Now on ScienceBlogs: Still more evidence that Morgellons disease is most likely delusional parasitosis, 2012 edition
A Blog For All and No One
Zuska is the kick-ass alter-ego of Suzanne E Franks. When not dispensing Zuska's wisdom, Suzanne can often be found gardening, reading, or having one of her thrice-weekly migraines.
The place where I come from...is a small town. Coalfields of the Appalachian Mountains
You will be wanting to read my excellent essay, 'Suzy the Computer' vs. 'Dr. Sexy': What's a Geek Girl to Do When She Wants to Get Laid? in She's Such a Geek! Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff.
If you have not yet figured out why you shoud not be using terms like "hard science" and "soft skills", then you absolutely need to read Telling Stories About Engineering: Group Dynamics and Resistance to Diversity in NWSA Journal v. 16 No. 1, 2004 (Re)Gendering Science Fields.
You should also read They Blinded Me With Science: Misuse and Misunderstanding of Biological Theory, an excellent critique of Thornhill and Palmer's nonsense about rape as an evolutionary strategy. You can find it in Burack and Josephson's must-read tome, Fundamental Differences: Feminists Talk Back to Social Conservatives.
Support the Mautner Project for Lesbians With Cancer! "The Mautner Project improves the health of lesbians, bisexual, and transgender women who partner with women, and their families, through advocacy, education, research, and direct service. [The Mautner Project envisions] a healthcare system that is guided by social justice and responsive to the needs of all people."
August 3, 2010
Category: Announcements
This blog has moved to http://scientopia.org/blogs/thusspakezuska
This announcement supersedes the announcement in the previous blog entry.
Thanks for reading TSZ here at ScienceBlogs, and I hope you will continue to enjoy reading TSZ at the new digs over at Scientopia.org.
Posted by Zuska at 1:42 AM •
July 24, 2010
Category: Announcements
New blog address is:
http://thusspakezuska.wordpress.com
Posted by Zuska at 6:10 PM •
July 20, 2010
Category: So Long And Thanks For All The Fish
...the party's over. They say that all good things must end. I've been mentally inching towards the coat closet myself for the past week (read Bora's post for the reference), but as you know, I've been off spending time with my mom. Now is as good a time as any to say goodbye to ScienceBlogs.
My first blog post was on July 13, 2005 on a relatively obscure blogging platform. Only the friend who nagged me into blogging noticed. A year later, the wonderful and talented Katherine Sharpe had invited me to join ScienceBlogs, and I gladly did. What a crazy crazy party. It has been a wonderful experience for all the reasons Bora so compellingly and thoroughly describes, even with all the problems, which he also describes.
I just don't have the heart to do a grand summing up in the manner of Bora or Pal. I will note that this post on Adam Bly's nascent blog leaves me feeling sad and tired. What does the Science-is-Culture media visionary in the year 2010 have to offer us: hairy old white dudes. And we should bubble over with enthusiasm. Thanks, I've had my fill, for this millennium and the last.
Leaving ScienceBlogs, watching it totter and drift and lose its way, doesn't make me happy. Let's call it a night the party's over But I am excited about some prospects for change, and the possibility to renew and reinvent my blogging elsewhere. Moving to ScienceBlogs made me a better blogger (again, for many of the reasons Bora discusses), and it is my hope that the next move or moves will have a similar effect - change is difficult, but can be good. and tomorrow starts the same old a brand new thing again
For the time being you can find me at this haphazard-looking wordpress site. That's the place to watch for any announcements of future moves as well. I hope those of you who have found TSZ here to be interesting, thought-provoking, amusing, helpful, aggravating, or just good for a laugh sometimes will follow me on the next adventure. And let your friends know where I've gone, if you don't mind.
To all of you who have read this blog over the years at ScienceBlogs and to all of you who have commented, thank you for making this endeavor worthwhile. Thanks to all my fellow bloggers who helped me figure out how to do this work, and do it better, and have fun while doing it.
Onward, Zuskateers!!!
Posted by Zuska at 10:09 AM • 37 Comments
July 9, 2010
Category: Burns My Shorts • Outrage of the Week
"The Same and Not the Same" is the title of a fantastic book by Nobel Prize winning chemist Roald Hoffman. It's a great place to get a hearty dose of science + culture. Part Eight of the book is titled "Value, Harm, and Democracy" and has all sorts of interesting stuff in it on chemistry and industry, environmental concerns, chemistry, education & democracy. It does not have a section on what to do when you are running a media empire and your advertisers want you to censor your writers because they are still feeling a bit touchy over that whole messy Bhopal business, but you can't cover everything in one book.
I have been extremely sad the past few days as I watch the Seed/ScienceBlogs Pepsigeddon nightmare unfold before me. Being part of ScienceBlogs has been extremely important to me, and something I've always been proud to claim affiliation with.
In my last post, I sought to draw an analogy between what I thought I saw happening with the now defunct, ill-fated PepsiCo blogvertorial at ScienceBlogs, and the previous struggles Ms. went through in the days it accepted advertising. Feminism and science are uneasy bedfellows at best, but they have this in common: most citizens are ignorant or ill-informed at best about them; are subjected to vast amounts of dis- and mis-information through highly effective marketing and propaganda machines that are better funded that the authoritative sources; and don't always know where to go look when they do decide they want some reliable information on the topic. In addition, they are not the kinds of topics that advertisers flock to in droves. So funding a witty, attractive, meaningful, public-serving, truth-telling enterprise devoted to either subject is a daunting enterprise.
That's what's the same.
Here's what's not the same between the editors of Ms. and whatever passes for editorial ethics and guidance at Seed:
Ms., in 1990, at the time of going advertising free:
It's been almost three years away from life between the grindstones of advertising pressures and readers' needs. I'm just beginning to realize how edges got smoothed down--in spite of all our resistance. I remember feeling put upon when I changed "Porsche" to "car" in a piece about Nazi imagery in German pornography by Andrea Dworkin--feeling sure Andrea would understand that Volkswagen, the distributor of Porsche and one of our few supportive advertisers, asked only to be far away from Nazi subjects. It's taken me all this time to realize the Andrea was the one with a right to feel put upon. Even as I write this, I get a call from a writer of Elle, who is doing a whole article on where women part their hair. Why, she wants to know, do I part mine in the middle? It's all so familiar. A writer trying to make something of a nothing assignment; an editor laboring to think of new ways to attract ads: readers assuming that other women must want this ridiculous stuff; more women suffering from lack of information, insight, creativity, and laughter that could be on the these same pages.I ask you: Can't we do better than this?
Seed editor, 2010, as quoted in Guardian article:
We're not running the bhopal piece, and we're passing on the Maldive shark ban (a bit late now... Too bad it got caught up in prod week... ). As for Bhopal, it's a cautionary call on our part as we're in the midst of advertising negotiations with Dow (who have been inspired by Seed's photography in their own brand campaigns). RE: the payment, as you're on a scheduled direct-payment, the bhopal fee covers the Kerry/Carbon trading news piece fee that was outstanding. Let me know if that's clear.
It's clear that twenty years later, we really can't do any better. We're not just agonizing over toning down a word choice, we're killing whole articles so that Dow doesn't get its fee-fees hurt over that whole regrettable Bhopal thingy. Not because we already have an advertiser we don't want to lose, but one we hope to gain. We're shutting our mouths before anyone has even asked us to.
Read that Ms. editorial, and see what they went through, what their willingness to speak out cost them in terms of advertising dollars, the contortions they went through to hang on to the few advertisers they were able to coax to the table. Adam Bly, you really couldn't have tried even half as hard as Gloria Steinem? Really?
Zuskateers, I believe this is my last straw. I'm leaving tomorrow for a week with Z-Mom, and there is supposed to be a conference call this week that will mollify all my concerns. I am ruminating, and will make an announcement when I am back from time with mom about my plans for the future.
UPDATE: response here and comments that follow.
Posted by Zuska at 1:56 PM • 19 Comments
July 7, 2010
Category: Feminist Foremothers • Isn't It Ironic? • Manifestoes • What They're Saying
By now, perhaps, you are aware of the uproar about the ScienceBlogs corner of the bloggysphere. PepsiCo has bought started a blog here, called Food Frontiers. Many are unhappy, bloggers and commenters alike. Read PalMD's take, and commenters there, for one perspective.
One of the potential disadvantages [of a blog network] is advertising and sponsorship. Here at Sb, we've been very fortunate in that our content is completely independent. We control anything in the center column. The top and right however belong to Sb, and they use this space to keep the place running. There have been several times when the advertising has been less-than-appropriate, and SEED has responded by altering it, but in this economy, it pays to be flexible. Ad content can serve as blog fodder. There's nothing preventing those of us who blog here from critiquing the ad content as vigorously as we wish to...PepsiCo's PR flacks basically own a the center column content on one of our blogs. This is not only a fundamental conflict of interest, it's also deceptive. If PepsiCo is providing the content, it should, in my opinion, be clearly labelled as advertising.
The only way to be free of any corporate influence over content is to be 100% ad-free, as Ms Magazine so candidly revealed to us at the beginning of the 1990's in Gloria Steinem's famous editorial, "Sex, Lies, & Advertising", with this stunner of an opener:
Posted by Zuska at 1:04 AM • 93 Comments
July 1, 2010
Category: Basic Concepts • Feminist Foremothers • Geekalicious • Those Humorless Feminists • Zombie Manifestoes
Zombie women of the world, I ask you: why are we content to shamble aimlessly along behind our brethren, following them willy-nilly, eating the leftover brains, and cleaning up after they senselessly destroy some village? Would it kill them to take a turn minding the zombikins for a change? No, it would not. Because they are undead.
There I was just last week, shambling along after Nigel on Shakedown Street. Like he knew where he was going! "Would it fucking KILL you to stop and ask for directions?" I asked him for the eleventy-fucktillionth time. "I'm pretty sure we are shambling away from the Mutter Museum, not towards it." I am sure you know what happened next. He just zombisplained me about zombie men's superior shambling gait and kept on in the same direction.
Eventually we shambled into Rittenhouse Square, which is lovely, but definitely NOT the Mutter Museum. About the time Nigel was ready to embark upon the tenth shambling circuit of the park, hoping a sign for the Mutter Museum would appear, it occurred to me that I could just sit down on one of those darling benches in the park. I won't lie to you: I'd taken notice of all the humans in the park and, feeling a bit famished, I wasn't fancying another meal of leftover brains. I begged Nigel to stop the shambling and go with me but he just muttered "We're making good tiiiiiiiiiiiiiime....."
Posted by Zuska at 8:27 AM • 13 Comments
June 29, 2010
Category: Naming Experience • Race Matters • Recruit, Retain! • Science Follies • That's So Class-y • What They're Saying • Why There Are No Women in Science
Why should any woman get any degree in a STEM discipline? Especially if she has to wade through tons of bullshit courses to get there, and part of the learning, it appears, has to do with learning how to be someone you aren't? Some other gender, some other race - or some other social class?
skeptifem challenges the female STEM universe thus:
Posted by Zuska at 3:29 PM • 52 Comments
June 28, 2010
Category:
Jun. 28, 2010 10:45 PM ET
SB COMMUNITY DEEMS PSEUDONYMOUS SOCKPUPPETERS ACCEPTABLE TARGETS FOR MOCKERY, DERISION
Douchey McDoucherson, ScienceBlogs Writers
ANYWHERE (SB)
Scientists have recently discovered that popular bloggers can taunt and gloat over the downfall of unpopular bloggers, and bask in the warm glow of widespread support - but only if proper precautions are taken while engaging in this dangerous enterprise. Most of the relevant research was published in a leading online linguistics journal.
Noted meangirl, petulant whiner, and internet gadfly Zuskaids was quick to critcize the major finding on a blog nobody reads, in the aggressive snark favored by her hellish mob: "These results cannot be generalized to the population at large. They did their study on a population comprised entirely of white males. I cannot believe the government continues to fund studies like this. Even the cress fanciers are bitching about this sort of thing these days."
At a recent online conference convened to celebrate the discovery, Professor Inoya R. Butwutumi observed,
This is no more bullying than an isolated incident of the most popular kids at school gloating at the least popular kid when it turns out that all the friends he claimed to have are made up.If they go on an on about it and hound him all over the place and never let him forget it, that could approach bullying, but only then.
Otherwise it is nothing more than a reaction to finding out that someone you don't like who has been criticising you is a liar and a hypocrite. Just because Greg and Myers are popular doesn't mean they can't gloat a little.
Esteemed blogger and skepticod00dtastical Übermensch Haddid Kumingtoim observed that these sorts of dominance challenges from nomadic males naturally provoke a swift and deadly response in kind from the alphas, who must defend their territory and kill or oust those who violate the rules of the tribe. "No mercy," declared Kumingtoim. "It seems harsh to us, but the herd must be culled of the weak and unfit."
At press time, it was not yet clear whether the Domestic Sockpuppet Threat Level, currently listed as High or Orange, would soon be reduced to Elevated or Yellow. Dedicated DSTL analysts were tense, yet hopeful, that this terroristic threat to blogging's credibility might yet be defeated.
---------
ScienceBlogs writer Douchey McDoucherson contributed to this report.
Posted by Zuska at 11:55 PM • 102 Comments
Category: Geekalicious
So Mr. Z and I went to that Phish show last Friday night. We bought our tix for that show from a ticket liquidator online. Had to call them to confirm and all because it was last minute. They were all set to walk us through the VERY COMPLICATED PROCESS of opening the email, downloading the emailed tix doc, and printing it. First thing the person on the phone said was, "Hey Phish fan, are you ready to have fun? Are you doing 'shrooms already?" (We were not, then or later.) Then he began talking very slowly and carefully to Mr. Z. "Do you have a computer? Do you know how to turn it on? Do you have email? Do you know how to open it? Do you have a printer? Do you know how to turn it on? Do you know how to connect your computer to your printer? Do you see the email from us in your email inbox? Do you know how to open the attachment?" and so on. It was hilarious. After we got off the phone we speculated that the ticket liquidator had plenty of experience talking quite a few seriously high Phish fans through the process of printing their last minute Phish tix.
Posted by Zuska at 6:13 PM • 11 Comments
Category: Stereotypes We Know And Love • What They're Saying • Why There Are No Women in Science • Zuska's Outreach Project For D00dly D00ds
Every once in awhile I do manage to get out to a social sort of event. Recently I was at one such thing. And overhead the following:
Female, mid-40s: When I was in high school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. And I had great SAT scores, high 1400's [out of a then total 1600]. But my high school guidance counselor strongly discouraged me, and told me "those are really more men's kind of jobs." So I gave up thinking about vet school, even though I had the ability.
Male, same age: When I was in high school, I wanted to learn to type. Probably because I just wanted to take what I thought was an easy class, but I kept asking over and over to be allowed to take a typing class. My guidance counselor wouldn't let me register for typing. He told me "you're going to college, you don't need typing. You'll have a secretary to do your typing for you." And then all through college I had to pay people to type my term papers for me, and spend hundreds of dollars on that. My first job out of college, I walk into the office and my boss sits me in front of a computer and says "you'll have to type [complex documents in his industry] on this." Just last week, my current boss saw me pecking away with two fingers and said "I can't believe you can't type."
Sexist gender role expectations are not innocent, and not without effect, even if everybody grows up to have lives that they are more or less happy with. Both of these people have what you would call a nice life. But one of them had her whole life course dramatically changed because of a guidance counselor's sexist beliefs about what jobs belonged to which gender, and another had to spend cash he didn't really have to spare in college, and spends time he doesn't have to spare now on the job, because of another guidance counselor's sexist beliefs about who should learn to type and who would have the typing done for them.
The differential effects of sexism often mean that men are less predisposed to be aware of them - having someone tell you "you don't need to worry about typing" is not quite as dramatic and life-altering as having them tell you "vet school is for the men, little lady". Men do have a lot of privilege to lose in moving to a more equitable system of gender relations, but they also have some things to gain. One of my commenters - I think it was SKM - posted a link on another thread to Men's Lives by Michael Kimmel. It's an interesting looking collection of essays on the intersection of race, class, and gender, focusing on men's lives, of course, as the title indicates. It would be something useful for all the d00dly Zuskateers (is that an oxymoron?) to read and ponder.
Posted by Zuska at 1:19 PM • 20 Comments
June 27, 2010
Category: Blog I Am Reading Today • Daily Struggles • Isn't It Ironic? • Naming Experience • Sex Discrimination • What They're Saying • Why There Are No Women in Science
Female Science Professor has posted a checklist - "Kind of like Sexism Bingo, but in list form." - and asked for additions.
I was going to offer a few additions, but I thought "all that crap happened a thousand years ago, when I was an undergrad/grad student. I'll just read this list of new stuff to see what teh wimminz are whining about these days." Because things are getting better all the time.
Alyssa at 6/17/2010 10:03:00 AM said:
Someone asks why you bothered getting a PhD if you're "just going to have children"and DRo at 6/17/2010 10:36:00 AM said:
You are told that you won't be interested in a TT position once you have children.
Time machine, take us to.....1984! Hello, classmate! Hello, undergrad thesis advisor!
Anonymous at 6/17/2010 12:16:00 PM said:
Someone tells you not to talk about women or minority in science issues because it makes people think you are not committed to science.
Time machine, take us to...1988! Hello, thesis committee member! (And major thanks to all of you for that 4.5 hour prelim, in complete violation of university policy, while I'm back here visiting!)
Anonymous at 6/17/2010 12:40:00 PM said:
** When you are in YOUR OWN office, visitors assume you are an administrative assistant **and then, when you point out that you are not the admin, are told "Oh, you must be the student worker, then!"
Time machine, take us to...1999! Hello, various random d00dches!
Anonymous at 6/17/2010 03:12:00 PM said:
One of my personal favorites from my graduate school was a comment by a faculty member meant as a compliment, at a reception, "Surely, you're not a physicist". "Surely, I am" I said.
Time machine, take us to...the entire decade of the 1980's! Hello, every pickup artist and sad sack conference fuckwit who thought "you're too pretty to be an engineer!" was a great come-on line.
Rachael Shadoan at 6/18/2010 06:58:00 AM said:
I feel that the more we focus on this kind of thing, the more discouraging it is for young women trying to join the field.
and at 6/18/2010 10:02:00 AM
Instead of long lists of how we're under-appreciated and gender-stereotyped and in general discriminated against, I would like to see lists of creative, professional, appropriate ways to handle some of these situations.Then, it's less depressing because it provides the tools to handle this sort of thing. Over time (presumably), if we all use the tools to address these issues, they will decrease in number and severity.
Time machine, take us to...1989! Hello, contentious discussion at AWIS meeting where I was invited to speak about gender and science!
On second thought, time machine, never mind.
Posted by Zuska at 6:10 PM • 40 Comments
June 26, 2010
Category: Geekalicious
Phish, you were fabulously jamtastic, and I dearly loved that sweet cover of Joni Mitchell's "Free Man In Paris", but I swear there were times when your light show made me feel like I was strapped in a chair next to Karl in Room 23. What can I say? I freely bought my own ticket.
Also: I neglected to bring along a hardhat, which would have come in handy for the glow stick hailstorm during your version of the opening movement of Also Sprach Zarathustra. Everybody looked like they were having fun and the glow stick tossing was random and joyous, so it was all cool. Thanks for the show.
Oh, P. S.: I know there are those who love Big Green Furry Monster From Mars - enough to fill whole amphitheaters - but that there is a migraine-inducer, boys.
Posted by Zuska at 11:40 PM • 5 Comments
June 24, 2010
Category: Geekalicious • Gratuitous Sexism • Ludicrous Language • Stereotypes We Know And Love • Those Humorless Feminists • What They're Saying
Jun. 17, 2010 3:34 AM ET
SB COMMUNITY DEEMS FEMINISTS IRRELEVANT NOBODY MEAN GIRLS, OMNIPOTENT PRIVILEGED HELLIONS
Douchey McDoucherson, ScienceBlogs Writers
ANYWHERE (SB)
Just days after a remarkable dustup in the science blogosphere, ScienceBlogs community members gathered to render judgment on feminist science bloggers.
Posted by Zuska at 9:55 PM • 41 Comments
Category: Feminist Foremothers • What They're Saying
While I was at work on this whole work-life balance stuff, a raging conversation sprung up on the WMST-L listserv about domestic workers and whether feminist women should or should not hire someone to clean their houses and help take care of their kids. (The discussion is still going on.) Some of the more interesting points have to do with questioning why this work has to be called women's work, and why it just can't be called work proper, and given some respect, and along with that some decent wages and benefits.
Meryl Altman, a professor at DePauw, posted a link to a short video, "Women and Work: Feminists in Solidarity with Domestic Workers," which is on the Barnard Center for Research on Women website. I strongly urge you to view this video and think about its messages, among them: the home as a worksite; domestic work as actual labor, not "women's work" that we just somehow need the men to help out with a little more; the need to support domestic workers in the struggle to unite, organize, and unionize for living wages, decent working hours, and real benefits; and the visual reminder that feminist women with jobs/careers who employ workers in their homes are not all white.
Of course, the video is full of a bunch of women talking about feminist shit, so probably it is completely bogus.
Posted by Zuska at 4:54 PM • 13 Comments
June 23, 2010
Category: Manifestoes • Stereotypes We Know And Love • WWZD • What They're Saying • Why There Are No Women in Science • Zuska's Outreach Project For D00dly D00ds
First post in this series can be found here.
Second post in this series can be found here.
In my second post in this series, I gave the men a cookie, and commenter rpf accused me of...gasp!...being too nice!
I believe this is the first time this has ever happened.
Posted by Zuska at 3:39 PM • 11 Comments
June 21, 2010
Category: Apologists for the Oppressors • Ludicrous Language • Sex Offenders • Technology Gone Bad • What They're Saying • Why Aren't You Reading This?
I know I'm supposed to be posting installment three in the work-life balance series - and it's coming tomorrow, I promise - but I was distracted by this post by Isis's new co-blogger. I think there's a relatively strong consensus that this invention is clearly a bit of Technology Gone Bad.
In a really old Saturday Night Live sketch, Gilda Radnor and Dan Akroyd play a befuddled couple at home in the kitchen, arguing over Shimmer. It's a floor wax. No, a dessert topping. But wait! Spokesperson Chevy Chase pops in to tell them it's BOTH!!!!!
What does this have to do with understanding rape?
Posted by Zuska at 11:59 PM • 29 Comments
June 18, 2010
Category: Daily Struggles • Manifestoes • Naming Experience • Stereotypes We Know And Love • WWZD • What They're Saying • Why There Are No Women in Science
First post in this series can be found here.
The third and final post in this series can be found here.
ScientistMother really wants DrugMonkey to step up to the plate already. She says that DM laid out his own responsibility to deal, on-blog, with work-life balance issues and to share the details of how it goes down at his own home. Find the full quote in the comments at her post or here in Doc Free-Ride's post.
As is generally the case, I have a few things to say about this.
Posted by Zuska at 9:03 AM • 53 Comments
June 17, 2010
Category: Burns My Shorts • Ludicrous Language • Science Follies • What They're Saying • Why There Are No Women in Science
Work-life balance: people have been talking about it.
Wait, that's not right. Women have been talking about it. And have been talked at about it, by some people. Doc Free-Ride has a good round-up of a most recent skirmish of opinions on the topic in the sciencey blogosphere. If you have not been following this, please do give Doc Free-Ride's post a read.
Where to begin?
Posted by Zuska at 4:33 PM • 79 Comments
June 12, 2010
Category: Some Good News For A Change • Tales From The Coal Patch
Just because I need a change of pace once in awhile.
Once when I was home visiting mom, I took her to a church spaghetti supper where we met up with her sister, my beloved Aunt Betty. This was at a time when I still couldn't really eat anything with onion in it, without immediately getting a migraine. Of course, the spaghetti sauce for the church dinners was chock full of onion. No problem, I said, you ladies enjoy your dinners and I will get something to eat later.
This was not acceptable to Aunt Betty.
She went into the church kitchen and whipped up a spaghetti sauce just for me. And it was DELICIOUS! This is how she made it.
3 T. olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
2 pats of butter
Saute the garlic in the olive oil and butter until just golden
Add 1 can Hunt's tomato paste (Aunt Betty insisted on Hunt's. You can try others. I'm just telling you what Aunt Betty said.)
Add 2 cans of water
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Add parsley (Aunt Betty used dried, but she said of course fresh parsley is delightful.)
Cook down to "right consistency". Don't put a lid on it.
And there you have it. If you are home some evening with a box of pasta and a can of tomato paste and bulb of garlic and don't know what the heck to have for dinner, you can make Aunt Betty's tomato sauce. It will not give you a migraine.
Posted by Zuska at 1:53 PM • 24 Comments
June 11, 2010
Category: Apologists for the Oppressors • Ludicrous Language • Men Who Hate Women
Over at Boing Boing, Maggie Koerth-Baker says "I wanted to know what actual female scientists thought" about the boring blah blah John Tierney barfed up this week in the NYT. And then gives links to four different responses, included the fabulous Isis's awesome take on why she is bored to tears with this topic.
Personally I would rather be forced to watch the second Transformers movie on constant repeat for the next 10 years than continue to have this discussion, but since the New York Time's John Tierney seems to have his head shoved so far up his own ass that his can lick his own tonsils, I suppose we must. But, just know that I am doing it for the people. Not at all for my own amusement.
Indeed.
Isis makes the case in her inimitable and infinitely hilarious manner, but it is, as she states, tedious and boring beyond belief to have to go over this ground again and again. The only point in doing so is for the people - to equip any readers in need with useful talking points, jabby little things they can poke at clueless douchebags who are likely to come up to them and say "But I read in the NYT that 'Physics needs genius men or western civilization will CRUMBLE! 7th grade SAT scores CLEARLY show gender differences! Innate! Biology!' "
Because what Tierney's saying isn't new. He isn't making any new arguments, covering any new ground, he certainly isn't being "daring", he hasn't put forth anything that wasn't mocked, rebutted, deconstructed, and debunked a hundred different ways to death before this.
So why is he saying it? Is he really just that stupid that he is completely unaware of all the arguments against his points that have gone before him? Is he really that incapable of interpreting data, or of using google, or of researching a topic thoroughly to find out ZOMFG! There really ARE valid arguments against this stupid steaming pile of horseshit I've just typed!
No, of course he's not stupid, and he's not incapable of doing the research. He's not talking to us, either. He doesn't give a rat's ass what Zuska or Isis or any of the readers of our blogs or any other women scientists think about his steaming pile of misogynist horsecrap.
He is talking to those people who aren't sure. Who maybe never thought too much about this topic before. Who can be stirred to unease with visions of peoples' free speech being stifled with turns of phrase like this:
I'm all in favor of women fulfilling their potential in science, but I feel compelled, at the risk of being shipped off to one of these workshops, to ask a couple of questions:
See, I like the little ladies, I do! Let 'em go into science, if any of them actually want to, and "fulfill" themselves, till they get distracted with a pilates class, or a baby. But Jesus God, they are going to ship real manly men off to the gulags, and no one is going to dare to say what they really think anymore! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR FREEDOMZ, PEOPLE???!!!?!??!
Dr. Summers was pilloried for even suggesting the idea...
They came for Larry, and I did not speak up. Now they are coming for all of the manly man scientists. Will you speak up? Because when they come for you, there will be no one left to speak up. They will all be zombies in state-run feminist workshops.
Would it be safe during the "interactive discussions" for someone to mention the new evidence...How could these workshops reconcile the "existence of gender bias" with careful studies...
Manly man scientists will be FORCED to do touchy-feely shit about gender that has NOTHING to do with evidence or careful studies!!!!!!! Science will be killed!!!!!!
Some have claimed he was proved wrong by recent reports of girls closing the gender gap on math scores in the United States and other countries. But even if those reports (which have been disputed) are accurate, they involve closing the gap only for average math scores -- not for the extreme scores that Dr. Summers was discussing.
"Some" = those angry activist women who are trying to take away your freedom of speech. Can you trust them? Would you give as much weight to the "claims" and "reports" of "some" as you would to a manly man like Dr. Summers and his X-treme scores? I think not.
But before we accept Congress's proclamation of bias, before we start re-educating scientists at workshops, it's worth taking a hard look at the evidence of bias against female scientists.
I've just given you a lot of blah blah with numbers and percents and right tale of the distribution, and I know you, John Q. Public, are mostly math illiterate and don't like to be made to think too hard. What you do understand, however, is Congress taking away your freedomz!!!! And the freedomz of other manly men! Are you going to let Congress send manly men scientists off to the gulag to be re-educated Soviet style? Let's take a hard manly look at this so-called evidence for the so-called bias against female scientists. Puh-leeze.
Tierney's column isn't written to be accurate, or survey the literature, or communicate with women scientists. It's written to get across a subtextual message to an audience of the general public, who doesn't want Congress taking away their freedomz, and conservative male scientists, who by god do not want to be forced to sit in one more goddamn workshop just because some stupid women still have their panties in a twist over Larry Summers, let it GO already, ladies, will ya? I'm tryna get some science done over here!
The legislation Tierney's disingenuously writing about still has to pass the Senate. He's writing to rally the troops. He only sounds stupid when you aren't in his target audience.
Posted by Zuska at 8:08 PM • 20 Comments
