Vagina Dentata

On the move....

2009-10-04T20:02:00.003+01:00

Hi All

I've moved sites, to a pretty wordpress blog site with a url of my very own: www.vaginadentatablog.net

Please change your bookmarks and RSS feeds - I would hate you loose you :)

I'll keep this address for a few more months but it won't be updated.

Thanking you.

Naomi Mc

Looking at boobs. Saving the world.

2009-09-21T12:09:00.004+01:00

Boo-hoo. My Mac is not well and I have to wait till Wednesday to see a Genius to cure the little mite. In the meantime, read this fabulous blog by Dr Isis on misogynistic breast cancer campaigning.

This reminded me of PETA campaigning which has been frequently branded sexist. Feel the anger from Feministing (Vote for the worst PETA ad), Jezebel (PETA explicit ad "banned" but actually not), Opposing Views (Save the Whale ad), Julie Bindel. A colleague of mine used to work for PETA and said that their strategy was to be as shocking as possible regardless of the fall-out - all publicity being good publicity. Defence from the President of PETA, Ingrd Newkirk here and audio here.

Hilarious The Onion take on this:

Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

Science reporting: is it good for you?

2009-09-17T20:44:00.009+01:00

The Royal Institution in London was packed to the rafters last night (I know because I was in the rafters) with bloggers, academics, journalists, bloggers, science communicators and bloggers for the Drayson/Goldacre face-off (watch the full debate here or read New Scientist's report).

Less rumble in the jungle, more grumble in the letters page of a peer-reviewed journal (come on, it half rhymes if you say it quickly).

The debate didn't really set the world alight and neither of them strayed away from their (after numerous radio interviews) well-trod arguments. My issue, as ever, is the trouble with gender and on this Lord Drayson used a pretty annoying headline to illustrate his point on the benefits of sensationalism. The front page story from The Sun on HPV and cervical cancer has a killer headline...

[thanks Kate Arkless Gray @radiokate]

What I found interesting is the sub-heading 'ALERT TO ALL WOMEN'. To all those who read the Daily Mail, you will know that the Government has been rolling out a comprehensive HPV vaccine to girls and young women. The Daily Mail is running a series of scare stories about this continuing a rich tradition in anti-vaccination journalism.

(As an aside: If any of the researchers I know from my old alma mater who did some work on Cervarix and Gardasil are reading this, please do comment/link to your research).

One thing that this policy decision does is put the responsibility for sexual health again squarely with females. And before, you roll your eyes and exclaim 'boys can't get cervical cancer', they can and do pass on HPV and they do get genital warts. I acknowledge that there is a cost-effectiveness argument but this call did get passed at the last BMA ARM - not the most rabidly feminist organisation I've ever come across.

My point is not to get into the ins and outs of the HPV vaccine, but more to take issue with Drayson's, and to some extent Goldacre's, view that sometimes 'sensationalism isn't such a bad thing', that it can publicise an issue that should get a high profile. Drayson used the Sun headline above to illustrate the benefits of sensationalism. My concern is that there are negative fall-outs from such an approach to medical or scientific PR; namely, that sensationalist stories can reinforce and feed society's prejudices, stereotypes and negative attitudes.

This is infuriating for those who campaign to challenge social attitudes whether on gender, race, immigration status, sexuality etc. It is hard enough to combat the Melanie Phillips' and Richard Littlejohn's of this world, without having scientists 'proving' that immigrants are coming over here stealing our women, eating our swans AND giving us HIV and TB.

I'm not advocating censorship, I'm pleading for responsible reporting. Sensationalism can and does regularly undermine scientific reporting of delicate and nuanced findings. This can both lead to health scares and dangerous health practices but can also feed negative stereotypes about social groups being diseased, stupid, promiscuous or all of the above.

However much we might point to outstanding examples of science journalism in certain papers, all newspapers are writing for their specific audience, influence their audience and have a political bias.

Plus there is a huge amount of research into the way people read newspapers and news online. Using eye-tracking and socio-semiotic research, we know that people tend to read the headline and first couple of paragraphs if you're lucky (this is a fascinating article on some eye-tracking research). Which means that if you leave the caveats, the nuances or other statistical 'health warnings' to the end of the article - they'll rarely be read.

Science reporting doesn't happen in a vacuum. It takes place in a society with historical legacies, prejudices, tensions and pretty low levels of scientific understanding and critical thinking. Journalists and scientists need to take responsibility for the presentation of findings (assuming it's good research in the first place) that can fuel discriminatory or unhelpful attitudes.

I only picked on one small aspect of the talk, coz I knew the blogosphere would do the rest. Here's some more on the talk and arguments:
From Ben Goldacre himself
Basheera Khan at The Telegraph
New Scientist
Skeptobot
Nathan Chantrell
Skeptic Barista
And many many more.

More Periods.

2009-09-15T21:20:00.006+01:00

Further to an earlier period post (which interestingly has been the most commented on post both here and from friends in person) I've only just stumbled upon the fantastic blog by the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.

I particularly liked the post on the hidden nature of menstrual blood in film and TV as opposed to the graphic depiction of blood via fighting, shooting and crashing.

Oh, and having just moved into a new flat, THIS is the shelving unit I've been looking for!

Periods and science: a veritable wellspring of menstrual blood!

My outfit does not consent on my behalf

2009-09-09T08:50:00.002+01:00

[a metal cilice, kind of thing worn by Opus Dey faithful for 'corporal mortification']

Inspired by a blog sent to me about EA Games ‘Booth Babes’ at ComicCon, I thought I’d write a blog about spanking. You know, as you do. Issues of Bondage, Discipline/Dominance, Sado-Masochism (BDSM), pornography and objectification are so huge I’m not going to pretend that I’ve done them justice here, but these are my initial thoughts so lets get, erm, cracking….

I’ve written before about misogyny in the gaming industry (here and here frinstance), which is ridiculous when 40% of (US) gamers are female. There was also a lot written recently about EA Games employing ‘Booth Babes’ and then asking for them to be sexually harassed by ComicCon delegates. But the most interesting blog (not worksafe) I have read on this was from a submissive model on the UK spanking scene.

This was interesting because it challenged me and my preconceptions about women engaged in BDSM. It wasn’t what she said on the EA Games issue, all of which I agree with: this objectifies women, ‘Booth Babe’ is a demeaning term, it encourages sexual harassment not just of the ‘Booth Babes’ but all women attending ComicCon etc.

There are two things that I find challenging about this: empowered feminists being sexually submissive and BDSM models criticising the objectification of women.

Now I’ve read a couple of blogs by sexually submissive feminists (such as the very good Girl With a One Track Mind) and it’s something I’m really trying to get my head around. It seems counter-intuitive to me because my instinct is to encourage women to be powerful and assertive against a historical backdrop of oppression. But this blogger dresses up in school uniforms and other costumes, and is spanked, dominated, tied-up and sexually submissive.

Plus she is a model on the BDSM scene and so is photographed in these situations and yet identifies the fact that encouraging men to get dodgy pictures with some ‘booth babes’ crosses a line into objectification.

I realise that finding these two things ‘challenging’ is an emotional response rather than an intellectual or philosophical one. So here’s why my emotional response is wrong….

What is definitely unfeminist, is a feminist telling another woman how to have sex and what she can and can’t get her kicks out of. I want my feminism to include, for example, those women who have a gendered analysis of the world, they campaign for women’s rights, they challenge people’s everyday sexism and yet they're also down with consensual arse-slapping.

The counter argument is: these women are perpetuating rape myths, they’re playing out their own internalised misogyny and they are making it harder for other women who are fighting against patriarchy. I simply do not think that this is true.

Firstly, I have found that those involved in the BDSM scene or burlesque tend to have far greater social rules and sexual etiquette than in society at large. Because of the nature of the activities, trust, self-awareness and boundaries are far more strictly defined. These are people with a greater awareness of their own sexuality and the concept of empowerment through sexuality than your average non-handcuff owner.

Secondly, if you believe in the empowerment of women you have to accept that they should be empowered to do things you personally wouldn’t want to do. This sometimes manifests itself as ‘feminism going too far’ or ‘women just acting like men’. Well yes, because if you want to give women choices you can’t then try and make those choices for them.

If a woman chooses to engage in a bit of ol’ spanking then that is her choice. To say that I have a greater analysis of her motivations and am more aware of her sexuality than she is herself is deeply patronising, condescending and simply wrong. And it is particularly wrong when the women in question clearly demonstrate their political awareness, identify themselves as feminists and critically engage with debates around consent, sexual freedom and privacy.

This doesn’t mean that non-spankers can’t engage in debate about the issues, but it does mean you have to do so from an informed position and with a sophisticated understanding of human sexuality which goes beyond ‘sexual practice A is wrong, sexual practice B is alright - says me’.

Finally, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea that individual women are responsible to women at large for their personal sexual proclivities. Women regularly bear the burden of their gender; if they succeed they are personally responsible for breaking down social barriers. If they fail, it in some way implicates all women in that failure.

The second ‘thing I found challenging’ was a BDSM model criticising the objectification of women in the EA Games example. The simple question being “isn’t that what you’re doing?”. Again this needs a little more sophistication on my part.

Two (linked) issues involved in the 'pornography: right or wrong' debate are female sexuality within the broad context of patriarchy and whether all porn is therefore objectification.

As a society we tend to make a direct link between female sexuality, what women wear, how they behave and how the rest of society should therefore react to them. This is the basis of the ‘she was asking for it’ rationale for rape, as though an outfit can consent to sex on behalf of its wearer. Just try and think what a man would have to wear in order to be asking for rape or sexual assault.

Putting aesthetics and scaring little children aside, a woman should be able to walk down the street naked without the risk of being raped. Clothes, lack of clothes or the wearing of sexualised clothing (for want of a better phrase) does not over-ride your ability to consent to sex. Your clothes do not remove the ability of another human being to stop themselves committing an assault.

Plus, I don’t think there is something intrinsically wrong with looking at sexual images of people. Yes there is a historical legacy of oppression of women, of women exploited by a male-dominated porn industry. That is context, not intrinsic so we try and change the context. This comes down to what sexual objectification means and its impact. Do all sexualised images, female or male, necessarily separate the physical appearance from their existence as an individual?

I think not. And while I understand the corrosive effect that pumping out degrading images of people can have (whether women or indeed, starving Africans) that is not true of all representations or all ‘consumers’. There is no getting away from the class, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, age etc etc aspects of this. But they simply make this more complicated rather than less as many marginalised groups, identities and sexualities find great empowerment in representations of their sexual liberation.

All pornography and/or erotica is exploitative, sexist, racist, homophobic, size-ist? I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.

In sum, if there is any walk of life where I want there to be feminists it’s in the BDSM scene.

So, ahem, more power to your elbow.

I am genuinely interested in debating this issue and am open to different points of view on it. Just don’t be pervy – I’ll just not publish your post and regard you a sad wanker.

Damien Hirst is a cock

2009-09-06T17:05:00.012+01:00

I think we get the artists we deserve, which is why our money-grabbing, commercialised, shallow, turn of the millennia, Western society has produced Damien Hirst.

Last century, and for century's before, most artists died in poverty usually syphilitic, earless, reputationless - apart from a reputation for opium and shagging prostitutes - they were on the fringes of society. OK not the court artists, but you get what I mean.

Now they are multi-millionaires, who employ people to produce their art in three factory workshops for them and swagger around threatening to sue 17 year old artists who make collages of their work and then getting them arrested.

Art has always involved copying and appropriating. It's how the Greats learnt their craft. Mentors would encourage their protege to learn from them.

But not today. Today we live in a world where art is brand and brand is money and all that matters is how much Saatchi will pay for your pile of shite (which is my idea fuckers - any of you try and sell your own pile of shite I'll sue!). In 2009, we get a multi-millionaire shitty brand artist like Hirst with a righteous desire to stamp on a 17 year old street artist.

So what happened? Street artist Cartrain made some collages using an image of Hirst's disgustingly expensive diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God. These collages were put up for sale on an art website. Hirst reported him to the Design and Artists Copyright Society and sent a bundle of legal letters to Cartrain's art dealer, Tom Cuthbert, at 100artworks.com.

After the legal threats, 100artworks.com surrendered the offending pictures to Hirst with a verbal apology. Cartrain, the artist in question took this all very well, and in the spirit of the Dadaists went to Tate Britain and stole a box of pencils part of Hirst's £50m Pharmacy installation. Cartrain was arrested, released on bail, and is waiting to find out if he will be formally charged with causing damage to the artwork. His father was also arrested in connection with the theft from Tate Britain, on suspicion of harbouring stolen pencils probably.

It doesn't feel a lot different from McDonald's stopping local family-run businesses using the name 'McDonald's'. In fact there are a lot of similarities, as the McLibel Two will tell you.

So Twitter has been buzzing with #hirstisacock and some have been debating whether Hirst is a shit artist or Cartrain is a shit artist. Both may be true but neither are important. What is important is a rich, establishment, art figure trying to stamp on a child artist because he can. This is why Hirst is a cock. He is a bully, a hypocrite and a sickening anti-competition capitalist.

Cartrain and 100artworks.com have asked that bloggers and twitters bring attention to this story. Woop here it is.

New "Scientist" at it again

2009-09-05T15:41:00.011+01:00

[Jessica Drew was down with the spiders, that's radiation for you]

At the risk of copyright infringement, I would like to quote directly from the BBC story on girls being afraid of spiders. This is a report on an article in the New Scientist which has a worrying habit of reproducing this kind of shite.

A new study in the US suggests that women have a genetic aversion to dangerous animals, such as spiders.

Let's focus on the words 'genetic aversion', what kind of evidence do you think you would need to establish a 'genetic aversion'? I would, for example, expect a geneticist to perhaps be involved in the research or maybe for it to be a twin-based study. But...

The research, published in the New Scientist, says women are born with character traits that were ingrained in our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

FACT. This research PROVES that women (i.e. all) are born with character traits (presuming manifesting in behaviours) that were ingrained (genetically pre-programmed?) in our hunter-gatherer ancestors (a catch-all term but where our character traits were cemented and untouched by 10,000 years of agricultural and pastoral society). Again, for this assertion I would expect an archeologist, palentologist, ethnographer, paleoanthropologist, or someone with some understanding of prehistoric societies to be involved in this research.

Previous research suggested women were actually up to four times more likely to be afraid of creatures like spiders.

Previous research. Not this research. Not credited research. Just other research.

The new research was headed up by developmental psychologist, Dr David Rakison, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, 10 baby girls, and 10 baby boys were subjected to a number of pictures of spiders to gauge their reactions.

OK, so let's recap shall we: no geneticist, no archeologist, no paleontologist, no ethnographer, no paleoanthropologist. A study on 20 babies where they GAUGED their REACTIONS to PICTURES.

A sample of 20 individuals who cannot adequately communicate were show pictures of things that they may have never seen before and the claim is that this research shows that women have a genetic aversion to dangerous animals.

Methods

First the babies were shown a picture of a spider with a fearful human face, followed by images of a spider paired with a happy face - alongside an image of a flower twinned with a fearful face.

This is supposed to be science. They are showing babies pictures of spiders with happy and sad faces (learnt behaviour) and stating that this in any way contributes to evidence for genetic aversion.

Results

The results showed that the girls - some as young as 11 months old - looked longer at the picture of the happy face with a spider than the boys, who looked at both images for an equal time.
The researchers concluded that the young girls were confused as to why someone would be happy to be twinned with a spider, and were quick to associate pictures of arachnids with fear.
The boys, it seems, remained totally indifferent emotionally.

"The researchers concluded that the girls were confused". Seriously, why do these people bother working in a university when they could just prop up a bar somewhere shouting "I reckon..." into the air? Oh yeah, its on the BBC website...

I particularly like the caveat "it seems" in the last sentence. Because of course they don't know, they weren't even measuring heartbeat never mind any other tests of emotion. They just reckon.

Discussion

Mr Rakison attributes this genetic predisposition to behavioural traits inherent in our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
Men, he purports, were the greater natural risk takers, the ones who took greater risks were more successful when going out to hunt for food.
With women, in their role as natural child protectors, it made sense for them to be more cautious of animals such as snakes or spiders, Mr Rakison adds.
By contrast, the research concludes that modern phobias such as the fear of hospitals - or that of flying - show no differences between the sexes.

Only at this stage in the article do words like 'attributes' or 'purports' come into play. It is interesting to compare what Dr Rakison is quoted as saying above and what he says when he is interviewed on the BBC's The World Today. The interview is worth listening to for the vox pops they do with a few women at the beginning (none of whom are afraid of spiders) where one says she's not frightened of spiders but is of men. Anyway, Mr Rakison says in his interview explicitly that this is a learnt response and that "its not that we're born with the fear".

Also the study is published in Evolution and Human Behaviour and is about fear learning.

So where does the 'genetic' and 'hunter-gatherer' bullshit come from? It's made up. It had no basis. It's just a cultural meme perpetuated by repetition. I'm not saying that humans do not have 'instincts' or that everything is environmental. I'm saying that the hunter-gatherer concept pisses me off. It invokes an image of big strong men hunting mammoths and home-bound women collecting berries which feeds cultural stereotypes about male and female characteristics which are false.

Apparently Dr Rakison thinks men are greater risk takers despite later stating that the is no gender difference in things like the fear of flying.

And on the point that this was a study of 20 babies, I came across this fascinating article in The Psychologist about psychology's problematic relationship with empiricism.

Oh, and this was another one for #bullshitbingo and its sister game #BSbingo (bad science bingo).

periods. Periods. PERIODS. P.E.R.I.O.D.S.

2009-09-05T01:47:00.001+01:00

[Carrie, the period horror film]

It is about time, in human evolution – in Western society’s evolution – that we started talking about periods. We talk, joke and laugh about shitting, farting and puking but not about women bleeding for a week a month. Why? Because it’s dirty that’s why - Biblically unclean.

We don’t talk about menstruation - and by ‘we’ I definitely mean men AND women - yet pretty much all women do it all the time. Its something that looms large in our lives. We fear, expect and will it when it starts. It mortifies us when it leaks. It ruins romantic weekends and when you’re in an intimate relationship with a woman it is something you both have to bear (x2 for lesbians).

This post has been inspired by a conversation I have just come from in the pub with two men (can you tell?). They took it well. One of them admitted that the first time he spoke about periods at the age of 8-ish he said he was confused about the blue stuff that came out of women. I have had a handful of conversations in the past mostly with women about periods but it’s only ever come up with good friends and sometimes in hushed tones.

This is the point. Girls and boys are rarely told about the ‘stuff’ that happens to the opposite sex during puberty and beyond. It leads to fear, misunderstanding, shame and repulsion. The natural functions of women has for millennia resulted in the notion of women as fundamentality ‘unclean’. The woman who shouldn’t be touched during her monthly period or you will be unclean till evening (Leviticus, which is all about the periods, and sleeping with animals). It has spawned a fascination and abhorrence with female functions and feminine ‘dirt’.

It is 'the curse' and the ‘sin of Eve’. It has as many euphemisms: having the painters and decorators in, on the blob, got the curse, Aunt Flo is visiting, time of the month, on the rag, women’s problems, riding the crimson wave, closed for maintenance, ketchup on the burger (OK, I made that one up).

I’m not the biggest fan of Tracey Emin, but I admire the fact that she brought dirty femininity to the fore in her art. The visceral reaction to her work is often due to her use of things like used-sanitary products in her ‘self-confessional’ work. Yeah, you might not like it and think its lazy and attention-grabbing – but what attention! The reaction to a woman laying bare her ‘filth’ and remnants of menstruation still has the ability to shock.

Menstruation is something that punctuates women’s lives, a regular reminder of your potential fertility. I’m not saying that it puts me in tune with the earth or the moon but it is a regular reminder to me that I’m a mammal.

There is interesting research around blobbing and contraception where randomised controlled trials have been conducted on extended oral contraceptive cycles. The fact that most women on OC take the pills in 21 days followed by a pill-free and bleeding week is not medically necessary. Women can stay on OC pretty much permanently with minimal spotting and few ill effects over the general OC side effects and recommendations for use over time (i.e limit to 8 years [pdf]). And yet many choose, if made aware of the choice, to allow for a pill-free period if not monthly than every three or so months. This suggests that there may be a desire to menstruate which may be for a number of reasons: confirming no pregnancy, excuse for not having sex, the ancient Greek feeling of menstrual catharsis?

There are gruesome facts about perioding that rarely get mentioned: that you shit differently, sometimes it hurts so much you vomit, it can make you uncoordinated and bump into things/knock things over, your breasts can swell and hurt, you get incredibly hot at night and can’t sleep, you get water-retention and go up a dress-size (BTW these things don’t happen every time or all at once, that would be really inconvenient).

All women have had to make make-shift sanitary towels out of bog-roll at one time or other. We’ve all had to get blood stains out of our favourite pants and or jeans. We all have the stories about when we found out about what periods were, when we started, the chats with our mothers, sisters or teachers. But those chats were always hushed and never involved men.

We have to pay (albeit reduced) VAT on ‘sanitary products’ or ‘feminine protection’ (the euphemisms upset me more than the bleeding) despite them being very far from ‘luxury products’.

Sometimes it makes you emotional, sometimes it doesn’t – so it’s not alright to assume women are ‘over-emotional’ because of their ‘hormones’. Women are called ‘over-emotional’ and men are said to be ‘in a bad mood’. They both might be true, or it might be that they’re arseholes. There may be a chemical reason for it but it’s not necessarily because of a wandering womb or meandering testes.

And then there’s sex and periods. There might be a few jokes about men becoming men when they get ‘blood on their helmet’ but what about women masturbating to relieve periods pains – (messy but it works). Some lesbians make a sexual act out of blobbing – anointing themselves on with menstrual blood – more power to it, even if it does make you look like Nosferatu.

When do we ever talk about the blood clots, the changing colour of the blood over the period, heavy month followed by light month, sanitary towel – tampon transition, and let’s not even get started on moon cups (sorry, I’m a green but I draw the line here I’m afraid).

Plus I can’t think of any better argument against intelligent design – bleeding every month, intelligent? No. Where’s our endometrium reabsorption?

As it is such a regular function for half the world’s population, let’s stop pretending it doesn’t happen. If we do talk about it let’s not use it as yet another misogynistic insult (in a past workplace a twatish manager said of a woman: “Not sure if you can say this these days, but it was probably her time of the month!” NB: if you start a sentence with “Not sure if you can say this these days…” then you can’t say those kind of things these days).

So please talk about periods. Let’s destroy the myths and stop pretending its not happening. If you’re a woman ‘of child-bearing age’ its happening. If you are a man who sleeps with women, works with women, is related to women or knows women, you are in the proximity a woman who is, was, or is about to bleed.

There definitely are periods. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

Saying girls are rubbish at maths makes girls rubbish at maths

2009-08-31T23:57:00.005+01:00

Very interesting interview with two researchers into the affects of stereotypes on women in their performance in maths tests.

This is based on their study (pdf) published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

See I'm not just wittering on about gender stereotypes, be they a love of pink or the *need* for women to remove every inch of hair from their body, because I find them irritating (physically and mentally); they can also be harmful.

And immensely aggravating to those of us who can long divide. Again, I give you xkcd on this subject.

The Game The Whole Family Can Play!

2009-08-27T20:22:00.010+01:00

[Click image to enlarge, via the indefatigable The F Word]

Seriously, I'm getting a little upset by all the pseudo-evolutionary (Just So) psychology bullshit now. Oh yeah, and the Daily Mail. A work colleague today warned me that the Daily Mail might consider taking a restraining order out against me.

OK then, this one is from the Daily Telegraph: Men prefer websites designed by men. The very first sentence of this article?

The differences spring from our caveman ancestors, said Gloria Moss, a specialist in human resources.

Frankly, I am not going to dignify this article by pulling it to shreds. That first sentence is enough to condemn it to the shit heap it sprang from.

JOURNALISTS LISTEN: Just because it is the bicentennial year of the birth of Charles Darwin does NOT mean that you have to get the word 'evolution' into every science story. If your writing about evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology firstly, know the difference between the two and secondly, find out if the researcher you're quoting/cut n' pasting does too.

RESEARCHERS LISTEN: Just because you work in Buck-Nowheresville university (or a further education college) do you really NEED to use nonsense, sexist, pseudo-evolutionary failytales to get your research into the papers? If the answer is yes, then kiss your credibility goodbye.

I'll be tweeting all future pseudo-hunter-gatherer 'science' stories with the hastag #bullshitbingo

Ruthless, sex-fiend, testosterone-fuelled women gamblers found by scientists

2009-08-26T01:32:00.007+01:00

The reporting of a particular study in the last couple of days sounded more like an ad for a kinky fetish party. “Risky women are ‘hungry for sex’” panted the Press Association over the newswires of the world. “'Traders' testosterone' fuels female financial flutters” was Nature’s lame attempt. “Even female investors juiced by testosterone” was Daily Finance’s rather damp contribution.

And I’m just generally baffled as to why The Med Guru felt the need to use a picture of Scarlett Johansson with this story.

So yes “researchers” have “found” that women with greater levels of testosterone are “greater risk takers” (notice my subtle highlighting of certain words there). And of course testosterone is a SEX hormone so some journalists thought it would be a good idea to talk about SEX a bit as frankly SEX is more interesting than financial trading which is what the study was actually about.

The “researchers” were in fact an Associate Professor in Finance, a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and a Professor of Comparative Human Development and Evolutionary Biology (who lists press cuttings and press releases on web page rather than journal articles, but that’s just a particular prejudice of mine which has frequently been supported by evidence).

They used the results from a cohort of 460 (320 male, 140 female) MBA (management qualification) students at Chicago University of their levels of testosterone and compared this to their risk aversion and the careers that they went on to do after graduation (which were rated as ‘risky’ or not on the basis of whether they were in the financial sector).

Now, I’m not in a position to judge the accuracy of the testosterone testing (saliva collection and digit ratio), so I’ll assume they’re sound.

The risk aversion test and career choice data have huge confounding factors. The risk aversion test was a computer simulation where participants were asked to choose between a fixed cash amount (from $50 to $120) or to ‘gamble’ for a lottery prize or either $200 or zero. I do not believe that this is a credible test because it was 15 questions in a non-real life example, where participants were selected as ‘professional financial decision makers’ and were not intended to be representative.

Students are a specific type of people, MBA students are even more specific, and MBA students having their risk aversion measured when fully aware of the concepts of risk aversion and financial decisions are likely to give specific answers. (BTW you can actually re-read the above sentence substituting the word ‘specific’ for the word ‘wanky’ and it is still true).

Secondly, the career data was collected two years after the test with no follow-up interview. Therefore, it was assumed that graduates chose certain "high risk" professions (in the financial sector) because they were risk-takers and the risk-averse would take low risk jobs outside of the sector. In fact, there may have been many reasons why certain jobs were taken; offers, opportunities, location, having children, redundancy, not wanting to be surrounded by trading wankers, etc. That is not a measure of risk aversion, for me it would be a measure of bullshit tolerance.

So I don’t think the research was great, but the reporting of the research was atrocious. None of the problems with the research were alluded to, they tried to sex it up by using words like ‘gambling’ and ‘excessive drinking’ and, er, ‘sex’. And they just made false and misleading statements:

Daily Telegraph: “[The study] found that testosterone-driven women who liked to gamble went on to choose careers in finance”

Press Association: “Women with an appetite for risk may also be hungry for sex, a study suggests.” (No, it really doesn’t)

I am most concerned by this quote from one of the researchers:

"This is the first study showing that gender differences in financial risk aversion have a biological basis, and that differences in testosterone levels between individuals can affect important aspects of economic behaviour and career decisions," said Professor Dario Maestripieri.

Now I have met enough academics who have been misquoted in the press to treat quotes with some suspicion. However, what is important is that this study DOES NOT show that gender differences in financial risk aversion have a biological basis. Even if the methodology was perfect it is still a small study on a select group of individuals who are members of an elite in a Western capitalist society. That is a long way from establishing a ‘biological basis’ for individual attitudes and behaviours.

This also feeds into the argument that women are not making it into top financial or commercial sector jobs because they are risk averse and non-competitive: only women with unusual ‘male hormones’ can make it to the top and the fact that men are over-represented is “natural”. This is wildly reductionist. There are huge environmental and social determinants of managing and evaluating risk and humans are notoriously bad at doing it.

So sorry to those who had hoped that scientists had found a bunch of sex-fiend, testosterone-fuelled women (you know who you are), you’ll probably find they’re too smart to be working in finance.

Thanks to the ever-wonderful Dr Petra for the tip-off on this.

Science on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

2009-08-24T01:36:00.008+01:00

I LOVE the Daily Show and I LOVE Jon Stewart. It is frankly, where I get all of my information about American politics. I watch Fox News for the laughs. Anyway, inspired by After Elton which did a great round-up of Daily Show Greatest Gay Moments, I thought I'd put together a Top Ten Great Science Moments list.

This is by no means exhaustive and it would be easy to sub-divide and do a Top Ten Evolution clips, Top Ten Bush-being-stupid-about-science or Top Ten Woo (which I may well do). But here are some of my favs....

John Oliver on the evil that is the Large Haldron Collider.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Large Hadron Collider

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Just to remind us of the bad ol' days: science under Bush

The Endarkenment

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Chris Mooney

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

THIS is the kind of science communicators we need. The amazing Neil deGrasse Tyson

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Neil deGrasse Tyson

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

here

Stem cell research, only slightly more crazy debate in the US than here

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Headlines - War on Terrorble Diseases

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Michelle Obama promotes organic propaganda. Or not.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Little Crop of Horrors

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

In the bicentenery year of Darwin's birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, let's have a bit of dinosaur-denying

here's the wiki on it

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Evolution Schmevolution - A Heritage Tour

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Ah, we were so optimistic about Mars missions in the olden days

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Catherine Weitz

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Theories based on evidence vs theories based on Discovery Channel documentaries slug it out

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Human's Closest Relative

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

A little more optimism as scientists advise and enter the Obama administration

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Harold Varmus

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Secretary Steven Chu

Finally, the critical question is who owns space

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Colbert - Outer Space Available

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Feel free to add your favourites if I've missed them....

The trouble with pink – you’re being manipulated

2009-08-23T21:18:00.005+01:00

I am a woman and I don’t like the colour pink.

Now, I know most of you will think that I am therefore some kind of mutant whose ovaries must have shriveled up and dropped off, but I’ve never been much of a fan of the colour.

And yet, we seem to be told regularly that females are in some way genetically programmed to prefer pink and that they would prefer that every inanimate object they come into contact with was in fact pink.

You may be aware of the stories a few years ago when scientists ‘proved’ that girls prefer pink. Except that’s not what they found, both males and females preferred blue but that hardly matters when you have gender stereotypes to uphold.

What was fascinating was the bullshit evolutionary biology/psychology (not sure which as the researchers involved were neither) tacked on to this misreporting of a study’s findings. I forget who once likened evolutionary psychology to ‘Just So Stories’ but I wholeheartedly agree. The ‘girls prefer pink’ story was padded out with rather implausible assertions that female hunter-gatherers (yes that old chestnut again) needed to be able to differentiate red berries when foraging.

But the study wasn’t about female/male abilities to differentiate colours but about preference. And anyway, colour significance is entirely socially constructed. Pink was a boy’s colour and blue a girl’s as recently as 1914 (warning: includes pictures of highly spoilt children).

“But,” I can here you cry, “my daughter/niece/friend’s kid loves pink and her parents have not forced it on her at all.” My first reaction would be really? Really have they not bought her pink things, not accepted gifts from friends and family that were universally pink? Did they not when she was under 1 year old and therefore indistinguishable from any other baby male or female, dress her in pink clothes and put a bow in her hair so that strangers wouldn’t say “Oh, what a lovely little boy”. Did they really? Really? Really, did they?

If you’re answer is yes, then fine but the little cretin will still go to nursery with little pink fluffy Shirley Temples, be bombarded with pink advertising and be generally encouraged, corralled and forced into liking pink.

This blue/pink thing has been largely manufactured by the advertising industry as a way of enabling product differentiation.

Companies can sell more of their product and charge more for it if they put pink on it, say its ‘specially designed for women’ and point out that if women don’t buy it they will be fat, ugly and hairy.

Look at razors. Only a few years ago the only ones both men and women bought were the orange and white bic razors. Yeah so they hacked half your face/legs off but progress in razor innovation has included marketing essentially the exact same product differently towards men and women. It has also *become important* to shave more and more bits of you, whether women needing to trim their bush:

Or men wanting to make their ‘tree’ ‘look’ ‘bigger’ (quote from Gillette website: “If you wanna see a tree you shouldn’t have to blaze a trail to get there. Trees look taller when there’s no underbrush”)

But who cares? I hear you cry. Well, apart from me… more and more gender stereotypes are less being propagating by the old forces such as religion, and more by rampant consumerism. For the nutritionist-~~bashing~~ constructive critics out there, this is reflected in Vitabiotics different vitamin supplements for women and men, the women’s one advertised with the slogan “We are of course very different from men in many ways - so why take the same general multivitamin as them?”

Why indeed?

Pink Stinks is a campaign for real role models for girls.

When we’re talking about geniuses we’re not talking about you

2009-08-16T17:17:00.004+01:00

Ah, Harriet Harman. I really wish I could support you, but you are far too crap (great analysis on this from Laurie Penny). Harman has reignited the debate about representation of women in politics which after years of looking at gender balancing political party selection procedures, makes me want to gouge my own eyes out.

It really is this simple: we live in a society governed by a form of democracy which is tasked with responding to the needs of the population. That population has women in it, therefore those tasked with governing need to represent that population. While there have been great successes brought about by feminist men, giant leaps in social policy positively affecting women has been put on the agenda by women MPs.

Equality campaigners of all equality strands see political representation as an important part, albeit only one, of their struggle. Indeed the representation of women in the governments of the world is cited by international human rights instruments (CEDAW and committee recommendations) as an objective in the campaign for equality.

Strange then, that a call for equality always gets dragged down into a discussion of either female intelligence (or lack of) or the ‘fact’ that women just aren’t cut out for politics.

I won’t get into the in-depth debate about the nature of intelligence here and will just stick to IQ. The evidence obviously varies often depending on how the test is weighted but in general there is no mean average difference between men and women. Where there is evidence of a sex difference it is in IQ variance, where there are findings (such as this 2006 study) of more men than women in the top and bottom 2%, although this could also be due to sampling bias.

As with a lot of science, it doesn’t give people the definitive, unchanging and universal answer that they want. At the moment the very most that we can say is that there is some gender variation at the extremes and some gender differences in different cognitive abilities, but even that may be refined by new evidence.

What is the real problem, as ever, is not the science but its interpretation. Specifically, the dumbass reduction to ‘men are cleverer than women’. It is as silly as using the same ‘logic’ at the other end of the scale and saying ‘men are stupider than women’, interesting how this flip side is never used….

There are such things as female geniuses*, there are just more male ones. Conversely, there are females who are cognitively, er, challenged (?), there are just more males who are.

There is a greater difference in IQ within sexes than there is between them.

There are not many geniuses in politics (believe me I know a lot of politicians, hopefully none of whom read this blog…), indeed nor should they be over-represented. Our democratic institutions are intended to consist of laypersons. There are no qualifications to be an MP (other than eligibility issues; over-18, British citizen, not a bishop – seriously…) which is to enhance the diversity and experience of our representatives.

So I get a little tired of the inference being made that because of a over-representation of males in the higher IQ tail, we shouldn’t aspire to gender balance within politics. That argument misplaces the significance of statistical significance.

The interpretation of information of this nature must be handled responsibly. We can’t look on wide-eyed and say ‘Look, I’m just saying there are more extremely intelligent men than women. It’s just a statement of fact, you are doing the interpreting not little ol’ me’ It’s like Fox News just saying that some of those responsible for the Glasgow terrorist attack were doctors in a socialised health system. Or The Sun was just saying that the numbers of swans in London had gone down in the same time-frame that numbers of asylum seekers had gone up.

In a society riddled with gender inequality, where women are paid less than men, where traditionally ‘women’s work’ is undervalued and where women’s infuriating habit of reproducing is getting them sacked and publicly bollocked, just saying that geniuses are more likely to be male than female is used by bigots to call women stupid and incompetent.

I’m not calling for censorship here and I am not trying to shut down debate. I am saying that facts and debates do not happen in a vacuum unfettered by discriminatory attitudes and values. We have learnt the need to contextualise a debate about young black men and crime and not cherry pick statistics and pretend that the stats we use will not have insinuations and ramifications.

Primarily, I’d like to point out that its unlikely that those who use the stat on male IQ are in the upper tail themselves and that you can’t get there by association. The Dunning-Kruger effect frequently takes hold.

*I’m using the (yes, sloppy and lazy) shorthand ‘genius’ to signify the top 2% on IQ variation.

Mitchell and Webb on lady adverts

2009-08-11T22:22:00.003+01:00

OK, apologies for being quiet on the ol’ blogging recently. But I’ve been moving flat. Here’s something to make up for it…

Rent-a-quote psychologists

2009-08-04T00:04:00.007+01:00

[Peanuts]

Now Dr Petra Boynton is a professional, eminent in her field and because of that is bound by professionalism and, er, eminence to talk euphemistically about a celebrity psychologist that she calls 'Psychologist A' in her blog here.

I, on the other hand, have no such shame and so can fairly confidently say; "Come on, Dr Petra, we all know you're talking about Dr Linda Papadopoulos." This shameless rent-a-quote academic will put her name to anything when not embarrassingly fronting a government campaign on the sexualisation of girls in British society (blogged on previously) or seemlessly moving to comment on Big Brother or My Big Breasts and Me. (Believe me I am aching to divulge her government 'research' but its not public, bites lip)

Dr Petra's blog was inspired by a great article by Martin Robbins on celebrity psychologists, so I thought I'd return to Dr Linda and share a few more gems from her academic-reputation-for-hire.

Dr Linda, Celebrity Psychiatrist (sic), is naturally concerned by our consumerist-obsessed society that is fueling dissatisfaction and alienation. Her remedy? Why Lacoste's new perfume 'Love of Pink' for women of course. Just as Dr Linda says:

“The color pink is, in a lot of ways, the essence of what it means to be a young woman – love, romance, femininity and youth are all punctuated by this color. When a young woman wears LACOSTE Love of Pink, she wears the color of love.”

Yeah, Linda, you are totally right. And I realise now that you are the PERFECT person for the government to employ to look into gender stereotypes which are fueling inequality and violence against women.

But it doesn't stop at perfume, oh no. Remember, this woman is a serious academic. She does SCIENCE. And by science I mean research. And by research I mean stuff that a company makes up to sell shoes. Stuff like, the FACT that women's heart rate increases when they buy shoes:

"Shoes have a particular draw to women as they are emotionally evocative items to them and they bring out women's socializing and nurturing instincts," the Mirror quoted [Dr Linda], as saying.

You know she's right. A cute pair of Jimmy Choo's actually makes my womb ache (sorry, she was actually being paid by Brantano, er, who?). In fact there is a direct link between the shoe part of my brain and my genitalia because I'm a woman and therefore incapable of abstract thought.

OK now, what's missing? I've got my shoes. I stink like the changing rooms in Top Shop on a Saturday afternoon. But I'm still not happy. Dr Linda knows why:

"There is evidence that people are malfunctioning because they are not enjoying enough pleasure on a regular basis to be healthy happy people"

It appears that I have 'Pleasure Deficiency Syndrome' which is something that only exists when drinks company Bailey's pays for a survey from YouGov and then pays Dr Linda to endorse the findings of the survey, make up a 'syndrome' and get people to drink more Bailey's. Now I am actually not getting enough pleasure on a regular basis but the one thing that will make this fact inexorably worse would be having to drink Bailey's.

Seems Dr Linda is frequently hawking her academic wares around to the highest bidder, be they Boots the Chemist, Tate & Lyle (pdf) or The National Lottery. And of course her own line of psychological face creams.

To think of the women who sacrificed so much to break through the glass ceiling of academia, who were the first to be admitted to male-only universities and colleges. And all so that in years to come, a lady psychologist can sell shoes, perfume and a creamy vomit liqueur.

Does this increase the public's understanding of psychology and is this ethical as Dr Petra asks? Well no, I would argue that this devalues science, makes the public suspicious that academics will say whatever they are paid to say and perpetuates embarrassingly shallow gender stereotypes. However, when the government buys into the academic-PR complex that is Dr Linda, we achieve new heights of incredulity.

How to get your project in the news around the world: say that women are a bit crap at something

2009-08-02T12:47:00.008+01:00

[Hunter from Neverwhere. Female]

This is one of the worst articles on gender and brains I've seen in a long time. A piece was written by an AFP agency journalist, has been cut n’ pasted into news sites across the globe. As far as I can tell, its only appeared in The Telegraph in the UK, but has made it to Russia, India, Spain, Australia, Japan and Playboy (and many many more).

It is a terribly written article about a yet-unpublished paper on a study of 48 people by an A Level teacher.

Now, I'm not being dismissive about the researcher from Hammersmith and West London College, but this study has got more coverage than most research from the most eminent professors in the country.

The article gives the impression that men are better at judging distances than women and that this is because of our hunter-gatherer past. Men would hunt and therefore have to throw spears long distances, women would gather berries and whatnot at close quarters. (And yes before all the archaeologists and anthropologists start jumping up and down on me, I know this is simplistic rubbish too, but that’s another story).

Firstly, men being better at judging distances than women wasn’t really the finding of the ‘paper’ (i.e. what was contained in the abstract of the yet to be published paper). The article in fact contradicts itself internally:

Men were more accurate than women when the target was placed far away at a distance of 100cm.

And then

In a second study, volunteers were asked to carry out the same tasks using a stick rather than a laser pointer. This time women were significantly better than men at judging both distances.

Secondly, this is a study of just 48 people (24 men, 24 women) presumably from one locality (probably Hammersmith or West London) and unlikely to have been controlled for other factors (age, occupation, experience of archery etc). But I don't know, and nor does anyone else, because the paper hasn't been published.

Thirdly, in a study about spacial awareness, comparing abilities over 50cms to 1m is fair enough. To define it as hand-reach (near space) and beyond hand-reach (far space) is clear. But leap from 1 metre being called ‘far space’ to the distance over which a ‘hunter’ would throw a spear at a mammoth, is more than a little ridiculous.

Fourthly, as a psychology experiment on visomotor performance why is there an urge to link this randomly and in an ill-informed way to primitive human society and evolutionary biology?

But lastly, this is an experiment conducted at a further education college which is about to be published in the Journal of Psychology. My problem is not with Stancey, seriously well done (as long as you take from this experience the media manipulation of science and how best to give comment to a journalist).

My problem is with a media that doesn’t check its facts, that doesn’t do anything but cut n’ paste a poorly written article into their newspaper. Stancey is quoted as "Psychologist Helen Stancey, from Hammersmith and West London College". Googling Hammersmith and West London College you realise it is a further education college that runs A Levels, BTECs and the like.

So how does this happen? We live in a world of lazy gender stereotypes: women can’t read maps, men take risks, girls like pink etc. When ‘science’ journalists come across a crappy story about women not being able to judge distances (which cognitively signifies women not being able to drive/play sports/walk past a shoe shop…) because they ‘were gatherers’, it makes culturally sense to us. Not scientific sense, but it fits in with society’s general assumptions, stereotypes and bullshit common-sense.

This is why I think these kinds of reports are so damaging, they serve as the wallpaper of patriarchy. The constant mundane assumptions about male and female differences that support gender inequality.

And for the record, I’m a dab hand at archery.

Beware the spinal trap

2009-07-31T19:16:00.002+01:00

I have reproduced the article below as part of Sense About Science campaign to Keep Libel Laws Out of Science. As a human rights activist I am well aware of the problems libel laws present for the work I am involved in, particularly when it involves private companies. It is vitally important that we have a society where people can critique scientific claims and subject them to scrutiny - that's how science works. So please read about the campaign and sign the petition.

Beware the spinal trap

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results - and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that '99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae'. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying - even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: 'Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.'

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher. If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

Women and Open Source. Again

2009-07-29T23:40:00.003+01:00

Sorry for doing women and open source software AGAIN (also here). But the principles are important people!

Anyway, here's a presentation from a female developer on some women-friendly projects. There's also some good tips on including women in your projects. The main one I'd like to pick out is:

Call people on their crap.
If someone’s being an asshole, call them on their crap. How do you tell if someone’s being an asshole? Well, if there’s a naked woman on the projector screen, that’s a good sign.

Let them know that their behaviour is making people feel unwelcome, and that you don’t like it.

Pay attention.
Pay attention to your own behaviour and the behaviour of others. This is possibly the hardest piece of advice I’m going to give. You’re not used to noticing this stuff. 80% of you haven’t noticed the sexism in our [OSS] community.

As men, you are able to glide through life ignoring these things. If you are white, and straight, and speak English, and are university educated, there are a bunch of other things you’ve been able to ignore so far, too. I’m asking you to try not to ignore them. Keep your eyes and ears open and be aware of how things feel to people who don’t share your privilege.

Just saying.

In celebration of hair

2009-07-29T14:22:00.004+01:00

[hairy and proud, Frida Kahlo]

Yes, the Daily Mail is at it again. A woman off the telly, went outside, in public, with possibly some hair on her lip (also possibly a shadow). Luckily, the Mail informs us that her young son "didn't seem to mind his mother's moustachioed look". That's nice.

Female hair really seems to be one of the last taboos and causes all kinds of kerfuffle when celebrity women go outside, in public, without being suitably plucked, shaved, waxed, sugared and electrolysed. I know women who shave their forearms. Forearms!

What I find disturbing about this is that bodily hair is a sign of pubescence and womanhood in women and there seems to be some very unhealthy drivers for making women look pre-pubescent. I find having hair sexy and womanly, and a micro act of resistance.

Plus, and I'm willing to concede that this is just me, I would love to know what it felt like to have a beard. I can imagine stroking it and twiddling it. Although I couldn't be arsed with shaving every day so on balance I'm pleased I can't grow one (and am unlikely to gain that talent even in later life as I'm not from a hirsute family).

It's time for hairy women to reclaim the mantel of Frida Kahlo and refuse to be bullied into expensive, painful and unnecessary treatments (particularly by the Daily Mail). If it feels more comfortable fine, but if not you should still be allowed out in public.

New Daily Mail Scientist

2009-07-25T19:05:00.007+01:00

[Daily Mail ad run in the Metro. Yes, in 2009]

This may well be a foolhardy adventure, a titanic battle, an Icarian endeavour, I cannot help myself but carefully and scientifically dissect another Daily Mail article. After I’m long dead I hope that the fossilised remains of my blog will be found so that others will know that there was resistance to this cancerous newspaper.

I’ll address most paragraphs in turn.

Fathers DO matter: Scientists claim they play crucial role in child's development

In a world where advances in cloning and genetics are threatening to make men redundant, scientists finally have some reassuring news.

No dipshit, it’s only in your paper that claims like this are made.

A study has shown that fathers play a crucial in family life - and that without a dad present in the crucial first stage of life, offspring grow up to be less sociable.

Let’s pick out the crucial words in this sentence: “father”, “family life”, “dad”. We all know what those words refer to don’t we. Yes, humans.

Although the findings come from a study of animals, it adds to the growing evidence that fathers influence the way children develop.

Right, so in fact a study HASN’T shown anything about “fathers” or “family life”. And given the variety of parenting models in the animal kingdom you are going to have to show applicability (who thinks they will?...)

Previous studies have shown that girls reach puberty younger, become sexually active earlier and are more likely to get pregnant in their teens if their father are absent when they were young, New Scientist magazine says.

I will address these ‘previous studies’ at the end and the problems with them. I will also take the New Scientist out the back for a damn good thrashing.

Other work has suggested that sons of missing dads have lower self-esteem later in life.

Other work? What like that paper I wrote with my own shit through the motion of wiping my arse? Obviously no need to reference, it is accepted wisdom.

The latest study looked for biological changes in laboratory mice when they were raised without fathers.

Here we go. Paragraph 6 and we find out you’re talking about mice. Five paragraphs on vague conjecture with a clue that this is a completely rehashed article from the New Scientist and we culminate in fucking lab mice.

A team at McGill University, Canada, used a strain of mice which, like people, are usually monogamous and tend to rear their young pups together.

A strain of mice, which like people, live in cages in laboratories, have tails and run around on wheels all day.

They removed the fathers from some of the mouse pups three days after birth until they were weaned at 30 to 40 days old.

The scientists, led by Dr Gabriella Gobbi, then analysed the behaviour and brain cells of the pups - and compared them to mice brought up with both parents.

Brain cells in the 'single parent' mice had a muted response to the 'cuddle hormone' oxytocin, a feel-good chemical released in the brain during sex or moments of intimacy.

‘Cuddle hormone’ is a technical term I’ll have you know. And given that the Daily Mail are anthropomorphising these mice to an alarming degree, does them talking about them having sex make this article paedophilic?

That meant they were less likely to feel positive when in the company of others. The fatherless mice were also more anti-social.

They found that they were feeling less positive through a survey where the mice were asked to rate their positivity on a scale of cheese to incontinence on a first date. Indeed fatherless mice are more likely to be Goths.

'Usually if you put two animals in the same cage they investigate and touch each other, but when we put to animals deprived of a father together they ignored each other,' said Dr Gobbi.

Maybe its because the offspring of divorce parents have less expectations of long-term relationships and decide not to get involved in an intimate relationship that will inevitably end in heart-break and despondency. Oh, wait a minute, they’re FUCKING MICE.

The scientists are unsure whether the same biological changes take place in human children raised without a father - and whether the findings are applicable to people.

But we’ll keep the headline and everything we've written up until this point because no one is really going to read this far and what can science tell us about the moral decline of Britain anyway.

In the strain of mice used in the experiment, the fathers lick and groom the young pups more than the mothers do. Because grooming affects the development of pups, it could be the lack of physical contact that cause the changes in the brain, the researchers say.

It seems that mice feminism has also gone to far and these mothers aren’t even looking after their children properly. OK, this paragraph does seem to entirely undermine the preceding drivel showing that mice parenting does seem to differ from human parenting somewhat, but apart from that the similarities are uncanny.

The finding follows another study which showed that men experience a huge surge in oxytocin after a child is born.

Let’s just randomly chuck this study in. Totally unconnected, but shit who cares?

Dr Ruth Feldman of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel tested oxytocin levels of 80 couples before a child was born and six months afterwards. She found that levels of the feel-good chemical rose in mothers and fathers after the arrival of a child.

‘Feel-good chemical’ is another technical term, keep up.

The chemical affected the parents in different ways.

Banal sentence of the entire article. Congratulations.

Mothers with the highest levels spent much longer gazing at their children, stroking and kissing them and speaking in a "sing song" voice, she found.

i.e. become insufferable to be around.

Dads with the highest levels played more with their child than fathers with the lowest levels.

'Fathers and mothers contribute in a very specific and different way,' she told the magazine.

She believes fathers may be 'biologically programmed' to help raise children.

This is a very very bizarre statement.

Right so let’s look at the studies the Daily Mail randomly chose to cite and how they arbitrary chose to report them. Sadly this Daily Mail article is a pretty much direct rehash of the New Scientist article it refers to. New 'Scientist' Fail.

I’ve been warned before that the New Scientist can be sexist, but this is the first time I’ve come across such a biased and unscientific article.

I have blogged here about the studies looking at early female pubescence and absent fathers when Oliver “bad-parenting-causes-schizophrenia” James tried to peddle his social-conservatism as caring liberal. (In summary; "I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that").

There are a number of social determinants that affect girls becoming sexually active earlier and teen pregnancy. Education, access to information, aspirations, abuse, gender inequality, coercion, poverty – can all play a role and interact with each other.

The two studies referred to directly in the article are by Dr Gabriella Gobbi of McGill University Health Centre and Dr Ruth Feldman of Bar-Ilan Universit, were both unpublished studies from Conference Posters presented at the World Congress of Biological Psychiatry and the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, respectively. Dr Gobbi's: The fatherless brain: Impact of paternal deprivation in Peromyscus californicus on social behaviour and on Oxytocin, NMDA and monaminergic synapses in the prefrontal cortex, poster, WCBP (pdf of programme). Dr Feldman's: Maternal and Paternal Bonding in the Postpartum: Hormones, Parenting Behavior, and Mental Representations.

I therefore doubt very much that the article reflects what these researchers will have concluded in their studies. Even if they themselves did make these giant leaps, the work is unpublished and there has not been an opportunity to peer-review.

Reporting ideology rather than science is what the Daily Mail does. Which is why I am more annoyed with the New Scientist for this crappy article. Of course the Mail was going to pick it up and use it as more evidence to espouse its socially conservative and judgmental propaganda. But for a scientific publication to use a study in mice to comment on human social interaction, is willfully ignorant.

Nerds leave Fortress of Solitude for Playboy Mansion

2009-07-20T20:40:00.008+01:00

My recent lack of posting is due to going to Latitude Festival over the weekend. Which was terribly lovely. But I got back to an emailed link to this story from Double X on the biography of Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin.

Apparently, their lack of ability in the getting-laid department inspired the origins of Facebook and their (unofficial) biography seems to chart their success through the anonymous women they shagged.

I've blogged before about nerd sexism (here and here), but I do have sympathy with the article's assertion that "sexism 2.0 is uglier than its early versions". Call it pop-psychology, but the misogyny within the geek-tech community seems to be driven by former rejection. Girls wouldn't kiss the geeks at school and now that they're billionaires they will wreak their revenge on women by objectifying them and spending their time developing rape-simulation games (great article on rape in games here).

This isn't a new form of sexism however, its the same-old same-old reaction by some to women not being constantly sexually available to men. As one male friend suggested to me; "Well, if those teenage girls would just snog the geeky boys at school..." Forgetting that a) teenage boys are repulsive and b) girls really shouldn't have to put out just so that boys don't go on to 'rape' female characters in Second Life.

Rather than male techies having a long hard look at themselves and seeing how they may be contributing to oppressive practices, they bemoan the fact that the banning of Rapelay has led to a decline of "erotic games".

Although this might all stem from the same sexism that pervades our society, what makes it worse is that the men involved are often anti-authority, leftish, progressives (I have a link for this, bear with me). As I've said before - we expect more from you, don't let the abused become the abuser. Plus the undermining of women in tech, whether web company founders or a faceless Victoria Secret model, seems to come at a confluence of a sustained backlash to the feminist analysis of objectification and a desensitisation to sexual violence against women (in society at large as well as in games).

Nerdy men need to be aspiring to more than the Playboy Mansion. You're not going to find a Starbuck there.

Thanks to Liz. And sorry I've been a bit too techie recently. Will get back to health and medicine.

OW! F, Bks, Cy, MF*! I stubbed my toe.

2009-07-13T01:23:00.008+01:00

This post was inspired by a Twitter conversation with @EvidenceMatters about pain and swearing. Apparently, swearing can increase pain tolerance, increase heart rate and decrease perceived pain (when subjects put their hand in icy water) compared with not swearing. I guess it is the linguistic equivalent of rubbing the elbow you just banged. But the study did say specifically that this was only true for men. What about women?

I went on the hunt for a study into female responses to pain and swearing. None. And yet I came across a whole plethora of linguistic, gender studies, organisational psychology, even politeness research (?) studies into gender differences in swearing.

Now, you may have noticed, I’m a big fan of swearing. I think it’s an important linguistic tactic. Plus, it is both big and clever. I love the fact that Armando Iannucci sends the scripts of The Thick of It to a ‘swear man’ who put more swearing into it.

However, if readers of this blog are true to form, you should be rather alarmed by my swearing and indeed think that this signifies my lack of morality. Of course, if you think that you can get tae fuck.

Culture and expectations tend to mitigate against women's use of obscenity. Swearing is seen as an aggressive and masculine thing to do and therefore sweary women are seen as transgressing gender norms. Indeed, studies show that women are judged more harshly for swearing than men (de Klerk 1992, 1997).

Swearing is also associated with lower socioeconomic groupings and/or working-class culture. A study by Elizabeth Gordon, found that in addition to the expected judgments of lower social status, female ‘non-standard speakers’ were additionally perceived to be of lower moral standing, on the basis of their vernacular usage (slang as well as swearing). So not only am I a gobshite, I’m a filthy, loose gobshite.

I admit to using swearing in a consciously gendered way. Just for shits and giggles. Calling men bitches, women wankers and requesting people suck my dick is part of my one-woman crusade to break down the gendered distribution of swear words. This isn’t unrealistic as apparently “terms like bitch and sow, were first used of males (or of both sexes) and only later applied exclusively to women”.

So could it be that the cultural norms that restrict women’s potty mouths could be doing them out of pain-relief? If you’re a woman and frequently find yourself frustrated, banging your legs on corners of tables or burning yourself with your cigarette – let out a screaming ‘fuck’. It’ll do you good on so many levels.

And on a positive note, girls swear as much as boys on MySpace - progress of sorts!

Next 'I'm a Celebrity' to be set in Whitehall

2009-07-11T23:59:00.008+01:00

[Then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith with the necessary celebrities launch a consultation]

It is a bad sign of the health of evidence-based policy making when the Government employs an academic on the basis of their IMDB profile. Almost as embarrassing as Gordon Brown phoning Simon Cowell to find out how Susan Boyle is doing, back in March the Home Office employed Dr Linda Papadopoulos to carry out a study into the sexualisation of girls in British society.

Now I’m not saying Dr Linda (as she likes to be known) is a bad person, I just don’t think she is the right person to be advising the government on this aspect of social policy. The research into violence against women in the UK is extensive leading to an understanding of the ‘continuum of violence against women and girls’ and policy outcomes such as the integrated strategy on violence against women (which exists in Scotland and is currently being consulted on in England).

This isn’t Dr Linda’s specialism. She seems in fact, far more comfortable as the resident psychologist on Big Brother, a regular on The Wright Stuff and Celebrity Fit Club and a general rent-a-quote ‘Celebrity Psychiatrist’ (sic) on CNN, Sky News, Channel 5 news, ITN news and BBC breakfast. She has also written such weighty tomes as 'The Man Manual' and 'What Men Say, What Women Hear'.

Dr Linda also has a range of skincare products which include ‘smart nutrients’ which can “boost memory, reduce stress and even help cognitive ability”. These are moisturisers. But the range is called ΨDerma [Psy-Derma]. Geddit? She’s a PSY-chologist who’s peddling moisturiser which makes them like, er, psychological moisturisers.

The range includes:

Cleansing Thoughts Foaming Cleanser – ‘Foaming cleanser & detoxifier to wash away the stress of the day’
Intensive Therapy Facial Serum – ‘Profound stress relief serum for unhappy skin’ (£30 for 15ml)

Now as I said, I don’t think Dr Linda is a bad person and a lot of her advice about women needing to boost their self esteem and not be body-obsessed is all well and good. What I do have a problem with is the Government’s use of pop-psychologists to advise on social policy and Dr Linda’s use of women’s self-esteem issues to sell over-priced moisturiser to them on the basis that it will in itself help deal with stress and anxiety.

Dr Linda is getting dangerously close to misusing her ‘Dr’ title. And its not good clinical practice to speculate on the psychology of anyone on TV. As the fabulous Dr Petra Boynton said at a recent talk: “I wouldn’t comment on a celebrity’s mental state if they were my patient as that would be unethical and I wouldn’t comment if they weren’t my patient as I would have no idea what I was talking about.”

Wise words. I would also add: psychologists should think deeply about giving academic legitimacy to the exploitation of or intrusion into any individual's mental health issues for TV.

Thanks to Heather for drawing this to my attention.

Let's all laugh at working class women

2009-07-08T23:36:00.004+01:00

[Diana Mitford Mosley, mother of Max Mosley. And not a working class woman]

This has really torn me. Yes I hate fascists. Yes I think they are ignorant and want to laugh at their stupidity. But Vice Magazine - which is a pile of shite - taking a dig at female members of the BNP filled me with rage.

I was uncomfortable about the article but what affirmed my position was the comments which were invariably from men referring to the women as "stupid cunts" and "ugly chavs".

But why do they need to objectify women to get their point across? The BNP are ignorant, bigoted, anti-intellectual propagandists that feed on poverty and marginalisation. So why focus on the women and highlight how ugly, working class and stupid they are? Ah yes, its an easy target.

But for fuck's sake, its the BNP! Its like beating a disabled, piss-covered gerbil to death. Momentarily rewarding but does it really achieve anything? Other than laughing at how stupid women can be, women who are not in the hieracrhy of the party and who did not just get elected to the European Parliament...

I Twitter. I Twat. I Will Tweet.

2009-07-07T17:53:00.008+01:00

Interesting article from Double X, an American women's Web magazine, on studies into male and female use of social networking. Apparently men on Twitter have 15% more followers than women and both women and men are more likely to follow men.

The original study from Harvard Business School had some other interesting findings. Such as:

More women than men use Twitter
Men have more reciprocated relationships (i.e. follow backs)
Both men and women tweet at the same rate
Men are more likely to follow a man than a woman, and so are women but not by as much
The top 10% of users account for 90% of tweets

These results are quite different from other forms of social networking media where activity tends to be more women-focused and men are more likely to follow the content of women they do and do not know. The Study hypothesises that this is because of the different way that Twitter is used and that it lacks photo-sharing (interesting...).

The finding that Twitter is used in very different ways to other social networking sites certainly seems to ring true. I use Facebook and Twitter very differently; Twitter more like a web-log such as MetaFilter and I have a much stricter criteria for who I'm 'friends' with on Facebook and have a private profile there but not on Twitter.

The article suggests people do a gender audit of who they follow. Meh, I follow about 500 'people' but after taking a quick sample, I do indeed follow more men than women but nearly as many gender-neutral as men (News sites, green and human rights orgs, etc). This is *probably* because I follow a lot of nerds, techies, politicians and comedians all of which have a male over-representation. Right, I'm off to have a following cull and find more women to follow!

Oh, and if you want to follow me on Twitter: @naomimc

CIA combine ill-treatment and pimping

2009-07-06T11:27:00.005+01:00

There is a fascinating history of mad, bad and deeply unethical medical and scientific research. From experiments in Nazi Germany to the Tuskegee study in the USA where African American men were left untreated for syphilis so that the progression of the disease could be monitored. The study was only halted in 1972.

I just came across Operation Midnight Climax, which back in the 1950s used prostitutes on the CIA's payroll to lure 'clients' back to a location where they were covertly given a range of substances including LSD so that the effects could be studied on non-consenting subjects. This was part of Project MKULTRA, the CIA's mind control and chemical interrogation research programme.

Unfortunately, this kind of stuff does fuel the (more loony) conspiracy theorists and prove many of their theories right. Its also important to question the ethics of the individuals involved in this including the scientists and medical doctors. It being a State-run programme should not absolve them of their responsibilities. Of course this isn't a thing of the past as doctors and scientists have been involved in the torture or ill-treatment of 'enemy combatants' in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

But also, what of the women? Where are their voices in this? Their sexual exploitation was being done by the US Government. Just as 'Comfort Women' were being shipped to 'service' soldiers by the Japanese Government during WWII and countless other examples of State sanctioned sexual exploitation of women.

The disclosures have rightly exposed this deeply unethical covert research. But how about some justice for the women used in this way by the CIA. I'm a little concerned that they'll just get glamourised for TV....

Female geeks and nerds of the world UNITE!

2009-06-30T09:34:00.000+01:00

[I like your sleeves. They're real big]

This post is inspired by a really really good thread on the often fabulous MetaFilter about geek feminism. Its not often that you get intelligent, articulate and thoughtful threads on gender issues. They very quickly descend into aggressive defensiveness and apoplectic rage. A bit like….

Person M: oh here we go – playing the gender card. when u chicks gonna to get over it??? we re all equal now!!!! Stop MOANING.

Person F: Great, out come the MISOGINISTS! Yeah, try being a woman in AFGANISTAN – women r made to where burkas!!!!!!! and they cant even go out of their home!!!!

You also by and large get 3 Person Ms to every 1 Person F. You get the picture...

Can I first draw your attention to some fascinating links from the MeFi thread:
Nerds and Geeks – book reviews on Pandagon
Feminist Geeks
How People Explain Female Geeks – Geek Studies
Cerise - Female Gamers website

I don’t want to reiterate all that was said on the thread – it really is worth reading – but I just thought I’d show my solidarity with the female geeks and nerds out there (for I acknowledge the difference betwixt nerd and geek) and echo their frustrations with geek/nerd men. It boils down to this: we expect more from you.

Yes we live in a sexist world, a society that objectifies women and where the pay gap hangs on stubbornly. But sexism, as with racism, homophobia etc, is borne out of ignorance if not a concerted effort to maintain supremacy.

Nerds and geeks should therefore understand power dynamics and – after years of having your head shoved down toilets – you should understand bullying and marginalisation. You are intelligent, often leaders in your obscure nerdy field, you should be able to comprehend the concept that equality does not mean ‘the same’ and that there may be a theory that draws together gender stereotyping, the pay gap, the lack of rape convictions, the glass ceiling, and the way that what women wear has almost become an international crisis.

You are scientists (or at least you look like one) so you should be able to interrogate evidence rather than fall back on lazy stereotypes. There are women involved in opensource software, that know their Petri dish from their agar plate, know the difference between mode, mean and median, and watch songs about PCR on YouTube. AND IT DOESN’T MEAN THEY HAVE A ‘MALE BRAIN’.

But most of all, you must not believe that your special exclusive little subculture, which skilfully excludes all the jocks, the stupids, the popular kids and quacks, is immune from the machismo that excludes women and turns them off even more than your lack of personal hygiene.

As mentioned in the MeFi thread – rape jokes in WoW, soft porn images in software presentations and sexually violent anime are the same as titty calendars, sexually violent porn and rape jokes in the locker room. What makes it worse is that female geeks and nerds expect more from you.

This guy has the right idea…
*Disclaimer: contains massive geekiness and schmaltz. Apologies*

More reasons not to be a Goddess

2009-06-29T09:33:00.000+01:00

I got a response from Mark! (background to this here) Unfortunately, it has simply added to the barriers I have in being a Goddess. We can now add "I smoke cigars" to my list of unGoddesslike behaviours.

Hi Mark

I'm not sure that I meet your Goddess requirements by any measure, however, I am intrigued as to why you are doing this. Why are you being so specific about the kind of woman you are looking for and do you think having a 'shopping list' is the best way to go about it? These are genuine questions.

The main thing that I find troubling is your definition of 'surrender' and 'control'. Taking surrender to mean "give up or agree to forgo to the power or possession of another" - doesn't mean your control over a woman? If you have zero interest in wanting to control a woman then why have you defined the necessary length of her hair and size of her waist (no exceptions)? It is certain that you do not want an equal relationship but very much want to be the "powerful" one. There just seems to be a tiny bit of cognitive dissonance going on here.

Thanks for your time.

Naomi

**************************************************

Hi Naomi,

Thank you for your response. I doubt if I can resolve to your satisfaction the "congnitive dissonance" you perceived, but I will make a brief attempt.

Your quoted definition of "surrender" is from the dictionary, and is NOT what I mean by that word... I am talking about spiritual "surrender," which is the most EMPOWERING thing in the world. It means surrendering the ego and dissolving into God. Numerous women who have responded to my web site KNOW this and it is what they WANT in a relationship. See, e.g., the writings and videos of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar... he talks about this extensively.

As for my "shopping list" why do you narrowly point to the "hair" and "waistline" items on my list? Why not take issue with the fact that I seek a woman who is "believes in God"? Or that I seek a woman who "is extremely intelligent and creative"? Or that I seek a woman who is "tobacco free and drug free"? What if she chooses to become an atheist, or she chooses to smoke cigars? Am I "controlling" her by stating otherwise in my profile?

I dislike it when women smoke, and I have no interest in a relationship with an atheist. Likewise, I dislike it when women have short hair or are overweight. I am seeking a woman to whom I will be attracted on all levels, and if she chooses to do dumb things (rather than being "intelligent" per my profile), then that will be a huge disappointment to me. And I will WEEP if she chooses to cut her hair short or she chooses to start eating junk food and gets fat.

Furthermore, if you look at most women's profiles, they have THEIR "shopping lists" and I often see things like "clean shaven" or "toned" or "athletic". What if the man choses to grow a beard, or become a couch potato?

God bless you.

Mark

************************************************

Yes, I did quote the dictionary definition of 'surrender' - my bad. I'm replying now, will keep you updated....

Made Up Science

2009-06-29T00:27:00.000+01:00

The fab Rebecca from Skepchick.

See my earlier blog on L'Oreal's use of SCIENCE to sell colourful fat to rub on your face. Oh, and how supportive of women is L'Oreal? Very. As long as you're not black.

Am I the Goddess you're looking for?

2009-06-27T16:26:00.000+01:00

[Kali, Hindu Goddess of Death]

I was obviously deeply excited to see this website where a hunk of a man was looking for a ‘Goddess’. I was obviously fantastically keen to apply, but there were a couple of things that I thought would get in the way for eternal happiness with ‘Mark’. What do you think?

I don’t believe in God.
I don’t really believe that Mark is on the brink of a large-scale financial success
I don’t believe he does speak DIRECTLY to God.
I don’t like people who CAPS words unnecessarily or over-use exclamation marks!
I don’t really think he is looking for a woman with a razor-sharp intellect or at least the other few of thousand words kinda undermine that desire.
I find pre-nuptial agreements offensive.
I don’t mediate every day, unless you count sitting on the bus on the way to work, staring zombie-like out of the window.
I don’t chant, unless you count shouting catchphrases like “Oh for fuck’s sake” or “he is such a fuckwit”.
My mind is rarely peaceful.
I have frequent “unwelcome thoughts” and constant “mental chatter”. Some unwelcome thoughts include the idea of bald, middle-aged fuckwits filled with sexual intensity *shudder*
When I get hurt or upset I stew on it for weeks, sometimes years.
I frequently feel hatred and the desire to hurt people, but then I probably spend too much time on the internet.
I don’t unconditionally love many people. In fact I don’t much like most people. I even hate some of my closest friends.
I don’t think I ever had childlike innocence and I have a particular suspicion of middle-aged men who want a woman to be childlike.
I have bad posture.
I have a fairly trim waistline – which I think gives me extra points. But I wouldn’t be willing to keep it trim for a man because I have self-respect and prioritise my relationship with pies and cakes over any man. No exceptions.
My hair has grown recently, mostly due to my laziness but I have spent many years with a crop and if there is any thing that would make me cut it all off again it would be a man wanting me to grow it for them. No exceptions.
I have a fairly low voice for a woman.
I’m not fantastically healthy (see relationship with pies and cake).
I am mostly tobacco free, but then do often have a fag when I’m pissed and high.
I’m not a vegetarian and would rather die than never eat sausages again.
My room (as I don’t own a house) is dirty, chaotic and full of crap
My main mental health issue is the frequent desire to kick men in the balls. But I am trying to deal with it.
Saying “outside the box” makes me want to kick Mark in the balls.
I’m pretty unreliable which I, but no one else, find endearing and lovable.
I’m not an actress and feel no desire to become one.
I wouldn’t be willing to travel the world with Mark or appear on TV with him because its crass, cloying and the heteronormativity of it makes a little bit of sick appear in my mouth.
I don’t really think that a sacred sexual union with Mark is crucial for manifesting his Global Vision. But would ostensively be to get his rocks off.
I haven’t been a prostitute and think that if men want their ‘Goddess’ to be one its because they wish to dehumanise, purchase and own a woman for her sexual services
I don’t long to be worshiped as a Goddess by a man. Its creepy.
I don’t want to be controlled by someone and believe submission, surrender and the looking a particular way for someone else are fundamental to control
I don’t really like 100% straight people, they are massively dull.
I don’t respond to anything as a LADY and I’m not a GIRL. I’m an adult and condescension makes me want to kick men in the balls.
I like walking on the street side of the pavement as it allows me to run away faster.
I like to make choices and exercise my free will.
I don’t own any vases.
I like music.
I watch downloaded telly.
Mark doesn’t seem funny – apart from in a funny-weird way.
I don’t want to live in Los Angeles.
I find the top Mark is wearing in the ‘August 2004’ pic offensive.
I think he does want to control his Goddess. Otherwise he wouldn’t have written 6000 words on exactly what he wants from a woman right down to the length of her hair and how long she mediates for each day. And that creeps me out.
I do indeed have a tendency to accuse men of being controlling when they try to control things.

But, but I am NOT a Scientologist!!

I’ll email him and see how I get on – fingers crossed!!!!

Men, no women, are responsible for rape

2009-06-23T22:47:00.000+01:00

The whole 'she was asking for it' line has almost become a cliche when talking about rape. Unfortunately, it's still a prevalent attitude. Back in 2005, Amnesty International launched the results of an attitude survey into rape which found that a third of people felt that a woman was wholly or partially responsible for being raped if she was being flirtatious.

This survey has been replicated by various different organisations including the Scottish Government and the findings are pretty consistent.

It is in this context that you should see if you can spot any differences between the headline from a press release from the University of Leicester:

And the story that resulted in the Daily Telegraph:

Notice any difference? Go on, look really hard.

In the study, psychologists at Leicester Uni asked men to consider themselves in various scenarios with a female acquaintance and find out if or when they were more likely to coerce a woman into sex. The scenarios differed with the acquaintance wearing different clothes, drinking alcohol, being aware of her previous sexual partners or her being assertive.

The main finding was that men who considered themselves sexually experienced were more likely to coerce women into sex. These men found resistance from a woman sexually arousing. Interestingly, alcohol had the opposite effect than expected with men more like to coerce sober women rather than those that were drunk.

Yet Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent, states that alcohol has a bearing on whether men will coerce a woman into having sex. He also says:

Sophia Shaw at the University of Leicester said that men showed a "surprising" propensity to coerce women into sex, especially those that were considered promiscuous.

Now, this is not in the press release and may have come from a phone interview. But it does look like he has mixed up women's promiscuity with men's. Remember, the Leicester Uni headline was "Promiscuous men more likely to rape".

So what's going on here? We already know that a large proportion of people will happily admit that under certain circumstances women are responsible for being raped (let alone those who think it but wouldn't admit it in a survey, it being a rather despicable view). So does Richard Alleyne in the Daily Telegraph just think that maintaining that belief is more palatable for his readership? Is he intentionally playing into our woman-blaming culture? He is the 'science correspondent' so you'd think he would know about study design and, you know, the results. So, he seems to have willfully misrepresented this study to again make women feel responsible for their own rape or sexual assault.

This has also been blogged on here, but they seem to have just worked from the Telegraph article rather than the press release or original study. As the headlines show above, that is never a good idea...

[And thanks to @CliveAndrews for sending the articles]

Women just aren’t funny, while patriarchy is hilarious

2009-06-21T14:56:00.000+01:00

[I heart Sarah Silverman]

I have been speaking to a friend a lot recently about how much Spiked Online sucks. As a supposedly intelligent, progressive website it is regularly weirdly reactionary, poorly written and strangely often plays into the hands of big business. Of course I moaned about it but didn’t really know what to do. However, now I think is the time for the sceptics to strike as is well demonstrated by the indefatigable Gimpy.

And what do they go and do but hand me a terrible article on gender by Patrick West to criticise. So settle in and lets deconstruct a little.

For a site that claims to be libertarian they are very selective about the power dynamics they choose to oppose. Government forcing us to do stuff – bad, patriarchy squeezing us into oppressive flawed and frankly lame gender-stereotypes – fine, indeed ‘natural’.

Patrick West decides to criticise moaning women who complain about aggressive atmospheres in TV panel shows and in politics. Put simply, if you don’t like the rules that us boys have made for our club, then get out. But he also goes further by saying that women aren’t as funny as men and that a hand full of women have adapted to the adversarial nature of the House of Commons so other women should similarly ‘grow some balls’. Nice.

Let’s start with the spurious claim that men are naturally funnier, like there’s some funny chromosome or identifiable ‘natural template’ of comedy. Call me a lay scientist, but I think that is likely to be bollocks.

Being funny is something that is beaten out of girls at a young age. Being funny is often synonymous with being smart and being clever two things that are seen as deeply unattractive in young women by young men. Put simply, funny girls don’t get laid. Young, insecure men certainly don’t want to get naked in front of a smart young woman who might laugh at their cock. Humour is a powerful thing, it cuts people down, it pokes fun at them, it makes them look ridiculous and men don’t like that coming from a woman.

Its not that men are funnier or more aggressive than women, it that females are brought up to be attractive in the eyes of men – that means feminine, and that means not funny. In all these stupid surveys about what women look for in a man, a guy who can make them laugh always comes top. When do men ever look for being funny as a top quality in a woman?

As for women ‘growing some balls’ and wouldn’t it be better if women were just more like men, again I’m afraid Mr West that I think you’ll find that it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Let’s just say for argument’s sake that women should be more like men in politics. If you want to lazily stereotype people and then try to defend such ‘generalisations’ as scientific, then fine let’s enter that science-free zone for a second.

When women are assertive what they quickly find is that other people actually think they’re aggressive. Men being assertive are just being men and nobody notices or comments on it. Women being assertive are cold, bolshy, pushy, unnatural, surly, and generally a bitch. So Margaret Thatcher was often portrayed as being a man, and indeed encouraged that portrayal. Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams, and Ann Widdecombe have all been portrayed at one time or other as mad, bad or useless.

(As an aside I’m getting really sick of the use of a handful of examples as ‘proof’ of anything. Those three women’s careers span over half a century in which there were hundreds of male MPs. You know their name because there were so few)

If women don’t want to take on certain masculine traits in order to succeed in their field, and particularly if they dare to criticise that culture, they are accused of “crying when they got insulted”, that they “moan about ‘ya-boo’ politics” and are “timidly retreating” from challenges.

Let us step out of that science-free zone where ‘generalisation’ is a mathematical term that allows you to be a fuckwit.

To put that into algebraic terms:
Where A is men’s height and B is women’s height.
A > B ≠ any ungrounded statement you want to make

How about you analyse that behaviour in a way that doesn’t maintain your power? Do you think that perhaps ‘ya-boo’ politics is not the best way to run a country? Could it possibly be that the people that are put off by cock-knocking in Parliament might actually be intelligent, thoughtful, empathetic, rationally minded people (female or male) who have something to contribute to discourse and debate? You generally find that those who shout the loudest have the least to say, (see BNP etc).

Now I say all this as an assertive woman, but one who has often been called aggressive, blunt and argumentative when I ‘act like a man’ (read: have an opinion). If I stay and fight I’m a bitch if I don’t want to play by male rules I’m timid. Seriously, there is no pleasing anyone. But I also recognise, that although I am able to stand my ground and thrive in a combative environment not everyone can or wants to. This includes men but mostly impacts on women and this is the crucial point – by creating barriers to entry into politics, the arts, comedy or anything, you are losing out and perpetuating the same bullshit over and over again.

Ultimately saying that adversarial, combative, ya-boo debate is the best form of politics is anti-intellectual. That argument is nothing to do with the substance and all about the style and posturing. It’s rhetoric over rationality.

Jo Brand commented on the structure of certain TV panel shows not working well for women. That doesn’t mean that women are less funny. (For a start the only funny ones on Mock the Week are Frankie Boyle and Dara O’Briain) It means that the set up, where they have to fight for air and verbally jostle for position, and the atmosphere, which is probably as much backstage as what we see on our screens, is not conducive to women being able to be heard. They could have hilarious things to say, but Jo Brand doesn’t feel they get the chance.

I’m not saying that there need to be an equal opps policy on Mock the Week, but women should be allowed to criticise that aspect of it without being told that they are weak, moaning and unfunny.

I don’t want anything to be diluted or weakened and I do not believe that enabling women to participate meaningfully will lead to that. That is a myth perpetuated by those in power – if we change something then awful things would happen! Things would CHANGE! I actually think (in fact know) that breaking down gender stereotypes leads to more diversity, more creativity and is more dynamic. It is the femininity vs masculinity, power vs weakness dichotomy which is stale, discredited and monotonous.

Viva la evolution.

How to get your research in the Daily Mail

2009-06-06T11:23:00.000+01:00

[From Lolcats]

Many years ago I used to work for a press cuttings agency and would therefore read most of the papers every day. One of the most interesting things about this job was seeing how the same story was retold by different papers through different ideological lens. You didn’t think you were getting unbiased news did you? And if that was what people wanted, they would read AP or PA everyday.

No, news is given to us with the light or heavy spin of political opinion. And research is used to enable this in the mainstream press.

This can be well demonstrated by this story about an interview with Sir Stuart Rose by the Observer (trailing the full interview in their Magazine) and in the Daily Mail. The story is that Sir Stuart Rose gave his personal opinion on women and the ‘glass ceiling’. He is the Chief Executive of Marks & Spencer, one of the biggest retailers in the country, and so we are expected to care what he thinks.

Now the Observer pad this article out by getting reactions from other organisations namely the Fawcett Society and Refuge. Fawcett gives stats on the number of women in senior positions in various sectors and Refuge gives a fairly meaningless quote about changing expectations.

The Daily Mail rehashes this article (rather than the original interview) and adds in it’s own bit of ‘new’ research about female happiness. Couple of interesting points about the Daily Mail piece:

It leaves out key pieces of information
Edits the quotes from Fawcett and Refuge in a way that I think distorts their meaning
And throws in a piece of research on female happiness as a way of directly linking the concept that ‘women have crashed through the glass ceiling’ and ‘women are less happy because of it’.

Key information left out - the Fawcett stats on women in top positions in different sectors.
By leaving this information out the fundamental assertion that Sir Stuart makes goes unchallenged in the Daily Mail article. It would be a sentiment that the Daily Mail would agree with “How can there be gender inequality when we’ve had a female Prime Minister/CEO/fighter pilot” etc. You don’t need a GCSE in statistics to work out the significance of this statement. You don’t even need to have gone to primary school.

‘Interesting’ editing of quotes.
I was at first surprised to see Refuge quoted in this piece, given that I think it is fair to say they are a feminist organisation. That was until I realised the Daily Mail hadn’t included the whole quote given to the Observer:

“There has been a subterranean war between men and women, which has largely been won by women who don't understand what they've lost. The hard-won freedom of choice has imprisoned women. I just see an exhausted generation trying to do it all."

Only the highlighted text made it into the Daily Mail article. For more on judicious misquoting, watch this video. WARNING: Contains Ann Coulter.

But most interesting of all, the Daily Mail leads on a “new study”, The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness (pdf), that the Daily Mail says claims women are “less happy nowadays despite 40 years of feminism”. Sigh. I know you can probably guess what is coming but I think it needs to be spelt out for posterity.

Firstly, this is not a new study. In fact the Daily Mail has already covered this piece of research at least FIVE times, the first back in 2007 (see here, here, here, here (all pdfs) and here).

As an aside, notice the picture they use of a WOMAN on a COMPUTER with her back turned on a LITTLE BLOND GIRL. How could she?

Secondly, the study is an attitudinal one and the researchers themselves point to many of the problems with their study design: different data sets, shifting expectations, increased ‘emotional intelligence’. This is not a longitudinal study, this is not a cohort study, this is not a study using the same parameters or methodology for each survey.

What concerns me more is the fact that the study has yet to be peer-reviewed (only being accepted into the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, but not yet published and still no link to their data-set) and yet has obviously been widely press-released and the authors proudly boast their media coverage which includes; The New York Times, CBS News, Financial Times, Guardian, Daily Pennsylvanian and the Western Mail (Wales).

Is this science? The study itself has merit bearing in mind the limitations it points to. Knowledge is a good thing, I don’t think this is a particularly enlightening piece of research but I wouldn’t say it was worthless.

What I do have a problem with is what seems to be the authors’ prioritisation of sensationalised press coverage over academic peer-review. They have for the past 2 years seen the fruits of their labours; wide coverage in the mainstream press and links to stories hinting that perhaps, you know, feminism has gone too far.

The Daily Mail is not particularly pro-women, they are always going to write this kind of guff and find some study or other that will back up their ideological position. Researchers however, should be aghast at the manipulation of their work and should be ashamed of the reactionary articles that reference them rather than proudly linking to them on their website. Unless, this is what passes for academic success these days.

It's not the size that counts, it's the opportunity cost

2009-06-03T23:11:00.000+01:00

[from xkcd]

I'm really only linking to this study about penis length and shoe size to a) insert the cartoon above and b) remind everyone that there are people dying in the world.

But at least now we know: "The supposed association of penile length and shoe size has no scientific basis." No can we please as a culture move on?

Men are from Simpleton...

2009-06-01T13:43:00.000+01:00

[Brooker supporting Water Aid. See he's not such a miserable bugger]

I'm just finishing off a post about the Daily Mail being wrong, but thought I'd draw attention to this fabulous column by Charlie Brooker today. Arf.

I believe the 'dick-swinging contest' is called cock-knocking in some parts....

Women in Science...with a touch of rouge

2009-05-27T23:30:00.000+01:00

[Lady scientist AKA a scientist]

I hope this is the only post I will ever do on the cosmetics industry. Mostly because to be honest, I really don’t care about make-up and really don’t think it’s the biggest feminist issue facing the world today. That’s not to say that I don’t think the Beauty Myth is alive and kicking but I do not think make-up is the fundamental issue, rather the restrictive and often exploitative female body images perpetuated by our consumer-based culture.

I don’t have a problem with women or men wearing make-up even if it is feeding into a $197 billion dollar industry. I would wear it more if I knew how to put it on but I think I missed that day at school.

That aside, I do find it fascinating that L’Oreal are so heavily involved in promoting women in science, to the extent that they have gone in with UNESCO on an annual global women in science prize.

Now there are much better analyses than I could do on the claims of cosmetic companies – (e.g L’Oreal having to pull an ad campaign on anti-wrinkle cream). However, it is also a highly regulated industry (by European Cosmetic Directive for example) and therefore the claims they make tend to be worded in such a specific way so as to make no claim whatsoever. Handbook of cosmetic science and technology is great on this.

So instead, rather than make actual specific scientific claims, some cosmetic companies seek to brand themselves as ‘sciencey’. Rather than make a choice of products on the basis of the scientific claims consumers will simply associate them with the noble cause of scientific endeavour. This is why adverts will be chocka with ‘sciencey’ sounding words.

To illustrate the dubious devotion to science from the cosmetics industry I’ve picked my top ten sciencey words and phrases. I think this might become my new hobby.

Aqua-spheres
Er, water.
Dermapod
This is the name they gave to the tub it comes in. And no its not pod shaped or from the future.
Vitafibrine
I think this is means ‘vital’ and ‘fibres’ which apparently “fight against the distension of the mesh of the skin by reconstructing the structure of elastin by consolidating the network of fibers (in vitro test)"*
* Ah, the all important ‘In vitro test’ which (as of course you know) means testing cell cultures in a Petri dish rather than on human volunteers. This is probably the most widely used method for making scientific claims in the cosmetic industry.
Fruit micro-waxes and active fruit concentrates
These are in a styling gel and a shampoo apparently. I know what these words mean separately but not together. And I love how its not just fruit waxes its fruit ‘micro’-waxes. Just as meaningless but smaller.
Collagen biospheres
I presume they don’t mean an ecosystem or one of those greenhouses, bio-dome things. Probably just collagen drops.
Formula
This is used all the time. You don’t get ‘recipes’ or ‘concoctions’ or ‘mixtures’. You get formulas with numbers and letters and shit.
Minerals
Such as; ‘enriched with minerals’ (hair gel, foundation) ‘mineral water’ (mousse blush) ‘made with 95% natural, skin-loving minerals’ and ‘light-diffusing mineral powders’ (powder blush). Obviously no indication of what minerals or why.
3D magnifying lipgloss
This is getting out of chemistry and into physics. I’d be far more impressed with something that you smear on our face which was 2D or even better 4D. Alternatively, I’d have to a Cyclops to be wowed by 3D.
PureSkin TM complex
Ah, putting two words together into one! The canny trade-mark! The subtle use of the word ‘complex’. That's pure distilled science right there.
Royal Jelly
Royal Jelly just always sounds rude to me, but then I have the sense of humour of a 13 year-old boy. But I’m also interested that bee secretion should be used in shampoo. ‘Not honey, oh no, we use bee secretion’. Weird.

So is it OK for private companies to be involved in promoting women in science when their aim is to build their brand as one associated with cutting edge science? Is it OK for them to be supportive of women when also beating them into consumer-based submission and all to sell blobs of coloured fat? Hell isn't science underfunded enough you've just got to get the cash where you can?

I certainly have a problem with brands as a concept, the idea of ‘having a relationship’ with a product is frankly weird (up to and including vibrators). It removes us a step from the functionality of the product and assumes that we make choices on the basis of font size, colour and packaging, which unfortunately is exactly what human beings seem to do. (This is particularly well illustrated with packaging for fags - really recommended study)

Indeed, most multinationals are involved in ‘philanthropic’ enterprises and have (up until the recession) had burgeoning corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments. With restricted science funding, we can't get too precious and increasingly private finance is the only option. There are many problems with transnational corporations' involvement with CSR which I won’t go into here, but I think its fair to say they are the handmaidens of evil. (And before anyone says it I know it’s a little more complicated than that, here).

Ultimately, its our fault for buying into brands, letting them get away with stupid sciencey talk, leaving science funding to private companies and the little matter of gender inequality.

As an aside, in researching this post, I came across these disclaimers in tiny type at the bottom of some Rimmel TV ads:

‘Enhanced in post-production’ – Ad with Kate Moss.
‘Filmed with lash inserts and enhanced in post production’ – Mascara ad with Sophie Ellis Baxtor.
‘Everything in this ad is a complete lie’ – TruFact Ad in my head

Women and CAM

2009-05-24T23:18:00.000+01:00

I was reminded of the women and complimentary and alternative medicine (CAM) 'problem' by this blog about Professor Edzard Ernst's talk at the last Skeptics in the Pub (which I missed, slap wrists). He mentioned that he had been talking to a female homeopath and as an aside said that most homeopaths are women. When quizzed on this later on he said:

All surveys show that the typical user of complementary medicine (more specifically homeopathy) but complementary medicine is... I call it “The Four F's” - Around forty, female, fertile... and I was going to say “fucking mad”

Now I have blogged on this before and do concede that indeed women are the bigger consumer of CAM, and it seems many are practitioners. So as I asked last time - why?

Purely on anedoctal experience it tends to be either or both based on a) bad experience of 'orthodox' medicine and b) out of desperation. One woman I know was having trouble conceiving and so went for fertility treatment. This treatment was ultimately unnecessary because the cause of their infertility was, as it is for most 30-something professionals, a lack of sex (I'm not medically trained but I believe that is key). The treatment did however result in alapecia for her. Both of these events are pretty high on the scale of emotionally devastating and led her to go to a snake-oil salesman to treat the hair loss and later to a Chinese herbalist for fertility 'things'. A combination of these treatments not working and me suggesting that it might take less effort if she just set fire to her money in the comfort of her own home, she now accepts that they weren't the best course of action but that in both circumstances she was distraught and needed help from somewhere.

Postscript: she now has two children and her hair grew back albeit completely white, which I think is rather cool.

In a previous job I also attended a seminar on Do Not Resuscitate orders arranged by the then Disability Rights Commission. I was representing a certain medical professional body and was therefore treated with suspicion bordering on contempt. This was because the politicised disabled people involved in the seminar had had awful experiences of the NHS and at the hands of doctors hence their admirable drive to get involved in disability rights work. These people would have been badly treated, misdiagnosed, ignored, possibly abused and so were aggressively opposed to doctors deciding on their fate when they were incapacitated. They did not trust doctors to make decisions that they felt would be based on prejudiced views of a disabled patient's quality of life. The health professionals in the room discussed the nature of resuscitation and how rarely it even works but it was difficult to shrug of the, in many cases well-founded, suspicion of doctors.

So my point is, that although these anecdotes may illustrate experiences that may lead people towards CAM or at least away from the NHS, not all women have had terrible experiences of doctors, feel alienated from the experience of the NHS or are in an extreme health situation. This makes me wonder whether gender inequality in society as a whole has some bearing on this. Is CAM more empowering for women? Is it because CAM sells you the facade that you are taking your health into your own hands? Is the communication of CAM better i.e. the therapeutic relationship is more important to many women? These are genuine questions, because I really don't know.

Also, given Prof Ersnt's suggestion that users of CAM are "around forty, female, fertile and ... fucking mad" could there also be something in - now bear with me here - the tradition of the witch? The Witch has been a potent symbol for centuries and although it has been interpreted as a sexist stereotype of old, ugly women, the witch has also be reclaimed by feminists as the symbol of a strong, powerful if maleficent woman. (It important to point out the various cultural variations, e.g. in Central and Eastern European during the Middle Ages witches were believed to be male or female, witches being predominantly female is mostly a Western European conception, but that aside...)

Do female CAM practitioners fit in somewhere in the tradition of strong female 'healers'? Is there any connection to the reclaiming of the 'witch' by feminists in the 60s/70s and its reinvention into the emancipatory goddess rituals? Of course I'm not blaming feminism for CAM, but it does seem likely that there is some connection between people feeling marginalised from 'orthodox' medicine and therefore veering into what are perceived as empowering alternatives. My only hope is that with the vastly increased number of female doctors coming up through the system this may have an affect on women's perception of medicine.

Abortion is about public health not morality

2009-05-23T14:37:00.000+01:00

I haven’t blogged about abortion for, oh, 3 or 4 posts so thought I’d revisit. Prompted by a great blog about the horrendous Nadine Dorries MP on Liberal Conspiracy from the Lay Scientist.

I written quite a lot about this in the past particularly at the time of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (now Act) and the activism I was involved in then (I’ll get around to posting some of that information here at some point).

This blog is going to focus on abortion as a public health issue, but I’m also working on a post about data on abortion in the UK and the oft repeated claim that ‘there are too many abortions’ which I believe is based on flawed logic. But that post requires some graph compiling so will take me a little longer. In the meantime…

I personally do not see abortion as a moral issue but primarily as a public health issue. As a medical procedure we treat it differently to any other, such as the continuing need for two doctors’ signatures which seriously undermines the concept of women’s consent to medical procedure. No other procedure puts the authority squarely with the medical profession rather than the female patient, and this is not an authority that health professionals are comfortable with and have repeatedly called for this to be changed.

Globally approximately 67,000 women every year due to unsafe illegal abortions. The deaths of women due to unsafe abortions are counted among the staggering statistics on maternal mortality where it is believed that a woman dies every minute due to reproductive related issues. The vast majority of these deaths are preventable easily and cheaply and primarily through empowering women through access to information, education and even the most basic healthcare that their predominantly developing world country can offer (99% of maternal deaths happen in the developing world).

Plus, all of these statistics are at best an educated guess because statistics on maternal mortality are notoriously terrible. The fact is that we don’t count dead women and we particularly don’t count those who have died after a botched abortion.

The best way to prevent deaths through unsafe abortion, is unsurprisingly, to offer access to safe and legal abortion. This has had a dramatic affect on the maternal mortality and morbidity stats for Bangladesh.

Not only does a restriction on access to abortion put women seeking an abortion at risk, it also regularly creates a chilling effect that prevents doctors performing therapeutic abortions for ectopic pregnancies and even from performing routine gynaecological examinations. This is most starkly apparent in Nicaragua where the complete ban on abortion has even lead the State being taken to the UN Committee against Torture on the basis of their abortion laws amounting to torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

The chilling effect can extent to women being criminalised when they suffer a miscarriage and are accused of abortion as has been documented in West Africa (currently unpublished).

All of these examples put the UK situation into context but we also need to be vigilant against unscientific attacks on women access to health services in the UK. The attempts to reduce time limits in this country during the passage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill were based on bad science and instigated by those morally and religiously entirely opposed to abortion.

What is worse is that it would have put particularly vulnerable women at risk of being excluded from vital health services in this country. So what was the evidence?

UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008
Forty years on from the passing of the Abortion Act, the Westminster Science and Technology Committee examined whether advances in science require a change in the law. Many advocating reducing time limits did so on the basis of “advances in medical science”. This was not however, supported by the evidence or medical establishment. (This is where in fact the Nadine Dorries story started, see Ben Goldacre’s blog on this at the time)

The British Medical Association and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, neither known for their radical feminism, both submitted evidence in support of the 24 week time limit and a liberalisation of access to abortion in the first trimester (e.g. removing need for doctors signatures among other things).

So where are the medics and scientists marching in the streets asking for the law to be changed? Well, there were submissions to the Science and Technology Committee advocating time limit restrictions from medical professionals who have not declared their religious affiliations. Luckily the press can do this for us. The majority of them are activists from the Christian Medical Fellowship, an organisation which is opposed to abortion (unlike most Christians) and had made its own submission as an organisation

The scientific case hinges on the principle of the "viability" of the foetus outside the womb. It is claimed that foetuses that have been born prematurely at 24 or 22 weeks have be kept alive by ‘science’. As stated by the BMA, it is only a fraction of births at this gestation that survive, and most of those are severely disabled. A study in the British Medical Journal reiterated the point - the latest stats indicate that survival pre-24 weeks has not improved since 1995. It is also important to draw attention to the conflation between the theoretical viability of a foetus at 22 weeks and the viability of a foetus that a woman chooses to abort at this time – these are two distinct situations.

Women get a scan at 20 weeks which can show up problems with the pregnancy. Obviously we can't be certain, but it is very very likely that those being terminated at this late stage have serious problems. Let’s remember that 20 weeks is half way through a pregnancy, women would have a very good reason for going through what is a particularly invasive surgical procedure. Either the foetus is in fact not viable or these are particularly vulnerable women. Restricting their rights further is hardly the answer.

So if the evidence didn’t back up the claim that there had been ‘scientific and medical advancements”, why were we talking about time limits? Suspicions rise further when we start looking at how many abortions we are actually talking about – in England and Wales 1.5% of all abortions in 2008 were over 20 weeks (that percentage is even lower in Scotland and abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland). So we are talking about a fraction of the abortions that take place in the UK which became a lightening rod for the abortion debate.

Why? Because this is a tactic, part of a wider strategy to chip away at the right to abortion. Banning by increment. This isn't my wild paranoia; this is exactly the course of action taken by the Anti-Choice movement in the USA. Lowering time limits, reducing services, enforcing health professionals read out 'warnings' to women before a termination, 'cooling off' periods, parental consent, arguing against the licensing of drugs for chemical terminations with the regulators - all of these mount until it is effectively banned in some States and restricted to 13 weeks in others.

Abortion laws in the global North affect not only women in those countries, as Bush’s global gag rule demonstrates. Not only is this about public health and women’s access to safe and legal health services, it is also fundamental to the principle of female reproductive autonomy and about women’s rights over their own physical integrity. Women and girls are brought up in a global society where their bodies are open spaces for public debate. Where individuals believe their morality justifies a violent imposition on another female human being. I do not believe that I have the right to tell a woman what to do with her body and that is why I am a pro-choice campaigner.

The Bad Feminist

2009-05-17T13:01:00.000+01:00

[picture from the fab Jackie Fleming]

OK, this isn’t exactly about science, although it does have relevance, but I have to blog about this rather than just have drunken rows with feminists in the pub about it. The Observer today has an article representing an ongoing debate/discussion/all-out war within British and American feminism at the moment, one which is regularly crudely characterised as ‘old’ second-wave feminism against ‘young’ third wave/post feminism.

Firstly, to divide feminism up like this is crude, simplistic, adversarial and damaging. Feminisms have always existed, it is not a monolith, there are not keepers of the flame, if you don’t believe me ask any black feminist, Marxist feminist, Feminist Marxist, liberal feminist, Muslim feminist, postmodern feminist, eco-feminist, anarcho-feminist, etc etc yawn etc.

I agree that sexual liberation does not equal emancipation, this is as true for gay politics as for women. I agree that we have a pornification of Western culture (I use that word for US/UK as I can’t speak for Europe etc). I agree that sexual objectification has been packaged, branded and resold to women by a sophisticated Western Capitalism. And I agree that selfish individualism is damaging for feminism which is built on solidarity, activism and an analysis of power whether cultural, economic, religious, social etc.

However.

I am deeply suspicious of feminists telling women that they are not feminists. Firstly, there are not enough of us and we are not winning, so let’s not become arrogant, superior and exclusionary. Secondly, sexual liberation is a very important part of emancipation and sex is a very important part of life for most people. And yet feminist sexual liberation has mutated into looking at what you’re doing and how you’re doing it rather than what you want and your freedom to choose.

Some feminists have become deeply chauvinistic towards, often younger, women who define themselves as feminists. I think this is really exposed by Julie Bindel referring to them as “lazy, bone-idle women” who “can't claim to be a feminist simply because you're a woman”. There is nothing lazy or bone-idle about calling yourself a feminist, it is still a difficult thing to do as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of women in this country do not want to associate themselves with that word. I have no time for the idea that women ‘can’t claim to be a feminist’ as though there is a governing body of feminism that you have to apply to be let into the old ~~boy’s~~ girl’s network. Aren’t we replicating male forms of power here? Are we continuing to tell women what to think, how to dress, how to have sex and what to say? That isn’t why I’m a feminist. I want women to be emancipated not simply live, dress and fuck in a way I want them to.

I am also particularly concerned by the false generation divide that is being created which is deeply patronising and alienating. I have personally encountered this – older feminists dismissing me as young and naïve and not respecting their god-given right to dictate the rules of feminism to me. This is particularly stinging for me given how much I have educated myself in the feminist canon. Given that at 16 years old I was reading Kate Millett while my friends were getting fingered. This is the ultimate adoption of patriarchal power-dynamics and will lead to young feminists rejecting feminism rather than critically engaging with it.

You cannot fossilise political discourse. Feminism is not an ideology it is an analysis of power. And attempting to stop women calling themselves feminists because they are revelling in their sexual promiscuity is as redundant as the Christian Right trying to enforce chastity. That genie is out of the bottle, so how are we going to engage in it. Call these women traitors? Or think how can sexual liberation can continue to be a force for further emancipation?

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that while we’re all having this little inter-feminist war the rest of the world is not listening. Girls are still acid attacked in Afghanistan for going to school. Women and girls are still being raped in shocking numbers in South Africa. As uncovered in the New Scientist, female foetuses are being sex-selectively aborted in Vietnam. Now is not the time to push feminists out of our ever-decreasing circle. If you don’t think sex-feminists are feminist enough, why don’t you tell them to get involved in women’s rights in the global South, raise money for their local rape crisis shelter or stand for election – that will be far more helpful than calling them tarts and traitors. There are enough men out there to do that for us.

Yet again, it is the bloggers at the F Word that make the best contribution to this debate. Do you think that’s because bloggers engage in debate and embrace the principles of open discussion, the free-flow of ideas and encourage arguments to be picked apart, dissected and put back together again? I think so.

Why I Hate Oliver James

2009-05-09T15:22:00.000+01:00

[Oliver Reed in The Brood]

I could rant for hours about why I hate Oliver James but to spare you that I thought I’d just focus on a recent article of his in the Guardian as emblematic of his biased reporting of scientific research to primarily serve his anti-women analysis of mental illness.

In his ‘Family Under the Microscope’ series, James wrote ‘Do absent fathers trigger early puberty in girls?’ as a eulogy against family breakdown and claiming throughout that yes, indeed the absence of fathers is in fact the main reason for females entering puberty earlier (average age at which a British girl had her first period has gone from 13yrs 6ms in 50s/60s to 12 yrs 11ms now, average drop of 7 months in 50 years: not insignificant but lets have a little perspective).

He goes on to talk about the risk factors associated with early pubescence in girls as a signifier of anxiety, depression and teenage pregnancy etc. Now we’re in perfect epidemiology causation/association territory here; are we feeling a few confounding factors coming on?

Now as far as I can tell, these assertions being made by James are based on a longitudinal cohort study of 173 girls in Tennessee published back in 1999 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (As an aside, this was in the same volume where Dunning and Kruger first published their study, what a coincidence...) The Tennessee study made a link between negative-coercive family relationships and early puberty.

A more recent review study was published in Clinical Psychology Review in Feb this year which reviewed the empirical evidence of an association between puberty and anxiety. They found that:

There is some evidence that among girls, but not boys, a more advanced pubertal status (controlling for age) is associated with higher reported anxiety symptoms. Also among girls, earlier pubertal timing is linked to higher anxiety scores. It is unclear whether early puberty may lead to increased anxiety or if high anxiety influences pubertal timing.

(I’m afraid I can only get the abstract because my login isn’t working, I’ll try again at work and will update when I do)

So yes there is evidence that anxiety is associated with early puberty in girls but it is not necessarily causal and certainly not directly linked to father-daughter relationships. There are a huge amount of confounding factors and if James is correct and depression and teenage pregnancies are associated with early female puberty than I would suggest that there are a number of socio-economic factors at play here as with any association between parental split and health outcomes.

James pretty much dismisses the association between earlier puberty in girls and increased weight, despite the huge amount of evidence linking weight gain/loss to affects on menstruation. As James asserts “But by far the most important factor seems to be a girl's relationship with her dad.”

Now, this article is in the Guardian so James is aware that readers probably also read Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science and so would be looking out for trifling things like ‘evidence’ and reports in academic journals. So at the end of the column, he helpfully references a journal article from Pediatrics billing it as “Evidence relating to decreased puberty age” - and the link to absentee fathers you'd assume. He doesn’t however, give you the title of the article safe in the knowledge that the vast majority of people won’t actually look it up. Here’s the title: Weight Status in Young Girls and the Onset of Puberty

So evidence of weight status affecting early puberty then. And I think we can safely say that the average weight of children has increased in Britain since the 1950s. Yet, James is hanging on to absentee fathers being the “main cause”. Why? Because that’s how he makes his money. As you may know he wrote the book ‘They F*** You Up (Your Mum and Dad)’ and so generally sees parenting as THE primary cause of mental health issues. I will return to slagging this book off in the future, but for now I’ll stick to this article.

So herein lies the problem with so much science reporting, the way it is used to push a particular, usually socially conservative agenda. James bemoans the impact on increased divorce rates at every opportunity. Linking divorce and working women to everything from early periods to schizophrenia.

The implications of his agenda impact mostly on women as his message is ‘ending an unhappy relationship and mothers working will fuck up your kids’. He tries to imply that 'blind feminism' (whatever that means) has degraded the role of stay-at-home mothers and he is battling alone to defend the role of women. For 'blind feminism' read 'straw man' as feminists have always campaigned for the recognition of women's contribution to society as care-givers.

The key is equality and choice rather than advocating stifling traditional roles through fear and scaremongering. And he dresses this up with sciencey sounding stuff, transforming associations into causes and making incredible death-defying leaps of logic.

I despair of this man.

Attracting Women: U iz doin it rong

2009-05-04T11:06:00.000+01:00

Great article from Allyson Kapin entitled: Is the Tech World Really Sexist? Not only does it point out that yes it is along with most other industries, but she gives practical advice to women who work in tech and want to break through the digital ceiling.

It is important for women to challenge social norms in this way and indeed we wouldn’t have the vote without the women who protested and were forced to eat tar or Emily Wilding Davison throwing herself in front of a horse. However, men can do their bit too. And not being utter fuckwits would be a start.

Kaplin made reference to Matt Aimonetti's presentation at the Golden Gate Ruby Conference. Here’s a few stats from the slideshow:

There are 32 slides with images on them (including photos, logos and graphics)
17 of the slides have images of women, 7 have images of men and 2 have images of Viagra which I would argue evokes a certain image of men
Of the images of women; 10 were overtly sexualised (women in micro skirts, naked arses, pr0n scene with 1 man 4 women etc), 2 were primarily demeaning (i.e. ‘funny’ pictures of an old woman and a fat woman), 2 included Jen, the female character from the IT Crowd, and the remaining three although not overtly sexualised (I’m being generous here) would have been chosen to be titillating (woman being massaged, woman’s mouth and women boxing).
Of the images of men: 2 were of Dr Manhattan (drawing attention to his godlike power and penis), 2 were of men surrounded by sexually available women, 2 were the other members of the IT Crowd and one was of Sting (fully clothed and to my mind deeply unsexual, although he is there to reference tantric sex – something to do with ‘performance’, geddit?)
Eight of the slides contain the logo for CouchDB which I presume is linked to whatever Aimonetti is peddling. This logo is a graphic representation of a ‘slacker’ bloke on a couch.

Now I can understand that this was probably an incredibly boring talk and Aimonetti thought the only way to engage what would have been a predominantly male audience would be to come across as blokey and use demeaning and objectifying images of women to ‘spice it up’. I also acknowledge that the demographic of the audience for this presentation (whether physically or online) would be one that consumes online pornography and so would identify with the imagery of naked women’s arses, women writhing around in simulated orgies, pole-dancers, thigh-high boots etc.

And therein lies the problem. This is what alienates women, this is what has led to the mainstreaming of images once the preserve of girlie mags now proudly boasted as pr0n. Not only does it stereotype Techy men as sexually-repressive, social misfits who can only conduct a ‘relationship’ with an animated Japanese teenager, it also makes the women who work in Tech, use it, and consume it (increasingly the majority) hate you.

You might think of yourselves as terribly intellectual but there is no difference between this kind of presentation and having a titty calendar up in a garage.

So yes, women can start promoting themselves within Tech and speaking out more. But the men in Tech are going to have to stop being such sad wankers and stop with the lame lame lame Tech porn.

Disclaimer: I know the title of this post and some comments are terribly heteronormative - but then so is most porn. I'll post some other time about sexuality and science reporting. Although have done some here.

A Sow's Ear

2009-05-01T01:06:00.000+01:00

Do NOT share cups with pigs

OK, I can’t have a science blog without mentioning swine flu. Is there a gendered analysis? Well probably in the access to healthcare for women, particularly poor women but there’s no data at this time. Generally, women do worst in natural disasters – most shocking stat I’ve come across is that between 70%-80% of the people who died in Southeast Asia after the tsunami of 2004 were female.

But also on searching for swine flu and women, I can across this hilarious conspiracy theory from Wendy Wright of Concerned Women of America (Unconcerned Women of America never really got off the ground). The ironically named Wright opined that Obama’s declaration of a state of emergency was a ruse for appointing Kathleen Sebelius as health secretary by stealth. Will this man stop at nothing?

Of course, the interesting thing is not Wright’s lunacy but the fact that she opposes the appointment of Sebelius because she is pro-choice. Sebelius has a great record of vetoing anti-abortion legislation in Kansas where she was Governor and she has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood which has fund-raised for her. All this and she is a Catholic too! Maybe she’s a fan of Catholics for Choice.

Wendy Wright on the other hand is staunchly anti-abortion which has included challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s licensing of emergency contraception, trying to stop the appointment of anyone who has had anything to do with any organisation that has advocated for women’s access to safe abortions, and she also went to Kosovo to lobby against specific articles in the constitution of the emerging state which provided:

the right to make decisions in relation to reproduction in accordance with the rules and procedures set forth by law.
the right to have control over his/her body in accordance with law

Apparently these are 'bad things'. Shockingly arrogant but at least unsuccessful.

(She’s also opposed hate crime legislation and marriage equality so obviously sidelines in homophobia)

What is most concerning for feminists and the rational, is the language Wright uses to oppose reproductive rights and other politically motivated positions on science such as all forms of human cloning; saying that this is about women’s safety and protections against exploitation and the harvesting of eggs. The Right are very adroit at using feminist language when it suits them (see arguments made for the invasion of Afghanistan), but this is particularly dangerous when sisterly language is used to undermine women’s access to safe and legal healthcare and drugs:

“When a drug is easily available, it is a public health hazard to women.”
Wendy Wright talking about FDA licensed emergency contraception

OK, so it wasn’t about swine flu. But you’ve gotta love that quote.

May The Open Source Be With You

2009-04-28T23:51:00.000+01:00

(image from the fabulous xkcd)

Righty ho. I've been tardy at blogging of late, well blogging here anyway as I do also blog for work here. But I came across this very interesting study via Women Who Tech about the numbers of women who use Open Source software. OK, when I say interesting you're going to have to bear with me...

I was first exposed to OS (and by that I mean enforced) by a dear friend, Patrick Harvie MSP. He would go on and on and on and on and on about it and I would smile and nod (because I was brought up correctly) while actually thinking about what I was going to drink that night. It went a bit far when he tried to get me to watch a DVD of Eben Moglen.

Then I started my Masters in global healthcare financing and got more and more into pharmaceutical financing and intellectual property rights. I had a eureka moment - this was what Patrick was droning on and on and on and on and on about, now I get it, now I care!

To be honest, software doesn't float my boat. But the principles are incredibly important and they are important for women. Which brings me back to this study which explores the reasons why a tiny 1.5% of F/LOSS community members are female and many of these reasons are as equally applicable to other scientific/skeptical arenas as to OS. Some reasons summarised here:

Women are actively (if unconsciously) excluded rather than passively disinterested. The exclusion happens among people who often do not mean to appear, and who do not interpret their own actions, as hostile to women.

F/LOSS communities actively perpetuate a ‘hacker’ ethic, which situates itself outside the ‘mainstream’ sociality, but equates women with that mainstream seen in a contrast to the 'technical' realm ascribed to men. Women are treated as either alien Other or (in online contexts) are assumed to be male and thus made invisible.

F/LOSS rewards the producing code rather than the producing software. It thereby puts most emphasis on a particular skill set devaluing other activities such as interface design or documentation which women often engage in.

F/LOSS production and infrastructure is designed and built assuming contributors have a long history with computers, but women tend to engage later in their lives with computers. In order to join women have a larger amount of catching up work to do, which they must do in an environment that almost exclusively values independent discovery.

Inflammatory talk and aggressive posturing (‘flaming’) is accepted within many F/LOSS projects as a key means of developing reputation. This is often off-putting for newcomers and less experienced contributors who are not yet familiar with the community, its norms, or its real hierarchy and is therefore particularly pronounced in the case of women.

These reasons such as exclusion through an imposed hierarchy of skills, advancement through aggressive posturing and equating dynamism against a mainstream that is identified as feminine are all eerily familiar to most spheres of life, be it work, politics or the family.

I've spoken to many many male bloggers who are really interested (or pretend to be) when I talk about a feminist analysis of science and mainstream media reporting but then say "Yeah, as a bloke I don't really do or understand gender." This is the same as people saying they don't really have an accent. It is not just women's responsibility to engage with science and scientific reporting (which in fact they are doing and have done in increasing numbers for decades). Men have to acknowledge the extent to which they are excluding women, however unconsciously this is claimed to be.

This isn't just women harping on about wanting to be involved in your little subculture, it will actually benefit the F/LOSS community, lead to a richer understanding of the power dynamics involved in media reporting and foster greater creativity and energy. And who knows, you might even get laid more often.

Mine's a Pint

2009-02-26T23:41:00.000Z

I love geeks. I love them because they know stuff. I may accuse the press wildly of sexism and I pick easy targets (although bear in mind that A LOT of people take most stuff in the press at face value). However, there are those that can methodically and mathematically tear apart sexist science reporting, such as this blog on women and alcohol. Story in the press here, and here.

After such expert and rational analysis - now for the feminist dogma.... There are repeated stories and commentary in the press about women drinking and this being; Britain Going To Hell In A Handcart, Feminism Going Too Far, Ladette Culture Going Too Far etc etc. Fact is, men still beat women when it comes to alcoholism, alcohol related deaths, and many indeed beat them when drunk.

I am not saying 'Yay, women should drink till they get cancer!', I am saying that research into women drinking is suspiciously over-reported, regularly misinterpreted and uniformly accompanied with moralising about wimmin and how awful they are.

Declared Interest
I drink. A Lot.

I Can Smell Your Brains

2009-02-19T22:51:00.000Z

Now of course I'm the first to criticise men. Horrid, despicable men. And I agree that there is a huge problem with the sexual objectification of women which feeds inequality, discrimination and ultimately violence. Yawn, heard it.

However, even I'm not convinced that a brain scan can show that men think of women in the same way as "tools, like spanners and screwdrivers" (note confusion in above pic). Bad science, possibly but definitely badly reported.

Now I've criticised psychologists before. And we must remember that a psychologist is neither a radiologist nor a neuroscientist. But it does seem that they are making the fairly unremarkable claim that "When there are sexualised images in the workplace, it's hard for people not to think about their female colleagues in those terms."

So yes, girly calendars in the office are inappropriate and are a key signifier of a sexist culture. But there being a "screwdriver" part of a man's brain? Even I wouldn't go that far.

WOMEN: Don't know you're limitless

2009-02-02T10:15:00.002Z

Here we go again. Everything that is wrong with the world is women's fault. Here, Children's Society blames working women for family breakdown, under-achieving children and getting themselves into poverty.

I'd first like to declare an interest, my parents divorced when I was 7. I have two degrees, a successful career and an ability to make friends. You know why? Partly, yes I'm fabulous, but I'm also middle class.

What angers me about these kind of stories is not that the data is wrong, although sometimes it is (links to a comment I made on another blog but haven't got round to blogging on here, tut). Its the inference it makes and the information is leaves out.

So if economic independence is allowing women to leave unsatisfactory relationships. So what do you suggest? Making women more dependent on men? Make them stay in unsatisfactory relationships?

The information that is missing here is about men. Men and women get divorced, why then to men disappear? Why is it divorced women that largely have sole responsibility for bringing up children? Because our society puts more responsibility on women for childcare than on fathers. Women being economically independent is the problem rather than men not being able to adapt to their changing role in society and in the family. Relationship breakdown is the problem rather than adults not being able to break up without turning into sadists intent on harming their previous loved one and often using the children to do that.

The genie is out of the bottle. Women are not going to stop working because they have a right to do so. Couples are not going to stop splitting up, because it is unhealthy for people to be trapped in a loveless relationship. The key here is the information buried deep in the article:
Figures published by Unicef in 2007 showed that children in Scandinavian countries – where rates of family break-up are similar to the UK – are happier than British children.

Why? Its the Economy, stupid. "Broken" families end up in poverty because (and bear with me this is quite mathematically complicated) two incomes are better than one. Childcare is expensive, before women were working they were doing the childcare for free. Only around 12.5% of absentee parents pay child support. Having this 'Men, tuh' attitude is letting them off the hook and blaming women for not putting up with it.

And I'm not even going to start on the often implicit 'children being brought up solely by women are crap because women are crap' argument, I'm sure I'll return to that another day. See picture above instead.

Vagina Dentata

On the move....

Looking at boobs. Saving the world.

Science reporting: is it good for you?

More Periods.

My outfit does not consent on my behalf

Damien Hirst is a cock

New "Scientist" at it again

periods. Periods. PERIODS. P.E.R.I.O.D.S.

Saying girls are rubbish at maths makes girls rubbish at maths

The Game The Whole Family Can Play!

Ruthless, sex-fiend, testosterone-fuelled women gamblers found by scientists

Science on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

The trouble with pink – you’re being manipulated

When we’re talking about geniuses we’re not talking about you

Mitchell and Webb on lady adverts

Rent-a-quote psychologists

How to get your project in the news around the world: say that women are a bit crap at something

Beware the spinal trap

Women and Open Source. Again

In celebration of hair

New Daily Mail Scientist

Nerds leave Fortress of Solitude for Playboy Mansion

OW! F***, B*****ks, C***y, M*****F*****! I stubbed my toe.

Next 'I'm a Celebrity' to be set in Whitehall

Let's all laugh at working class women

I Twitter. I Twat. I Will Tweet.

CIA combine ill-treatment and pimping

Female geeks and nerds of the world UNITE!

More reasons not to be a Goddess

Made Up Science

Am I the Goddess you're looking for?

Men, no women, are responsible for rape

Women just aren’t funny, while patriarchy is hilarious

How to get your research in the Daily Mail

It's not the size that counts, it's the opportunity cost

Men are from Simpleton...

Women in Science...with a touch of rouge

Women and CAM

Abortion is about public health not morality

The Bad Feminist

Why I Hate Oliver James

Attracting Women: U iz doin it rong

A Sow's Ear

May The Open Source Be With You

Mine's a Pint

I Can Smell Your Brains

WOMEN: Don't know you're limitless

OW! F, Bks, Cy, MF*! I stubbed my toe.