Rachel’s Musings

I’ve come across two disturbing newsarticles in the last week or so: A BBC report on a study of children’s responses to questions about partner-violence and a report that despite falling homocide rates, women are increasingly being killed by their partners.

According to the BBC report, kids apparently find it okay to hit someone because she was late with making diner. This sounds so much like the standard excuse from a batterer it is very scary. The study of 11- and 12-year olds also investigated attitudes toward gender roles. It’s as if feminism had never happened! The aspirations are as sexist as ever. Plus, girls seem clear that they have to censor their own career goals because it’s not right for a girl to be a doctor. Now, this study is small – 89 pupils were asked – so maybe this is a rather skewed sample. But it was followed by a report on an uptick in domestic violence. Interestingly, it is very difficult to verify if this uptick is real because the FBI is not tracking domestic violence homicides separately. Apparently domestic violence is not a hate crime… Or a crime worth tracking separately. But as the article reports, organizations that fight domestic violence and help its victims are seeing a marked increase in requests for help. If we put these two reports together, I am wondering if the increase in domestic violence is not only due to the economic strains but also due to tolerant attitudes. After all, if he’s unemployed, it’s understandable that he’d beat up his wife because he’s just under so much stress – or however the societal excuse might go. Plus, sexist attitudes also reinforce the idea that a man has lost his manhood if he looses his job – and a way to proof that he’s still a man is to beat up his wife/partner. Apparently, we need to start plastering all over the place again: There is NO excuse for domestic violence!

(Hat tips go to the Feminist Philosophers blog for the BBC report and the AtMP blog for the WeNews report.)

I guess I should have known. After all, I’ve been following the Feminist Philosopher’s blog for a while. But it still came as a shock when I counted the number of women in my first graduate philosophy seminar. Four. Out of 26 students. There are three in my other seminar – out of 16. The one article by a woman in the book we’re using didn’t make it onto the syllabus. I’ve been in statistics classes with more women. Based on what I’ve read on the feminist philosopher’s blog, other male dominated fields also have higher proportions of women. Apparently, there’s something about philosophy that makes it more attractive to men. Or less attractive to women.

This post was prompted by my reading of an article that talks about the nature of man and man’s body. You know, as in human being. That sexist language makes me wonder: Maybe there’s a meme at work here that links philosophy with men. And this also suggests why it is so important to be careful about our language and avoid sexist usage (I suppose in 1981 when the article first appeared consciousness about this was fairly low still…).

What’s a meme? According to the Oxford English Dictionary (as cited by Richard Dawkins): A meme is

an element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation.

“Nature of man” reinforces the meme that all humans are men, that men are the standard, that women don’t count. It might be subtle but it’s there. This makes it very important for us to translate this into the nature of human beings. Of course, I am also wondering what human does in this context. Even that word seems to reinforce the meme that men are the standard humans and women are just copies, not really independent beings, just men with a few changes (making them defective, lesser somehow…). If philosophical reading includes a lot of text that reference the “nature of man” – and other sexist language – this meme is strengthened unless counteracted (here’s how!). And so that we can counteract this meme, we have to notice them and raise awareness that this is an issue. I intend to do that whenever I can – and since the seminar is on the philosophy of mind, I figure it’s important to reprogram some minds (to utilize some functionalist ideas).

“Deliver us from Evil” is the title of a documentary that uses the case of one Catholic priest to unravel the whole story of Catholic cover-up of the extend of child sexual abuse committed by priests. According to Patrick Wall, a theologian and former priest, the Catholic church knew that they had a problem with priests abusing children way back in the 4th century, when the first attempts were made to force priests into celibacy. Another report was published (and ignored) in the 11th century. Then in the 12th century, celibacy became official. According to Father Thomas Doyle, a very outspoken critic of the Church hierarchy, the Church’s view on sexuality goes back to the Stoics who introduced the mind-body split (soul and corporeal). Anything corporeal was bad. The Church hierarchy adopted that view. Sex was bad no matter what. It was permissible – though still bad – only if it produced children. Doyle remarks that we need to remember that this kind of anti-sex view produced by a bunch of celibate men is what influenced us all if we grew up in a European-ancestry home!

Wall stressed that about 10% of the graduates of one of the major Catholic seminaries in the US have been convicted as pedophiles (sorry, I don’t recall the name of the seminary). 10%! As Wall rightly points out, if Yale had a similar disgusting track record, it would’ve been shut down! Yet, the Catholic church manages to survive. They’ve paid more than a billion dollars in fines and reparation. There are at least 100,000 victims who have come forward – this is an estimated 20% of the real number of victims. Yet, the Catholic church goes on. How can an institution not loose all its credibility when there is such an extent – both in numbers and in time – of a problem that is systematically covered up? Doyle even blames the very essence of the Catholic hierarchy for this. A priest is considered more valuable than a child, so it is logical to cover up for the priest rather than to protect the child. And if all sex is considered bad, as Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea explains, it is difficult to distinguish child sexual abuse from adult consensual sex because it’s all bad. The Catholic hierarchy had lost their moral compass – that how Frawley-O’Dea puts it. And after that, they still have moral credibility left? That seems more mysterious than the conversion of a cracker into a piece of flesh! How much has to happen before people will stop trusting sexual advice from people who have pledged not to have sex? How much has to happen before people will stop following moral doctrines from a deeply immoral hierarchy? Only if the priests lose their supposedly god-given power will they stop abusing it.

This must be the year of change… The US President rode into office on a platform promising change (although he seems to be forgetting that). So, in keeping with this change theme, I’ve decided to change my life, or at least my career. To that end, I am going back to school – a rather scary thing to do amongst the California budget crisis since the class schedule, for example, is being revised. Hopefully, the classes I want to take are still being offered when they’re done slashing…

What am I going to study, you ask? I have been accepted into the master’s program of the philosophy department at SF State. The areas of philosophy that I am particularly interested in are feminist and moral philosophy, especially applied ethics. I would like to center my investigation of these areas around the development of an ethical framework that helps us humans create life-affirming and sustainable societies that are just to all individuals no matter what our relationship status.

Musings over our current economic and environmental situation have deepened my interest in addressing these problems more rigorously by switching careers. As the financial crisis deepens, most economists and policy makers suggest that the way out of the crisis is to spend. They call on the government and individuals to increase our spending, ignoring that one of the root causes of the crisis is a mountain of debt. This debt was largely created by a desire for growth – economic growth as well as the idea of “more” on the individual level. We were accumulating stuff in an attempt to attain happiness in life. If only we could get this one more thing, we’d be happy and our life would have meaning. Overconsumption – and the associated debt – is a symptom of an ethical crisis that might lead to the destruction of our life support system. Back in the 1950s, Victor Frankl talked about an existential vacuum. The existential vacuum emerged from a meaning crisis in most of the Western world: As religions were replaced by humanist ideas, no ready-made life meaning was available and humans no longer felt connected to something larger.

Additionally, our connections to other human beings have narrowed with the increasing emphasis on the nuclear family. The community of friends and acquaintances merged into the idea of “The One” – one person who can meet all of our needs. Underneath the façade, though, the needs for connection and meaning remain unfulfilled. Combine this need deficit with an economic system that pushes growth as the only factor that matters and the consumption and debt patterns we are witnessing now result.

In order to create a life-affirming and sustainable society, we need to find an ethical framework that reconnects us with genuine sources of meaning. My task as philosopher is to help develop this kind of framework that provides potential answers – or guidelines on how to find them – to the quest for meaning in life and the desire to be part of something larger. I suggest that there are better ways to fill the existential vacuum: By strengthening our connections to ourselves and to other people, as well as nature. These connections have to be founded on a profound understanding of justice – an affirmation of the individual as connected to a larger world, no matter who that individual is or how these connections are established (i.e., through marriage or friendship or anything in between). In order for us to increase our chances of survival as a species we need to change our priorities. This redefinition, though, requires a vision of a new way that is grounded in a deep understanding of our interconnections but does not need religious concepts.

Six weeks down and two weeks to go with $442 more to raise to meet my goal. Thank you to everybody for your support. Both monetary and verbal support are greatly appreciated. And if you’ve been meaning to help me reach my financial goal, now is a good time to do so . I can see why this combination of physical activity and fundraising is used a lot: It is very motivating to me! Not sure if I wouldn’t have succumb to the excuses today – I am too tired, the hills are too steep… But 1 hour and 35 minutes later, I was glad I walked! Again I was accompanied by another great interview by C.S. Soong of Anne McClintock, a professor at my alma mater UW – Madison: Paranoia, empire, and torture. The interview is based on a recent article by McClintock published in Small Axe, a journal published by Duke University Press.

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I might regret walking home twice this week – my glutes are already complaining – but the sun was out and I would’ve had to pay exact fare for the bus, so I decided to walk home again today.

After setting my pace with some music, I listened to Terry Gross’ interview with Michelle Goldberg. I heard parts of that interview before and it had fascinated me enough to dig it up. Goldberg describes the history of the fight for women’s reproductive rights.      Continue reading this post » » »