Feminism

The Truth About Science Fiction

~ Cheryl

Via John Scalzi I discover that John C Wright has written a long treatise on the true nature of science fiction. It includes gems such as this:

What girls read is only tangentially related to science fiction, because it has mushy emotions and junk, like some sort of story about a spaceship-cyborg with a girl’s brain who falls in love with her pilot. Or horses telepathically linked to their Amazon riders. SF for girls has girly stuff in it, like feelings. Except for Goth girls, who write about vampires.

But before you get all uppity and outraged about this, I should warn you that I think the whole post is a fake. I have read it (well, skimmed it anyway), and I can’t find a single reference to spanking in the whole thing. Based on my previous experience with Mr. Wright’s writing (and I have read five of his books) I am forced to conclude that the post in question was authored by someone else.

Indy Gets Pride

~ Cheryl

With Pride London only a couple of weeks away The Independent has run a number of LGBT-related articles.

Firstly they look at how civil partnerships have been a roaring success, despite the occasional idiot fundie protest. California please note.

Secondly there’s an article on why we still need Pride (just in case anyone thought that all of the battles had been won).

And thirdly one of interest to me about raising children in LGBT families. This was actually very encouraging:

When I started working in this field more than 30 years ago, there were assumptions about children being bullied, that the boys would be feminine and the girls would be masculine and that they would struggle with their own sexuality. And while all the evidence points to this not being the case, the same assumptions still come up today.

So sure, there are still problems, but with time we are gathering evidence that, once again, the sky is not falling.

There are several other articles in the series as well, all accessible via a helpful “related articles” box.

Cheney on Langauge and Determinism

~ Cheryl

Matt Cheney has joined in the discussion of biological “causes” for LGBT people being the way that they are. In particular he points us as this article in Language Log. It figures that if you read that Swedish brain study closely you find that the data isn’t anywhere near as clear cut as most reports made out, so well done to Mark Liberman for reading the paper and checking that out. But I was just as impressed by Liberman’s analysis of the media coverage, which suggests that for most news outlets the message that they were attempting push by covering the story was not “homosexuality is biologically determined”, or even “homosexual people have brains similar to straight people of the opposite sex”, but actually “gay men = women”. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

Happy Wedding Day, California!

~ Cheryl

Yeah, I know they started last night, but I was asleep then, and I didn’t think to do a delayed-time post.

But happy wedding day anyway. Here’s to all you happy couples getting married at last after so long being denied the right to do so. Long may it continue.

More Biological Determinism?

~ Cheryl

It appears to be Sweden day in the LGBT corner of teh intrawebs, as two major studies looking for biological explanations for sexual orientation have hit my feeds.

The first, reported in The Guardian and conducted by the Stockholm Brain Institute, claims that brain scans of gay men are in some ways more similar to those of straight women than of straight men, while corresponding similarities exist between lesbians and straight men.

The second experiment, conducted by the Karolinska Institute, claims that the largest twin study in the world thus far proves that social attitudes have no influence on our choice of sexual partners.

Regarding the second, I refer you to Kathy Sedia’s withering denunciation of twin studies. I don’t have a neuroscientist friend to hand, but it seems to me that no amount of medical evidence is going to convince your average fundie or DUP politician. As ever, the point should be that human beings are naturally diverse, and that there’s nothing wrong with being different.

Score One for Pychologists

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I had cause to mention the odious DUP a while back, and in case you are wondering just how odious they are, one of their members has managed to get a staring role in a post on Pharyngula. Obviously there’s no point in my adding to one of Mr. Myers broadsides – it would be like firing a pea shooter in the wake of a cruise missile. However, I would like to note that the British Psychological Society has firmly rejected the idea that LGBT people are mentally ill.

I’m slightly less impressed with the statement in that article that transgender is a “sexual orientation”, but that bit isn’t in quotes so it may be an error on the part of the journalist rather than by the BPS folks.

All Us Deviants

~ Cheryl

I have been pointed to an excellent article in today’s New York Times by Stanley Fish. It is about what we mean by “normal” when it comes to people. The article focuses on issues such as groups of autistic and deaf people who are happy the way they are and do not want to be “cured” or even seen as “disabled”, but Fish touches on many of the wider issues as well, including mentioning that up until 1967 mixed race marriages were illegal in the USA. We find that appalling now. Not too many years in the future people will also find it appalling that same-sex marriages were once illegal. And what does Fish choose to illustrate that “different” does not mean “wrong” – why, the X-Men, of course.

(Thanks Donna).

Death Statistics

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

One of the more bizarre characteristics of the mass media is the different level of emphasis that they place on reporting deaths. Teenager killed in gang brawl, an accident on the railways – they’ll be headline news. Someone killed in a motoring accident – lucky to be reported at all. But the actual numbers are out there, and every so often we get to see one that (hopefully) makes us stop and think. Today’s number came in an article about a group of MPs that wants more done to discourage domestic violence by means of education. Here’s the number:

Two women are killed every week in the UK by husbands, boyfriends or former partners, the report said.

I’ll repeat that:

TWO . WOMEN . MURDERED . EVERY . WEEK
in Britain, by their family

Remember that next time someone tells you that feminism has outlived its usefulness.

On Victimhood

~ Cheryl

I’ve just been listening to a podcast of an interview by Tim Franks who is the Chief Executive of PACE, a London-based charity that provides mental health services to LGBT people. Given all the uproar last month over what is happening in the US, it is a pleasure to listen to someone who is able to grasp the concept that LGBT folks may sometimes be in need of help from psychiatrists, but that doesn’t mean that they are crazy because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Being able to start a relationship with a therapist from a position of normality rather than having to first establish that you are not a freak or a pervert is incredibly liberating.

But what struck me most about what Franks said was that a major benefit for PACE’s clients was that they could get away from being victims, and that this was a Good Thing. And it is. It is all too easy, if you are immersed in the blogosphere, to think that you need to identify yourself as a victim, because it is such a well-proven way of winning an argument. But actually continually thinking of yourself as a victim is deeply corrosive. It engenders feelings of powerlessness and anger, and aside from winning debates on blogs it doesn’t actually get you anywhere. This maps back to what I was saying in the Riki Wilchins review about identity politics. Defining yourself into an ever-narrower oppressed minority doesn’t get you anything much except unhappiness with your lot and the state of the world.

Or at least, so things seem at 11:40pm. Hopefully I won’t wake up tomorrow and discover that I shouldn’t write philosophical blog posts when I ought to be going to bed.

Standing Up for Susan

~ Cheryl

There’s an essay and long pile of comments on Sarah Monette’s LiveJournal about the character of Susan in the Narina books. I don’t have time to read it all, and can’t remember the books well enough to participate in the discussion, but some of you might be interested to do so.

I do, of course, remember being furious when I read it the first time, and I’ve never forgiven Lewis.

As to “the sin of Eve”, as I recall, there didn’t need to be any particular sin involved. If you read some medieval theologians then women are evil per se. Sorry, no references, my library is in California and teh intrawebs are far too full of misogynist blogs to be of any help.

International Rainbow Roundup

~ Cheryl

My congratulations to the New York State Assembly for passing an employment protection bill for LGBT people by a whopping majority of 102-33. This is, of course, the same sort of bill that the Democrat leadership felt had no chance of passing congress because it included protection for transgender people, and which President Bush said he would veto even if it only protected homosexuals.

Congratulations also to the British Embassy in Riga for lending their support to the beleaguered LGBT people of Latvia.

The less said about Turkey the better. They clearly have real problems (and not just over LGBT issues).

LGBT Family Blogging Follow-Up

~ Cheryl

Checking back with Mombian today I discover that there are already 159 posts for LGBT Family Day. I’m not going to have time to read them all by any means, but do feel free to dip in. Some of them are really heartwarming.

What did surprise me, however, was to find the Daily Telegraph getting in on the act. Well, they are a day late, and I don’t think they did it deliberately, but it is lovely anyway.

Introducing COLAGE

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

My apologies for doing yet another queer politics post, but I’m assuming that there will be a fair few LGBT folks and their allies popping in as a result of the “Phone Arnie” post and the various follow-ups and this seemed like a good opportunity to plug some people who I think are rather important.
Continue reading →

Feminism Arrives in Ancient Greece

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

There’s a very odd article in today’s Observer about changing attitudes towards the role of women in ancient Greece. It starts off as follows:

Women in Ancient Greece were major power brokers in their own right, researchers have discovered, and often played key roles in running affairs of state. Until now it was thought they were treated little better than servants.

This was news to me, I’ve not actually read much history about the period. What I know about Mycenaean Greece has come mainly from Homer and interpretations thereof. And based on that it would never have occurred to me that women such as Penelope, Clytemnestra and Helen were “little better than servants” (let alone Medea and Ariadne). But there you go, apparently people did hold these ideas because, as the (male) professor being interviewed wraps up:

The problem has been that up until recently our interpretation of life in Ancient Greece has been the work of a previous generations of archaeologists, then a male-oriented profession and who interpreted their findings in a male-oriented way. That is changing now and women in Ancient Greece are being seen in a new light.

Well, there’s progress for you.