Rachel’s Musings

I just finished Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller’s wonderful book “Liberty: A Better Husband. Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780 – 1840.” It is a great read for any single by choice because it provides some historical grounding: there were women in antebellum America who chose to remain single for various reasons and some of them were actually rather happy with that choice. Chambers argues that the Cult of Domesticity gave rise to a Cult of Single Blessedness that was built on the notion that it is better to be single than miserably married (17). Her book follows several women through their life - using their journals, letters, and in some cases professional publications. They struggle with finding their place in society, often making great personal sacrifices to live with the choices they made. Largely, though, they were accepted by society - until after the Civil War. Then things changed. Singlehood became a “great social disease.” Singlism was born.

The arguments brought forth sound strangely and sadly familiar: “The root of the great error of our day is, that woman is to be made independent and self-supporting,” warned Reverend John Todd in 1867 (190). It wasn’t God’s will for her to be something other than a wife and mother. And just like today, the specter of damaging health consequences was raised. Edward Clarke argued in 1873 that women’s blood cannot support their reproductive organs and their brains at the same time. He forecast that women end up “hermaphrodite in mind.” And of course, putting all that blood into the brain has painful consequences for the single woman. Since she hasn’t used her reproductive capacity, the organs will shrivel up and a painful menopause sets in (192). (Maybe these are the theoretical underpinnings of the recent headlines that marriage makes people smarter? Oh, wait, no, that would be the other way round, right? Because if you were married back then, you’d likely have all your blood tied up in the reproductive system, which would leave any blood for your brain, so you’d be stupider… I am digressing, though.)

But the impact of celibacy is not limited to the reproductive organs. No, the medical community of the late 19th century warned, spinsters will die younger: “Very carefully prepared statistics show that between the ages of twenty and forty-five years, more unmarried women die than married, and no instance of remarkable longevity in an old maid is known” (193). Of course, ignorance is not evidence but that argument was pre-baloney detection kit… (Then again, if you’re male and live in Australia, you’re still pushed into marriage with the carrot that you’ll be living longer. Having read much of Bella DePaulo’s work debunking studies like this, I suspect that this finding is as solid as thin ice… Update: One of the Rachel’s Musings readers pointed me to an article on a recent U of Michigan study that is also debunking that marriage is the only way to stay healthy. I’ll incorporate more in a future post!)

If it doesn’t kill us, it will drive us nuts: “throughout the civilized word there are every where three to four single to one married woman in the establishments for the insane” (193). Being exposed to these kinds of attitudes can indeed lead to insanity…

To make sure that the single woman can safely be marginalized in society, everything considered not “normal” was brought together in a sure-fire mix to discredit the health of a spinster. As Chambers puts it: “Celibacy, often a symptom of that new female sexual disease, frigidity, would result in physical and mental degeneracy. Homosexuality and female independence were degenerate in and of themselves. Thus the epidemic of spinsterhood had to be quashed. The progress of civilization and the health of women depended up it.” With that much danger, it is surprising that single women weren’t burned at the stake. Oh, wait, that was a different century…

It is sad to realize that many of the stereotypes that were created after the Civil War are still around today. If we’re single, there’s somehow something wrong with us. We’re (supposedly!) more susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease and our blood pressure is higher. Seeing the historical continuity of these attacks doesn’t make them any less painful. Actually, it makes them more painful! And they make me wonder: Why are single women so threatening? Oh, wait, I think I know: If you make the whole existence of civilization dependent on marriage, of course, living single would be a big threat. That is the myth we’re up against.

A post over at the Feminist Philosophers’ blog talks about an amazing woman, Alia Sabur, who is the world’s youngest professor in the history of academia. She also happens to be a Muslim. JJ ends her post stating that

in many Muslim countries women are a strong presence in science classrooms, as students and teachers.

This reminded me of an article I read in Free Inquiry about the dismal state of science in Muslim countries, written by a professor in Pakistan, which seemed to call into question any celebration of strong female presence. Either way, I was intrigued and tried to find information on women in science. I was looking for an international comparison of scientists in academia by gender. So far, I haven’t found much. In the process of looking I stumbled on a debate that took place in 2005: The Science of Gender and Science, a topic that I briefly mentioned earlier this year. As behooves the label dilettante, although I prefer the second definition, I abandoned my search for statistics and read the debate instead, which took me forever. This post has been a week or so in the making.

Both [Harvard psychology professors Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke] presented scientific evidence with the realization and understanding that there was nothing obvious about how the data was to be interpreted. Their sharp scientific debate informed rather than detracted. And it showed how a leading University can still fulfill its role of providing a forum for free and open discussion on controversial subjects in a fair-minded way. It also had the added benefit that the participants knew what they were talking about.

As you may recall, in 2005, the president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, caused a loud out-cry by remarking that maybe women are underrepresented in science because of innate ability differences. The Pinker-Spelke debate was intended to see what the science really says.

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An interesting commentary at AlterNet made me realize how destructive the influence of the Religious Right really is (hereafter I call them the Wrong - they might be on the right-side of the political spectrum but they are dead wrong in their positions). The topics where their influence plays a role are ever expanding in my awareness. Here are some of them:

• Evolution: This is the most obvious one. Their attempts to derail science and teaching nonsense range from creationism, via creation “science,” to intelligent design.
• Global climate change: Here they try to cast doubt on the fact that we humans are influencing the weather patterns for the worse and are the major culprits behind climate change.
• Marriage: Not only are they opposing gay marriage but by imposing their standards of the heterosexual marriage as the only healthy family, they are attacking family diversity.
• Child rearing: Through ignoring research, they were able to perpetuate the myth that marriage is necessary for healthy child development.

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As the mother of a teenage boy, I was eager to read the article Lost Boys in the June 2008 edition of the Monitor. I was rather disappointed. The article ignores that despite the supposed educational gap, men still earn more than women. The last sentence even implies that the opposite is the case. The reasons given for losing boys are based on anecdotal evidence and do not reflect any changes in schools. Teachers have long been predominantly female, for example, so this cannot explain this trend. One of the suggested solutions sounds like the good-old-boys network resurrected, which is contrary to Dr. Kleinfeld’s claim that “we can design schooling where both boys and girls do well.” Nothing in the article presents even a hint of such designs.

The most disturbing comments came in the last two paragraphs, though. Starting with “helping boys succeed helps girls,” I excitedly expected to finally find out how schools can be designed to serve both boys and girls. But this is far from what Dr. Kleinfeld and the author of the article had in mind. No, these programs for boys help women find better partners! What a sexist and singlist statement! As if the only thing women are interested in is finding a partner, and a male one to boot. How about helping both girls and boys succeed in education without assuming that girls just get an education so that they can marry well or that boys should be better educated to make better partners?

(This is a copy of the letter to the Editor I sent to the Monitor on Psychology.)

Crimes committed against women because they are not following religious doctrines are increasing at an alarming rate in Iraq, reports AlterNet: “Violence against women is rampant, rising every day with the power of the militias. Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicides through self-immolation, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse masquerading as marriage of girls as young as nine are all on the increase.” The voices inside Iraq who are speaking out against this violence are themselves threatened with death.      Continue reading this post » » »

What quantum mechanics is to the New Age movement, neuroscience seems to be to sexism: Neuroscienctific terminology can be used to lend false credibility to sexist arguments. Like: men’s and women’s brains are so different that their traditional roles are based in the neurological firing of our brains. Cordelia Fine wrote an interesting - and upsetting - article taking apart the “findings” from neuroscience popularized in recent books (thanks to the Feminist Philosophers for blogging on Fine’s article!). Here are some excerpts from Fine’s excellent article (please see her article for all citations):

Unfortunately, scientific accuracy and commonsense are often casualties in the ugly rush to cloak old-fashioned sexism in the respectable and authoritative language of neuroscience. [...] Most lay readers, of course, have neither the background nor the resources to question the many inaccurate and misleading claims made about gender differences in the brain. There is also recent evidence that neuroscientific explanations enjoy a special “seductive allure”. [20] People’s capacity to spot the unsatisfactory nature of circular psychological explanations is significantly reduced when impressive-sounding neuroscientific terms are introduced. [...] What, exactly, is the draw of gender stereotypes dressed up as neuroscience? For men, perpetuation of the idea that they lack women’s hard-wired empathizing skills is a small price to pay for licence to lay claim to more valued and potentially profitable psychological advantages. [...] For women, a possible explanation of the appeal of neurosexism lies in the palliative system justification motive, “whereby people justify and rationalise the way things are, so that existing social arrangements are perceived as fair and legitimate, perhaps even natural and inevitable.” [11] Jost and colleagues have found that lower status groups have a remarkable capacity to rationalize what goes against their self-interests, internalize limiting stereotypes, and find legitimacy in the very inequalities that hold them back. [...] And as Cameron [5] has noted in her popular critique The myth of Mars and Venus, the effect, and also perhaps the appeal, of the idea of “timeless, natural, and inevitable” differences between the sexes is that it “stops us thinking about what social arrangements might work better than our present ones in a society that can no longer be run on the old assumptions about what men and women do.” Popular neurosexism permits us to sit back and relax, with its seemingly neat explanation of our social structure and personal lives. The answer, ‘Oh, it’s the brain,’ offers a tidy justification for accepting the status quo with clear conscience. [...] There is evidence that accounts of gender that emphasise biological factors leave us more inclined to agree with gender stereotypes, to self-stereotype ourselves, and for our performance to fall in line with those stereotypes. [...] Nineteenth century medical opinion proposed that girls who overtax their brains might never reproduce. Twenty-first century neurosexism warns that women who reproduce risk overtaxing their brains. It is, perhaps, a little less progress than many working mothers would have hoped for.

Fine calls this neurosexism: Sexism that appears to get the stamp of approval and scientific support from the hot new field of neuroscience. And it seems to be working: One of the books Fine mentions is on the New York Times bestseller list (#15) and has been translated into other languages. Is this a new version of a backlash or just the same old backlash in new clothes?

While there are differences between male and female brains - after all our bodies aren’t the same - look at the conclusions some of these authors come to, as quoted by Fine:

Levy [author of The Essential Difference] adds, “[t]his is no basis for equality. It is not an accident that there is no Nobel Prize for making people feel included.”

Freud said that women couldn’t be lawyers because they didn’t experience the Oedipus complex and thus never developed a super-ego. It is sad that almost 70 years later, we’re still bombarded with scientific-sounding nonsense that perpetuates gender stereotypes, cements the status quo, and leaves us all without alternatives for new gender roles that let us integrate all parts of who we are, whether they are “traditionally” male or female.