July 31, 2004
Vatican statement
I just wish Jesus would come back already, in a female body, or an intersexed body, or a transgendered body, or a gay or bisexual body, so the Vatican can stop issuing nonsense like this:
Such a push for equality, the Vatican said, makes "homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality."
[...]
The document reserved its toughest language for what it called recent "new approaches to women's issues," saying an emerging tendency is that "to avoid the domination of one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied, viewed as mere effects of historical and cultural conditioning."
"The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences on a variety of levels," the document said, asserting it has inspired ideologies that "call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father."
It also warned of challenges to fundamentals of church teaching, saying the blurring of differences "would consider as lacking in importance and relevance the fact that the Son of God assumed human nature in its male form."
Aaaaaargh!
July 30, 2004
Back pain
In the fall of 1993, I was writing a thesis on Kant's theory of freedom. It was my last semester of college. I had a grueling schedule applying and interviewing for scholarships. My best friend - she of the selfless backrubs, ever-ready quip, and willingness to snack - had graduated and moved across the country. I was breaking up with a man I loved and having sex with a woman I liked, in two different cities. Never break up or begin a relationship while in the middle of a major writing project. I'm sure you know that.
One evening while descending a marble staircase, I slipped and landed four stairs down from where I'd been standing. I landed on my butt, my lower back hitting the edge of a marble stair. The thesis, the lovers, and the scholarships are well in the past, but the ruptured disk (L5, S1) is mine for keeps.
Much of the time it doesn't bother me. But when it starts to hurt, I'm good for mostly nothing. Like now. Luckily, right now seems to be a minor, if prolonged, episode. I can't sit much, but I can sleep, walk gently, and (mostly) lie on my stomach to read, write, type, talk, watch DVDs, and do my press-ups. Acupuncture helps. So does cranio-sacral work. Ice. Homeopathic injury pills. Conventional medicine can do little for back pain, although once the combination of an epidural, Xanax, and a trip to California did the trick. Mostly I rely on time and a rueful, renewed comittment to yoga and sit-ups.
In praise of old women
From Heather Corinna's blog (July 30 entry):
... from the mouth of a tiny old woman mowing the lawn of that house, dressed in an array of mismatched and slouchy men's clothes, with a big floppy hat, a wave and a great big smile.
Needless to say, I had to whirl my bike around and go talk to her. Within a half an hour, I knew when and where she got married, that she was originally from New Orleans, how she came into that house, a drama with hospital bills (they'd spelled her name wrong, calling her "Katy" rather than "Cady," which she took great affront to and therefore, felt she could be justified in saying no Katy lived there and the bill wasn't hers: I agree), that people keep telling her to write down her life story but she feels she can't write, that she liked my t-shirt emblazoned with "self-service" across the front of it, and that I should stop by again sometime. That's one of the things I love, love, love about many old women: there's no small talk. They go right to the stories, and they keep'em coming unless you vacate the premises altogether. You rarely even get a word in edgewise. It rocks.
July 29, 2004
Female-Friendly Philosophy Programs
Brian Weatherson provides a link to this article in the Spring 2004 APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, "Female-Friendly Departments: A Modest Proposal for Picking Graduate Programs in Philosophy." The discussion at Weatherson's blog is also worth reading.
I recall hearing years ago from female philosophers their concern that the Leiter report doesn't adequately take into account gender, but I've never seen an argument for that claim, and I'm not even sure what the substance of the complaint is. I think part of the worry is that the Leiter report ranks departments according to criteria set by analytic philosophers, and that such criteria are ipso facto biased against female philosophers. I don't think such a strong claim withstands examination, but I am sympathetic to another claim implied by the author, which is that analytic philosophy is often too narrowly defined. To anticipate Jason Stanley's comment, I don't think that philosophers should be doing literary criticism or comparative literature. The methods employed in those disciplines are quite different from the methods employed by (analytic) philosophers, and I think that's fine. But, in my experience, analytic philosophers can be highly disdainful of work that doesn't prima facie seem to fit their idea of what philosophy should be. One result of parochialism is relative intellectual isolation within the academy.
That said, I don't think the author of "Female-Friendly Departments" shows that the Leiter report displays gender bias. She herself says that such a claim would be very hard to prove. I think she raises questions worth asking, but as Brian Leiter himself says in the comments at Weatherson's blog, many of those questions could have been answered by ... just asking him. Further, those questions not directly relevant to the Leiter report - such as, is there bias in evaluating women's research? - deserve more consideration than they get in the article.
I think the Newsletter ought to have axed the first 2/3 of the article and asked the author to develop her thoughts on what makes a philosophy department "female-friendly."
July 28, 2004
The Crawford Wives
Head on over to Salon.com, where today's sponsor is NARAL. Click on the link in the upper right-hand corner, and watch NARAL's excellent new ad.
Humour me
You are Melancholy. Melancholics are often gifted,
even prone to genius. You are deep and
thoughtful, but this can lead to your being too
introspective, to the point of moodiness and
depression when you find flaws within your
self. You strive for perfection in all things,
most especially your self and your immediate
world. You are sensitive to the needs of
others, and loyal to your friends, but can be
hard to please. Melancholics do well in the
Arts, science, and math.
Which of the Humours are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
July 23, 2004
Math humor
A joke told to me this morning:
Q: What's the difference between an extroverted mathematician and an introverted mathematician?
A: The extroverted mathematician will look at your feet when s/he's talking to you.
Amy Richards' abortion
Ah, but here's the abortion article that has the 'sphere abuzz (I'm still catching up, folks). Amy Richards, coauthor of the third-wave feminist book Manifesta, tells the story of her selective abortions in a calm, matter-of-fact way. When told by her physician she was carrying triplets, Richards opted to abort two of the fetuses and carried the third, now a healthy baby boy, to term. Alas, a blog has an excellent round-up of the discussion (scroll down; I'm having trouble linking to the post). I particularly appreciate Trish Wilson's comments on her own blog.
I think Ms. Richards has done a brave thing for the feminist, pro-choice position. She risked (and received) much hostility; I wouldn't be surprised to hear that she's received death threats. She explained her decision in words not designed to garner sympathy or pity. The old feminist slogan is "abortion on demand and without apology." Exactly.
Denying abortion
43% of American women have at least one abortion before they are 45, yet abortion remains a covert, shameful, and increasingly unavailable choice for many women. Barbara Ehrenreich has an op-ed piece in yesterday's NYT about women who choose to abort but distance themselves from other women who have abortions:
Or go to the Web site for A Heartbreaking Choice, a group that provides support for women whose fetuses are deemed defective, and you find "Mom" complaining of having to have her abortion in an ordinary abortion clinic: "I resented the fact that I had to be there with all these girls that did not want their babies."
Kate and Mom: You've been through a hellish experience, but unless I'm missing something, you didn't want your babies either. A baby, yes, but not the particular baby you happened to be carrying.
Update: Rivka at Respectful of Otters explains what's wrong with Kate and "Mom"'s thinking that their abortions are somehow more justifiable than the abortions of women who simply didn't want to have children. She includes a disability-rights perspective.
July 22, 2004
Noted
From John Barlow:
Ram Dass, whom I encountered along this way, told me, "Our bodies are a joke." I agree, but this is all the better reason to take them seriously, I think. They are at least a joke played on us by God, and God's jokes are the soul's curriculum.
