From the archives: "Theories of Patriarchy" by Lindsey German

A Marxist critique of feminist patriarchy theory which I came upon recently:

http://isj.org.uk

Interestingly in light of current debates, she attributes the gender pay gap, which was much greater then than it is now, to situational factors resulting from the structure of capitalism, rather than to sex discrimination as many reflexively do today:

We live in a period where more women work in most advanced countries than in any other period in history. The jobs they do differ from men, in that sense the sexual division of labour is as alive as ever. And their pay is far from equal. This is because women still (usually) have their working lives interrupted by childbirth (although much less so than a couple of generations ago) and are still expected to play the major part in caring for the children as well as work.
But the structure of women’s jobs has more to do with the period of capitalist development in which they entered the labour force (the expansion of the service sector in particular) than with any male conspiracy.

Later, she writes:

The myth [of the fulltime housewife] has a number of advantages for capital. It enables them to foist poor wages, conditions and hours on women. It makes women feel that their job is not their ‘real’ work which makes them less likely to organise at work, and more likely to acquiesce to unemployment. It promotes the double burden of waged and housework for women. But it is nonetheless, a myth,

making it not so clear whether she's blaming intentional discrimination by capitalists, or lesser willingness to assert their rights by women workers. The fact that the wage gap has shrunk since this paper was written might be accounted for by women's increased inclination to see career as just as essential as family to their sense of purpose in life. Unfortunately, it's also at least in part because the labor movement has become weaker: it's less that women's real wages have risen, than that men's have fallen.

One of My Newest Message Tees Goes Over Well

After my Left Book Group meeting today, another member said she liked the anti-domestic violence T-shirt I was wearing, recently ordered from the Red Pill Shop at Zazzle. She said she especially liked "the fact it says everyone and not just women." I explained that the shirt is intended to raise awareness of the considerable proportion of DV victims who are men, and the lack of services proportional to the need, facts to which she reacted with surprise and interest.

Quote of the Day

If science is a religion, it is the religion that heals the sick and reveals the secrets of the stars. -- Eliezer Yudkowsky

Chris Satullo Is Still Picking Fights with Atheists

In a clear case of projection, WHYY's Chris Satullo has again attacked atheists without provocation, and then tries to blame it on us. You can read his commentary and my response here: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/blogs/centre-square/item/84294?linktype=hp_blogs

In love

For the first time in about 14 years, I'm in love. Pretty hard and, for the first time, with someone I haven't even met in person. I don't want to give too much detail lest she see this and possibly be weirded, so suffice to say I've fallen for someone on account of an ever deepening admiration for her strong will, sharp intellect, and compassionate heart.

Quote of the Day

We should be skeptical of arguments that play up the physical danger women are in, as fear is another mechanism of oppression. It is often the perceived threat of physical assault, more than the actual likelihood of it, that keeps women at home. -- Jean Yang, Computer Science PhD student at MIT, on Quora.com

Quote of the Day

[T]he prison, the reformatory, and the jail have achieved only a shocking record of failure. There is overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it. -- National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, Task Force Report on Corrections, 1973, quoted in Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

Fan Organizations Must Take a Stand Against ExpoGate!

I will be introducing a motion at the upcoming meeting of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society (Friday, 8pm at International House, 37th and Chestnut Streets) to condemn the expulsion and banning of Alison Tieman and the Honey Badger Brigade from Calgary Comics Expo and pledge to boycott that event's "Super Sponsors." Here's some additional information on the case (about which I wrote previously), from an article on SuperNerdLand:

Competing Statements 

Here is the only official statement from Calgary Expo:

"The Calgary Expo is a positive and safe event for everyone. We have reason to believe that the Exhibitor in question does not fall in line with this mandate...so we have politely requested that they not participate in our show or future shows. We continue to build a positive and fun event for everyone.

"We have evidence that the group in question was actively disregarding our mandate. We support free speech -- and continue to promote equality across the board. Their removal from the show had zero to do with gender, and everything to do with our show policies, which apply to all exhibitors and attendees.

"We are very proud of our initiative for #ExpoEquality and we wish everyone a happy, safe and fun Expo."

For contrast we have the Honey Badgers Statement in full: 

"Early this morning, Fan Expo Canada banned Honey Badger Brigade (HBB) from the Calgary Comics and Entertainment Expo (CalEx). Security staff approached the HBB booth, ordered us to leave, and refused to state the reason why unless Alison Tieman agreed to speak to them away from the other members of the group, without recording. They informed Alison that they had received complaints on social media, including 25 allegations of harassment. No evidence was presented, no request was made for information from HBB, and no specific incident was cited until further questions were asked of security. Upon further questioning, security mentioned the Women in Comics panel discussion from the previous day, where Alison was given permission to speak. Alison spoke briefly in relation to a topic brought up by the panelists. Accusers, however, claimed that Alison derailed the conversation. Alison and myself were in attendance, and you can listen to Alison’s statement in the panel here on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymkIiGRvtBg) You can hear Alison, myself and indeed the entire panel in the full discussion record (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyBfJuvopPg). As you will hear, there was no harassment. Expo staff and mob rule, in their crusade for ending harassment against women, harassed the Honey Badgers despite having no evidence of any policy violation.

"To those unfamiliar, HBB was founded by three women and has a highly diverse staff of volunteers, creators and lovers of free expression. Alison Tieman, a woman who spent 7 years writing graphic novels and fighting censorship, was censored by other women for speaking her mind, and advocating equal compassion for men, and true strength in character for women. We ask all involved to question what it means to provide an open forum, and to examine how CalEx treats it’s patrons and exhibitors. Do they provide a safe space from harassment, or a safe space for the people who want to define what harassment means? Please send press inquiries to xenospora@gmail.com for more information as the story develops. Also be sure to follow us on Twitter."

Nowhere in the Calgary statement does it cite a rule The Honey Badgers broke, or even mentions a specific case of wrongdoing they are accused of. This is a very weak and generalized statement and does not, in my mind, hold up as the basis for such harsh and quick action. Someone on Twitter summed it up best: “If that is going to stand as your official explanation, it is completely inadequate – and not even coherent.”

I hope people will take the time to look into the facts of this matter for themselves -- and certainly not rely on the account in The Mary Sue, which has financial ties to the Expo.

Quote of the Day

Pascal's Bookie is perhaps the best moniker ever. -- Keith Lowell Jensen

I Support Alison Tieman, and So Should You!

 

For anyone who hasn't heard, there was an outrageous incident of political censorship at the Calgary Comics Expo. For no other reason than a politically divergent opinion expressed by artist Alison Tieman, founder of women's creative collective the Honey Badger Brigade, the whole group was thrown out without warning (in violation of the con's own contractual policy) as they were about to set up for the second day. Worse, Tieman herself has been banned for life from this con and all others run by the same organization -- a big deal, as 100,000 attend these things. It's essentially a death sentence on her comics career.

To add insult to injury, after they were expelled and had announced plans for an informal gathering of fans in a nearby park, police were actually sicced on them on totally spurious charges of possible criminal activity. The police themselves concluded there was no cause for action. Here's raw footage of the encounter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqv78wABm00&feature=youtu.be. Honey Badger Rachel Edwards reports that the officer said the complaint had come from the CalEx organizers.

I think this incident is particularly telling, because by indulging in this extra bit of gratuitous harassment, CalEx tipped their hand. If they were willing to make a false report to police just to badger the Badgers a little more, why should we believe they didn't manufacture the reports of "harassment of women at the convention" that served as the pretext for expelling them?

To be sure I was getting both sides of the story, I used DuckDuckGo, the search engine that doesn't track you (and therefore won't tailor results to biases indicated by your history) for the terms "Alison Tieman" + "Calgary." I found the great majority of results were pro-HBB, and the few that weren't were based on demonstrably false information and often on an ad hominem level, repeatedly stooping to what I can only call slut-shaming.

Here's Tieman's own heart-rending account of her brutal experience: Banned for not Damselling

The full recording of the panel at which she made the offending remarks on which the spurious charge of "harassment" was based (warning: poor sound quality): http://www.avoiceformen.com/allnews/full-audio-of-alleged-harassing-of-women-at-calgary-comic-expo/

An overview of the whole affair: http://www.examiner.com/article/calgary-expo-censors-the-honey-badger-brigade-s-anti-censorship-message

Video messages are being compiled from Tieman's friends and supporters. Here's the compilation as it currently stands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI0h-2pCC3I. (In support of collator SkepTorr's comment on the media misrepresentation of GamerGate, I recommend this compilation of messages from GamerGaters whose existence contradicts the media stereotype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwGIHUCtjU.)

Supporters of free expression are urged to send messages of protest to the organizers at info@calgaryexpo.cominfo@calgaryexpo.com.

"Super sponsors" can be contacted at sponsors@calgaryexpo.comsponsors@calgaryexpo.com (you can also find a complete listing of them at the con website).

The artists don't want other exhibitors to be hurt by any kind of boycott against the con, but encourage pressure on the sponsors.

I've done all of the above. I've also contacted the NPR program On the Media, which has covered issues in geek culture in the past, urging them to do a story on this. The web contact form is http://www.onthemedia.org/emailform/contact-otm/

You can check out Tieman's webcomic Xenospora on her website: http://www.xenospora.comhttp://www.xenospora.com. I plan to order a bound, printed copy of Volume I as soon as my tax refund comes in. Meanwhile, I've made copies of the comic's logo and started putting them up all over downtown Philadelphia.

My friend Rey will be competing in the Special Olympics Spring Games this Saturday, 18 April, at William Penn Charter School, 3000 West School House Lane. I'm not sure when the games start but athletes have to check in by 8:30am.

Quote for the Day

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. -- Anonymous (via Tessa Norris on Quora.com)

The Amazing Temporally Meandering Coffee Can

Last year I discovered the first concrete evidence of time travel, in the form of the letters "SPQR" etched in a Philly sidewalk. This could only have been the work of temporally dislocated ancient Romans: it stands for Senatus Populusque Romanis ("of the Roman Senate and people") and was etched on official structures of that state. Now I find additional evidence in the latest issue of the Philadelphia Public Record. A cover line reads, "Political Careers Rise And Fall On What's Pulled From This 1968 Coffee Can!" Meanwhile, under one subhead of the "Pols on the Street" column, we see this: "An empty Horn & Hardart coffee can, vintage from the mid-60ies, has made or broken candidate nominees from both major parties for over half a century" -- while the caption for picture story on the same page informs us, "Many political candidates had their futures decided by how they pulled ballot positions from this coffee can, used since back in the early 1960s by Registration Commission." (Boldface added for emphasis.) What technology or fluke of nature allows its world-line's past endpoint to have three different time coordinates? That remains a mystery.

As if it weren't bad enough trivializing domestic violence in her "Blank Space" video, Taylor Swift is now trying to trademark her lyrics. Forgive me for doubting her creative genius, but I think I'd heard the words "speak now" before. http://www.npr.org/2015/02/22/388187291/taylor-swift-savvytrademark-titan

Quote of the Day

Oh my god, I am the patriarchy. -- Brene Brown, recounting to Krista Tippett her insight that, by concerning herself only with women's vulnerability issues, she'd been perpetuating men's emotional repression.

James Hansen's Exit Strategy from Climate Change

His "fee and dividend" proposal is the most politically astute way of getting done what needs doing, while there's still time: http://www.climatelobby.com/fee-and-dividend/

There's probably no truth to the theory that the Salem witch trials were due to psychedelic effects of ergotism. But it can't be denied that when pasture is infected with ergot, the steaks can be high.

Quote of the Day

"It's not a God-shaped hole, it's a hole-shaped God." -- ciphergoth, http://lesswrong.com/lw/5v/church_vs_taskforce/454

I wrote about a week ago (http://stripey7.blogspot.com/2014/12/yesterday-i-checked-out-party-at-one-of.html) about giving myself an exposure to help train me not to be controlled by social anxiety. My thinking of this, and overcoming my own resistance, were doubtless facilitated by the fact I was reading Scott Stossel's book My Age of Anxiety.


An aspect of anxiety I learned about while reading it is that anxious persons tend to have a higher level of "interoceptive awareness," meaning sensitivity to their internal physical state. Combined with their predisposition to worry, this results in an increased likelihood of noticing things that they construe as signs of anxiety, causing them to worry about behaviors that may result from that anxiety, spawning further anxiety in a vicious cycle.


This must have been on my mind last Friday evening shortly after work, while I was in a Rite Aid to get a couple things before going home. I detected what I thought was a moment of faintness that might be attributed to having eaten lightly that day. I thought of buying a piece of candy to "tide me over" until I got home, but then cross-examined this impulse. I realized I didn't really know if what I'd felt was faintness, or just sleepiness. Further, even it was a very slight faintness, there was no reason to think there's be any catastrophic consequences if it recurred during my ride home.


In other words, I was applying one of the routine questions of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety disorders, "What's the worst that could happen?" which serves to counter anxious people's tendency to catastrophize. As a result I chose not to buy any candy, saving me money and hazard to my physiology while teaching myself not to be controlled so easily by minor sensations. And I didn't, in fact, feel faint again on the ride home.

Quote of the Day

Equality is no more than an empty shadow so long as monopolies give the rich the power of life and death over their fellow human beings. -- French revolutionary Jacques Roux, quoted in Albert Soboul, A Short History of the French Revolution, 1789-1799 (London: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 86-87