Feminist Law Professors

“Gayprof” blogs at Center of Gravitas, and yesterday he noted:

Over the past few days, the inevitable occurred. Two colleagues from my university found my little bloggy and deduced the true identity of GayProf. Perhaps I should not have worn that gold and red bra with matching Old-Glory short-shorts to faculty functions.

Still, it came as more of a shock than I expected to be exposed to local colleagues. Diana Prince found it so much easier to keep her secret identity. All she had to do was put her hair in a bun and toss on some glasses and nobody ever asked questions. In my case, though, people kept noticing that GayProf and I were never in the same room at the same time. They also found the invisible jet in my parking space.

My detectors are friends, so it’s not such a big deal. Still, the lack of local anonymity prompted some probing questions for me about the blog.”What?”I hear,”GayProf having a moment of existential crisis? That’s so unusual.”Hush-up, sarcastic voice in my head.

It’s not that I have been particularly zealous about preserving my anonymity. There has been the occasional picture. Anyone who e-mails me will know my actual name (btw, it’s not really”GayProf.”That’s my middle name. My parents were very forward thinking). Plus, there just aren’t that many gay, Latino history professors in Texas. No, it’s true.

Two observations about this: First, if you found that as entertaining as I did, you should regularly read Center of Gravitas. Second, this is yet another reminder that anonymity is hard to retain for anyone who blogs in a meaningful way. So I should just come out and admit that I am really a 17 year old teenaged boy living in New Hampshire, posing as a feminist law professor at the University of South Carolina.

–Ann Bartow

Here is a cartoon that opposes heteronormativity, produced by the South Carolina Equality Coalition. My goodness the narrator has an unusual Southern accent!

I’m having a few issues with WordPress this morning, two posts eaten and frustrations rising. Go to Blackademic and start following the alphabetical links. Hopefully by the time you get to “F” I’ll get the post up and the stream of nonsubstantively-related “F” words around here will have subsided!

Update: Yipes, Nubian listed me alphabetically by my first name! The first time I’ve ever regretted that my parents didn’t call me “Zelda!”

Udate 2: See Sodomy! at Sivacracy.

–Ann Bartow

As discussed here, when Annalee Newitz got an article published at Slashdot, she was perturbed to find that rather than discussing her ideas, a lot of commenters instead engaged in a colloquy about whether they found her personally attractive. She wrote about this here. Today at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte noted that one of the comments about this piece that Newitz received was as follows:

So let me get this straight: If a man looks at a woman and thinks about having sex with her, that is”sexist”? If so, call me and every other man on the planet sexist. Apparently, men are supposed to ignore and overcome millenia of evolution, merely to fit into your PC paradigm. I thought this sort of Victorian, sexless feminism had been discredited by the likes of Camille Paglia long ago.

To which Amanda responds:

We need to get together a hit squad of straight women and gay men together and start hitting big blogs run by men and turning every single discussion into one about whether we’d fuck the guy or not. Refuse to engage on the topic at hand and when anyone says this isn’t about his fuckability, get all pissed off and accuse that person of being an anti-sex prude and suggest they join the Christian right. Sometimes just turning the tables tells the whole story.

This gave me a pretty good laugh, although the comments that followed the post were predictably discouraging. Read the whole thing here.
–Ann Bartow

Feminivist is hosting links here to many blog posts related to sexual assault as part of a “Blog to Raise Awareness About Sexual Assault” project. It’s a worthy undertaking, and a difficult one. I tried a couple of times to write something meaningful, but I couldn’t seem to accomplish this without betraying confidences, or sounding awkward and uncomfortable or unworkably obtuse, so I heartily applaud the intrepid contributors there.

–Ann Bartow

You be the judge.

Up now at I See Invisible People!

Pathbreaking South African author Ellen Kuzwayo died this morning:

Kuzwayo was the first black writer to win South Africa’s premier CNA Literary Prize for her 1985 autobiography “Call Me Woman,” a book that made her a spokeswoman for the suffering and triumphs of black women under apartheid.

“My motivation for writing the book was born out of the negative image about black women in South Africa, promoted by the general community of white people of this country, in particular the women … who employed African work as domestic workers,” Kuzwayo said.

Read the full article here. There are many online profiles of her as well, e.g. here, here and here.

“He Touched My Special Gray Area” at I Blame The Patriarchy

“Inside Higher Ed on the Gender Pay Gap” at Alas, a Blog

“Women should know better than to get raped” at Feministing

“Who Has It Tougher — Prosecutors Or Defense Attorneys?” Part One and Part Two at The Happy Feminist

“Why We Need More Philosophers: A Service Announcement” and “Why Philosophy is Likely to Make You More Ethical” at Mad, Melancholic Feminista

“Duke Case Reopens Wounds for Black Women” at MSNBC.com, via Tiffany at Black Feminism, where there are a lot of interesting annotated links

“You Will Respect My Authori-tah!” at The Well-Timed Period

“Some Thoughts on Advertising and Women” at Echidne of the Snakes

“Life and Death? Just Don’t Think About It” at Media Girl

“A Feminist Gets Married” by Michelle Anderson, at Concurring Opinions

The fact that I had the temerity to voice a difference of opinion with Brad of Sadly No, still has him riled up, and I learned today that he recently compared me to an unappealing right wing “Christian,” writing:

I love how people like Creech feel they have the authority to tell people that they aren’t true Christians because they don’t believe the universe was created in a fucking week. It’s kind of like how Ann Bartow, a.k.a. the Mighty Enforcer of All True Leftism, can can [sic] take away my left-winger badge just because I had the unmitigated gall to make jokes about David Horowitz’s name.

I didn’t know Brad had a left-winger badge, and I didn’t know that posting a few comments at his blog vested me with the power to strip that badge away. Well, at least his gonads are safe, right? Obviously, when Brad and his cohorts started pounding on me in the Sadly, No comments threads, I was expected to cringe and retreat quietly. I wasn’t supposed to repost the comments over here, or challenge the content, proportionality or sexism of the responses. I dared to defend myself, so the angry campaign of attempted intimidation continues.

If being the Mighty Enforcer of All True Leftism left me with more free time, I’d question in more detail why some of the “left wing” humor at Sadly, No seems to be homophobic in nature and/or to have an element of sexism. Stuff like this, this, this, (“Andrew Sullivan dealt the President a double blow yesterday (no, not that kind of blow …”) this (“Finally, Marshall Wittless, in what is surely the most unseemly episode of adhesive wingnut-love since Hindsocket’s “George Bush is a genius” post, puts his elastic mandible to use by roundmouthing John McCain.”), this and this.

I don’t like “humor” that leverages a person’s gender, race or sexual orientation in a pejorative way, because I find it contrary to the tenets of liberalism, as I understand them. In fairness, there are posts at Sadly, No which can be read as mocking, rather than practicing, homophobia, such as this and this. And this actually seems mildly feminist, if you ignore the rape reference, at least until you read the comments that follow. But the overall tone and perspective of the blog seems to be that because right-wingers are so odious and evil, they deserve anything thrown at them, even if the subtext of a jibe is that being gay or female is something bad. I have this crazy idea that there is a positive value system associated with being a leftist, one that aspires to reduce the amount of sexism, racism and homophobia in the world for everyone. So their humor is not my cup of tea, and I’d be happy to leave them alone, if only they’d extend me the same courtesy.

–Ann Bartow

“50 Tries” is a funny, wonderful blog. It is captioned “a chronicle” of author Kiersten Conner-Sax’s “attempt to publish a “Shouts & Murmurs” piece in the New Yorker during [her] second round of chemotherapy for breast cancer.” There are posts about her life, posts mocking Caitlin Flanagan, and links to her New Yorker submissions, like this one.

Participate! Blogless Feminist Law Profs and friends can e-mail contributions for posting here to feministlawprof@yahoo.com (or drop them in the comments to this post).

Michelle Malkin decided to punish some student activists by publishing their contact information at her blog, after dumping a load of invective about how they were violent seditionists. From Ezra Klein:

…a crew of students at UC Santa Cruz … protested some military recruiters, and Malkin got hold of a press release with their personal contact information — a poorly conceived inclusion on the students’ part, but then, these are undergraduates, not trained media flacks. Rather than calling and speaking to them herself, which is what members of the press are supposed to use such releases for, [blogger Michelle] Malkin published their personal information on her website, prompting her hordes of orcish mouth-breathers to brandish their pitchforks and inundate the unsuspecting students with death threats (some of which you can read here). When the students frantically called on Malkin to remove their numbers, she posted their contact information again.

Klein links to a page listing some of the communications the students received here. Scary and totally predictable. What Malkin did was utterly despicable. Malkin now asserts that she in turn is receiving “filth and threats against her family.” While I’d like to think she is lying, because liberals do not lower themselves to that sort of vile tactic, recent experience suggests otherwise. From behind a veil of pseudo-pseudonymity, people will say horrible things, particularly if they feel validation and encouragement from bloggers they follow. If what Malkin did was wrong (and it was!) then doing the same thing to her is also wrong. Charting her dishonesty, stupidity and flat out meanness could be a full time job, so I wish liberals wouldn’t waste time making threats that reflect badly upon the entire left. They aren’t going to make Malkin even the tiniest bit smarter or nicer.

–Ann Bartow

Update: Here is an example of “liberal male humor” in reaction to Malkin’s unequivocally repulsive actions that makes me wonder what exactly “liberal” means:

Michelle is cute (and crazy)! And perky (and crazy)! And her soul is deader than Bob Dole’s dick (…and she’s crazy!). She deserves the big bucks and if she has to write like a tweaker with a raging yeast infection to get some attention, well, deal with it. She’s not going to be ignored! No slight to America is too small for Michelle not to fake a back-arching ragegasm guaranteed to engorge her loyal one-handed readers as they alt-tab back and forth between her site and bukakebitches.com.

I know some people will consider that an amusing and appropriate response. I’m just not one of them.

This is the fourth installment of The Long Story series, subtitled: “Strength comes from refusing to be shamed,” by blogger Manxome at Climacteric Clambake, who writes: “In the interest of disclosure and empowerment, of stubbornness and sheer attitude, I hereby submit my experience with sexual assault. I am not objective in this area, I take it personally. I have every right to. I am tired of silence and shame.”

Part 1, “Petrification,” is here. Part 2, “Dehumanization,” is here. Part 3, “Humiliation,” is here. Part 4, “Visualization” is here.

This LA Times article asserts:

In these early soundings for 2006, Republicans face the potential reemergence of a gender gap that Bush narrowed in his 2004 reelection. Although men split evenly when asked which party they intended to support in November, women preferred Democrats 57% to 31%, the survey found.

Democrats hold a commanding advantage not only among single women, a traditional Democratic constituency, but among married women, a swing group that broke toward Bush and the GOP in 2004.

This LA Times/Bloomberg poll reports (among a lot of other things):

Nearly two out of three men say the economy is doing well, 53% of women say it is doing badly.

A small majority of men approve of the way the president is handling the war on terrorism, but three out of five women disapprove.

Male voters are virtually split as to who they want to control Congress, but 56% of women voters want Democrats to control both chambers

Women think Democrats come closer to representing their views (50% to 32% for the GOP), while men think Republicans do, although by a smaller margin (45% to 37%).

Women by 11 points think the Democrats over the Republicans can do a better job of handling the situation in Iraq, while men give this issue to the Republicans by 16 points.

Also, the poll suggests that if the 2004 election was re-done today, Kerry would win by 10 points.

I only wish I was making this up. Here are the first three sentences from a recent ABC News story:

“They’re on every college campus where sports teams succeed: groupies who want to date athletes — or at least have sex with them. At Princeton University, where the men’s lacrosse team is regularly ranked as one of the best in the nation, the women are known as “laxtitutes” or “lacrosstitutes.” Candi Arner, a Princeton freshman, said her friends knew three girls who between them had slept with nine players on the team….”

Later we learn that Princeton University coaches are advising their team members not to rape anybody. Here’s another excerpt:

“Alex, a sophomore athlete who didn’t want to give his full name or sport, said the Duke case had been discussed with his team. “Our coach has given us a huge talk about how easy it is to screw up and jeopardize the whole program for one night,” he said. “Just an accusation can ruin a whole program.”

Okay, so the two main points of the articles are: Lots of college women like to have sex with athletes; and college athletes who rape or even get accused of rape can ruin an entire athletic program. The newsworthy aspect of all this is apparently that college athletes can have sex without raping anybody. Thank you for the enlightenment, ABC News. And what Princeton student wouldn’t want to be called a “lacrosstitute” after she helpfully prevented rape by sexually servicing an athlete, right? Sheesh.

Via Feministing.
–Ann Bartow

So today’s NYT has a review of Caitlin Flangan’s new anti-feminist screed, “To Hell With All That,” which was written by Pamela Paul, and entitled “Mother Superior.” The review is yet another installment of the NYT’s Lessons for Uppity Women. Here are two sequential sentences excerpted from the very first paragraph:

We are still waging war and wagging fingers over diapers and bed sheets. Caitlin Flanagan, a staff writer for The New Yorker, is right out there on the front line : and feeling the fire.

Now right away I am confused. Who is “we”? What is the premise of the “war” over “diapers and bedsheets” and who are the combatants besides Flanagan? What is Flanagan fighting for, exactly, and who is she fighting? How will the interested observer recognize when the war is over, and which side won?

Here’s what is known: Flanagan hired a full time nanny when her children were in diapers, and she has a housekeeper to handle the bedsheets (see e.g. this). But she writes essays promoting the view that other women should do as she says, not as she does, and handle their own messy chores. This writing pleases the men at certain magazines, so they publish her work.

Now back to Paul’s review. She explains that what “really bothers” Flanagan’s critics is that they “find themselves agreeing with much of what she writes.” Let’s think about that for a second. Paul seems to be suggesting that Flanagan’s critics revile her because she is correct, making them almost as hypocritical as Flanagan herself is. I suppose this is possible, but I’d like to see Paul proffer some minute shred of proof. It doesn’t come when Paul isolates what she views as Flanagan’s three “major points” as follows:

…that most women hate housework but want to be good at it anyway, that women say they want men to contribute an equal share in the domestic arena but don’t want to sleep with the kind of men who do, that married people should have sex…

So Flanagan thinks all women are hypocritical sexless freaks, and Paul thinks Flanagan’s critics agree but are too hypocritical say so. Sheesh. Then Paul says:

What makes Flanagan’s book original and vital is that she is a realist, willing to acknowledge the essential gray areas in too often polarized positions. As it stands, sensitivities are so attuned to the slightest insult of any one of women’s myriad work-life choices that Flanagan’s simplest observations : for example, when a woman works something is lost : are taken as an indictment of working women. Yet any working mother can see the truth in such a statement: time spent working = less time with children = something lost. What’s appalling is that pointing this out raises such ire.

Where to even begin with that mish-mash of obfuscation and intellectual dishonesty. Flanagan asserts that women who work deprive their children of time, so “something” is lost. Paul says any working mother can see the truth in that statement. But she fails to enlighten the reader about the nature of that “truth.” Is it also true that men who work deprive their children of time, so “something” is lost? And what about the things that are gained when women and men work? Like satisfaction, fulfillment, salaries that enable the purchase of diapers and bedsheets, and for a lucky few like Flanagan, money to pay people to change diapers and bedsheets?

The rest of the review is completely unhinged, ping-ponging between urging people to read the book for almost sadistic reasons (“…even dyed-in-the-wool Flanagan haters might enjoy reading her make fun of herself,”) and giving us reasons to avoid it altogether (“The book is somewhat repetitive, as if [Flanagan] assumes readers won’t bother to read straight through…). At the end she almost seems to suggest that Flanagan herself needs and wants a traditional wife to look after her. My conclusion? To hell with this book, as it seems to corrupt and confuse everyone it touchs.

–Ann Bartow

Update: If you want to read a more explicit takedown of Flanagan’s work, check out this post by Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon. Update #2: Echidne of the Snakes reviews the Paul review in greater detail here.

From Ezster Hargittai’s Passover Page:

It’s that time of year again when the Passover page on my Web site starts attracting lots of visitors. A few years ago I compiled a feminist humanist modern version Haggadah for Passover as the traditional ones I could find did not meet my needs. I would have preferred to just grab one from a Web site, but none provided the type I was seeking. Once compiled, I figured others may find it helpful as well so I decided to post it. Feel free to grab a copy if it is of interest. It contains no references to a higher power, it includes an orange on the Seder plate, it is inclusive in language to both Jews and non-Jews and it refers to contemporary plagues such as hunger, war and racism. It is certainly not meant to offend. It is meant to offer people an alternative that better aligns with their beliefs and concerns about the world. (The Web page does not contain a Creative Commons license because I myself grabbed most of the material from elsewhere so it’s not really up to me to make a decision on that. I credit the sources on the document and include links to their Web sites.)

–Orly Lobel

From Jewish Post of New York Online:

What originated by Ma’yan: The Jewish Women’s Project of The Jewish Community Center (JCC) on the Upper West Side as strictly a New York event for Jewish women has become a national phenomenon. This year, more than 50 groups across the country in cities, such as Dallas, Louisville, Charleston, Peori, Rochester, Kansas City, Atlanta, Washington DC, and Birmingham, will replicate the Ma’yan model and host feminist communal seders. Over 2,000 women will sing, dance with tambourines and read from Ma’yan’s new and expanded Haggadah The Journey Continues, at the special pre-Passover seders held on April 9, 10, 11 and 12 at Bridgewater’s, 11 Fulton Street in the South Street Seaport.

“The annual women’s seders keep growing exponentially because they provide spiritual uplift and religious authenticity within the warm, wide embrace of feminist community. The Ma’yan miracle never ceases to amaze,” comments Letty Cottin Pogrebin, author of Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female & Jewish in America. The popularity of the seders reflects the desire of many women to have a voice in the Passover celebration, which is more than their traditional roles as seder cooks and passive attendees.”

–Orly Lobel

In “The Down Side of Slashdot” Annalee Newitz writes at Alternet:

…any tech or science writer whose stuff goes on the Web (including yours truly) is at least a little bit invested in the idea of getting Slashdotted once in a while. It’s sort of like being included in the Readings section of Harper’s Magazine — you automatically get a wider audience, and also the implicit approval of a venerable media institution.

Except if you’re a woman. A few months ago, an article of mine was Slashdotted. But instead of resulting in a lively debate about technology and social justice, it instead produced a popular thread in the “comments” area about whether I was too fat to be considered attractive. At that point, I vowed to stop reading Slashdot. What the fuck? Why should I give a shit about those morons? I would read other geek culture blogs like BoingBoing, where the male editors are feminists and Xeni Jardin knows why it sucks that some creeps care more about her ass than the political op-ed she just wrote for the Los Angeles Times.

But, like I said, Slashdot is like the New York Times. No matter how infuriating and stupid its editorial policies, the site still breaks interesting news that everybody talks about. So I started peeking at my Slashdot feed again once in a while, then visiting the site, then actually poring over it daily as I used to do. Until my most recent Slashdotting, in which a guy linked to one of my more satirical columns and described me as a “gorgeous nerd” rather than a journalist or writer or columnist or even just plain “nerd.”

You can imagine the comment threads that followed. Was I really gorgeous, or was I ugly? Wasn’t it OK to evaluate my looks because my column wasn’t really “professional,” but rather “humorous”? (As if I haven’t been writing this column seriously and professionally for six and a half goddamned years.) And, my favorite, wasn’t it OK to talk about my looks because I write about sex? (This comment was followed by links to several articles I’d published about technology and sex, as if writing about vibrators somehow meant I was “asking for it.”)

My friends said, “Ignore it.” They said, “Those guys are morons.” They said, “Let’s just read and write things in other places where men aren’t dicks.”

Yet slowly I began to feel the same way about their comments that I feel when a right-winger tells me that if I want to promote socialism, I should just move to another country. The problem is, I love my country. It fucking rocks. And I love Slashdot too. I don’t want to run away. This is my home, and I want to stay here and fight for justice. I want women to get excited by all the cool articles on Slashdot and not get driven away by a community that values them for their bodies instead of their thoughts.

So I went back and began rereading the comments on Slashdot about my article. At least half of them were written by outraged readers who asked why my looks were relevant. A woman had posted about how this kind of treatment was exactly why so few women are in the tech industry. It wasn’t a solid wall of sexism — there was a debate going on. And for every sexist dick, there was at least one feminist dick talking back to him. Even the guy who’d written the post sent me an e-mail apologizing for having used the word gorgeous, explaining that his English was really bad and he hadn’t intended to inspire the kinds of comments he had. …

The pushback can be ugly, especially if you comment about sexism under your own name. And some jerks will never change, but others do listen, and we won’t reach them if we don’t at least try.

See also Tiara.org on this issue. Original link, and pointer to Tiara.org post, via Feministing.

–Ann Bartow

Though the tone and editorial position adopted are very much “women as other,” the data and conclusions are interesting. Read the full text here. Below is an excerpt:

…Making better use of women’s skills is not just a matter of fairness. Plenty of studies suggest that it is good for business, too. Women account for only 7% of directors on the world’s corporate boards:15% in America, but less than 1% in Japan. Yet a study by Catalyst, a consultancy, found that American companies with more women in senior management jobs earned a higher return on equity than those with fewer women at the top. This might be because mixed teams of men and women are better than single-sex groups at solving problems and spotting external threats. Studies have also suggested that women are often better than men at building teams and communicating.

To make men feel even worse, researchers have also concluded that women make better investors than they do. A survey by Digital Look, a British financial website, found that women consistently earn higher returns than men. A survey of American investors by Merrill Lynch examined why women were better at investing. Women were less likely to”churn”their investments; and men tended to commit too much money to single, risky ideas. Overconfidence and overtrading are a recipe for poor investment returns. …

…In particular, there is strong evidence that educating girls boosts prosperity. It is probably the single best investment that can be made in the developing world. Not only are better educated women more productive, but they raise healthier, better educated children. There is huge potential to raise income per head in developing countries, where fewer girls go to school than boys. More than two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women.It is sometimes argued that it is shortsighted to get more women into paid employment. The more women go out to work, it is said, the fewer children there will be and the lower growth will be in the long run. Yet the facts suggest otherwise. Chart 3 shows that countries with high female labour participation rates, such as Sweden, tend to have higher fertility rates than Germany, Italy and Japan, where fewer women work. Indeed, the decline in fertility has been greatest in several countries where female employment is low.

It seems that if higher female labour participation is supported by the right policies, it need not reduce fertility. To make full use of their national pools of female talent, governments need to remove obstacles that make it hard for women to combine work with having children. This may mean offering parental leave and child care, allowing more flexible working hours, and reforming tax and social-security systems that create disincentives for women to work. ….