Rachel’s Musings

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).

From the Catholic Anarchy blog:

With a heavy heart, yet grateful beyond words for her life and work, I report that Mary Daly died this morning, January 3, 2010 in Massachusetts. She had been in poor health for the last two years.

Her contributions to feminist theology, philosophy, and theory were many, unique, and if I may say so, world-changing. She created intellectual space; she set the bar high. Even those who disagreed with her are in her debt for the challenges she offered.

When I return from vacation at week’s end I will post more. But I want WATER colleagues, of which she was a stalwart one, to know this now. She always advised women to throw our lives as far as they would go. I can say without fear of exaggeration that she lived that way herself.

May her spirit soar and her ideas endure.

Mary E. Hunt
Hoechenschwand, Germany

I’ve read some of Daly’s Wickedary – a quite thought-provoking dictionary for women/feminists. Weirdly enough, the thing I remember most from the Wickedary is the Seal of Approval: A little seal clapping her flippers in approval… Daly was tremendously important in feminist theology, a direction of feminism I dabbled in as a teen and young adult.

Every year during the year change phase, I get reminded of how arbitrary this whole time thing is. I called my parents at 3 PM today to wish them a happy new year. They were already living in 2010. Or were they living in 2009 since I was calling them? Or were we both living somewhere in between, in a year-neverland akin to the areas that used to be between the two Germanys? We are all living now. But when is this now? Is it at the time I write this, the time in my timezone? But now is also 9 hours ahead, or 3 hours past depending on what timezone you’re in. See! It is mind-boggling to think about this! Is it 10 PM now or 1 AM? Well, it depends on your timezone – but why? Aren’t we all living now? Shouldn’t that now be now and not at some arbitrary time? Maybe now is now and not 10 PM or 7 AM. We’re imposing a time arbitrarily onto now, which creates a separation between all of us. We are really just living now.

In any rate: Happy New Year!!!

I was already saddened when Gloria Steinem bend over backwards to try to justify getting married. In my eyes, she was forgetting all the feminist analysis that had critiqued marriage. As D. A. Clarke has pointed out “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Just because feminists marry doesn’t change marriage, the patriarchal and privileged institution that still traps so many women (and men) in unhappy lives.

I was pretty disturbed when Steinem listed this in her list of wishes in celebration of her 75th birthday. It is one thing she’d like to see in the next 25 years.

I want any two adults to be able to marry-as long as they don’t hit each other.

There are so many things wrong with this sentence!

Here are a few that came to my mind – feel free to add more in the comments:

• It ignores the reality of non-physical abuse, which can be just as devastating, sometimes more so, as physical abuse.
• Why two adults? Yes, I know, polyarmory is a dirty word now but when did that ever stop feminists?!?
• She is ignoring and devaluing any other relationship. How about wishing that our society equally values every relationship that we as human beings value?

I am deeply disturbed that the poster-woman of American feminism is forgetting so many of us in her quest to be normal, which apparently is a rather strong influence in the feminist movement as well, just like it has turned the queer movement into the marriage-equality movement.

This week’s Too Much includes an in depth look at a new meta-analysis about the impact of a society’s income inequality on that society’s citizen’s health. It’s a puzzle that apparently epidemiologists have been working on for a while but it was fairly recently brought to the forefront again when a comparison between the US and European countries showed that the US fares worse even though we spend a lot more on health care (I’ll see if I can dig up that article again…). Nothing seemed to explain the discrepancy, though, it’s obvious that the reporting ignored consistent findings that showed that the income gap seems to be a strong contender. According to the new meta-analysis:

The results suggest a modest adverse effect of income inequality on health, although the population impact might be larger if the association is truly causal. The results also support the threshold effect hypothesis, which posits the existence of a threshold of income inequality beyond which adverse impacts on health begin to emerge.

The US has clearly passed that threshold. Most of the extra mortality occurs in the US, the country with the widest income gap. How much of an impact?

Of the deaths the new BMJ study ties to inequality, almost 900,000 came in the United States.

Too Much last week asked a leading U.S. epidemiologist, Dr. Stephen Bezruchka of the University of Washington School of the Public Health, to place that calculation in perspective.

“We can say,” he noted, “that one in four deaths can be attributed to our high rates of income inequality.”

That’s about three times the number of deaths attributed to smoking… An editorial in the British Medical Journal gives more background.

In a previous post, I remarked that choosing to be single feels like a rather uppity thing to do. I promised to explain.

According to the Urban Dictionary “uppity” means (ignore the other two definitions!):

Taking liberties or assuming airs beyond one’s place in a social hierarchy. Assuming equality with someone higher up the social ladder.

As a single person, I am at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The hierarchy that starts with singles, then unmarried couples, then married couples. I am supposed to move up to the top by marrying someone. Instead, I dare to choose to be single and demand that I am equal to married folks. I want the hierarchy demolished but I am expected, socially, to respect it. And on top of that, I am not sad about my single status and don’t do anything to change it. In fact, I am happily single and would like to stay this way (both happy and single ).

Now, I also commented that this is uppity even for a feminist. Although many feminists have questioned marriage, a lot of them don’t. In fact, there are feminists who marry (amongst them Gloria Steinem). Feminism can incorporate marriage as a possibility by working toward egalitarian marriages. Something I find actually rather appalling. So, my choice to be single implies my critique of marriage as an outmoded, patriarchal institution that I don’t want to be a part of (well, not again, since I’ve been married before). Instead of attempting to create egalitarian marriages, my choice is to demand we find different ways of relating to each other, where relationshipse go beyond the dyadic. Thus, it is also demanding equality in the male-female hierarchy but also a call for questioning more than the equality of pay, for example, or equal access to everything, though this is also extremely important.