiness that has persistently defined the American power structure in business and government and that has weirdly resisted wave after wave of immigration since the mid-19th century."

Here's the whole section:

As an Obama supporter, I of course see things quite differently. Whatever his tactical assertions in the primary trenches, Obama seems to have an open and flexible mind. He is a conciliator and synthesizer, ready to give due respect to opposing views -- a grace desperately needed in paralyzed Washington. When the camera comes close -- as it did last week when CNN's terrific Candy Crowley tenaciously grilled him about Hillary Clinton's prospects for the vice-presidency -- his deliberative thought process is plainly visible. What a deft performance under high-stakes pressure: Obama was firm, authoritative and methodical without ever losing his warmth and geniality. The guy is smart as a whip. And his administration will be as good as its appointments. As for Michelle Obama, she is formidable, representing a bold, stylish feminism more authentically contemporary than the old, bellyaching, blame-the-males style of Hillary's omnipresent cheerleader, Gloria Steinem.

Given the looming importance of national security concerns, I used to think that Virginia's pugnacious junior senator, Jim Webb, an ex-Marine, would be Obama's most prudent running mate. Obama doesn't need some veteran pol like the 66-year-old governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, who would simply make Obama look younger than he is. Arizona's ebullient Governor Janet Napolitano would certainly fill out my Italian-American dream ticket and help to nail down the Southwest. But I've come to feel that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius is Obama's best bet. She is a polished public presence who epitomizes that cordial, smoothly reassuring, and blandly generic WASPiness that has persistently defined the American power structure in business and government and that has weirdly resisted wave after wave of immigration since the mid-19th century. An Obama-Sebelius pairing would be visually vibrant and radiant, like a new day dawning.

Hillary for veep? Are you mad? What party nominee worth his salt would chain himself to a traveling circus like the Bill and Hillary Show? If the sulky bearded lady wasn't biting the new president’s leg, the oafish carnival barker would be sending in the clowns to lure all the young ladies into back-of-the-tent sword-swallowing. It would be a seamy orgy of scheming and screwing. Hillary could never be content with second place. But neither could an alpha male like Obama. The vice-president should be an accomplished but subordinate personality. An Obama-Hillary ticket might tickle party regulars, but it would be a big fat minus in the general election. Republicans have shrewdly stockpiled a mammoth arsenal of past scandals to strafe Hillary with. Only a sentimental masochist would want to relive the tawdry 1990s.

More to the point, however, Paglia laments the resurgent male bashing that came out of the Clinton camp. Hillary tried to turn the Democratic contest into a giant gender issue, the kind of "identity politics" that conservatives love to see, since it often means an easy victory for them.

In point of fact, Hillary's sex helped her more than hurt her. What the media repeatedly claimed was her success in debate was predicated on her silencing of her male competitors, who were bullied into excess caution in dealing with a woman. Not one Democratic male dared attack or rebut her with the zest shown by all the Republican candidates jousting with each other. Hillary had to be coddled with elaborate deference -- or the delicate little woman would squawk bloody murder (as she did when she petulantly complained about always being given the first debate question). All of this rubbish was resurrected last week in the thousand mawkish excuses found by the media and her crooning acolytes for "giving her time" to withdraw from the race. No man would have been treated in that overconcerned way -- as a frail vessel of quivering emotion. Yet another blot on feminism, courtesy of Clinton, Inc.

And here’s another whopping female advantage: Hillary could jet around the country with an elaborate, color-keyed wardrobe and a professional hair and makeup crew, who plastered and insta-lifted her with dewy salon uber-ointments and cutting-edge technology before every appearance. No male candidate has ever had that theatrical privilege. (John Edwards, in contrast, was heaped with scorn for his simple yet pricey haircuts.) When the mega-prep for some reason failed -- as on a frigid morning in Iowa -- the resultant photo of Hillary in realistically wrinkled 60-year-old mode caused repercussions around the world. Golda Meir, with her robustly lived-in face and matriarchal jowls, would have given ever-primping Hollywood Hillary a derisive Bronx cheer.

There can be no doubt that Hillary's travails have reignited the feminist wars, which sputtered out in the mid-'90s after the rousing triumph of the insurgent pro-sex wing of feminism to which I belong. Grab your swords and saddle up, ladies! The spectral Steinem is clinging to Hillary like a limpet. Oh, and there's Susan Faludi wispily brooding in Steinem's papoose. Get ready to rumble: Male-bashing feminism is back with a vengeance.

My latest salvo, which opens with Hillary, will be published in two weeks by Arion: "Feminism Past and Present: Ideology, Action, and Reform," which was the keynote address of a conference called "The Legacy and Future of Feminism," held at Harvard University in April. The article may be available on Arion's Web site by late next week.

Thank god for Paglia. The last thing we need is a return to male bashing. If Clinton had been treated fairly, like all the other candidates, she would not have stayed in the race so long, having been defeated by her own version of pseudo-feminism -- conveying to voters that they should vote for her simply because she is a woman.

But how great would it be if Obama chose a woman as his running mate, a talented, engaging, intelligent woman who is his equal. Clearly, as anyone who has seen Michelle speak would guess, he is not afraid of powerful women.

Tags: Camille Paglia, Barack Obama, Veep Choice, Hillary Clinton, Politics, gender studies, culture, Kansas Governor, Kathleen Sebelius, feminism, male bashing

The Masculine Heart

I have started a new blog, for reasons that remain partially obscure to me. The new blog is called The Masculine Heart, and here is the introduction:

Starting a new blog is always a risky proposition. I'm not sure how much I have to say, or if it is relevant to anyone other than myself. I might post regularly, but I doubt it. This is likely to be an occasional blog.

However, I do invite and welcome guest posts from anyone with something to say on the topic of the masculine heart. You can email me from the link on the sidebar.

What I hope to explore is the evolving sense of masculinity. Not the wishy-washy New Age variety, but the tender-hearted warrior version Chogyam Trungpa wrote about in Shambhala. But this isn't an exclusively Buddhist blog, since being a man isn't merely a Buddhist idea.

My sense is that what it means to be male in this culture is evolving, becoming more heart-centered, but also becoming soft. Which is not to say that being heart-centered is to be soft, but rather that many men make this mistake. I believe we can be fiercely masculine and still hold a tender heart. I hope to explore how we might do that in these pages.

So there you have it.

I've posted a couple of things, and will likely post some material from this blog over there that is relevant to the topic.

Drop me a note if you want to contribute something, or know of some good blogs I should be looking at. The site is still under construction, so I will be adding things here and there.

Tags: The Masculine Heart, blogging, gender, masculinity

How to Be a Man

A very cool post from Steve Pavlina on how to be a masculine, yet sensitive man.

How to Be a Man

May 9th, 2008 by Steve Pavlina

What does it mean to be a man today? How can men consciously express their masculinity without becoming cold or closed-hearted on the one hand… or wimpy and emasculated on the other? What’s the most loving way for a conscious man to express himself?

Here are 10 ways to live more consciously as a man:

1. Make real decisions.
2. Put your relationships second.
3. Be willing to fail.
4. Be confident.
5. Express love actively.
6. Re-channel sex energy.
7. Face your fears.
8. Honor the masculinity of other men.
9. Accept responsibility for your relationships.
10. Die well.

You'll have to go to Steve's blog to get the details on each item; and if you might know how to be a woman, he's looking for input.

I’ll tell you what. If you can write the “How to Be a Woman” article, go ahead and post it on your site, and email me a link to it. Next week I’ll make a post linking to all the quality submissions. Erin and I will select the article we consider the most insightful, and that link will be given special prominence at the top of the results post. So basically the prize is a permanent link and free traffic.

Tags: How to Be a Man, Steve Pavlina, gender studies, culture, Psychology, living consciously

Review - The Sexual Paradox: Troubled Boys, Gifted Girls and the Real Difference Between the Sexes by Susan Pinker

The New Statesman reviews the new book by Susan Pinker, The Sexual Paradox: Troubled Boys, Gifted Girls and the Real Difference Between the Sexes. There seems to be a feeling in the reviewer that the issues Pinker is addressing do not exist on the other side of the pond (although she does include research on education in Europe) , so I have included a link to the New York Times review of this book at the end.

My sense, from the two reviews, is that the book attempts to move beyond the gender wars by recognizing that men and women are different in some ways, and that only through accepting these differences will we be able to achieve more gender equality. Both reviewers have problems with the book, but it seems like a valuable effort.

Gender and agendas

Viv Groskop

This is a fascinating and complex book, highly controversial and often infuriating, in which the Canadian developmental psychologist Susan Pinker attempts to draw together all the evidence proving that there are vast gender differences. Pinker's premise can be misread in various ways, but it is not quite as bad as it initially sounds. She argues that men and women have been sold short in recent decades thanks to the feminist movement's assertion that the sexes are basically the same. Her aim, however, is not reactionary. She claims that by respecting gender difference, we can make life fairer and easier for men and women alike, instead of labouring under what she sees as a politically correct pretence.

Pinker uses an uneasy mixture of biology, psychology and sociology to argue her case. Least convincing - despite their multitude - are the biological and neurological explanations, which seem largely to be backed up by sociological data and individual case studies. Men are "programmed", she claims, to "mature later, compete fiercely, and die younger". And, yes, all this can be backed up with myriad statistics. Men drink, smoke and use lethal weapons more than women and they are more at risk from violence and suicide. But how much of this really is innate and unchangeable and how much is cultural and sociological? The question remains unanswered.

The book's most incendiary chapter explores the motivation of women who abandon high-flying positions. Pinker tries to show that such women are more than capable of their jobs and that they feel supported and promoted ("I never felt there was a glass ceiling"). She argues that they leave only because they want different things out of life from their male colleagues, and suggests that they should not be belittled for making this choice. "One of the profound gifts of second-wave feminism," she writes, "was to give women the opportunity and the right to pursue their interests and goals."

True, but surely the choice of a handful of women does not prove the existence of innate gender differences. Won't some people (regardless of gender) always gravitate towards high-income, high-stress jobs, and others recoil from these? Pinker wants to show that the conventional male work model is not necessarily the best, or one that many women are interested in. This is a good point. However, it has nothing to do with biological determinism. It merely backs up the assertion that different people want different things out of life. And it is something of a red herring in a world where many women do attest to discrimination and the existence of a glass ceiling.

She draws on hundreds of studies that have pointed towards gender differences, but many of these examples feel unconvincing, or at least too nuanced to be persuasive. Pinker may dislike what she calls the "vanilla gender assumption" - the idea that there should be no difference between the sexes - and she finds excellent case studies to show that statistically this is simply not the case. Yet the all-important and hugely problematic "why" is never quite answered.

Some of her blanket statements are wildly irritating. In the chapter on language, she asserts that "male brains are simply less versatile when it comes to language, written or spoken" (and cites plenty of erudite studies). But surely such distinctions, even if scientifically proven, are largely meaningless when we all know that there are so many exceptions to these rules, exceptions dependent on education, family, opportunity?

The Sexual Paradox feels very much as if it is written from a specific, North American standpoint. I could not stop myself thinking that many of the attitudes Pinker challenges simply do not exist over here. The book takes as cultural givens that the market is king, that work is the most important thing in life, and that it is somehow "shameful" to empathise with other human beings, or want to spend time with your family and not work a 60-hour week. Pinker is right: these aims should not be embarrassing or "feminine": they should be celebrated and encouraged in all civilised societies.

"Over the past decade there has been a shift in economics from an exclusive focus on measuring money and profit to examining what drives longevity, satisfaction and happiness," she writes. It makes sense, naturally, that no one should measure himself or herself against old-fashioned, stereotypical "male ambition" as a recipe for a great life. Qualities that women have developed, such as empathy and altruism, she argues, are becoming more highly valued. Possibly. But, as Pinker herself also notes, women do not have a monopoly on these virtues. So why flag them up as "female attributes"?

Pinker's conclusion wants to have it all ways: "There is no biological evidence that suggests that women should stay home and raise babies. Nor is there proof that men and women are indistinguishable, and with the same opportunities will value the same things and behave the same way." Still, the reasons behind these differences appear as confusing and inconclusive as ever. This book leaves one distinct impression - possibly unintentional: that life - and human nature - is far too complicated to be looked at exclusively through the prism of gender.

You can read another review in the New York Times.

Tags: Review, The Sexual Paradox, Troubled Boys, Gifted Girls, The Real Difference Between the Sexes, Susan Pinker, gender studies, culture, psychology, biology, education

Camille Paglia: Rigid Scholarship on Male Sexuality

Camille Paglia takes a look at three new gender studies books about men -- and while she is pleased that things are getting better, she feels there is still a lot of work to do in generating a more even-handed approach to gender studies.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Three provocative books on male sexuality recently published by university presses provide a good barometer of the current state of campus gender studies. A welcome development of the past decade has been the expansion of the gender lens to include men, who were routinely stereotyped by women's-studies curricula as they took shape from the 1970s on. These books reflect that broader perspective and also display a more liberal attitude toward pornography, which was assailed in the 1980s by religious and cultural conservatives oddly allied with crusading feminists. By the 90s, pornography was legitimized as a field of study by gay male academics as well as an insurgent wing of sex-positive feminism. However, despite their greater sexual sophistication, the three books under review still retain traces of the old archfeminist censoriousness toward men — or, more exactly, toward the majority of men in the world who do not happen to conform to the tidy bourgeois values of political correctness.

Read the whole review, it's very much worth it.

One of the books, the first one reviewed, has one of the most amazing opening sentences you're ever going to read:

It has been called sperm, semen, ejaculate, seed, man fluid, baby gravy, jizz, cum, pearl necklace, gentleman's relish, wad, pimp juice, number 3, load, spew, donut glaze, spunk, gizzum, cream, hot man mustard, squirt, goo, spunk, splooge, love juice, man cream, and la leche.

Almost like poetry.

Tags: Camille Paglia, Rigid Scholarship on Male Sexuality, media, books, gender studies, culture

Macho Men Not So Good for Long-Lasting Love

The other day a study hit the press that suggests women prefer more "feminine" men for long-term relationships. Further, the study suggests that "manly men" are associated with dominance and are not good choices for marriage.

Here is some of the story from ABC News:

"What I've shown is that when people look at masculine faces they see them as being associated with dominance -- which is a good thing in evolution but less good as a long-term partner," she said in a telephone interview.

In the study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the researchers asked more than 400 British men and women to judge digitally altered pictures of male faces made to look more masculine or feminine.

The participants were then asked to predict personality traits such as dominance, ambition, wealth and whether a person would be faithful or make a good parent, said Boothroyd, a researcher at Durham University.

But it wasn't the macho men who came out ahead. The study showed these masculine types with larger noses, smaller eyes and thicker eyebrows were viewed as less faithful and worse parents.

Instead it was the "feminine" faces with wide eyes, finer features and thinner, more curved eyebrows that were chosen as the best potential long-term mates, Boothroyd said.

I'm thinking this has something to do with perceptions about testosterone making men more likely to wander and less able to be affectionate -- probably even an unconscious bias. This isn't necessarily true. However, there is a strong correlation between masculinity (i.e, high testosterone) and the "cave man" mentality.

It's entirely possible to be masculine AND capable of being an affectionate and empathic partner. Maybe there are not many men who are growing in this way yet, but masculinity -- as biologically defined -- need not be associated with boorishness.

And on that note, 10 Zen Monkeys posted the "male scale" of 10 masculine archetypes (as embodied by culturally identifiable figures):

Manhood is in flux.

Until the 19th century and the beginning of the Women’s Suffrage movement, traditional gender definitions prevailed. But as women gradually claimed their share of political power, they were not content with the classic male-work-rational-strong vs. female-home-emotional-weak dichotomy that dominated — and of course they shouldn’t have been.

Men resisted the movement until they could do so no longer. As women took steps to define their own gender roles, men missed the opportunity to do the same. We were left with a confused, ragtag concept of what it means to be a man, defined not by ourselves, but rather by contrasting ideals from two sources — liberated women and posterity.

But most modern men defy these narrow stereotypes, taking pieces of each. So without further ado, I now present to you...

The Male Scale

1: John Wayne
The cowboy. Solitary, doesn’t need anyone else, but everyone else needs him to save the day. He is untethered by the world, an emotional Gibraltar. Therein lies his power, and his doom.

2: James Bond
Bond is…almost untrammeled. As a spy, he is defined by his one “weakness,” a desire to save the women who he encounters, and not solely for the sex. It is this chink in his armor, this mite of sensitivity in an environment where it could mean his death, that has made his image an echoing one.

3: Hemingway
Hemingway would pretend to be Wayne, hunting and fishing and eschewing the women for the guys. For Chrissake, he got a special dispensation to hunt U-Boats in the Caribbean during WWII, which really just was him and his buddies getting drunk in pleasant waters. But his manliness, down to his nickname — Papa — was always a bit of trying too hard, always a dodge from the heavy emotions that consumed him. His characters were constantly hurt and refused to show it. He was the sensitive man who couldn’t bear to think it, so tried to cover it up with obscene displays to the contrary.

4: Jason Bourne
As we reach the middle of the scale, Bourne is a twist on Bond. He has that something that many men crave, that surety that every other guy he sees, he can take in a fight. But he’s also a man in search of himself, haunted by his status as an assassin. If you choose to see it that way, he represents a drive towards self-awareness that few action heroes attempt.

5: Harry Potter
Harry isn’t the best wizard. He’s not the smartest. But he is the bravest. He alternates between brash actions that make you cheer cringe, and moments of self-doubt and emotional connection that, well, make you cheer and cringe. He is motivated by the desire to protect, but also for love and family. And, of course, he combats evil. It’s fitting, perhaps, that the balance is embodied in a child, who is less affected by the cultural ideas that can take root in the soul after so many years.

6: Brad Pitt
Right, right. We all know he plays a badass Irish boxer, a secret agent, and Tyler Durden. But let's not forget roles like Tristan in Legends of the Fall (Sure,Tristan was one of the Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian legend, but the name also means "sad"). And, since hooking up with Jolie, Pitt has actively been trying to change his image from sex symbol to humanitarian aid symbol. That Vanity Fair cover he got so upset about was said by some to be working against this new image.

7: Barack Obama
Obama is a sensitive voter’s fantasy, hitting all the right notes of compassion and unity and hope. He lets us fantasize about the possibility of a President who isn’t a 1 or a 2 like most of those we’ve gotten over the years (particularly from the Republican party). Although he displays a strong chin, he is constantly criticized for his “lack of experience,” meaning his indecisiveness, lack of definitive policy, etc. In effect, he’s being criticized for not being more like Wayne or Bond.

9: Danny Tanner
On Full House, he was father and mother, teaching his children about emotions really more than anything else. He was respectable, the kind of dad a lot of people would want. Of course, that didn’t stop everyone from calling him gay to the point that Bob Saget wrote a hysterical song defending Tanner’s heterosexuality.

10: Mr. Sensitive
Just to get the point across, I’m going with a caricature here. In the certifiably crappy movie Bedazzled (whose only redeeming feature was Liz Hurley in shifting, besequined outfits), Brendan Fraser for his wishes switches his personality around in an effort to win the heart of this one girl. At one point, he wishes to be “sensitive,” which just means that he starts crying over crap like the flight of a bird. The lesson I think we’re supposed to take away: some, or even a lot of sensitivity is good, but for God’s sake, be a man!

So now I ask you: is this scale accurate? Is it skewed in one direction or another? Where do prominent figures you know fall? (I think Bush is a 1.)

What do you think -- is this accurate of the predominant archetypes in our culture?

Tags: masculinity, the male scale, cultural values, macho men, gender studies, culture, testosterone, 10 Zen Monkeys